Walking the Tree

by Kaaron Warren

  "Is the baby all right?" Lillah said. Her guide took her hand.

  "He's all right. But she will not live to keep him."

  "What do you mean? Why will she die? Who'll take him?"

  "She is weeping because she knows she will not live. She has lost too much blood. But she is not worried about her son. You see he is darker? His hair thick? That means he will fit in outside. She will leave him in a Leaf cradle and someone outside will take him as their own."

  "Some say my mother was found that way."

  "It's possible. You may have inhere blood. You see how we send babies we think will fit in, whereas outthere they leave babies they reject. Unwanted babies they expect to die."

  "They don't realise you are taking the babies. If they knew they may think about it more."

  "Different blood needs to mix with different blood. We all know that. You seek it as you travel around; we seek it too. Some of ours are yours, you know."

  "We thought it was the monkeys feasting on the babies when they disappeared. But we never knew what happened to the bones."

  Lillah stroked the baby's head. She said, "Can I take him? Will he come to me? I have missed my chance for children outside. I am tainted now. Too different. I will go back to Ombu and be an old woman."

  "You don't have to do that. You can go wherever you want to go. To your lover, to Melia, to your father and brother. Your school is no longer your concern, and Morace isn't your concern either."

  She felt a wonderful sense of freedom. The baby cried and she thought, "Do I want it? Do I want someone in my care or do I want to be free from responsibility?"

  "There are many who want this baby," Santala said. "Many. There is no need for you to have him, unless you can give him all the love and care he deserves. Then we might consider it."

  Lillah looked at the baby and felt nothing. She shrugged and smiled. Santala frowned at her, angry. "You think you should take this child? I don't. It needs a loving mother."

  "You're right. Very right. I don't have to be a mother."

  "You may be. You may turn out to be. But you won't be mother to this baby."

  Lillah gathered spider webs and took them to the bleeding mother. She showed them how to stop the flow.

  "You've never observed this?"

  "We felt wrong in doing it. But perhaps we were wrong not to do it."

  They travelled long and far. Some places on the inside had a great stink about them; dead places. Cold, empty spots he pulled her back from. "Don't step into there. I will not be responsible for a cold, senseless woman. Those are the places cursed by Spikes. Your people send it into us."

  "Not all. Many send it out to sea."

  "I wish they would not send it in to us."

  "They think it is a sacrifice, and that the Tree purifies all. What would happen if you step into the dead spot?"

  He grabbed her wrist. "We will not find out."

  "Aren't you curious?"

  "Not like you are. We like our knowledge safely."

  "I am not like you. I want to know. I want to know it all."

  To distract her, Santala said, "You don't ask after your friends. Your school. Morace."

  "Are they safe? Can you tell me?"

  "We can. That is safe knowledge. Your school has reached Bayonet. Morace is not with them. He will join them at the next Order. Bayonet is not a good place for him to prove his wellness. Your school does not wish to stay for too long in Bayonet. There are terrible death rites there. Those to be jailed beg not to be sent there. It is a cruel place without mercy. It is a place of terrible nightmares, and they have cruel rituals to stave them off."

  "You are frightened of them too?"

  "More than any other Order we observe. They seem to have a magic others don't possess. They can bring a person back to life; we have seen them do it."

  "They cannot."

  "We have seen them."

  Santala took her to a storyteller. There were many of these women, obsessed with the tale, unable to talk of anything else. This woman smiled as she spoke, an odd smile without humour. "One of the children of Bayonet died, and they cut him into pieces. They threw the pieces high into the Tree, the limbs, the torso, the head and they fell to ground whole. The boy stood. He was missing a foot, though, so they carved him one from wood. That boy did not lead a kind life; he was known for his slow slaughter of those who are sick, those who require treatment."

  Lillah felt sick about how close Morace came to be treated in this way.

  "I see that this is necessary. We all do. The sick will infect the rest." She could say this, now that Morace was safe. Earlier, she denied it.

  "It is mostly that. It is also the natural desire to keep the population down. Our forefathers said that the crowding lead to disease, death, great and terrible suffering for all. If we keep our numbers down this will not happen. And a lesson forgotten, as well, when Spikes took so many of us." The old woman waved her hand up and down, a boat on the waves. "They lost the art of boat building. I think deliberately; they thought that way meant safety. That ignorance would keep them safe."

