Walking the Tree

by Kaaron Warren

  The sun was up late and the children wouldn't sleep. Morace remembered every now and then about his mother and his face would drop. Lillah thought he wasn't as sad as he pretended to be. It was more fear for his own survival. The schoolchildren began to dig deep in the sand, telling the local children of the last Order, where deep sand caves had kept them cool. Rham told them, "If you dig deep enough, you find the roots of the Tree. They are powerful with magic. Some of the roots stretch all the way to the sea, and if you dig deep enough, make a tunnel, you can let the water run up the beach. You will be the ruler of the water."

  The children took to the project with great delight and the adults were glad of the peace.

  Lillah and her man sat together, talking quietly. They would move away soon, but she was enjoying this quiet time, this thoughtful moment. She saw his home, with its seaweed door-hanging. It smelt faintly of the sea, but it was not as overpowering as she imagined it would be.

  She spoke of Rham, her great cleverness. And of Morace, who was becoming a kind boy.

  "Do you only talk of the children?" he said. "Your children are better than ours." But he smiled as he spoke and kissed her so she couldn't respond.

  Close to four weeks later, Melia leaned against the Tree, staring up into the leaves intently.

  "Can you see the sky?" Lillah said. "Your eyesight is very good."

  Melia tilted her head back and Lillah saw that she was crying.

  "What is it, Melia?" This girl had never cried, in all the time Lillah known her, in all her life.

  "I'm thinking about my uncle climbing the Tree."

  "Very sad for your mother."

  "Not that. I'm worried these people will find out and they won't take me. No Order wants the risk of someone climbing the Tree. Telling others to climb the Tree."

  Lillah turned her back, partly amused and partly furious at herself for thinking that Melia would care about anyone else.

  "None of us will tell them. Don't worry. We'll protect you."

  "I'm sorry I couldn't protect you from knowing about your mother, Lillah. Would you prefer to think she is free somewhere?"

  "I don't know. It seems she died happy, at least. Something she rarely was in life."

  But then there was a terrible scream from the beach. The children came running; school children, local children, all sandy, tear stained, terrified.

  "The cave fell in! It collapsed! They said it would stay up!"

  "You can dig again," said one of the fathers.

  "No, no, there is someone underneath!"

  Morace, barely able to speak, said, "It's Rham."

  They ran, all of them, the men grabbing large shells on the way, and too many people dug to get her out.

  A sickening silence settled as they reached her face. Her eyes were closed and her mouth full of sand; they dug desperately to free the rest of her body and saw her fingers clutched, her fingernails torn and bloody.

  The Birthman stepped up. "Bring me water and wine," he said. He cleared her throat, so full of sand, and he sat her up. The water and wine came and with these he tried to revive her, but she was gone to the spirit island.

  Morace threw himself to the ground and the other children followed, all of them wailing a terrible, inconsolable sound. "She won't go to the island of the spirits! She'll be caught in the ivy."

  Lillah threw herself down, too, and the other teachers, no thought of comforting the children, just allowing the grief to take them in all its passion.

  For two days the Birthman and the fathers tried to revive Rham, painting her cheeks with red, opening her eyes for her. They propped her against the Tree, food in her hand. They did not want this bad thing to happen in their Order; they did not want to be thought of badly.

  Lillah walked to the water's edge, looking out to the island of the spirits. She felt ill at the thought of Rham's soul being lost, drifting out to sea. If only they'd had a turtle close by, or a bird.

  Morace stepped into the water nearby and fell to his knees. The other children joined him, kneeling and letting the waves slap them.

  A low, rhythmic moaning from them, so low and rhythmic Lillah couldn't tell it from the sound of the waves. They stretched their hands towards the island and the sight broke Lillah.

  "I saw a bird sitting on a rock over there," she said. "Did anyone else see it? It had red feathers on its shoulders, like a neck ruff. It sat there for a long time then flew up into the Tree.

  "Really?" Borag said. "You saw that?"

  "I did," Lillah said. She wished she was a child then, to hear a happy lie and believe it. She wished she knew that Rham's soul was safe.

  Finally, Melia said quietly to Lillah, "We need to send her out to sea. She will never reach the Island of Spirits otherwise. And we don't want her bones eaten by ghosts."

  "That is an odd thing to say," Melia's lover said, kissing her neck. He took her into his arms. "There are no ghosts in the Tree."

  Lillah watched Melia change in that moment. She let belief go so easily, because her lover told her to. Lillah thought, Yet I still see her strength. The teachers washed Rham's little body again, weeping, pouring their salt tears onto her skin. They placed her beloved wooden puzzle in her pocket. The children sat quietly now; some already bored with it all, some so shocked still they couldn't talk.

  "Another messenger is coming. With seaweed around his neck."

  "No. Not more death."

