Amanderella Gottsnobbler and the Bangolin Tree Chapter 15

Chapter 15.

A wandering carnivorous tree.

Amanderella stood and watched the reeds where Dr Wickslate had disappeared until it was clear that he had said his final word on the subject of the Bangolin tree and its fruit.

She made her way back to the River Burko and walked carefully along the bank, avoiding the vines which seemed to feel the need to wrap themselves around her. One even managed to remove her hat and was very reluctant to give it back until threatened with a number six hatpin.

The water ran the colour of weak tea at first, muddied by silt, leaf‑fall, and the general behaviour of Burkoland’s soil. But after an hour the river began to clear, as though someone upstream had decided to rinse it properly.

When the water was perfectly clear, clear enough for her to see the small fish which had made it their home, she cast around for a path. It was narrow, overgrown, and gave the impression of having been trampled by something large and without a clear idea of where it was going. Amanderella stepped onto it without hesitation.

The jungle changed almost at once. The air grew still. The light dimmed. The trees leaned inward, not menacingly, but with curiosity, as if trying to see who she was and what she was doing walking under their canopy.

Then she heard it. A faint but insistent humming over the top of the usual jungle noises. It was not particularly musical, nor did it sound like an insect.

“At least it is humming,” she thought, “so it cannot be Tuesday.”

The path widened. The undergrowth thinned. And the Burkoland canopy opened just enough to reveal a small clearing, a circle of sunlight in the middle of the densest jungle.

There they stood. A grove of trees. Trees that looked nothing like any of the other trees of the jungle. For a start, these trees did not have a single vine clinging to them, unlike every other plant Amanderella had seen. They were short, thick‑trunked, armoured with overlapping plates of bark that looked as though they had been borrowed from a particularly well‑armoured reptile. Their leaves drooped in long fronds, rustling even though there was no wind.

“Dr Wickslate said that there was only one Bangolin tree,” she thought. “But there are a dozen of them here”

Most of the trees stood quietly, as though waiting their turn.

But one, just one, leaned slightly forward, its bark plates parted around a single, heavy fruit nestled in the crook of its central branch.

Amanderella nodded. “I wonder if the good doctor meant that there was only one tree that produced the fruit.”

The fruit glowed faintly in the filtered light, warm‑coloured and dense, as though it contained all the sunset pigments the British weather had mislaid.

Amanderella approached with the calm of a woman who knew exactly what she was doing. The fruit continued to hum, and it certainly was a hum, not a growl.

The fruit was too high for Amanderella to reach. She looked around the clearing. There was nothing she could stand on to help. She sighed.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said to the tree, “but I am going to have to climb you.”

Amanderella placed her hand on the trunk. The bark plates were cool and faintly ridged, like the scales of a creature that had decided long ago it would not be climbed by amateurs. She tested a foothold. The tree did not object, but it did not assist either. It simply hummed, a steady, resigned vibration, as though acknowledging that this was its turn in the rota and there was nothing to be done about it.

Amanderella stepped back, surveyed the situation, and sighed the sigh of a woman who had been raised to maintain standards even in the middle of a jungle. Climbing the tree was not the only problem she could see. Carrying the fruit after she had picked it was another. And, as Dr Wickslate had warned her, dropping the fruit or letting it touch the ground did complicate matters.

She looked around the edge of the grove. Growing out of reach of the trees, which were supposed to be carnivorous, were beds of thick‑stemmed, broad‑leafed reeds. Giving thanks for her foresight in learning how to make baskets from grass stems long ago, when she was training herself to become an explorer, she set to and collected armfuls of them.

She began to weave. Her fingers moved quickly, over, under, twist, pull, the muscle memory of a skill she had taught herself years ago coming back to help her. Within minutes she had a basket strong enough to cradle the fruit and flexible enough to absorb any bumps on the journey back.

Her dress, though, was another matter.

“This is not to be passed on to anyone else,” she informed the tree.

The tree hummed neutrally.

After a quick look around to make sure she was alone, she unbuttoned the long overskirt with brisk efficiency, folded it once, twice, and tied the hem and sleeves into a neat sack. For a brief, shocking moment her legs, pale, determined, and entirely unaccustomed to public life, were revealed to the Burkoland air.

“This is highly irregular,” she informed the nearest tree.

The tree hummed sympathetically, but made no comment.

Amanderella placed the dress in the basket at the base of the tree with the air of someone setting down a tool she fully intended to use later.

“This had better be worth it,” she muttered.

Then she climbed.

Without the heavy skirt tangling her, she moved quickly, sure‑footed and precise. The bark plates shifted slightly under her hands,not to hinder her, but as though adjusting themselves to her weight. The humming grew louder as she reached the branch.

The fruit was warm. Heavy. Humming with quiet importance.

Amanderella lifted it carefully, cradling it against her shoulder as she climbed back down. When her boots touched the ground, she exhaled with satisfaction.

“Right,” she said. “Now we can address the matter of decency.”

She set the fruit gently on her folded skirt in the basket and tied the bundle securely around it. She stood back. The fruit did not attempt to escape.

“A lady may climb,” she said, “but she must not display her knees.”

On the far side of the clearing was a plant with large leaves, broad, glossy, and obligingly sturdy. She picked four of the biggest, examined them for insects, evicted a large spider and a small lizard, and, using some of her handy hatpins, made herself a skirt which covered her essentials rather neatly.

It was not elegant. It was not fashionable.

But it was respectable, and that was the important thing.

Amanderella adjusted one final pin, lifted the fruit bundle, and straightened her improvised leaf skirt with the dignity of a woman who refused to let Burkoland dictate her standards.