Walking the Tree

by Kaaron Warren

  "We can't do that," Lillah said. "As if we can go into the Tree."

  "You have to do it," Maringa said. "If you want to save yourselves."

  Lillah dragged me away from her. For the rest of our visit, it was like that kind old woman did not exist. If I mentioned her, Lillah would throw me such a look I felt like sinking into the sand. The other teachers ignored her. Even Nyssa gave up talking about her.

  "We'll be fine, Morace. We're almost at Gulfweed. You wait and see. At Gulfweed everything will be all right. They are your family. It will be all right."

  We could see, though, that people were talking about us. Word was getting out. It was slow, but it was happening. They knew about my mother, which means each messenger would tell the next communities.

  I hope Gulfweed is what we think it will be.

  Sargassum — GULFWEED — Chrondus

  We call it my Mother's Place.

  Here we went into the Tree.

  I am fourteen years old.

  The next place we'll visit is the place my mother was born. Lillah told me many times, "Don't worry, it'll be fine, they'll love you, nothing to worry about, you'll be safe there," that I started to worry. I hadn't worried before that. Of course they'll love me; they're my family. I couldn't wait to get there and talk about Mum, tell the truth about her. How she died, and that I am sick too, but that they should look after me and not try to treat me. They are my family. They won't treat me for the illness like other villages will. I couldn't tell anyone else. I can tell Lillah but she mostly doesn't want to hear it. She thinks it makes me too sad so she changes the subject, but I hate that. I don't want to pretend my mother isn't dead. I know that if I went home now she'll be gone. My Dad'll make up some story about her talking a walk into the Tree, but no, that's not true. Why do people who aren't children pretend so much? It's not like the thing isn't happening. It is happening. Pretending it isn't doesn't make it go away.

  So I was nervous as we got close to Gulfweed. What if they hated me? Didn't get my jokes? What if I found out they never liked Mum, like Lillah found out about her Mum? She was broken up about that. She thought her mother was perfect, but if other people saw something they didn't like in her, then I guess she wasn't.

  They didn't come running to meet us. That made me a bit sad. Dumb old me thought the whole Order would be there, cheering.

  Only a bit of me thought that.

  I feel so scared. My family don't love me. They aren't going to save me. I don't want to be treated. I don't feel sick enough. Nowhere near sick enough. If I'm going to be treated, I'd rather be at home with my dad to say goodbye to him.

  I don't want to die.

  I let a few tears fall because no one was watching. They would want to be nice to me because they feel sorry for me, or think I'm a baby, or want to stop me crying, and I didn't want that. Don't be nice to me; save me.

  It seemed to happen very quickly. For this whole journey we've had Gulfweed as our goal. When we get to Gulfweed I will be safe I always thought. They will save me, hide me. They will not want to treat me.

  But they were quicker to condemn me than any other community would have been, I think. There are places I might have been safe if we'd stayed.

  It happened over welcomefire. They asked about my mother. They called her Rheeezo, with a long drawn out centre. Our dearest daughter, they called her. I was glad to think they had loved her so much.

  Tamarica told them she had died in childbirth. The Birthman nodded. But what he said didn't match the nod.

  "We know how she died. She died of Spikes. Maybe she had it in her when she left here; we don't know. We know she died of it and we know that Morace is her son."

  "Morace is perfectly healthy," Tamarica said. "There is nothing wrong with them."

  "There is, though. Anyone can see. You have brought sickness into this community and you will help us to treat it."

  I knew what that meant. I stood up and ran away, running up along the beach, I thought I'd run as far as I could and they would forget I existed.

  No. One of their older boys, who should have been with school but was too stupid, he chased me. How fast could he run? He brought me down with a grab around my legs, and he held me down until the others came and joined him. Then they all carried me back.

  I struggled as much as I could but they punched me hard when I did so I stopped it.

  "There is no point in running, Morace. We will catch you. It is our responsibility. In the morning the treatment will begin."

  They left me alone then. I sat by the water's edge. I couldn't think of anything I was so scared. I didn't want to die.

  Lillah came over to me and put her arm around me. It's always her, always. I'm not sick of her, but I know she looks after me because she has to. If she didn't have to she wouldn't care less.

  "Sitting here feeling sorry for yourself won't help," she said.

  "Won't hurt," I said.

  "Yes, it will. Sitting here doing nothing will hurt. We need to pack up, you and I. We're going to make a run for Chrondus. Keep ahead of them."

  "Why would the next community help if this one didn't? They'd know about Mum too, by now."

  "But they won't know you, at least until we've gone. If we move quickly we'll reach home in no time and I can hide you, then. Your dad will help."

