Walking the Tree (11 page)

  Lillah's brother chimed in, "Nasty little babies, twisted and in pain. Dead babies." He kissed his own baby on the head.

  A shout went up, signifying a catch of crab. Logan held out his baby for someone to take. "They'll be an age yet, bringing it in. They don't need you," Lillah said. "Sit with me and talk for longer. What about what we've been talking about, our message?"

  Logan smiled. "Do you think it will work?"

  "It's worth a try."

  "All right. When you've been gone two years, I'll send you a message. You send it back to me as you hear it. And we'll see!"

  "We'll see how clever our messengers are. How much information is changed by the sending. They won't believe us, but it's worth a try, don't you think?"

 

In an informal ceremony around talkfire, but an important one, all the women whose birth Orders were elsewhere around the Tree came one by one with gifts for the teachers to deliver. Lillah found it hard to remember. It was Agara who had the good memory; she took the poem to heart.

  There were painted leaves for Parana, coloured sand for Arborvitae and shells for Sargassum.

  Thea sat apart, plucking out her hair, peeling her dry skin. She held her bonsai on her lap. Agara's father approached her and said, "You understand we must only send the best? It is our responsibility, to keep us strong."

  "I'm not strong," said Thea. She rose above them, then, towering high and clenching her fist.

  Melia's father tapped his temple. "Not in here, you aren't, Thea," he said. "But you can learn that from the other teachers and all you meet."

  Thea threw down her bonsai and ran. The others girls stared at the mess, the precious dirt, the denuded branches.

  "Somebody clean it up," Melia's father snapped.

  Dickson and Lillah followed Thea. "I will send you a message so you know I am thinking of you, sister."

  They drew her back to the farewellfire. Tilla was shouting at them: "Don't know where you think you're going. No one can walk around the Tree. No one. Can't be done."

  The Order laughed. "But you did it!" Lillah said. "You went to school."

  "I never did."

  Somehow the old man had forgotten every leaving. For him, the world began and ended only as far as he could see.

  Lillah would meet others like him on her travels.

  "But what about people who leave in this direction and come back in that, five years later?"

  "Liars. All of them. Don't ask me why. I don't know how liars think."

  Lillah stood ready, the children who were about to travel with her running at her feet, the noise of them lively and setting an edge to her nerves.

  There were no tears. The leaving of the school was accepted because it had always been that way. Women and children left. Children came back; women sometimes did, many years later.

  "You know if you just keep walking you'll get there eventually. There is no way to get lost. Keep the Tree to your right shoulder and just keep walking," Erica's father said.

  "We send our best away! Why do we send our best away?" Dickson said.

  Pittos put his hand on Dickson's shoulder. "Because the best are sent to us. That is the way it works."

  "And the best are the ones who deserve to find a place with fresh water," Melia said. She hated salt water.

  Aquifolia gave Lillah a message for her home Order. It was a bundle of twigs, marked and etched. It would be difficult to carry and Lillah wondered if she would get away without delivering it. She'd rather throw it into the scrub before too long passed. She also handed them a pouch of dried moss. "Take a small pinch of this every morning after you take a lover. It will stop you from catching child. The most important thing is to see my mother. Everybody wants to see her. She has no time for her own children, but she will find time for you."

  Lillah thought it would be hard to have a mother so sought after.

  "She'll tell you your future by reading your burn scars. Fire is cleansing."

  Everybody had at least one burn scar. Worship and fearfulness of the fire somehow led to a lack of wariness. Some people had more scars than others. Aquifolia reached behind her and the ember she had was still red. She thrust into onto Lillah's forearm.

  Lillah recoiled, too shocked to scream. "Run to the water," Aquifolia said. "The water will take the heat from you."

  "You
burnt
me," Lillah said. She wanted to take a stick and thrust it into the woman's eye.

  "You will thank me when you meet my mother."

 

"See you children in five years," Logan said.

  "Make sure my nephew knows who I am, where to find me when he goes to school. I'll look for a child who looks like you. Our strong family features."

  Rhizo had asked Lillah not to share the secret with anybody, but Logan should know he had a brother.

  "Walk the seawalk with me, Logan."

  They walked closely together, shoulder to shoulder, and she told him about Morace, and Rhizo and the illness.

  "She shouldn't ask you to do this. I never liked that woman. If he's sick, he's sick."

"But he's our brother."

  "And this is our Order. Our world." He paused. Looked back at shore. "Brother, huh? So my son has an uncle?"

  They walked back together, joining the others.

  Magnolia held him from behind. "You find a good man like your brother. You will have to look hard. You watch out for the men in Douglas. I grew up with them as my neighbours and I thought that's what neighbouring men were like. You watch out for them. Learn from them, too, though. Learn to appreciate a good man." Logan and Magnolia let tears fall. Lillah tried to remember her school years, walking through Douglas. She did not think badly of the place, but knew that their teachers would likely have protected them carefully.

  Magnolia said, "Say goodlove to my brother, Ebena. You'll like him. He makes me laugh."

  Tax, much settled now, waved goodbye, his family around him.

  The children's long fingernails were cut. "You are big people now." They stared at their odd-looking hands. "My fingers are shorter!" Rham said.

  The teller Annan stood by and told his tales. "When walking the Tree you follow in a noble tradition, you walking women. The Tree is bigger than the land space and you walk the Tree. The first woman walked, too, seeding the ground and seeding the Tree, changing its nature from place to place as she walked. She taught all women about bloodline and she began the telling of the Tree. She left us messages of the dangers, and this is why we don't all walk. Men stay behind to care for the Order, keep it safe and keep it happy. They die of old age, as men should. The women walk and with this walking comes danger. Sometimes a teacher is lost and sometimes a student, but to die as you walk is a very great thing."