  The storyteller shifted from buttock to buttock. She was large, her eyes unfocussed. She drank stone beer, huge swallows of the stuff which made her eyes roll back in her head and her voice to rise in pitch. She couldn't hear questions, just said the words she wanted to say. "In a cage out at sea; the killer from Osage. They give messages to him. He cries. 'I'm so lonely. I'm so sorry.' We can see what will happen. He is there for a while but soon he'll be sent out to sea. Cast adrift. Sent in the direction of the Island of Spirits. He shouts at them, 'I will escape and go back to my people. They will forgive me.' He rattles his cage weakly; it is clear he would barely make it to shore, let alone survive the long walk back to Osage if he escapes. He thinks he will float away, run away, but in fact they will kill him, send his body out to sea. They kill like this to keep away the nightmares. If you hear someone call out in the night, be wary. If you hear two people, be prepared. If you hear three people calling out with nightmares you must leave by the next night. They will kill one of you, they will carry out the death rite to appease the god of bad dreams.

  "The death rite of the murderer. Someone tells him, 'They praise the strong. You are supposed to be quiet during your ordeal; accept the pain, let it purify you. If you scream, they will give you a drug to keep you quiet.'

  "'Will it stop the pain?' he asks.

  "'Yes. The pain will be numb along with your tongue. Feel something nice before you start screaming. Suck something sweet, kiss someone, run the dry sand through your fingers. Once the drug is swallowed, you'll never feel anything again.'

  "He holds a smoothstone in his fist. Starts screaming as soon as they begin cutting, so they keep him quiet. The stone drops as he feels no more.

  "They hum around him as his flesh is removed in chunks and thrown in the fire. The smell made your teachers, your children, strangely hungry; it had been a long time since they had eaten roasted animal. The last one was an enormous bird found with its wing broken. Unwilling to let it die in vain, they killed, cooked and ate him.

  "This human flesh smelt similar."

  Lillah did not believe the words; she did not want to believe them. "The children? They will be terrified by this."

  They were interrupted as a quiet roar began. The storyteller stood up.

  "The mother has died. Her story is over."

  "Your webs did not work," Santala said.

  "If you use them earlier next time, they will work," Lillah said.

  Santala pulled out a pot of burnished metal. Lillah ran her fingers over it, marvelling at its coolness, its smoothness.

  "We found this metal at the site of the aircraft landing. You will know it."

  She nodded. "Sequoia. They don't use the metal themselves. They practise sacrifice inside it."

  In the pot, a coppery powder which he pinched out and began rubbing into his face.

  "This is how we look for the meal after a death
ritual. This dust is only found in one place in the Tree."

  "What is it from?"

  He didn't answer, trying to distract her from his lack of knowledge by pinching some powder out for her. He didn't like not knowing the answers; he liked to know it all.

  Lillah rubbed the powder into her face. Her guide nodded. "You look like one of us, now," he said.

  They joined the largest group Lillah had seen in one place, in a massive cave in the roots of the Tree.

  There was food on huge leaves; dried fish in lemon juice, soft fleshy coconut, spiders.

  Lillah missed hot food. They cooked very rarely here, and then the food was only warm, because they used the heat of the Tree.

  They sat on great fallen branches. Santala showed her how the Tree grew in rings, each year another ring, and how some years the growth was small, if the weather had been poor or if there was illness in the Tree.

  There were two caughtchild women, treated well, like goddesses. They sat closest to the warmth, and had small fires burning nearby.

  "Fire is the essence of fertility," Santala said. "They need to be close to fire to keep the child. We have had times when there is no fire, and the children are born dead, cold. We need fire to keep them warm. The prescience of fire. This is why you have more babies on the outside: you have the sun to keep the babies safe."

  "We lose babies there, too."

  "You kill babies there."

  "Not me. I have never."

  "You have condoned the death of babies. You have not hated the baby killers."

  "She was my friend."

  Lillah sat through the grieving ritual, all the while thinking of Thea, of her mother, and of all the women she had loved.

  As they walked, Santala spoke. Lillah didn't interrupt him; she barely said a word. She hoped she could remember it all. This was the history, not etched in the Tree and lost, but spoken, handed down, known.

  She would tell it like this when she left the Tree.

  "I can tell you about the buildings," Santala said, wanting to show off his knowledge again. "The ones built by our ancestors, the scientists." His voice was soothing, vital. "They left buildings but the locals never took to them like they did the rest of the culture."

  "There were people living here? Before the scientists?"

  "Not many. And not well. They were so dispersed the families didn't grow large. They liked to live alone. It was only the scientists, with their houses, their idea of family, which grew the population."

  They travelled. Walked. She came to understand how he thought and to guess what he would say next.

  "Why are you devoting this time to me?"

  "Not just to you, Lillah. You are the first to come to us with real thirst for knowledge, the first to listen without feeling as if I am saying you are lesser because you know less. It is so important for us to have one who knows."

  Some days they moved slowly. "Time is different for us," Santala told her. "We live our lives more quickly. Our women mature more quickly, and our bodies shut down sooner. I am matured, Lillah. I am on the way out."