  "I can't move that fast."

  "Yes, you can. Or I'll leave you, and you can let yourself die."

  I nodded.

  "I have to go and join them at the tale telling

  now or they will suspect. You go to bed. Once they are all asleep, we will run. Okay? We'll run."

  "I have to say goodbye to everybody."

  "No, you can't. We have to go without anyone knowing." Lillah thinks she knows everything.

  They want to kill me. My own people want to kill me. My mother thought I'd be safe with them but she was wrong.

  I lay in my bed waiting for her to come and get me. I didn't change into night clothes and I tried to quietly pack some things to take. The thought of running was so tiring, but there was no alternative.

  But they lied. Those people lied.

  They came for me.

  I pretended to be asleep, thinking it was the Sleep Demon. They carried me outside and I could hear voices, I knew that they were not demons voices but the voices of my uncles. My people. I opened my eyes and saw that they were carrying me to a large slab.

  I screamed so loud I guess I woke the whole place up. "Lillah!" I screamed so she could hear me even if she was back in Ombu.

  "I'm here, Morace. Be brave," she said. She was at the back of the crowd. They were holding her like she was a prisoner.

  They held me down.

  The headfather came forwards. Oh, he carried the sharpest shell and I screamed so loud again, so loud. All the children cried and screamed.

  "Tonight we begin," he said.

  And he cut a huge slice out of my thigh.

  Of course I fainted. I woke up to the most terrible pain I've ever felt in all my life. Lillah held cobwebs to me, and Musa gave me some liquid, something to ease the pain.

  I think I slept for many hours. I had terrible dreams, waking sleeping dreams. I knew it would not be long before they came back to take more of me.

  But before the sun rose, we had a visitor.

  Maringa.

  She had followed us all the way. She didn't say, "I told you so." She said, "You must enter the tree."

  She and Lillah talked for one hour or two.

  I said, "I want to go, Lillah." My thigh hurt me still but the tea had helped. It wasn't bleeding but it felt terribly stiff. I knew I could walk but I couldn't run.

  And so we went into the Tree.

  Lillah is so slow. She makes me feel bored, sometimes. I wish I could leave her behind. I want to explore, I want to look inside. There's nothing to be frightened of. I can't leave her, though. She hasn't left me, all this time. I know she wanted to. So I'll wait, be patient. Oh, I wish she'd hurry, though
.

  I went first into the woodcave. It was dark near the back, where the natural light couldn't reach, but I could see a glow back there as well, something bright.

  "Come on, Lillah. It's okay."

  She climbed in. She breathed really quickly because she was scared, so I made her sit down and I held her hand till she calmed.

  "How long till we go back out?" she said. "How many days?"

  "We're not going out there," I said, pointing at the way to Gulfweed. "Maringa told us to go in. Into the Tree."

  "I can't."

  Part of me was so frustrated with her I wanted to say, "Well, then, how about we go outside so I can be sliced up and then hung from the Tree? I know you don't care." But that would be cruel. She did care and I didn't want to force her, make her come out of guilt.

  "Lillah, if you want, you stay here for a few days, then go out and say I was taken by the ghosts. That will work. I'm going in, but I can go by myself."

  She thought and we talked more. I tried to explain why I wasn't scared, about how much I wanted to know.

  She said, "Let me think."

  No one has ever been braver. Even with her terrible fear, she said yes. She came with me.

  • • •

  We climbed through to the second cave. Lillah breathed fast again and she made some noise when we saw what decorated the walls.

  Bones. Many, many bones, from a hundred? Two hundred? people. I worried that I was wrong, that there were ghosts in here who will suck our bones clean. I said, "Maybe we should go back."

  "No. Let's go on, Morace. Let's find out."

  Luckily we had both settled down so we didn't scream when a man appeared before us. He was pale, like moonlight, and hardly wore any clothes. It was warm inside the Tree, really warm.

  "I am Santala," he said. He had water, and I've never tasted anything so wonderful. Melia would have fallen down and kissed his feet.

  "I am Lillah, and this is Morace." She handed him back the water-container and smiled.

  "I will guide you," he said. And off we went to see the inner world of wonders.

  The first thing we noticed was that they use bone for everything. They play music on a long arm bone with holes along it; soft, high notes. They make me want to cry.

  You hang your shirt off a bone stuck in the wall. You walk on a bone path sometimes. I can see why they take all the bones the outsiders leave for them.

  The second thing to notice is that the children are smaller than me, even the ones who are a year or two older. They have faces which look very young.

  The grown-ups too. No wrinkles.

