Walking the Tree

by Kaaron Warren

  "The man Dickson took a child to his cave and would not let her out."

  The locals, hearing this, said, "A man from your Order did this?" to Lillah.

  "The man Dickson kept the child for many days and then he killed the child."

  "No! No! Killing a child!"

  Lillah said, "Which child was it?" Not my nephew, she prayed.

  She thought of Thea, her huge great hands, and the children who had suffered. She wondered if Dickson felt a similar guilt. If there was something in their blood to make them that way… she realised she didn't know where their mother was from.

  "This is the place you came from?" Morace's grandmother asked him. "You knew this person?"

  "Which child died?" Lillah asked the messenger. "Why did he take a child?" She wished one of her friends was with her, one of the women who knew Dickson and his foolishness, knew Ombu.

  "Dickson was always rough with us," Zygo said. "He thought he was still a child."

  The sadness of this made Lillah feel tired.

  The locals watched Lillah. The other teachers didn't talk to her, though Musa didn't physically move away as the others did.

  "We should know the story before we judge."

  "We know the story."

  • • •

  After the meal, Lillah and Ster ventured on to the seawalk.

  "You are wrong that I treat Morace differently."

  "So if the seawalk was to collapse, and all of us dumped into the sea monster's bathwater, who would you save? Morace, or one of the other children?"

  Lillah didn't speak, although she knew the answer. Morace would be right beside her and he would cling to her whether she wanted to save him or not.

  The Tale-teller, tall with rough skin like Bark, leaned up against the Bark, his lips pressed into a knot hole.

  Lillah crept up to listen.

  "We have Morace, son of Rhizo, here with Spikes. Rhizo died of it and we have no sorrow for that. She was not a good woman. We have sorrow for Morace but need to treat him regardless of pity."

  Later, the Tale-teller said, "We will give him tonight because he is Rhizo's son. But we will not be the ones to break the way. In the morning his illness must be treated."

  Morace started crying. "Lillah?" he said.

  She took his hand. She knew that this was an important moment; she needed to do exactly the right thing or Morace would be lost.

  "It's okay, Morace. They'll be gentle. We've known this was coming for a very long time." She held him to her chest to keep him quiet.

  "Sleep well then. Good dreaming."

  The school was left alone. No one spoke. They prepared for bed as if nothing new would happen in the morning, but Borag and the other children slept close to Morace. Lillah noticed they turned their backs to him, as if avoiding breathing his breath. As if suddenly what was in him could kill them.

  Lillah wondered if they cared at all. She remembered treatments in her own Order, how the crying had been disturbing but how she had never felt she had to act.

  That night, with the children asleep, the adults told terrible tales.

  They told the story of a man at sea, a friend of the sea monster bringing shame to all. Lillah thought they meant her uncle Legum, but she did not say. There was reason enough for violence here.

  "And now," the headfather said, "Now the treatment must begin."

  "No! You said in the morning!" Lillah said.

  "Now."

  They walked to the place Morace slept and they gently carried him from his bed and laid him on a flat, long wooden table. He woke as they did so, feeling the salt breeze, hearing the voices.

  "What? What?" he said. Lillah took his hand, tried to tug him.

  "Can you run? We'll run," she said desperately, but she knew they couldn't. She knew she should have taken him before, she should not have listened to the stories but taken him and run.

  "We begin tonight and we will treat this boy for ten nights. On the eleventh night we will join him with the Tree and all will be well."

  The headfather took out a large, sharp shell. Morace screamed as they held him down.

  Lillah threw herself on top of him. Tamarica and Ster pulled her backwards. "We must accept, Lillah. We must. This is their way."

  "We must not accept!" she called, but they held her back, covered her mouth. Three men held her and she hated their smell, she vomited at their feet but they were not bothered.

  "You are sick too, perhaps?" they said.

  "He is not sick!"

  Morace screamed, terrible, full of pain. She could not see what they were doing.

  "They've sliced some flesh from his thigh. A chunk. Oh my Tree, it's bleeding."

  "Let me get the webs. Let me go," Lillah snarled. They let go her arms and she ran into the branches, seeking the spiders she knew spun there. Greedily she grabbed all she could find.

  They had staunched the flow with leaves. Lillah pressed the webs on top of the leaves and stroked Morace. He was pale in the moonlight and seemed sleepy.

  "Rubica gave him some tea, Lillah. He is not feeling the pain now. Tomorrow, when they take more of him, he will feel great pain. With pain comes cure," the headfather said. "You may take him now. He will need rest for tomorrow."

  Lillah and Ster carried Morace back to his bed. The other children murmured but didn't speak.

  "I warn you again, Lillah. They will kill him and all of you."

