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Walking the Tree

Page 44

by Kaaron Warren


  They told me their adventures, and I told them mine. They said that Phyto was very happy in Osage.

  And time passed.

  We grow up, all of us, and begin to see how adults think, to understand them. That is sad. It was good to be a child.

  Schools came through and teachers stayed, though I wanted to wait for Anarcadia, my love from inside. I left messages and gifts in our ghost cave and they always disappeared, but nothing was ever left behind.

  Why didn't I go back inside? Because I am an outsider. I need the sea, sand, sun. I can't live without those.

  Lillah came back as if time had not passed and I had not become a man. No one can believe it. She is thin and pale but she has a burning fire in her eyes. She knows things, she has learnt so much. She will find us dull and empty after all she has done.

  I want to make her proud. Do some good work. They have already agreed I should help the market holder between Ombu and Laburnum, and I will make it a place all of Botanica thinks about. Anarcadia will join me, and our children will walk the Tree, and life will go around and around and around.

  ANGRY ROBOT

  A member of the Osprey Group

  Midland House, West Way

  Botley, Oxford

  OX2 0HP

  UK

  www.angryrobotbooks.com

  Ghosts

  An Angry Robot paperback original 2010

  1

  Copyright © Kaaron Warren 2010

  Kaaron Warren asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  EBook ISBN: 978 0 85766 044 2

  Set in Meridien by Argh! Nottingham.

  eBook produced by ePub Services dot net

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

 

 

 


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