  "The sun. You need the sun. You should venture out. Find a place. There is a large stretch of land between Parana and Torreyas and the market there is rarely used. You could set up there. Build. You could start a new Order outside."

  "Would you help them? Live with them?"

  "I would. But you will be among them."

  "How would we keep our knowledge?"

  "You would tell the schools as they come through. They will tell and remember themselves."

  "This is for the future, though. It won't happen in my lifetime. It will take much time. I am too tired for it."

  "I think two should go out, build, then more join them as time passes. You give yourselves a name from the Botanica, and you become one of the Orders."

  "So much would be lost."

  "You only lose what you choose to lose. No one will take it from you."

  They spoke to other insiders as they travelled. Made plans. Asked questions. Some turned their backs, others showed interest. Santala seemed some days to be full of fire and energy. Others, he seemed unwilling to walk far, or to talk with her any more.

  Santala led her through the Tree and she didn't ask where they were going. She listened and learned and tried to understand.

  At one point they came to a place where the luminescence flowed thickly. There was a small cave beside it; the notation told her this is where the almost-dead crawled to die.

  She didn't want to see it; she avoided it. Time, she told herself. She knew it was a two day journey into the place of death and she wasn't dying.

  "Lillah," Santala said. "This is where I must leave you. I am tired and I am done. The journey will take me to the end of the trail."

  "No!" Her scream made him bend over with pain, and she covered her mouth. She felt more grief than ever before; more than losing her mother, Morace, any of her teachers, Rham. She couldn't bear the thought of this man gone, of life without him. He had won her; she had won him. It was time, she thought. Time together. He was like a brother and she could not bear to be without him.

  "This is my place. You should continue the journey. Climb up. Find the upsiders, the Rememberers, and learn from them, if they still live."

  So Lillah said goodbye.

  "They'll be watching," he said, and, far from disturbing her, this gave her comfort.

  "I'll listen for them," she said. "And one day I may come back. If I knew you were here I would come back."

  He nodded. "Yes, you may," he said. "But I will not be here. And I am too pale and soft for you, too quiet. You will find a lover and stay with him and his brothers. A lucky man. You will not find a lover amongst us. We are not strong enough for you. You will find someone good, who will listen to you. You will tell tales and people will love you."

  "I will help you set up the community outside. Send someone to collect me when you are ready."

  "Lillah, people know. They will make this move if they are ready. But I– I will not be among them. You will know them, though. One will come to tell you they are ready."

  Lillah looked at him. "The more I know you, the more attractive you become," she said. His skin seemed to shimmer in the green glow. She bent to him and kissed his mouth, hoping it would be good and she could be carried away with passion, be with this good man once before she went back to the sun.

  It was terrible. Slack-lipped, too soft, his tongue flopping weakly into her mouth. She pulled back and smiled.

  "Goodbye," she said.

  There were many decisions along the way. Lillah found choosing a direction very difficult. She had walked in a line outside, followed the sway and curve of the water. Here there were always options; sometimes three or four.

  She learnt to read the notations by each tunnel. Inside the Tree was well-mapped.

  Upward movement became natural to her, arms and legs in a rhythm she barely noticed.

  Up here were berries, and there were birds. There was water in grooves and niches; she wasn't bothered by the grit in it, the woody flavour. As she climbed, she saw evidence of past habitation.

  She learnt to wrap her feet in leaves to protect them from the roughness of the Bark. Many places were smooth, as if the tougher outer layers of skin had been shed and never replaced.

  She almost gave up any number of times: when a tunnel she'd been following for days ended in a solid black mass of wood; when she saw skeletons tied to branches, flapping. These times she'd take out her pouch of dirt, given to her in Arborvitae and she would smell it. It brought her great comfort; the smell of home and the point of her journey, to learn, to take back the knowledge.

  There were times she was lost, the signs not telling her where to go. The Tree was like a great maze. Sometimes she found bones in a pile, skulls grinning and she thought, This person was also lost.

  She used the stones Maringa gave her, truly believing they could help her find her way. Knowing they would help her map inside th
e Tree and find her way home again. She gave the marked stone to a young child she met along the way and asked her to deliver it to the ghost cave of Sargassum. She knew that Maringa would receive it and understand.

  Lillah felt so exhausted some days all she wanted to do was curl up into a ball and sleep forever. Pull a cover over her head, hide from reality, not face what she knew or decide what to tell.

  She heard laughter and wondered how anyone could be happy.

  She found caves with walls of bone, walls of skulls. These were old, she thought, brittle and cracked, and there was a smell of the sea, somehow, salty and sweet at the same time.