  It was Thea. Fallen from high in the Tree, the messenger said, but they knew that she had been murdered by the men of Douglas.

  Lillah put down her washing cloth, put both her hands up in surrender, and walked up to the Tree. She found a small alcove, dry, ghost-free, and she stepped inside, wanting to be alone, without anyone, alone and not caring about those who died.

  It was two days before Melia came to convince her to come out. "We need you, Lillah. You can't give up on us because of a person like Thea."

  Lillah spat at Melia, "It's Rham as well. We failed her. You hated Thea, but I didn't."

  "You didn't like her. You are lying to yourself. You despised her as much as the rest of us did."

  Lillah stared at her. "What do you care? You'll be staying here, I imagine."

  "How did you know?"

  "You are so predictable. You don't care about the men. You want the water."

  Melia flicked her hand, as if dismissing the importance of the men.

  "The men will do," she said.

  The children seemed to recover well. Lillah caught Borag tasting sugar, and Morace went swimming with some local children. The others, you could see their faces sometimes, when they thought of their schoolmate but mostly they played, and ate, and waited to move on.

  "These children wouldn't care if we lived or died," Lillah said to Tamarica.

  Tamarica said, "They would care, but only sometimes. Not always. They don't feel grief as an all encompassing thing like we do and that is good. Grief leaves no room for learning."

  "And you," Lillah said, because that wasn't what she wanted to hear. "Your brothers have murdered my dear friend."

  Tears came to Tamarica's eyes. "I am sorry for that. I'm sorry she died in my Order." The two women looked at each other, no recriminations. They stepped closer, like they would stand with a man, and for a moment it felt like the right thing to do. But Lillah did not feel that way about women: she liked men, their length, their strength. And Tamarica did not know yet what she wanted: she had come from such a bad place it would take time to know this.

  The leave taking was cold. For Lillah it had to be that way; to lose Rham, Thea and Melia, and to care, was too much to bear. She felt a certain envy that Melia had found what she was looking for. That she had the freedom to do so; no brother to protect and keep from death.

  "You're staying in this place of death? The place my mother died, and Rham? You care so little? The place we heard about Thea?"

  "I don't care at all," Melia said.

  "Then you are lucky."

 
; Melia picked at her toenails. She said, "You don't really care about consequences, do you? About punishment, or protection. Safe keeping."

  Lillah didn't speak. She didn't know if the others knew what she was doing. They didn't know Morace was her half brother, but did they know that he was sick and she was protecting him from being treated and cured?

  Melia looked at her. "I convinced Thea to stay in Douglas. I told her she should do it as punishment, to atone. So she would go to Spirit Island when she died."

  Lillah was suddenly so furious she couldn't breathe. She shook with rage. "You told her to stay with those men? Who we knew would likely kill her? How could you?"

  "Because I believe in guilt. You don't. You would have kept her by your side, safe. With the children around her unsafe. And you would know that but not admit it. I should have told you, but only so you would not sacrifice your beads. That was not needed."

  "That is the very least of it."

  Lillah's face filled with salt water, it seemed. Her whole body a sea of tears. "I can't speak to you again," she said. But she knew that Melia was right. She had to feel this way, in order to protect Morace at the risk of others.

  Melia gave Lillah a smile, but Lillah ignored her.

  Melia hissed, "I can't believe you put Thea before me! She is a child killer. I am your dearest friend."

  Lillah turned her back.

  "You're angry at me? Over Thea, who's no longer with us?"

  "I'm angry because you don't care. Because you think you can tell people what to do but you don't think it's your fault when people die. I'm angry to have lost Rham when she would have been a wonderful teacher. And now you're staying and I'll never see you again."

  Melia looked at her. "This is how we live, Lillah. I'll miss you too."

  Melia's place was taken by Ster, someone very different, quiet and nervous. Lillah wondered who would play the role of the curious, with Melia and Rham gone.

  In her mapping, Lillah told the Tree: Alga is those who question.

  Here, the Tree grows death. The leaves are pale and dead, the Bark is dead, the ground is dead.

  Alga — PINON — Arborvitae

  Phyto was shocked to hear the news. He alone realised how desperate Morace was to have lost his mother, and he tried to talk to them about death, news of death, sudden death, so much of it in one place. And Lillah, too, now knew she would not see her mother again. She now knew her mother was dead.

  "Why was Rham in the hole? What was she doing in there?"

  Morace answered. "You know that we spent a lot of time in this community in holes. The sand was quite hard, we thought. We were taking over and showing them how clever we were, then I got out to find us some water and Rham was left behind."

  He began to cry, hunched down where he stood and cried. Lillah was pleased to see the tears; pleased that Rham had been loved.

  "Thea… we don't know all about that yet. We know that she is dead and we think of course that the men of Douglas killed her. We don't know though."

