77

Ella hadn’t listened. Of course, it had been a race. And she had wiped the floor with her brother. She looked down at the crawling speck below her as she crested out of the pit. The tree was far larger than either of them could have possibly imagined. It stood alone in a familiar field. It looked just like Mr Armitage’s, but harvest day had long since passed. The sisters were all around her, a sea of corn stalks leant and sank. The beans shrivelled and withered. She took a step forward and tripped, plunging her arm into a rotting squash, which let off behind a foul odour and juice. She ran around the pit to the base of the trunk, it looked as though it had been struck by lightning and caught flame. She hauled herself up to the first branch, loose charred ash bark crumbled in her hands as she ascended. She looked out across the never-ending field of rot and back down to the pit. She whispered quietly;

“Sara?” Nothing. A little louder then - “Bethany? Catherine?”

Conor had been right in the pit, he didn’t need to say anything to her, she knew. The way to fucking what she repeated, in his tone. If every deep has a river, she thought, every deep must have a tree. If there was one in hers, she’d never found it. But she’d never crawled so low in hers. She knew for a fact that Conor hadn’t. Scoffed again - fucking buses. Before she knew what she was doing she silently said something resembling prayer. A prayer that their trees were still alive.

She continued watching her brother as he moved slowly up through the pit. Then, something stirred further down. She watched as the great white roots at the base where they had begun their climb began breaking loose of the pit wall. Conor felt the wall shake and looked down. She could see the outline of terror marking his face as he turned back and began scrambling faster. The roots below had broken loose and were contorting in the base of the pit. They began thrashing. The first emerged fully, bringing with it an enormous cascade of soil away from the pit wall to Conor’s left. She was screaming at her brother to run. It wasn’t helping. He was at maximum speed already. The second winding root broke loose and fell upon the first that was now laying at the bottom of the pit. It landed on it and the first one thrashed violently. Ella saw then that they were not roots, but great serpents. They reared up, massive, and threw themselves at each other. Before they twisted up again in a heap at the bottom. Only when the third - the smallest of the beasts - emerged from the side wall did they calm down. White like the strange roots they now writhed below, their wet skin flashed, the twisting outlines turned the pit into a moonlit well. Conor had some way to go still, as the serpents turned to face upwards and began jostling for position as they made their way up the pit wall towards the tree.

It’s a fucking race, thought Ella.