Walking the Tree

by Kaaron Warren

  It was much drier than she'd imagined. She'd thought of the Tree as human inside, wet, soft, red. This was dry, hard and brown. It smelt like fire, like wood burning, and she thought of the legend she heard in every place, of the great Tree burning from within, one day slowly collapsing.

  The floor was covered with broken shells.

  Lillah heard a whispering and wondered if they were Tale-teller words coming in from the outside or if it was the ghosts, talking about how to kill them. She backed up to the entrance, put her arm through.

  "I can't stay here," she said.

  "Lillah, it's all right. Come on. We'll be all right."

  It was warm, at least.

  They both jumped at a creaking noise, grabbing each other fearfully.

  "The ghosts will be friendly," Morace said. "They won't hurt us. We should explore. Look further in."

  "Why can't we stay here?" Lillah sat down and curled herself. "It's nice here. Warm. We have food and light."

  "I'm bored. This is boring. I want to explore in there." Morace dug his thumb into the air and glared at her. "And the shells hurt. It's not comfortable here. And they will look in and find us, Lillah, and then what?"

  Lillah sat heavily, feeling like a child but not ready to take the journey yet. "I've been forced to come in here, I won't be forced to move on unless I want to."

  "So we'll rest, we'll eat and soon you'll be used to it and we'll move."

  He stuck his head through the large gap further into the Tree.

  "Can we just move into here, the next chamber? It's even warmer, and no one will see us. There's nobody in here. I swear. There are no ghosts. It doesn't smell of anything at all. I'm going in. You can stay by yourself if you want to." He climbed stiffly through and she remembered the terrible injury on his thigh. Being alone was more terrifying than anything else, so Lillah crawled through after him.

  It was warmer in there. Smooth walled, and soft underfoot. "We'll stay here for a while," she said.

  "No! Come on!" Morace said, heading towards another cave.

  "Morace! You said just this room, and here we'll stay. Don't make me go any further."

  Morace came back and sat beside her. "We'll stay here for a while, but promise me we'll go on soon. This is our chance to know what there is, Lillah. We can't let that go."

  She slept well. The air was thicker than she had ever breathed and it made sleep deep. She awoke to Morace standing over her.

  "Come on, Lillah! You should see the next room! It's full of bones! This is where the bones go!"

  "The ghosts… oh Tree, the ghosts… they take the bones, Morace. Don't you understand that? We go in there and they will suck the flesh from us and add us to our collection."

  "I've been in there for hours, Lillah, and nothing happened. Nothing. The bones have been there for a long time."

  He pulled her until she stood. She poked her head through, thinking she would sense ghosts if they were there.

  White bone. Lined up ceremonially, bones like a seawalk, lined like the slats of a seawalk. Or the wall of a house, if the house was built of drift-in wood faded by sun and worn smooth by sand and sea. Some of it was drift-in wood. Some of it was Tree roots, stripped back and pale, looking almost edible.

  Morace carried their things in and set them up neatly. "You see? This is okay. We'll rest until you're ready."

  They slept, ate, talked, sat in silence. Morace concealed his impatience well.

  There was no way to tell without sunlight how much time had passed before one of the bones reached out and grabbed Lillah's shoulders. She screamed.

  Morace held her. "No, no. That was a falling bone, but can't you see amongst the pale strips, there, can you see it?"

  A face.

  Mouth opened slowly, like the fish puffing out the last salty breath.

  Lillah screamed, dug her fingers into Morace's arm. She pulled him backwards, towards the gap to outside. He shook her off and stepped forward to peer into the face.

  "Morace! Keep back! Keep away!" She took the plug from the jar of salt water Maringa gave her.

  "It's a person," Morace said. "Look. Arms, legs, stomach." He pointed. "It's a man."

  Naked. Naked, pale, hairy, stepped out.

  Lillah screamed and scrabbled back towards the first cave. "Ghost! Ghost! Dead-but-walking!" She dragged at Morace, tugging him, terrified.

  "It's okay, Lillah," he said. "It's a man."

  "It's not a man, it's a ghost." She threw the water at him.

  "No. I am not a ghost." The man spoke. His voice was very quiet and he had his hands to his ears. Water dripped from his nose.

  "Too loud," whispered Morace. "We need to whisper."

  "That is not a man," Lillah whispered.

  Naked hairless took his hands from his ears.

  "Yes. Too loud." He gave a shimmy. It was an odd move, one Lillah had never seen. He didn't shiver with the cold, though she could see her breath frosting in the air.

  "We've come in from Gulfweed. I'm Morace," Morace whispered.

  The man nodded. "I'm Santala. Where are you from?"

  "From Ombu. But we came in from Gulfweed."

  He wrinkled his brow. His whole body seemed to fetch up with it. "You have travelled a long way, then."

