Walking the Tree (25 page)

  "It is so far, the distance between the communities here. I think eighty days' walk at least. That is too far to travel to market."

  "I would make a market people would travel a full year to visit."

 

They walked later into the night than usual. They talked about their options. Phyto thought they should just keep moving, forget about learning about the weather, forget about stopping at this Order.

  Melia said, "We have an obligation to stop everywhere. We are supposed to meet all types, know them all. The children need to know that not all people are good. And who knows, perhaps the people of Torreyas have some bone to pick with these men, and they don't like them. Perhaps they are perfectly fine people. We should decide for ourselves." It was a sharp night, making their vision further-reaching.

  Melia looked back. "There's definitely someone coming. There, in the distance. Closer than last night."

  "We'll sleep tonight and see if she is closer tomorrow. If it's a messenger they won't rest. If it's a walking woman, if it's your mother, she will catch us eventually."

 

At the approach to Douglas, Lillah said, "Let's cover up. They're expecting us, and they know what we're here for, but let's make it clear the choice is ours, not theirs."

  "Let's just walk past," Thea said.

  "No," Melia said. "I want to know what they know. It's knowledge that should be shared. And you know they dive for sea sponges here. We could fill our bags with them."

  "Phyto, you should walk in the night, past the Order and onwards. Meet us at the other side. We don't want them seeing you. Be even more careful than usual."

  "I want to be with you. You may need help. I want to protect the children."

  "You can come for us if we don't get a message to you in a few days." Although they were reluctant to enter Douglas, after such a long time walking they were happy to see it on the approach. Lillah felt no clarity as they neared the Order. This was not the place she would find her love, if her relatives were to be believed.

  The school walked closely together, pressing up to make a mass. Rham, in front, said, "What is that?" and it was a long length of bones, stretched out, picked clean. There was a scurry of red on it, crabs at work, gorging.

  The children ran to the Tree screaming, to hug the Trunk, the normalcy of it.

 

They walked closer, and heard a hissing sound coming from the overhanging Tree limbs. A growling sound, a yip, a high pitched noise as well. Looking up, they saw men in the Trees, sitting on the branches and walking along wooden pathways built up there.

  "Do they live in the Trees?" Rham asked.

  "It looks like they spend a lot of time up there," Melia said. "Or perhaps that's their watcher, protecting their secrets."

  The leaves were huge, the size of a food plate. They were the palest green Lillah had seen. One of the men dropped down from the branches. He smiled broadly, and Lillah thought, He doesn't seem too bad. Very nice looking.

   "Welcome to Douglas. We're very happy to have you and hope we will be able to learn from each other."

  The other men dropped down carrying garlands of flowers for the teachers, small carved boxes for the children. Melia and Lillah exchanged glances.
All right so far.

  They were led to welcomefire, where Rubica gave over the red beads with an apology. "These came in trade. We are sorry."

  "This is not your apology to make. The people of Torreyas are not known for their generosity. They are too busy counting."

  In return she received a bracelet carved of delicate bird bones.

  "Feel free to roam where you please. Our Order is yours."

  The men left to fish and prepare the feast. The women, quiet till now, welcomed the teachers in their own way.

  One of the women said, "Perhaps the only place you shouldn't go is the bachelor house." The men here shared homes, the women in their own places.

  Built amongst the roots, reaching above and beyond the lower limbs, this house was full of small rooms.

  "We don't know what is in there. It is not a place for women to go. It leaves the men their freedom," one woman said, and whispered, "But freedom goes both ways." The teachers wandered into other houses, admiring shell spoons delicately carved.

  The men welcomed them to the feast with singing so beautiful it brought tears to Lillah's eyes. They stood, united. She thought, They couldn't sing like this if they were bad people.

  "Here," Melia said. "Have some of my herbs. You won't feel so worried then."

  Lillah shook her head. "I like to see what's happening in this world, not one imagined."

  Afterwards, Zygo joined them in a game, much rougher than any they'd seen, but he held his own. He came to Lillah bloodied; worried. He said, "These men… their voices are the best part of them. That is not how the game is played anywhere else we've been."

  The men were deep out in the water, diving for sea sponges, and it was something indeed to watch. They came up with sponges in their fists, their brown skin gleaming, their hair slicked back, their voices proud.

  "Nice," Melia said. "They do not seem to be the awful men they are reputed to be."

  Lillah tried to look at the men as if she knew nothing about them, and wondered if she would have found one attractive if she hadn't been warned off them.

  Their voices were beautiful, and some were wonderful to look at. But there were other elements. Sadness, which made their voices flat and their faces depressing to look at. Desperation, which made them laugh when nothing was funny, hold your hand far longer than was comfortable and stare at you. This made them hard to look at.

  Some had eyes the same green as the Leaves.

  There were two older women of the Order not gone on the old woman walk. They were quiet, tired.

  "These are our boys. I feel like we need to keep them safe." She spoke with her eyes shut and Lillah wondered if she was protecting others from the men.

  "We feel so guilty, but all of us had the same trouble."

  "What trouble?"

  "We couldn't feed them from here." The woman squeezed her soft, flaccid breasts. "We took chance from their side and made them weaker men. It might have been different if we'd had girls."

"Many places we've been are like this one."

  For a moment the woman's shoulders lifted. "All sons are like ours?"

  "No. No. I mean that many Orders have more sons than daughters. Don't you remember from your time at school?"

  "I remember nothing but here. This is all I need to know."

  Lillah thought, You need to forget how other people live so this seems normal. She said, "Do you have many old women walk through? Do any want to stay?"

  "Stay here? No. No."

  "My mother…" Lillah said. "My mother I think walked through. She liked to cook. She was very good at it. Do you remember her?"

