Chapter 4

Excited, Ricky scurried down the branch he had been perched on.

He pressed on the tree trunk and an oval hole half his height and about 40cm wide appeared in the trunk. He dived in and crawled for a half meter before he hit an open chamber.

The centres of the trunks of the three original trees that formed his home were made up of vacant cavities and sections of hard dead wood for at least half of the tree’s height.

Over the hundred years that he had lived in the tree, mostly by himself, he had hollowed out new sections, smoothed floors and walls, and formed internal stairs where he wanted or needed them.

He and his father had built the more standard type rooms like bedrooms in some of the lower spaces when he was young. It had been a lot harder work back then until they go their medallions.

Many of the smaller rooms in the higher levels were simply cavities that were bare or filled with the items he had brought back from his travels, borrowed, bartered for or that had been left for whatever reasons best known to his visitors.

Other chambers, mostly in the east trunk, were spelled as food preservation rooms, and they stored the grains, fruits and vegetables that he harvested from his fields each year. He even had a cold store for when he butchered one of his camla or woollies or had to thin his rohan and longears populations.

After one of his infrequent trips to the coast about ninety years before, he had come back with the parts he needed to finish building a very well-appointed ablutions room that he had read about in an obscure book he had found amongst his grandfather’s possessions.

He just loved to use the flushable loo and the showers, so he had put bathrooms on several levels in his tree and in each trunk, for his convenience and the odd time he had a guest.

As a consequence, he had then upgraded the outside amenities from an old thunderbox to the new loos, and added the hot showers, much to his visitors’ delight.

The facilities he offered often encouraged people to stay for at least one night and sometimes longer if they were waiting for other people to turn up to trade with. The impromptu trade fairs happened a couple of times a year.

It was handy that he could use the natural plumbing system of his tree for his source of water, and the tree provided a means for the removal of his wastewater. He tapped into these ducts for his kitchen’s drinking water and the waste system too.

On the lowest floor, the east trunk housed Ricky’s main kitchen and dining room. His rather large kitchen had every amenity he would ever require and even some he wasn’t sure that he had ever used more than once or twice after he invented them.

His main study and a lounging room were in the west trunk, and his playroom and bathroom were in the northern trunk. The rooms had eclectic assortments of furniture in them, but they were all large and pleasant rooms.

The next level up contained three large bedrooms, each with a big bed and its own bathroom. His bedroom was in the southern trunk. A wide spiral staircase that stopped and started on a broad landing every 250cm ran up the middle of the tree for 25m.

In the next eight levels above his bedroom, were his workshops, laboratory and material storage areas. They were not safe places for inquisitive people, so he kept the entrances to those areas spelled for security and safety.

He had quite a few rooms high in the west trunk that housed his collection of reading material and art-deco. If there was one type of item that his spirit friend may admonish him for borrowing, it was other people’s books. Not that she could stop him if he found one that he didn’t own and really wanted.

A person looking around his home would find unique touches of a woman having lived there at one time, but Ricky hadn’t had a long-term live-in lover for near on twenty-five years.

The men or women tended to get lonely, took exception to Ricky screwing the other travellers, or they would simply leave as they felt it was time for them to go and join the real world once again.

In the past, a couple of his visitors had even lived with him long enough that they had died of their old age. However, most of his lovers didn’t last longer than a couple of months of winter that they found themselves stuck for; this included his last couple of live-in lovers.

This didn’t bother Ricky too much as he never promised to be faithful and he never promised to love them. As long as the guest didn’t damage his books or things and stayed out of his workshops and labs, he didn’t really care what they did. He did expect them to let him screw them when he wanted to.

Most of his guests found these conditions acceptable for a while, but eventually, they discovered his sexual requirements were too demanding. Ricky knew that he could be hard to live with when he went into one of his inventive phases and totally ignored them for days, or even weeks; so, they inevitably left.

So many had come and gone that Ricky didn’t put a lot of emotional energy into keeping them.

Ricky made his way to the ground and checked that the campgrounds were acceptable to guests.

The ‘Keep clean’ spell he had on the barbecues and tables had kept them clean enough to eat off. He’d noticed a fallen branch, and some dropped leaves from his perch, so he pulled his wand from his pocket on his ratty shorts. One would be amazed just what was in those pockets that looked flat and empty.

Ricky flicked the wand, as he muttered a levitation spell to shift the items over to the woodshed. He then floated over to the woodshed himself. He used his ‘Chopping’ spell, to break the sticks and added them to a barrel that was used for kindling.

He then muttered some words and tapped the pile of leaves with his wand. The leaves collapsed into a blurred mess that swirled and twisted in on itself. After a few moments, the mess formed into large rolls of cream coloured thick and soft, toilet paper.

He headed to the shitter and stacked some of the fresh rolls into both of the cupboards beside each of the loos. He refreshed the drawing of a roll of paper on the door of one, as it was looking a bit tired.

The toilet bowls were clean, the cistern tanks full and both refilled once he flushed the loos to check their operation. No critters had tried to move in, and the rooms looked clean and tidy inside.

He did refresh the ‘Absorb bad-smells’ spell on the crystal over each door. He knew people appreciated not smelling the shitter. He always giggled when he used that word, mostly because it was so apt.

‘That book of granddad’s that he had drawings of the showers and toilets in it for me to build them, sure had some funny words for things in it,’ he chuckled to himself again as he left to check the shower side of the ablutions building.