Walking the Tree

by Kaaron Warren

  The woman's fingers clutched at air, like a snapping crab. "Lillah! Lillah!" she said. Lillah turned away. She was only fourteen, and had lived in the company of her nine schoolmates for five years. The people of the other Orders welcomed them, but not with the same neediness.

  Her brother, Logan, had come running out, past the scary, needy parents. He looked the same, just older, more handsome.

  Lillah clutched the hand of Pandana, her favourite teacher.

  "Who's that?" Pandana said, quietly for a change.

  "It's my brother. He's bigger than me," Lillah said. She stood behind Pandana's shoulder.

  Pandana had taken the place of the teacher from another Order, who stopped in Osage to marry Pandana's brother. Pandana was happy to go; she was bored in her Order and desperate for new experiences. She had been with them for less than a year, but Lillah loved her more than any other teacher.

  "How much bigger?" Pandana said.

  "Two years. He's two years older."

  "Sixteen." Pandana turned, sighing. "Too young." She squatted amongst the children, her legs in the short skirt squashing fatly. Muscly.

  "Now, my students, you're home. You've learned so much but now you're home. No more walking, no more travelling. This is where you'll stop."

  "But what about you, Pandana? Are you going to stay with us?"

  "I will walk the children ready for school until I find my place."

  The families were holding back, not wanting to frighten the children any more. Pandana stood up.

  "Now," she said. "Who belongs to these children? Who belongs to Melia? Who belongs to Lillah?"

  Parents stepped forward to claim their children. They carried gifts: perfect shells, sweet dried fruit in woven baskets, dolls made of leaves, delicately painted bowls, to welcome them, distract them from the strangeness of it all.

  Lillah's parents and Logan stepped forward for her. Logan picked her up and span her around. "You're back, you little pest. Back to annoy me." He put her down and rubbed noses with her.

  "This is your brother? I thought you said he was stinky and ugly," Pandana said. Lillah giggled, then squealed as Logan began to chase her.

  Pandana and Lillah's mother watched them, smiling. Pandana said, "He's a handsome boy."

  Lillah's mother looked at her quickly. "He is. A boy, I mean."

  Pandana smiled. "It's okay. I'm sorry. That sounded wrong. I do love your daughter, though. I've become very attached. It seems like a nice Order." Lillah's mother took her hand. "Come to the house. I'll get you a drink."

  They walked to the house. Lillah came running out. "Mother! Mother! My bed is just the same! Look!" She waved her favourite childhood doll, made of Bark and leaves. Treesa.

  "Got it back into place just in time," her mother whispered to Pandana. The two women smiled. Lillah threw herself into her mother's arms.

  "I missed you," she said. "I cried every night." Her mother glanced at Pandana, who shook her head, smiling.

  Later, during the welcomehome feast, Pandana leapt and danced to the music.

  "I wish we had someone for her," Lillah's mother said. "All our men are married and our boys are too young. She would have been lovely to keep."

  Melia's mother said, "It's a shame she can't just stay. But it's a lot to ask. We can't expect her to give up the chance of her own family. Can we?"

  "She's got that desperation about her. Some of them find that off-putting."

  And Pandana had chosen Thallo, with its lovely men and frightening ways.

  Lillah could see that everyone listened to Pandana. She shone with wisdom. Lillah felt envious, wishing people would look to her like that, that she could be so wise and understanding. How to get that way? She was too selfish and she knew it.

  Lillah ran down to the water's edge. Her tail bone ached from sitting and she wanted the smell of salt in her nostrils.

  When she felt clean again, Lillah sat and thought about what she'd seen, the awful display of babies. The children played in a deep, dug out pool. Gingko watched them, trying to join in, but they yawned widely at her, bored with her ideas. They didn't seem too bothered by what they'd seen and Lillah wondered if they would be different once the school walk was finished.

  Pandana came and sat beside her.

  "What made you decide to stay here, Pandana?"

  "The last school through here had eight teachers and six students," Pandana said.

  Lillah looked at her. She stared out to sea, barely blinking. So she doesn't want to talk about it, Lillah thought.

  "That would make caring for the students easier. But there would be more fights amongst the teachers, I imagine. Fights over the men and competition for who is the leader."

  "You don't seem to have that much in your little group."

  "We're lucky. Melia and I are the greatest of friends. Thea is in awe of both of us and would never stand up to us. Erica is more of a battle, but even with her we greatly respect each other."

  "That's good. I'm proud of the way you handle yourself. You remind me of your mother."

  "Did she ever come through here, Pandana? I thought I would find her in Rhado, but she didn't stay."

  "She didn't make herself known to us."