  "We should not be here," Lillah said. "We should have stayed in the other cave."

  "It was covered with broken shells, the whole floor. This bone room is better," Morace said.

  Santala nodded again. "Out there they leave the bones for us. From the Tree. We take these gifts when offered. The place we call Bone Table leaves the body out for us to remove and use. They are a kind people."

  Lillah thought he must mean Pinon; she remembered the stone table, the ritual laying out of a child's body.

  "You steal the bones from outside?"

  "We don't have our own. We are held together with a framework of wood. Where else would we get them from?"

  Morace looked at him, softly fleshed, languid.

  "You must have bones. What's left when your flesh falls off after death?"

  "We dissolve in the heat. Melt into this." He pointed at the luminescence running down the wall. "We fuel our own lights."

  "We say outside that the ghosts take the bones."

  He smiled at her. "I can't speak for the ghosts. As for us, we don't waste what we are given. We use everything."

  His voice was calm. Lillah reached out and touched his arm. It was soft, but definitely made of flesh.

  "Are you hungry?"

  "We have our own food. But we will offend you without intending to because I've almost nothing to bring to share."

  "That's unimportant. We have plenty. You must be hungry."

  Morace said they were. Lillah looked at him, so calm. And at Santala, this strange man, this notghost. She decided she would let it happen to her. She would trust the Tree. She would not fear unless she had reason to.

  Lillah's guide took her hand to lead her. His hand was very soft, almost squishy. It felt like a jelly fish wrapped in cloth, and she squeezed it for the sensation.

  He squeezed back, and she worried she was sending signals she didn't want to send. She had no desire for this man; not even out of curiosity.

  "You have come into the Tree at a good place. We live mostly on this. The mushrooms grow well here and there is moss for us to use. It is very quiet on the other side. You might have climbed for days without finding anyone."

  "We use the moss to stop us catching child."

  "We have not heard that. Some of our children leave for a life outside. They seek what they can't have: a sense of place in a place they don't belong."

  "We call them Newcomers. They are always treated well. Welcomed."

  "As we welcome you. Where are you travelling? Do you want to walk through the Tree to return to Ombu?"

  "We are not sure. We were told to head for the centre of the Tree."

  "Then that is the direction we will head in."

  He fed them w
ith a cold stew of mushrooms and herbs. It was so delicious Lillah did not want to swallow each mouthful.

  Then they began to walk. Morace, always pale, became almost translucent, but he didn't cough, didn't worsen. His thigh was dark red with scab tissue and Santala gave him ointments along the way. It seemed to heal well, pink around the edges rather than yellow. They travelled slowly, peacefully. Lillah enjoyed the silence.

  They saw few people.

  She watched Santala walk ahead, his odd sideways limp. He had lost his leg below the knee and wore a carved leg glued with sap and some of the luminous material that flowed through the internal roots of the Tree.

  It meant his leg glowed; the dripping thick stuff glowed in the dark of the Tree.

  "How did you lose your leg?" Morace asked. Lillah nodded. It didn't occur to her he might not want to talk about it; she was curious.

  "I didn't lose the leg. I sacrificed it to the sea."

  "Outside, we are fascinated by the Tree. It is like god to us. Because we don't know it or understand it; certainly not what lies within," Lillah said. "You have the same feeling about the sea. To us, we often fear the sea because of the monsters, but we also understand the way it comes and goes. We know that if it goes, it will come."

  "But how do you know? How can you know such a thing?" he said.

  "The same way you know the fire of the Tree. Watching, learning, understanding."

  Lillah reached out and touched his wooden leg.

  "Why do you find it so odd? You have men in your own Order with limbs not there."

  "You know that?"

  "We know Treefall. We remember every Treefall of our lives. That one, we felt the creak of it from everywhere. It was a deep line fracture which worried us. We thought the Tree would crack through the centre and we would be exposed to the bright open sky." He shivered at the thought.

  "The open sky is beautiful. When it's blue you feel like you can see forever. At night, the stars reach so far you feel like you could grab hold of one and travel to some distant place, where there are no Trees and perhaps no green." Lillah sighed at the thought.

  "I don't like the sound of it. It's too big. I like this closeness."

  "If you know when Leaffall is about to happen, why don't you warn us? You would save lives. We lost Gingko, a good teacher, to Leaffall." Morace looked at her sidelong. He knew what she'd thought of Gingko and it was not that she was a good teacher.

  "You don't know yourselves? We thought this was deliberate sacrifice."

  "Not deliberate. No. But appreciated by the Tree."

  "We watched your teacher's sacrifice. Felt it within us, accepted it as worthy."

  "She didn't do it on purpose."

  "Doesn't matter for her. She still reaps the benefit. That is good."

