He pointed at a giant seabird overhead. "That one? Was once a human. All seabirds are. They are attracted to the smell of human beings. The giant seabirds catch and eat people. They like little children."
He whispered to Lillah, "And get the taste for human flesh. But the children don't need to know that."
She shook her head.
There was a smell in the air Lillah didn't like. Sap gone sour or something, she didn't know.
"I can't smell it," Phyto said.
"Perhaps it's a woman thing."
"I can't smell it either," Erica said. "It's because these are your cousins. You can't lie with them."
Phyto patted Lillah's shoulder. "Good luck, Lillah. I'll wait near the trunk and walk past the Order at night. See you at the other side. Unless you decide to stay here."
"I can't stay here," she said. "Why don't you come with us this time?"
"Maybe next time."
The group was quiet as they approached Rhado. A tall woman stood alone, her legs spread, her arms crossed. Her hair was piled high on her head. She didn't smile or walk forward to greet them.
"They hate me already," Lillah said.
"It'll be okay," Melia said.
"Which of you is Olea's daughter?" the woman said when they reached her. Other locals came up behind the woman and stood silently.
"I am." Lillah stepped forward. She peered through the crowd, looking for her mother, wanting to be held in her arms. She felt tears come at the thought of being held by her mother; she hadn't realised until that moment how much she missed her physically. She touched the necklace her father had given her.
The woman grabbed Lillah's shoulder and span her roughly. "We heard you were coming."
"My father sent this necklace for Olea."
"She is not here. We will take it for you, if you like. It is better here than travelling. And we'll give you one in return. This is precious; I hope that you are worthy of it." The woman hung a string of shells around her neck. It was scratchy and ugly.
"I'm sorry, but I will keep the wooden necklace my father made. It is for my mother. He would not be happy if I didn't give it to her."
"You won't find her." The woman squeezed her chin. "You look like her. And already you are behaving like her. We're not interested in having people here who aren't Order-minded. Who aren't willing to put in a day's work for a day's meal."
"No, no, I'm not like that." Lillah was confused. "I don't understand why my mother isn't here."
"She was here. Was. Walked all that way then we weren't good enough for her. How she imagines she will find a better place I do not know. We have not found one because one does not exist. We do not want people like that here, anyway." The woman snorted. "I am your auntie. Simarou. I walked home and here I'll stay. You'll stay with me. Don't follow your mother out to sea or wherever it was she went. We think she went to sea. Just like her brother-in-law, Legum." She touched her ear. "They say he disappeared, without a goodbye. I don't know what the ignorant people in other Orders know, but we know that those who disappear are watching us, listening to us, and that they get very angry if we don't think of them.
"Legum," she touched her ear, "sailed out to sea on a huge piece of Bark and has never been seen since. Some say that he sank to the ocean floor and built a home there. Some say he lost his flesh from hunger and floated into the air. Some say he is still on his raft, eating fish and shouting with loneliness. We will never know and we do not care for his rejection. Olea did not fit in. It was like she was found as a baby in the roots of the Tree; that she was sent from inside. They didn't want her in there so they sent her to us. You may find the spirit island as you walk. I don't know where it is and I don't know anyone who's found it. But on that island, if you sleep, you will dream of the dead. Your mother may be dead and she will come to you. Your ancestors will come."
Lillah knew she would not be seeking any such thing. She was glad she had not allowed them to take her father's necklace. He had meant it for Olea, not this place.
The smell of the food cooking made Lillah's mouth water. She wanted to watch, to learn from these people who had taught Olea how to cook, but they didn't seem welcoming. They seemed to find the process upsetting, and they shouted to each other, abused each other, seeking perfection.
"That is so like my mother," she said to Melia. Melia smiled.
"Wonderful food, but you pay in tears for it," she said.
"I'm not like that, am I?"
"You? The day you cook a feast for this many people, perhaps you will be. When you cook for us; no, you are not like that."
Borag stood just behind her. "Why are they fighting?"
"Sometimes you can be too proud of your food."
The fire-tenderers, too, seemed overly proud of their work. The flame changed for each dish and the cooking plate.
The food was delicious. Fish cooked in coconut milk, greens diced with soft vegetables, flat bread salty and sweetish. The coconut milk had a wonderful, smoky flavour to it. They heated smoothstones in the fire then, using two sticks, lifted and dropped them into the milk, which boiled briefly and instantly.
The plates, clay here rather than leaf, were crushed and then stamped beneath the feet, a shouting, thumping roar of an event that took Lillah by surprise.
"Every six days we do this," her aunt said. "New plates made of old ones ground to dust. We'll soak the dust and dry it, make a nice glaze. Each glaze becomes stronger and better. Until the glaze becomes so good we no longer need to crush the plates, then we start all over again. I like to think the food improves with the aging of the plates, as if the memory of each good meal is absorbed into the next good meal. After a birth we will mix in the placenta to give life to the clay. We place dry leaves in some plates, but those are for a special feast."