  Lillah felt so good with her old teacher, and so enamoured of her lover, she said, "I could stay here. It has a lot of strange things, but it's the people that matter, isn't it? You, and my lover. And the water is warm here. And I like your seawalk."

  Pandana was quiet for a while.

  "You don't want me to stay?"

  She took Lillah's hand and led her away from the Tree. In the branches, a man squatted, watching, waiting for secrets. "I'd be a very bad person if I allowed you to stay here. In fact, I'm going to tell you something that will cause me great trouble. I want you to leave now. Right now. Gather the children and the other teachers and go, before this evening's feast."

  "But it looks so delightful! Everybody is dressing in brightest colours."

  "Yes. It looks beautiful. But Lillah, you have to leave. They want one of you to stay, so you have to leave."

  "But I might like to stay."

  Pandana blinked at her. "Have you noticed my limp?"

  "Of course."

  "And the fact that most of the other women limp here too?"

  "I did, I guess. I didn't think about it, though."

  "At the feast tonight, they will break the legs of one of you. That's what they do to keep you here."

  "Is that what happened to you? Why didn't your school take you with them?"

  "How could they? I had two broken legs. I couldn't walk. It took many months until I could

  even drag myself along."

  Lillah was suddenly terrified.

  "Come with us now. Come now."

  "I can't. I have my children."

  "They can come too."

  "They're too young, Lillah. When they go to school, I'll walk. That's not too long. And it isn't so bad here. But I don't want you to be trapped. I want you to walk on."

  Lillah hugged her, crying. "Is there anything else we should be wary of? Some have warned us of the men of Douglas."

  Pandana nodded. "I have heard that they are not what they seem. I was not with you when you travelled through, and I stopped here. I did not reach that community."

  "We will have to judge for ourselves. I can barely remember Douglas myself." Lillah had a thought. "Tell me about Osage. The men there. What are they like?"

  Pandana smiled. "Our men are kind and gentle. They make loving husbands and fathers, and they also love each other very dearly. If any of you wished to stop there, you would be most welcome, but you would need to know that the men will prefer to be with each other in the night time."

  Then Lillah gathered her school. It was a testament to the way they communicated that there was no argument: they packed up and left.

  • • •

  In her mapping, Lillah told the Tree: Pandana broken legs, fish so good you eat too much trap the teache
rs let them go.

  Here, the Tree grows cruel pictures, awful babies and pawpaw. The leaves are blood red and the Bark weeps.

  Thallo — PARANA — Torreyas

  Phyto greeted them boisterously. "You're early! I was lonely! You've been gone so long."

  "Lillah made us leave," Borag said. "She made us miss a feast."

  "I'm sorry, Borag. But they wanted a teacher to stay and none of us chose to. That might have upset them."

  "More than running away?" Melia said. But she nodded; she knew all was not right at Thallo.

  "The market will be open in twelve days if you want to see it. We'll need to walk quickly," Phyto said.

  Zygo groaned. "I don't want to walk quickly. I'm tired and hungry."

  "Let's see how we go."

  They didn't reach the market in time, but did pass two limping women returning to Thallo.

  "Didn't like our handsome men? Must be something wrong with you all," one woman said. She looked Phyto up and down. "He's not one of ours."

  "He is not yours to worry about," Erica said.

  They walked on, thirty days along the water.

  The Tree here had roots right to the water's edge, thick and high. Someone had cut a doorway through.

  "Look at it!" Zygo said. He ran his hands over the smooth entrance. "It must have taken hundreds of moons."

  "Sharp shells or rocks? Did they scrape and scrape day by day?" Rham said. "Or was it already here, formed by the waves?"

  It was terrifying to walk through the doorway. They felt as if they were moving to another world, as if they might not be able to breathe on the other side. They were certain they would not come out alive.

  The school felt hot and nervous as it neared Parana. Melia had warned them that it would be about questions, questions, questions on questions. Every answer would spark more questions.

  "Aren't you looking forward to meeting your family?" Erica asked her.

  "I'm looking forward to getting rid of this bundle."

  Melia had been carrying the beautifully painted leaves since she left home. Her mother cried as she left, to think of Melia's uncles opening the gifts. Remembering how much she loved them.

  "And unless things have changed, you know their attitude to sex."

  Melia's mother had warned them before they left, saying that the women here were brought up to believe that sex was a thing to be despised, an ugly, dangerous killing thing. "Why do you think I was so happy to leave?" she said.

  Lillah felt no clarity, no realisation that here was the place.

  They were met on approach by a woman dressed in drab-coloured clothes. It was a stark contrast to the place they had just run from, and the drabness of it made Lillah feel safe, as if in this place there would be no trickery, no broken legs or captives.