  Lillah thought he showed impressive sensitivity.

  "What else do you know?"

  "What else do you want to know?"

  "We hear a crackling sometimes. People say it means the end of the Tree is close. What causes it? Do you know?"

  "Sometimes we will have a breaking of the limbs. When there has been a Limbfall outside, there is often debris inside as well. Everything has a reaction, a response. So we will break the Tree limbs, crack them, and that is what you hear. The echo of it. It is like music to us. One of our most beautiful songs."

  "It doesn't sound good from the outside."

  "You should hear some of things we have to hear. All those people confessing into the Tree. Whispering into the cracks as if no one can hear, as if the Tree won't be damaged by the poison. We knew your friend was a child killer long before you did. Before she even knew it herself, when she was still struggling with her demons."

  "Thea? Those killings were an accident. Thea never meant for it to happen."

  "I'm sorry. I know you want to think that. You trusted her and took her in as a friend, but she whispered into the Tree about the deaths in detail before she committed the murders." As she spoke, she thought They even see this? They see all the small things of our lives?

  "You did nothing."

  "We tried to give messages. We strung out bones. We cracked limbs. You didn't listen. These children and adults who stare into the ghost caves. Call in. Imagine what would happen if we responded. Our lives would be invaded. They are already trying to tunnel through in some places. These people we haunt, we terrify. We don't want them in our Tree.

  "We 'crunch crunch' noise to scare them. One man, you may remember. You may have heard. He spoke into the Tree and he said, 'You will not wait long for us to come. We know you are there and we are not scared of you. What you have in there belongs to us.' We took him into the Tree and did not return him. We left a clump of his hair so they would know where he went."

  "What did you do to him?"

  "We involved him."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means we passed him through initiation. Not all of the young men survive this. He did not. Your mysteries are our answers, of course. Your missing people, or the strangely killed? We have the answer."

  This was too interesting to be annoying. "Is there nothing we know that you don't?"

  "We know all of the stories of the Tree. But you know of food, fire and water. These things we aren't expert in. We use the existing fires. We will never start a fire, or move it. We can't bear to watch fire made outside or to watch it moving from place to place.

  "We scare our children with stories of the firedemon, who prowls around ready to burn the hair of bad people. He can look into your soul and find goodness or evil. We scare young mothers to care for their children because sometimes they would rather be elsewhere. We take the placenta and bury it. When the child is becoming an adult, we dig up the placenta to see its state. Sometimes it is still perfect, and those are the children who will be our leaders.

  After some time (one month? Two? Time passed so differently inside the Tree. Lillah was never tired because her body ruled her sleeping, not the sun) as they woke up, Santala said, "We are almost at the place my mother lives. Would you like to meet her?"

  Lillah didn't really want to, but Morace, desperate for other company, insisted.

  They walked for a day, climbing through the Tree. The wood changed as they walked. In some places it was pale, almost colourless. Others it was dark. Sometimes there were clear markings, circles and knots. Others it was like the sky on a clear day; smooth, featureless.

  Santala led them through a small tunnel into a large cave with walls almost purple.

  "My boy!" Santala's mother was very small, pale and fat. She reminded Lillah of a slug, but she was lively, not sluggish at all.

  "Mother, I brought some friends."

  "They are very dark."

  "They are from the outside."

  His mother looked at them through her lashes. "What is it they want here?"

  "Mother! I told you they are my friends. I have brought them to meet you."

  Morace stepped forward and took her hand. "We wish you no harm. We are here to understand. To explore. We are adventurers."

  Lillah smiled to herself. Such a different boy from the one who'd walked out of Ombu.

  Santala's mother took Morace into her arms, then. "What has my son been feeding you? I hope he has been feeding you well."

  She led them to an open area. Growths out of the floor were smooth and comfortable for sitting. In an alcove, fire glowed and there was a round pot sitting in there. Santala's mother lifted the lid and the smell wafting out made Lillah gasp.

  "Ah, you enjoy the smell of my soup." That made the old woman smile.

  Lillah said, "I have a student outside who would love to see this food cooking. Wouldn't she, Morace?"

  He nodded.

  She remembered the pouch of seeds, the offering, and pulled it out.

  "We have a ceremony outside where we make an offering to ask forgiveness, for all offences. I know we have hurt some of your people; will I be able to make an offering somehow?"

  San
tala's brother, his arms shrivelled below the elbows, joined them. After they had eaten, wiped their mouths, he said, "You think you can atone for the murder of our people with a small bag of seeds? Why should we forgive you, all of you, for these things?"

  Lillah wished she were cleverer, that she knew people, understood them.

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  "You have not killed. It isn't your responsibility. Others have done it," Santala said, knocking his brother on the side of the head.