  Borag came to stand by the water.

  "What are you eating, Borag?"

  "Bread sprinkled with cinnamon." She ate it with great passion; even a simple piece of bread could excite her.

  "You will learn to control your joy in food when we are given food you dislike."

  "Not a food exists I won't like."

  "We'll see."

  Lillah looked out to sea. If her mother was there, they would have looked out together. It was a thing they did, very early on, when talking about the dangers of the world. Her uncle, too, long gone out there.

 

In her mapping, Lillah told the Tree:
Home of brother
too much to say will need this to come from another
teacher who does not know us so well.

  
Here, the Tree grows berries sweet and bitter. The leaves
are dark, the Bark is dry.

 

 

 

It was an easy day's walk, their first one. They knew the terrain, had met and traded with people from Aloes partway. It was a six day walk to the market meeting place, then the same back again. They were allowed to travel to market with the trader as they neared teacher age. This to prepare them for the physicality of the walk and so they would be heading for something familiar, not completely unknown. This market was one of the closest between communities, Lillah knew. In some places, they would walk for thirty days, or ninety, with no sign of another human being, just the Tree and the birds to keep them company.

  The burn Aquifolia had given Lillah itched and wept. She tried to keep it clean but sand worked its way into everything. She knew she'd be scarred: the skin rubbed off as she walked.

  They could smell the moisture in the air and knew that rain would soon come. There was a high wind blowing which frightened Morace and some of the other children. Lillah hoped they would reach the Order Aloes before the real wind started. They would be prepared for it there and have places to shelter.

  The Tree Trunk wept red sap, sticky stuff which the children rolled into balls. The teachers turned away, pretended not to notice. They did not care as much as the older people did; didn't think it disrespectful to play with the sap.

  Rutu, the trader, came with them as far as the market, carrying the clay pots which would be traded or filled with jasmine oil and returned to Ombu. She liked to complain each morning as they rose with the sun and began the work soon after the morning meal.

  "Where do you get your energy? You won't have it in a few months, I guarantee that. You'll need your sleep just like I do. You'll dread the rising of the sun."

  Lillah shrugged. "We'll see," she said. She knew Rutu was speaking lines spoken by traders before her. A trader was supposed to be world-weary and wise, and even though this girl was a year younger than Lillah, she would play her role perfectly.

  Rutu was glad to be going this far, and Lillah wondered if she had it in her to just keep going, stay with them and pretend she'd been selected.

  "It's a shame you have to go back, Rutu. You would make a good teacher."

  "The fathers decided otherwise. They know that the position of trader brings with it great privilege. A bad trade could end good relations with neighbours, and it could leave an Order poor for future trades. Much as I want to come with you, I am happy with my position."

  "I'll be sorry to say goodbye to you, Rutu. I'm glad you're trader, though. You will experience so much more that way than if you were stuck in Ombu."

  Rutu nodded. "Thank you, Lillah. You will do well on your journey."

  "If I can find the patience. This man is so slow."

  The market holder seemed to take an age filling the jars and sorting out his products.

  "I'm happy for the walk to be slow. I like being away from home," Rutu said. "I like to walk."

  Too soon the jars were filled for Ombu, and she loaded them onto her pack and said her goodbyes. It was a strangely low key farewell, after the fuss made leaving Ombu.

  "Why don't you sleep one more night here?" Melia said.

  "I don't like much to sleep the night in the market. Ghosts are at their most powerful here. Their most envious. They will steal my hair, steal my thoughts. I prefer to walk."

  Lillah was disappointed: she'd wanted to see some rebellion from Rutu. An attempt, at least, to stay with the school. Lillah would have supported her, argued her case. But she left quietly, no backward glance.

  The children whispered together. "Is it true?" Rham asked Melia. "Is it so dangerous to sleep at the market?"

  Melia nodded her head. "That is what is said. You know that the trader before Rutu used to tell stories of other traders, ones he knew in his youth, before the lessons were learned. He said that they did not ever have children, the ones who slept in the market. He said that no market holder has ever had a child, and that most of them talk in short sentences with no real meaning. It is a risky job to take."

  "We can sleep further around, though," Lillah assured them. "There will be no danger there."

  They all assessed the market holder. He was bald, it was true. And his eyes seemed paler than most; as if they could see a short distance only.

 

Melia bounced around, chatting with the children, telling them jokes which made them squeal with laughter. The children ran ahead and splashed in the water until the teachers caught up, or they lagged behind collecting shells and pebbles. Morace hung back, watching them. Lillah gave him a small push on the shoulder. "Go on, Morace. You can join them."

  "I don't know what to do."

  "They don't either, Morace. They are just playing. Making it up as they go along." He caught up with the children but did not join them in their whooping and screaming.

  "Not a very disciplined first day," Erica said. Melia and Lillah exchanged glances and laughed. Lillah threw away the sticks Aquifolia had asked her to deliver, dropped her pack and cartwheeled up the beach, making the children scream with delight.

  Melia carried her things and passed them to her when she was done. "What about the sticks?"

  "Oh, my Tree Lord, leave them. I'm not going to carry them all the way for a woman like that. She burnt me. I already have Magnolia's bag to deliver."

  "How you suffer," Melia said.

  Agara plunged into the water, shocking them, then stepped out dripping to speak her poem, the one listing the gifts and the places they needed to go.

  
We carry a bonsai Tree to offer in welcomefire to 
Aloes.

  
We carry shells for Osage from Ombu.

  
We carry a bowl for Cedrelas.

  
We carry a necklace from Myrist to Olea in Rhado.

  
We carry sticks for Sargassum.