  They are very pale. It seems odd to see white skin like that. They have soft skin and are very strong.

  Lillah spends all her time with Santala, talking, talking, talking. It leaves me free to be with the children. They're teaching me how to play their games, how to use the loose bark to make shoes. Their favourite game is following clues, a hiding type of game. One goes ahead and, at each choice of tunnel, trunk or limb, leaves a message behind. The adults get very angry at this game because they say the messages are the only thing keeping us from being lost. They say the children confuse the messages. The children know they can find their way anyway.

  The children don't answer when I asked how old they are. They know what words I say but don't know what they mean, I think.

  "We don't count how long we've been here," one of their grown-ups said. I don't know if they have teachers. I haven't figured that out yet. "It doesn't matter to us. We don't count time like you do."

  This was something to learn, that time, the blinks, the days, the moons, is only what we say it is. Time is only decided by people.

  Lillah seems to be good at changing the truth. I always knew that about her. She told Santala that Gingko was a good teacher, but I've never heard her say anything good about Gingko before.

  I think my skin must be thinner and softer than theirs because I scrape myself every day about a hundred times. It makes them laugh and that doesn't bother me. They're not being mean. It's because I'm different. I've laughed at different things before.

  They have another game where there are squares drawn into the dirt floor, and you have to balance there, one footed, while the others drape things over your side-stretched arms, trying to topple you. They hang sharp things, hard things, and if you fall they all pummel you.

  I was good at it because my feet are large. For all my clumsiness, I do have good balance.

  It was fun, but in the end I was totally covered with scratches and scrapes and my skin was red with blood. A beautiful woman, who had straight pale hair, huge eyes, a kind voice, put her hand on my shoulder.

  "Look at you, all cut up. Come on, Morace, we'll soothe your wounds."

  "Are you the birthwoman?"

  She shook her head. "Here, I'm known as a healer. I understand the body and can read its signs."

  I knew, I knew I should not let her touch me. She would find out I had Spikes, and soon I would be dead.

  I pulled away.

  "I have to find Lillah."

  "I'll send a message to Santala. Lillah will be with him."

  "We have to wait."

  "Let me just fix your wounds."

  She led me carefully through the Tree to a large cave. She had bowls and bowls of things there; all sorts of colours and textures. She dripped something onto my cuts and it seemed to seal them.

  "Aren't you scared of catching something? How do you know I'm not sick?"

  She shook her head. "I don't think you're sick, Morace. None of the signs are there. We can find out. Would you like to?"

  She asked as if this were nothing, as if we were talking about where to eat a meal. I nodded. I never had the idea I might not be sick.

  She took a small bowl with high curved sides and bade me lay my arm flat, palm up.

  At my wrist was a small wound from the game we'd played. She dripped a high-smelling liquid onto it.

  "If you are ill, the blood will turn green," she said.

  We waited.

  Nothing.

  Nothing.

  "You are not ill," she said, again as if this was nothing.

  It made me happy but fearful. How would I tell Lillah that we didn't need to run? That we hadn't needed to come inside the Tree? She would want to go outside that minute and I didn't want to. I wanted to learn more.

  I wanted to find Lillah straight away but it took some time. I told her what the healer said and she cried and squeezed me much too hard.

  "So we can go outside now, if you want."

  "Do you want?"

  I shook my head. "I want to stay for some more days. I want to learn more."

  She nodded. "So do I. But I will need years, Morace. I am going to stay here for longer than you should."

  "I will be able to find my way," I said.

  So Lillah left me. She went with Santala. But I was safe. I was well.

  I wanted to stay inside the Tree and I did for a long time. I learnt about time and history and the past and many other things before I left and headed back to Ombu.

  Labrunum — OMBU — Aloes

  We call this Our Place.

  The insiders told me my school would be hard to catch. I decided to go straight home to Ombu. This took a long time, but I had guides all the way, groups of children who felt so familiar it was as if they came from my home community. One girl, though, she didn't. She was very pretty and smart. She knew what every message meant and we never got lost. Her name was Anarcadia.

  As we got closer to the ghost cave of Ombu, I said to Anarcadia, "You should come out with me. Live in Ombu with me."

  "I might one day."

  "Come now."

  "I'm too young. I belong here still. Perhaps when you are older and I am I'll join you."

  "You'll forget me."

  "No. No, I won't."

  It was weird to be back outside. Weird but right. I

  had the mark of the healer on me, proving my health. I
could only hope my father, our birthman, would understand it.

  He did. He was happy to see me but I made him think of Mother, which made him sad.

  It was not long before the rest of my school returned. All the teachers were new, except for Ster.