  Tamarica covered her face. "My men are not good men. I don't know if they would kill for no reason, though."

  "So you think that Thea deserved to die?"

  Tamarica looked shocked. "No! No! I don't mean that at all."

  Lillah touched her shoulder. "It's okay, Tamarica. It's okay."

  There was a shorter walk, only twelve days, to the market, and it was lively and colourful, serving hot drinks and cold, food snacks, making it a place for people to meet. Phyto was accepted as a travelling man without much concern, and he said that already he liked the people of Pinon.

  Lillah felt like a bad tempered old man, but she couldn't help it. She missed Melia terribly; Ster, the teacher who'd taken her place was dull, quiet, far too nice. She agreed with everything Lillah said, wanting to impress her, Lillah supposed. She brought out the worst in people, Lillah thought. Just being around her made Lillah want to behave badly, speak ill of people long gone, make shocking statements.

  Borag and Morace quietly took her hands and walked with her. She loved them for it; supporting her in her bad mood, not expecting her to change. They talked about Rham; told the stories they knew of her, sad and funny clever, the stories they knew.

  Morace coughed, tried to smother it. Even a cough could give him away as sick, though it was pimples and other growths that would cause the greatest concern.

  Lillah kept some hard sap balls in her pockets; she gave Morace one to suck, to soothe his cough.

  After four days walk, she began to feel calmer and more connected to the present.

  The first thing they saw as they entered the outskirts of Pinon, the first thing they smelt, was a man, hanging from a Limb.

  It was close to being more than Lillah could handle. She bundled the children forward, distracting them, wanting to remove them from the stink of it.

  Phyto said, "Perhaps I should come with you this time." As if to answer this question, a tall man, shaven head, greeted them. They had not seen him approach. His teeth were broad and white as he smiled. He did not comment on Phyto's presence.

  "We weren't sure whether to hang our treated man as you enter the Order, or as you leave. We decided entry, because we want it made very clear we do not like illness here."

  "Nobody does," Lillah said. She pressed her elbows into her sides to stop from grabbing Morace, giving anything away at all. I must believe that he's not sick, she thought. They won't know he's sick unless I tell them. If I believe he is not sick, they won't know.

  "That's a cruel way to kill a person, though."

  "Sometimes cruelty is needed to save an entire Order."

  "But what if Spikes is a myth? We have no real proof of that part of our history," Tamarica said.

  "You have learnt nothing in your travels then. Proof is everywhere. In the places where the population is so low they are barely surviving. In the Trunk, where people have etched pictures of suffering. In our stories, our myths. All of this tells us Spikes is something to fear. This is what we must protect the people from."

  Musa said, "You are a fear-mongerer. This is wrong, what we do. You know that. Spikes is in the past, and this is now. We shouldn't kill people because they might be sick. It's a terrible thing."

  The argument continued. Finally Musa said, "We are tired, and the children are very hungry. Do you think we could move beyond your border?"

  The tall man nodded at her. "Please excuse us. We are a philosophical people and we tend to forget the needs of children. Of course the needs of children are more important than anything else which could be discussed."

  Musa and Lillah exchanged glances. Lillah thought, We must be careful of these people.

  "We won't discuss then the Tree of life, the earth mother and the sky father. That we will leave, because the children are hungry."

  "If you don't mind," Musa said. For the first time, Lillah was pleased she was with them. She was tough and unrelenting. She was not bothered by slights.

  These people walked with a slant, always facing the Tree. As they sat for food, none of them faced the sea; always the Tree.

  Borag whispered, "Do they know that Oldnew Day is coming? Do they even care?"

  Zygo said, "We will ask them. See what they think."

  "No, Zygo. Not everyone believes in the things we believe in. We must leave them to decide for themselves," Rubica said.

  Zygo stood up. "This day is too warm to be sitting here with you. I will find some excitement." The light around his shoulders made him seem taller, larger, and the teachers and the students alike watched him, wondering what he would be like as a man.

  Lillah looked at the Tree Trunk and felt disturbed by the greenness of the moss she saw there. It almost covered the ground area and, as she stopped closer, she could see that it was both slimy and furry, almost seaweedy in texture.

  The women lived in groups of two or three and the men shared with them. It seemed a happy arrangement, without the rules of ownership which, when broken, can be so
distressing.

  None seemed concerned with Phyto, and Lillah was happy with his company.

  At welcomefire, the people were not impressed with the sealed bowl of sweet water. They reluctantly gave a bag of morning-after moss. Lillah spoke quietly to her school. "We remember our lost women. Rham and Gingko and Rhizo and Thea. We remember them and eat in their honour."

  Morace sat quietly, chewing slowly. He did not often talk of his mother, but Lillah knew thoughts of her sat with him most of the day. He awoke from nightmares in which he said she was dead-butwalking, making her way through the Tree towards him.