  "A lot of them don't even pass through here, Lillah. I don't know why." But the women exchanged glances and Lillah saw that they knew very well why.

  "She was not a frightened woman. She was never scared of a new experience or of people who behave differently."

  "I don't remember her. You should not let such a thing bother you. Nobody else does."

 

The Tale-teller's voice was deep and melodic as he told the story of the creeping ivy.

  "You see how we do not cut the ivy here? It grows wild; it holds the Tree up; it is strong enough to support a man. We do this because it contains the souls of every child who ever died while being bad. That is most children; most children are bad until they learn how to be good. You, and you and you: if you died now, the ivy would reach down, lift your body up, and draw you into its folds. It would slowly suck the flesh from your bones, slowly drink your blood, until you were nothing but soul. Then it would fold your soul into a small square and tuck it into a Leaf, where it would use everything you ever loved or knew to help draw the next child in. You would know you were doing this but you wouldn't be able to stop it; you see a child behaving badly and you want to scream 'Stop before the ivy takes you', but you won't be able to."

  The children were crying quietly. Morace had his arm around Rham, and Borag and Zygo clung together also. Lillah said, "I think that's enough. The children go to the island of the spirits like everyone else, their spirits carried by a turtle or a crab."

  "You have to earn a place there on the Island," one man said, and he covered her mouth, held hands around her throat so she couldn't breathe. "This story will not hurt them. It is a lesson they need to learn."

  "Don't you know how the Tree came to be? Are you big enough to hear it? Are your teachers brave enough? Because once you've heard the true story, you'll never be able to return to a time before you knew."

  The children breathed hard, hoping the teachers would let them hear it.

  "It's just a story," Morace whispered. "Can we hear it?"

  "It's not just a story. It will take a place inside your head, reside there until you drop to bone on the ground."

  "I don't think it's a good idea," Lillah said, but the children squalled,
Please, please,
and the man began to tell them the story.

  He had them hold tightly onto the Tree limbs so they didn't fall out, bare-skinned.

  "You want to feel that roughness. Feel the bite of it, the snap of it. You live beneath the Tree and walk around it, without looking at the detail of it.

  "If you could see your skin with the eye of a fly, see it close and huge, your skin would look like this Bark."

  He dug his fingernails under a piece and lifted it up. He sniffed it, then turned it over and showed them the insects underneath. "You would think that would hurt," he said. "To have those insects under your skin. But we do have them, crawling beneath the surface. Can you feel a slight bump on your arm? That's most likely a crawling creature, working its way to your heart. There are many different insects in Botanica. So many you could not count them. Each has a purpose but no ambition. They are happy that way, agreed?" He took Lillah's hand. Kissed it. His lips were warm and thick and despite her revulsion at his words, Lillah felt her blood move faster.

  "There are insects that roll shit out of the sand. Some who use Tree mould to build nests. Others plant eggs in the joints of the Tree and the egg sacs strengthen the limbs."

  While he was talking, Lillah was interested. Melia, too, listened open-mouthed at this new information.

  "My heart hurts," Morace said. Lillah took his hand, hushed him.

  "So long ago that no one remembers, the people who lived here were as tall as ten women. There was no Tree then. Instead there was a massive drinkwater that the people could drink from and be refreshed. They washed in the sea, laid waste there too. They kept the drinkwater clean, and they lived together in one Order. There was no school and no long walk. The land was their home and they shared it.

  "Then a flock of birds arrived at the drinkwater. These were birds forty times the size of the ones we know. The people watched them land and drink and wondered if they would make good eating.

  "They caught one and roasted it, then sliced it open.

  "Inside was a sight to make them ill. They knew even then how our bones sat; they tied their dead to deep-seated stakes on the sand and let the saltwater and sand turn body to bone.

  "This bird inside was one bone. Smooth, like the water on a still day or the sand before a soul has trod on it.

  "The flesh smelt good, though, so they ate, and cooked another and ate that, too. Then a terrible thirst took them, so great they drank with their faces in the drinkwater till they couldn't move. Then they drank more, and more, until one by one they tipped into the drinkwater and drowned.

  "Now, usually, when the body dies the bones stop growing. Not with our ancestors. Bones broke through flesh. Bone grew up, out, bones met and melded."

  He folded his fingers together. "Bones formed a Tree. This Tree. Deep in the Tree, if ever you should go there, is the last remaining spring, the last drinkwater from that time. We have an outlet here; the water you drank tonight came from there."

  His whispery voice gave Lillah the shudders. The whisper was like a shadow of his real voice: the dark, thick, quiet whispering you hear in the moment before sleep. The voice of doubt, bitterness and regret.

 

Lillah found Melia. "We should leave here sooner rather than later. The children are frightened. Especially the girls. Have you seen the way they look at the girls?"

  "Have you seen the way the women look at us? It's like they think we're going to steal something. I need another day or two to get this information. They know a lot about the insects of the Tree."

  "Is any of it information we couldn't have gathered ourselves? If we put it together?"

  "They've put it together, Lillah, that's the thing. It's about connections. From a flower to a bee to certain plants around the Tree. They know so much about how each affects the other."

  "But why do we care? It doesn't affect us. We know when it rains, when it's dry. We know so far which plant grows where."

  "It's information, that's all. They know beforehand of things that might be coming. They told me that when spider webs fly, it will soon be dry. If spiders are about in the daytime, rain is coming."

  "You already knew that, Melia. This is not new knowledge. You observed all of this yourself."

  "But the slugs, the slugs come out when it's going to rain. And the chrysalids; if they're on the slender branches, there will be fair weather."

  "Let's leave in the morning. I'm worried about Thea. I think she likes it here."