  Lillah spun at the sound of the voice. Maringa.

  "You are a ghost," Lillah said to Maringa.

  "No, I am not. But I will be if you don't listen to me and I will haunt you and yours for all the life of the Tree."

  "Lillah, I'm scared. I wish Rham was here. She would know what to do," Morace said sleepily.

  Lillah wanted to hit him, drown him. Years of care and protection and he thought Rham would be the one to know what to do.

  She rose above those feelings and said, "Let's go, Morace. Now. We will run, run to Ombu. We will keep ahead of them."

  "I will say goodbye to everyone then we'll go."

  "No, we can't alert them. We'll see them at home. They understand. They know your life is important," Lillah said.

  All they needed to do was stay ahead. That was all. If they ran for fifteen hours a day, they would manage that.

  They could be home in nine months.

  She felt a deep ache in her cheekbones, along her jaw line; the strain of smiling when she felt like screaming.

  "Lillah," Maringa said.

  "I don't know how to keep him safe any longer. I'm so sorry to put this on you. We don't know what Rhizo, his mother, died of, but she was worried he would have it, too. She wasn't going to send him to school but knew that at home, in our own Order, they would be more alert to his health. And to hers. She knew he would be killed if he stayed at home. She is not my mother. My mother went walking. Is… dead. But Morace and I share a father. I feel great responsibility for him. We've done so well, but Rhizo is dead now and it's like a power, a protection, is gone. We think Morace may be sick."

  Lillah felt great relief to be telling this at last.

  "Regardless of the effect on an Order? You save him at the risk of many others falling ill?"

  Lillah said, "I don't believe he will infect people."

  "That I can't see. But I tell you, Lillah; you must go into the Tree. I am no longer seeing the future. I am seeing the present. Now."

  Morace said, "I don't want to die, Lillah. I am not going to lie down and die. Let's just go and look, at least. Just look."

  "I will not."

  Maringa held out her hand to Morace and they walked together to the ghost cave. Morace limping, his hand gently holding his thigh.

  "Morace!" Lillah followed them. She could hardly see through her tears, and her legs provided shaky support. She felt as if her body were going to give up, that she would collapse. They were going into the Tree.

  The entrance to the ghost cave rattled with hanging bones.

 
As they stood beneath the Tree, Maringa gave Morace a small sack of stones. "All are marked. You pull one out when you need help and you will know what to do. This one, you send to me and I will know you are well. And do not lose your smoothstones. They are part of your identity. Learn all you can. Remember all you can. One day you will be Tale-teller, Lillah; these are the stories you will tell."

  Tale-teller, Lillah thought. Why not?

  Lillah wished it was Musa and not her standing here. Thea, or Melia, or anyone, anyone but her. She wished she could sink into the sand and die rather than go into the ghost cave.

  I remember in Aspen, how calm and peaceful they were, she thought. The brothers, with their words of war, were still gentle and filled with love not hate. I should have stayed with them. I could have been happy there.

  But Morace coughed and she thought of how easily they had cut his flesh, how little they cared for his pain. How the people around him cringed away, lifted their shoulders to avoid him, and she knew that she was the only one to protect him.

  He climbed into the ghost cave.

  "We are just looking, Morace. We are thinking."

  "We have to go in, Lillah. We have to. I am going with or without you. But I want you to come." He reached his hand out to her. "Please, Lillah. Please. You know I am not as scared of ghosts as you. I don't believe they want to hurt us. Please come with me. I will be too scared to go alone but I will have to. I don't want to die and I don't want them to slice me open. I don't want to be looked at from the inside."

  He turned away, shaking.

  Lillah thought, There have never been two people more scared of two different things at the same time.

  Maringa put her arms around Lillah. "Listen to him, Lillah. You are the strongest women I have ever met; stronger even than I am. This is not just about Morace; this is about your future, and the future of all of Botanica. You must know that I see this with all certainty. You must do this."

  "There's nothing I must do," Lillah said, standing tall.

  "There is this," Maringa said, so quietly Lillah felt as if the earth had stopped spinning so her words could be heard.

  "Send word back about what you find," Maringa said. "I can see black air in your future. Hard to breathe at first, but you get used to it. This is not dangerous, but there have been people go in who don't come back. You will know. There is much to ask for forgiveness for inside. We have killed their dead-but-walking and I know others have too. Take this pouch of seeds. They will be precious to those inside and worth presenting."

  Morace had come out of the cave and was jumping on the balls of his feet.

  "It's right, Lillah. It's what I always wanted to do."

  "You wanted to do it. Not me. I don't want to go into a place like that. We don't belong in there."

  "It will be all right. I know it. I really know it."

