Birnam Wood


 Contents
 
 Title Page
 Copyright Notice
 Dedication
 Chapter I
 Chapter II
 Chapter III
 Acknowledgements
 Also by Eleanor Catton
 A Note About the Author
 Newsletter Sign-up
 Copyright
 
 
 
 Guide
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Dedication
 Chapter I
 Acknowledgments
 Contents
 Copyright
 
 
 
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 Begin Reading
 Table of Contents
 A Note About the Author
 Copyright Page
 
 
 
 The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
 
 
 
 for Steven Toussaint
 
 
 
 
 
 THIRD
 Be lion-mettled, proud; and take no care
 
 APPARITION
 Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are:
 
 
 Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be until
 Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
 Shall come against him.
 
 MACBETH
 That will never be.
 
 
 Who can impress the forest, bid the tree
 Unfix his earth-bound root?
 
 
 
 
 
 I
 
 
 The Korowai Pass had been closed since the end of the summer, when a spate of shallow earthquakes triggered a landslide that buried a stretch of the highway in rubble, killing five, and sending a long-haul transport truck over a precipice where it skimmed a power line, ploughed a channel down the mountainside, and then exploded on a viaduct below. It was weeks before the dead could be safely recovered and the extent of the damage properly assessed; by this time the temperature was dropping, and the days shortening fast. Nothing could be done before the spring. The road was cordoned off on either side of the mountains, and traffic diverted – to the west, around the far shores of Lake Korowai, and to the east, through a patchwork of farmland and across the braided rivers that flowed down over the plains towards the sea.
 The town of Thorndike, located just north of the pass in the foothills of the Korowai ranges, was bounded on one side by the lake, and on the other by Korowai National Park. The closure of the pass created an effective cul-de-sac: cut off from the south, the town was now contained in all directions but one. Like much of small-town New Zealand, the local economy depended for the most part on the commerce of truckers and tourists passing through, and when the rescue teams and television crews finally packed up and drove away, many Thorndike residents reluctantly left with them. The cafés and trinket shops along the highway frontage began, one by one, to close; the petrol station reduced its hours; an apologetic sign appeared in the window of the visitor centre; and the former sheep station at the head of the valley, described by its real estate listing as the town’s ‘greatest-ever subdivision prospect’, was quietly withdrawn from sale.
 It was this last that caught the attention of Mira Bunting, aged twenty-nine, a horticulturalist by training, and the founder of an activist collective known among its members as Birnam Wood. Mira had never been to Thorndike, and she had neither the intention nor the means to purchase even the smallest patch of land there, but she had earmarked this particular