"I like the way you cook your fish."
"Everyone eats their fish differently. Some like it shredded finely, others like big, barely cooked steaks. We like it with the coconut milk, but we also like it cooked hard in a fire. We like ours minced and marinaded, also. We like to eat food that has absorbed flavour; taken on the flavour as its own."
The welcomefire saw the fruit wine exchanged for a plate, crushed and remade six times, then the Order walked out onto the beach and took to the seawalk. They liked it out there, it seemed. The warmth of the sun reached them, and, they said, helped digestion.
"So your mother cooked well? Looked after you? And your father is a good man?" her aunt asked.
Lillah nodded. She realised they wanted to hear no negatives.
"She's lucky she knew a good man from bad. Her brother helped her to see that. He was a good man." Her aunt shook her head.
"My uncle?"
"Yes. He would have loved to meet you, I'm sure. You are so like your mother. But there was a terrible accident. Terrible. We think it was the punishment of the Tree because your mother was never as she should have been. She always thought more of herself than others did. We think the Tree punished her by taking her dear brother."
"But how was he taken? She never said."
"She never knew. He was taken at Leaffall. It was
punishment for her behaviour. You should protect your own brother by not behaving as she did."
Then food again: some strange kind of meat, cooked with onions. Lillah didn't like it; it reminded her of the placenta cooked when Magnolia's baby was born.
"We cook our placenta like this in my Order," she said. She felt uncomfortable in the silence that followed. "My mother taught our Order how to cook the placenta into a decent meal. She was well-liked because of that. And your Order was very wellthought of."
"Well, that's good. It is a recipe to be shared." Lillah didn't believe the speaker supported her own words.
"So you cook the placenta? How surprising and original," said one of the women, and they laughed. One hissed in Lillah's ear, "That is our tradition, teacher. If your mother told you about it, it's because she stole it from here."
Li
llah touched the wooden necklace around her neck. She was glad she had kept it from these people. She wanted to walk away with something still left of Olea's memory that wasn't tainted.
Lillah watched Melia and the other teachers testing out the men, and she couldn't understand how they found them attractive.
"They smell funny, don't you think?" she said.
"You always find your relatives have a strange smell. It's a warning off, in case your memory of the chain is flawed. It shows you how certain it is you should not have children with those closely related to you," Melia said.
"This one in particular you go nowhere near," Lillah's aunt told her. "He is your cousin, and flawed. He should not be touched by anybody." Lillah would not have considered the poor young man anyway. "He is flawed. If his father hadn't been well-respected he would have been placed in the Tree at birth to have his bones sucked dry. Those bones stolen by the ghosts inside."
He was a charming boy, though, funny and thoughtful, and Lillah enjoyed spending time with him knowing they wouldn't mate. She wouldn't take any of these men: all of them too close to her. Morace joined them and the three talked of the mysteries of family and birthright.
Thea came and took Lillah's flawed cousin's hand. He did not refuse.
Later, as the other teachers left for their evening's enjoyment, Lillah's aunt tried again to convince her to stay, to take her mother's place. "You don't need to be a mother," she said. "Your duty is to us, to take her place because there is a gap now."
Lillah had no desire to stay with these people, but a small part of her felt the guilt of her mother's sin of desertion. She walked, digging her heels into the sand and feeling the sharpness of the grains bite in, considering all she would be giving up to salve her conscience.
Lillah saw the lump on the ground and could not begin to understand what it was. She hadn't seen a damaged human before.
She thought of placenta, first. A great mound of it, a whale mother huge and spent in the water, her placenta washed up, for surely only water could support a mother of that size.
Then it shivered.
Lillah stepped closer, though fear made her move slowly.
It was blood. To see blood is to see injury, death, childbirth with its own inherent risks. Lillah knew it was a fluid better kept in the body.
"Hello?" she said, woefully inadequate, but she could think of nothing else.
Just a small whimpering breath; a release. It brought to mind the salty fish, the way its last breath had been so gentle yet so definite.
The mound shifted as it breathed and Lillah saw it was her cousin with the missing toe.
"Who did this?" she whispered. It was clearly not one person. This violence came from many.
She ran to the Tree, touched her forehead to the Bark in apology, and tore a piece away. She caught the running sap in the torn Bark and carried it, two-handed, back to the boy. She dribbled some in
his mouth. But he wouldn't swallow.
"Borag? Spider webs," she called. The girl ran to help. Zygo watched, tossing a stone up and down.
"What happened to him? Did he make a joke and no one laughed?"
"Zygo, help with the spiderwebs."
