They pushed against the luxuriant vegetation of a greenness so bright it both hurt and pleased the eye, so redolent with life it seemed.

Two slim figures forged on ahead, full of their own vitality. The Massking twins, dressed in identical fawn hiking costumes with rucksacks bouncing against golden pigtails, enjoyed the battle with nature in their own way. They fought ferns and great leaves with equal enthusiasm, tangled and untangled themselves from vines and lowering branches dexterously as they followed an instinctive path amid the trackless forest. That was until they disappeared from sight with perfectly matched squeals of alarm.

"Ah, they have found the drop," Ansibby said happily and those with her chuckled with knowing complacency.

"Have they fallen over a cliff?" Victoria asked, apprehensive.

"Indeed they have, no doubt depositing themselves safely upon a thick bed of moss awaiting them some tens of feet below. We usually descend less rapidly by means of rope ladders and climbing vines as you shall soon see, but these eager children must be left to find their own way."

"Some children are more eager than what is good for them," the censorious Midgy observed as for the umpteenth time she retrieved her hat from a snatching twig that like its fellows before insisted on depriving her of what she deemed essential headwear in such a climate. Her charge rather scandalously had given up on her own bonnet and it swung unceremoniously upon a tree some distance back. Midgy however refused to be defeated by nature's vagaries.

Everyone had reached a brighter patch of greenery by this time, telling them an opening to the sky was ahead. They paused at a break in the wall of trees and looked out upon a curious vista of sandy wastes so different from the rich valley they had passed through like jungle explorers lost in a timeless wilderness.

"Behold, the Tree of Life," Ansibby said, gesturing at a curious growth some distance away right in the centre of the quarried depression which was surrounded by lush greenery that fringed rocky ledges around the boundary line, except where there was some quarrying at the far side. The tree was the oddest looking thing the girls from Miss Plazenby's had ever seen. Then they looked down at the sound of laughter. Divvy and Fizzy added their own oddity to matters as they sprawled in lazy nonchalance upon a spongy mat about twenty feet below looking for all the world like victims of a terrible tragedy if not for their bright-eyed smiles as they stared back up at their less adventurous colleagues.

Sophelia jumped and Midgy screamed. The Deepwold girl could not resist the challenge and landed in a tumble of limbs that exposed a lot of frilly leggings as she endeavoured to right herself amid the cheers of the twins who scrambled out of her way to safety.

"Really," came an exasperated gasp from the maid, "this place has a very bad influence on Miss Sophelia. Imagine what her mother would say if she were here to witness such ungainly antics."

"Eight point four perhaps?" Victoria suggested as she too could not resist the tumble.

"Easy for you to say, being already dead and all," Midgy muttered unheard as she sought a rope ladder which one of the others kindly indicated to her.

Once everyone had descended into the eerie depression, they made their way across its sparse surface. The sandy soil harboured but scant vegetation except along the fringes of a rapid flowing and noisy river that apparently disappeared into some unfathomable underground cavern. Wiry grasses and pale bushes devoid of all but a few leaves, managed somehow to suck nutrients from the dusty ground, yet in their midst stood a magnificent oak of sorts upon a raised mound like the last citadel of life in a dying world.

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It was not a true oak, botanically speaking, but some adapted sub-species with vague resemblance to that monarch of trees. The leaves were different, longer and with an oily substance that silvered the pale green leaves amid the burning sun. Tiny hard buds, like nodules of wood, clustered upon every branch as very poor imitations of incipient acorns. None looked remotely as if they would ever ripen.

Ansibby stood beneath the shady foliage and gestured up at what made the tree so much more extraordinary still, blossoms no tree had every produced anywhere else upon Winkel World.

"We call it the Tree of Life for reasons now lost," she said, lecturing to tourist visitors as the first years and Midgy gathered in a half circle and looked up at the display. "Thus it has also acquired a more credible name of the Bubble Tree."

"That's incredible," Victoria Sponge said, stepping forward and examining one of the bubbles that hung from the branches, a bright pink globe soft and warm to the touch. "Why this is-"

"Balloons!" the twins chorused and raced forward to give the Bubble Tree their own brand of examination. For indeed the fruit of the Bubble Tree was no more nor less than inflated rubber balloons in a multitude of colours, each carefully tied to as many branches as could be reached so that a festoon of soft round globes adorned the tree. They must have counted a hundred or more, swaying silently in the lightest of breezes. The girls stood beneath the leafy fronds and gently touched the colourful bubbles. Then inevitably when Fizzy was looking one way Divvy batted a balloon against her head, making a pleasant rubbery sound. There was a squeak and then a series of playful slapping battles between these two untamed and untameable forces of nature that made many of the spectators laugh, though some were a little perplexed by the exuberant display.

Ansibby though was thoughtful, her mind upon an uncertain future.

"The Bubble Tree is as much a mystery to us as the great spoons of our ancestors," she said to those who were not watching the epic balloon battle between the Nordeyer girls. "Indeed it is a part of the same mystery, for an image of the tree often appears in the bowl of the spoon. Always it is depicted with these great bubbly fruits upon its branches, yet as you see, the living tree refuses to bear any fruit. Our ancestors brought seeds of the tree with them and one by one they were planted, grew, matured and died. Now we have no more and this is the last. Long ago it was decided therefore to dress our sacred Tree of Life with tributes of our own in the shape of these balloons. We like to think of them as representing the beloved souls of long departed ancestors."

Bang!

"I think your great great grandfather has just departed again," Victoria observed wryly as one of the twins paused in guilty horror at the irreverent game the two girls had been playing.

"It must have hit against a sharp thorn or something," came an excuse in nervous tones.

"It was your fault," accused the other twin.

"No, it was yours when you pushed that big orange one in my face, saying it was Bubbles Bannatyne."

Therein followed a slap fight only broken up by deep laughter from Orfo Falofa.

"Worry not young duplicates," came a reassuring voice from the chief of Ansibby's family and he produced from his belt a deflated spare.

"Me!" Divvy said.

"Me!" Fizzy echoed for it was clear what they wished to do.

"I think misses, it would be an honour for the Bubble Tree to have the air of your lungs grace its branches from both of you," and the man produced a second balloon. Both were golden in colour and of course were identical in every way. The girls blew and blew until they almost burst these replacements but were only satisfied when they were of the same size and lustre before each produced a spare hair ribbon to tie them to the tree with.

"Now I'm glad you burst that other balloon," Fizzy said, sighing at the sight of twin balloons swaying in the breeze above their heads.

"And I'm even more glad it was definitely your fault," came the opposing rejoinder. "We are the Twins of Life," and the girls cheered and clapped.