  "You're a child, a sick, weak child. You know nothing but what I've taught you."

  Morace laughed. "I know much more than that. If that was all there was to learn, we could have stayed safe and dull in Ombu. Met no one, experienced nothing."

  "This is your destiny, Lillah. Your past; I see your brother, your father, walking with wood. Your mother with food. Leaving too soon. I know this about you, and I know you will be a greater person if you venture inside. You have the Tale-teller within you and you need to know all you can."

  "You shouldn't be scared," Morace said quietly. "Imagine what Logan would think. He would want you to take this adventure."

  "I think we should run."

  "To what? To where?"

  Lillah walked out into the water. The sea bed here was thick with broken shells and the small sharp stabs of pain took her out of herself.

  Lillah thought of her true love, Sapin. And of Magnolia's brother, Ebena. Of the two brothers in Aspen.

  She thought of her uncle, the one who disappeared out at sea.

  She slowly walked back to Morace and Maringa.

  Lillah said, "When the school wakes up, tell them we went to sea, that we have disappeared. Tell them not to wait."

  She touched her wooden necklace, wondering where it would be safer. She did not want to be parted from it but she didn't want the ghosts to steal it, either. She kept it, hidden deep in her carryall.

  Maringa pointed. "You go in there."

  "But… the ghosts? How do we keep the ghosts away?"

  "I don't think you will have to keep them away. But I will give you each a shawl, which you will soak in the salt water. Even when it's dry, they are scared of salt water. Without flesh to protect it, the soul dissolves at the very smell of salt water. And you'll take these." She handed Lillah small clay jars. "These have some seawater, enough to flick at any ghost."

  "I can't take a child in there."

  "You can't leave him out here. Out here he will be treated."

  "They don't even know for sure if his mother died of Spikes."

  "They don't care. Of course they don't care. Sickness means Spikes to them. They don't realise that not all illness kills. They see Spikes as a monster."

  Maringa gave them each a bundle filled with dried fruit and strips of salted bird.

  "You need to get going. The sun will be up soon. You need to be well inside the Tree by the time they all wake up."

  Lillah thought of the places she hadn't visited. Focussed on them to take her mind off the idea that she was about to enter the place of the ghosts. Chrondus, Osage, where Phyto could be by now, Bayonet and Laburnum, with which Ombu traded perfume. These places perhaps she would never see. Most teachers had no idea of completing the island, of seeing it all, but Lillah felt a great desire to do so.

  In her mapping, Lillah told the Tree: Scar tissue tells a story. The family of cruel men and women I see where Rhizo came from.

  Of Gulfweed I remember nothing else.

  Here, the Tree grows bitter nuts. The leaves are too soft for use and the Bark looks diseased.

  PLANTAE

  Lillah and Morace, clinging to their belongings, wrapped in their sea-soaked shawls, walked up to the entrance of the ghostcave. Morace squeezed through the crack and stepped inside the Tree.

  Lillah tried not to think how small and dark it would be inside, how enclosing. She tried not to think of the ghosts she'd been warned about her entire life.

  "Come on," Morace said. "It'll be fine. Come in."

  "I'm coming," Lillah said, wanting fresh air on her back for a bit longer. The idea of stepping inside the Tree, inside it, made her want to choke.

  Morace thrust his face back out, then a hand. He said, "I've always wanted so see what's inside. Come on!"

  He pulled his head back in and called, "It's big in here. Hollowed out. And lighter than you'd think. There's nobody in here. There's nothing."

  Lillah passed their belongings through for Morace to stack neatly inside.

  "We can't leave anything behind outside," she said. She swept the dirt at her feet, covering up all traces. She was terrified, going through the small motions of preparing to cover her terror. She knew she should not be as scared as that. She knew now that not everyone believed in ghosts, or in the malevolence of ghosts. She was no longer sure ghosts would eat her bones. She thought that if she had been born elsewhere, in a community where they didn't fear the ghosts, she would not be scared now.

  Lillah took a deep breath and stepped through.

  Their things were piled in a mess.

  "Morace! I passed you these things carefully. Why did you let them all spill out?"

  "What? Oh, Lillah. I was too busy looking to bother about those things! Leave them!"

  Lillah, hunched over, breathing through her mouth, repacked their clothing, food and water in the heavy weave bags. She held onto the little bag of dirt, given to her by the woman in Arborvitae, where Rham died, where Melia stayed, where they heard about Thea's death. She wanted it close by if she needed it. She also held the small container of saltwater given to her by Maringa.

  The area they w
ere in was quite light. Lillah couldn't see the source.

  There was silence. No waves. It was like her heart had stopped beating, so strange and frightening was the silence. She strained to hear and she could find a faint rhythmic noise but no more.