  "Welcome," the woman said quietly. She looked the teachers in the face and then said, "Melia? You are one of us?" but she was looking at Thea.

  "I'm Melia."

  The woman nodded. "Your mother has explained that we think differently here? You understand that you are not here to seek sexual partners, but to discover your heritage and perhaps learn something? Perhaps decide to stay for the Order, not just one man."

  The teachers tried not to giggle. It was too serious, and they must give a good impression to the children.

  "My mother sent me with gifts for her brothers," Melia said. The woman nodded. "Of course she did."

  • • •

  The night was clear and warm, the food was very good, but the mood was very quiet. Welcomefire saw an exchange of the pot of paints for a bag of tea leaves. Lillah realised why it was so quiet: children.

  There were very few children here, and no babies.

  There were few young men.

  "Where are your young people?"

  "We do not catch child as often as others do. Most of our children are at school. They will return soon. Tomorrow or the next day. Soon."

  The teachers exchanged looks. It was bad luck to run into another school.

  "So, Melia, your mother is well?"

  "Yes. I think she'll do the walk soon. At least, she was thinking about it. She's very happy at Ombu, though. Especially when the other mothers walk, and she's left there alone with the men."

  Melia and Lillah laughed at this, but the Order didn't.

  "Wild, like her mother," one of the old men muttered.

  Lillah, thinking to take the attention from Melia, said, "Do you get many women walking through? Older women?"

  "Some. They don't always stop."

  "Do you remember a woman who was very good with food? She would have been proud, perhaps to the point you tired of her."

  "I remember someone like that. It was a while ago. She stopped here for a day or so only. She did not seem to know where she was going."

  Later, Melia paced restlessly about and the movement made Lillah feel agitated.

  "What's the matter?"

  "This is my blood. This sluggish, baby-less Order. This is mine."

  They watched as one of the men walked by, his shoulders slumped. He didn't brighten to see them, as most men did.

  "It's peaceful here," Lillah said. "And I like the way they have built carved Bark into their homes."

  "They are peaceful because they know the Order is dying. And they're just giving up. The Trunk thickens by a fingernail every year here. They leave the carvings because they think nothing else will be left."

  "Everywhere the Trunk is thickening, isn't it?"

  "Here more than anywhere. They are being squeezed out."

  "They sound sick," Morace said. "They make me feel sick. Their voices are scratchy."

  "I wish I didn't say that about Mother. Poor Mother. I didn't mean to make her look bad. I've said that in other places and they've laughed and agreed."

  It struck Lillah again how lucky she had been, growing up. The space they had, the distance from the Tree to the sea, was fortunate indeed.

  Here, where Melia's mother had grown up, the distance was no more than five hundred steps and she felt that every wave could creep over the sand and reach her toes.

  It was the first time Lillah had seen people actively resenting the Tree, hating it. They spent their leisure time tearing strips of it off, hacking into it, trying to make more space.

  "Are they allowed to do that? Doesn't someone stop them? Damaging the Tree there could damage it all along."

  They watched the piles of Bark form. Lillah thought the Tree was bleeding: she could see reddish sap. The sight made her ill, and angry.

  "Don't you know that some people believe the sap will give them eternal life? If you took some your Order would live forever," Melia said. They disgusted her.

  An old man, his hair the pale grey of the underBark of the Tree in places, said, "The first woman floated in from the great sea as a child. We still have the remnant of the wood she floated on; it is very different to that of the Tree. It is light, soft, and it floats very well. We do not know the origin of that wood, though we have asked many questions about it.

  "She was a small child, not yet ready for children herself. She arrived with her eyes bound, one leg tied to the wood so that she would not fall off. She had a basket of fruit beside her, but that was almost empty. She said she has the memory of eating fruit and nothing else. That was all she remembered.

  "She did not land in this place. She landed not far away, though, and after untying herself she began to walk. Each place she stopped, she defecated, ate and slept, and we see the remnants of her walk now. She was seeking a place like home, and that she didn't find. There were seeds in her shit, seeds she spread around the Tree.

  "She finally entered the Tree, when she saw a large cavity she could step into. There she found one man, a young man, lonely, pale and without the power of speech. They grew to maturity together, and they began the walk again. In each place they had a child, and another, and they stayed with those children until they reached maturity. Then they moved on.

 
; "Each child was different, born of different blood, because each time the man stepped into the Tree he was transformed. All men are one man, one man is all men, all children from the first woman. That is the story of the first woman." They began to sing, beautiful music, far sweeter than Lillah had heard before.