The next day when Timi returned to the library, the tree had grown a full metre overnight. Timi could no longer even touch the top of it.
He only had a little bit of time before he was due back at his auntie’s for dinner, so he spent most of his time in the library lugging buckets of water from the kitchen to the tree, until he felt satisfied that the tree had had enough to drink.
‘I’ll come back again soon,’ he told it before he left. He felt calmer seeing that 64the tree had not only grown but looked as healthy as it did before the holidays when he had gone away.
He had the feeling that the tree was answering him back now, acknowledging that it would see him again soon. He crept from the library and stole away back to his auntie’s house.
The next time that he came back, the tree had grown another metre and was taller than the empty bookshelves.
The time after that, it had grown not only taller but wider as well. Its branches reached outwards and, standing beneath it, Timi felt like he was under a green, leafy umbrella. 65
He always did the same thing every time he was at the library. He watered the tree with the bucket, he opened up the 66curtain to give it light and he spoke to it a little. Timi had the same feeling of wonder watching the tree growing in the library as he did when he saw one of his apple seedings sprouting. The seedlings at home grew much more slowly, but it still seemed like a miracle to watch a leaf unfurl and get strong under his care, and for another and another to appear.
But this tree was something else. Like on the first day that he had spotted its growth spurt, he still felt like he needed to keep coming back to check that it was really there. It continued to seem impossible.
But it was always there.
Always growing.