He was dead, though. The blood no longer pulsed from his many wounds.
Lillah ran to the Order, distraught, calling for punishment, but they talked her down. "He was flawed and he thought he could behave as if he wasn't," said one man.
"You seem to be flawed yourself," Lillah said. She touched his belly. The skin there was raised, pink, furry. He usually kept it covered; she lifted his shirt to show it.
"This is my family sign," he said, hunching away from her. "It isn't a flaw."
Her aunt told Lillah, "In the next Order, Thallo, they would punish such a man.Your mother, Lillah. This is her fault. She brought a curse on the family. She didn't fit. She did the wrong thing."
"I cannot believe this violence is not to be punished. If it had been a woman beaten like that? A teacher, or a mother, what then?"
"Then, if she wasn't flawed, there would be great punishment. That is a very great sin." Lillah felt the Tree growing down on her, closing her in. People around her, too close. She pushed away gently, knowing the fuss would cause attention and she didn't want attention. She walked away, not knowing where to go.
When she returned, someone said to her, "Don't be a moss-muncher about this. Don't tell stories that aren't true."
Lillah saw her students crying and worried. The other teachers gathered around them, comforting, but she knew she had to lift herself. Pandana, her favourite teacher, had done this many times.
It had made her mind up, though: there was no way she would consider staying in an Order such as this one. She felt no loyalty, no love. How could they allow a violent death, welcome it?
The Tale-teller spoke about the death. The way he told it was twisted to justify the actions, which made Lillah realise all tales could be told to suit the teller.
The teller, so tall Lillah reached only his elbow, stood on his toes to tell the Tree. Stretching up to a small carved hole, his arms stretched even higher, grasping a knot hole, a protruding bump, caressing these things as he whispered.
Lillah stood close to him, desperate to hear his words. How would he tell such a thing? She knew how the Annan, Tale-teller in Ombu would tell it. He would tell the truth. He would find the culprit and tell the truth.
The teller here said, "Your own teacher told us something to strike fear. Hear all the facts before you judge. Your own teacher, who went to that boy's bed. She said he showed her a sharp knife. Said he would cut the toes from the men, women and children in the Order so he would no longer be different."
"Is that true, Thea? He really said that to you? He said nothing like it to me," Lillah said.
Thea nodded, her eyes wide.
"She's lying," Melia said.
"She always lies," Rham said.
Thea turned and ran.
"She does always lie, Lillah. She is your friend, but she is a liar," Gingko, Agara's replacement, said.
"What would you know, Gingko? You don't know her well. You didn't grow up with her."
"It doesn't take long to get to know someone like that."
They gathered up the boy's body and carried it to the Tree, where one of the stronger men climbed the Tree and threw down a vine tied to a branch. They dragged him up, tied him securely. They steadied him so he wouldn't swing; rhythmic movement like that could bring his ghost to life and they didn't want a vengeful ghost about.
Below they gathered hard wood twigs, saved in a cave. The smoke would purify the body and the air around it.
As the school prepared for departure (the children waiting up the beach, tired of this place, sickened by it) the aunt and the uncles surrounded Lillah.
They pressed softened leaves into her hand.
"Walk with one in your shoe, and your future home will be clear."
"The leaves feel very soft."
"We soak them in seaweed oil. It makes them last longer. You must wear it till it disintegrates, and you will know when it's time to stop. We must be the ones to choose, to control the Orders of the Tree. This is how the human race will survive. Women think first. Men act first, when it comes to teachers."
They said nothing of the dead boy. When Lillah tried to talk of him, they hushed her. "Gone now, gone away," in sweet, comforting tones, touching their ears.
Lillah held the leaves in her hand, choosing not to put them in her shoe. She did not believe anything these people said.
In her mapping, Lillah told the Tree: My mother from here and fine, fine cooks, though people die and no one cares they think if they are flawed then death is a reward.
Here, the Tree grows coconuts. The leaves are soft, almost pink and lie thick around the base. The Bark sheds here like loose flakes of skin.
Rhado — THALLO — Parana
"I was so scared," Lillah told Phyto when he met them. He held her, listened to the stor
y. "Seeing the violence done to this boy, and the way they didn't care. The way they looked at me when I cared."
"Where does fear come from? It isn't a thing you feel unless you are in danger. And the first time you feel it, it would be milder, I think."
"It started for me fearing Magnolia's dying in childbirth."
They walked twenty-five days.
Lillah felt for the first time that she had a purpose beyond school, beyond saving Morace, beyond sex. She knew why her mother had left Rhado: the people there were cruel and destructive. She wanted to walk quickly now, find her mother, sit down to talk about Rhado. How little it had changed, perhaps. And to thank Olea for not passing on that mood, that style. For protecting Lillah from the cruelty of mind.
Walking the Tree Page 15