Tree Mountain

Tree Mountain is the story about Sana from Mountain Keep and her friend Seal, the merboy.

Excerpt from Chapter One

Enter the library at Mountain Keep. Walk past the lovely picture books in the foyer and head straight for the shelf with the oldest and dustiest books. Open up the pages and they will tell you about a time long ago. Before Mountain keep was built, before the ice of the world melted and the oceans rose, people had built another city here. It was called Cape Town and it sat at the foot of Table Mountain. After the ice melted, the city flooded and people moved away to live in the Floating Cities. Table Mountain was forgotten, until one day when passing ships noticed something strange growing on top of the island that once was a mountain.  It grew from a tiny seed that had fallen into a crack in the rocks. The rain watered it, the sun baked it and it grew into the biggest tree anyone had ever laid their eyes on. Its bark was white, its leaves silver and it never stopped growing until its branches brushed the clouds and tickled the stars. Because it glowed softly at night, people called it the Ghost Tree. They treasured it and they built the Mountain Keep next to the tree and appointed the Keepers to care for it.

There were two special things on the mountain. One was the tree and the other was the girl called Sana. She was the only child in all of Mountain Keep. But that wasn’t what made her special. What was remarkable was the manner by which Sana arrived at the Keep.

Many years ago, the mountain experienced the fiercest winter ever recorded in the journals of the Keepers. It rained for days on end and cold winds furiously lashed at the walls of the Keep.  But the storm stopped, as storms generally do, given enough time. When the people emerged from their home to breathe the fresh air, they found a ship washed up on the rocks. It was a small ship, strange and foreign like none they had ever seen. There were no people aboard. The only thing they could find was a basket, the kind you would put a tiny baby to bed in. Yet there was no baby in sight.

They brought out lamps and candles and flashlights to search the cliffs, but they found nothing. The next morning, a Keeper went outside to the courtyard where the Ghost Tree grew. He was busy raking leaves blown down by the storm when he heard a child’s happy laughter. He looked up to see a small baby in one of the bird’s nests in the tree.

Publication

Tree Mountain was published by Mthombothi Studios in South Africa