Walking the Tree (20 page)

  No one spoke to this woman. The two children stumbled and fell a lot, rose without tears. The mother ignored the falls, which was odd in this Order. Mostly the children barely shed a tear before an adult lifted them for comfort, a sweetness popped into the mouth for distraction.

  Lillah walked over to the woman. "Those boxes look very sturdy," she said. "What do you keep in them?"

  The woman looked up and smiled. "Berries or seajewels. Stones. Teeth. People keep different things." The boy fell again, this time gashing his head on a rock. This time the mother dropped the box she was working on and ran to staunch the blood.

  "It doesn't stop once it starts," she called. The cloth she held against her son's head turned crimson, so Lillah ran into the leaves around the Trunk seeking spiderwebs.

  Most places she identified a web soon after arrival, just in case, but she had been distracted by the beautiful, quiet men in clay.

  She found webs a hundred steps away and wound them carefully and quickly onto a twig she broke off. She noticed odd drawings in the Trunk and vowed to come back once the boy's bleeding had stopped. The limbs here were oddly smooth, the larger ones reminding her of a man's leg, with tapered ankles. There were small bones (fingers?) hanging from the toes. Lillah wondered why the ghosts had not taken these bones.

  The mother watched Lillah gently press the webs onto the boy's forehead. The bleeding stopped and the mother gasped.

  "I had heard of this but had never tried it. I took bleeding as another punishment. Born as two, that's what. My punishment for a bad choice."

  "Why were they allowed to live?"

  "They were left out on the Trunk but they survived the night. It was decided that they were not meant to die, and they have been protected ever since. I am to do nothing but watch them. Nothing. But if I had not agreed to this, we all would have been treated. You have a bad baby, you are treated as if you have Spikes. I chose a man too close to me. This is not a good place to stay, for all its beauty."

  Lillah walked back to the place she had seen odd drawings. It smelled unpleasant there. The drawings frightened her. They told the story of a killing labour of birth, the woman torn apart. A man stood beside her, and the artist had cleverly drawn him so it was clear he was related to the woman.

  The artist worked as she watched. She marvelled at his gentle touch. He used a flattened bone to mix his paint and a sharpened one to draw his pictures.

  "There was once a box of painting things washed up. There were wooden sticks with soft hair at the end of them, and bright colours you have never seen."

  "I bet the pictures didn't last, though. I imagine they disappeared with sun and time."

  "They did. That's true."

  There was a mess of a baby painted in the trunk at the man's feet, limbs twisted, eyes pupil-less. There were other babies depicted, too, deformed. Unable to live.

  Lillah heard a peck peck and looked up to see a white bird at something in the high branches. She couldn't see, so climbed a branch up, then another.

  It was the almost-pecked clean skeleton of a baby. Above it hung another and above that, more.

  Lillah fell backwards in her horror, and landed hard on her tail bone. The bird flew away.

  Olea's words came back to her. "Be observant."

  "Not too hard to observe that," Lillah muttered. No wonder they had an obsession with lineage. Dead births told of wrong matings. These men must be very poor sires. She noticed a small cavity she had missed before. Inside lay the skeleton of what looked like a tiny baby. There was only a torso and head; no limbs. Someone had made a bed for it; sewn a tiny mattress, stuffed a tiny pillow. There were dried flowers, and nuts, and a small, hard ball of sap. Carving on the walls showed birds on the wing, stars. Lillah felt sorry for person who had built this shrine. She stepped back, not wanting to see any more.

  Pandana stood there. She took Lillah's wrist between her forefinger and thumb and squeezed.

  "Did you touch anything?"

  Lillah shook her head. Pandana squinted at her, then stepped over to the cavity. She stared in, then reached up and made a minor adjustment. "The men here are no use, for all their good looks," she said. "It is best to let them be the last. They are even more useless when they are old."

  "Maybe the Tree ate their man-bones," Lillah said, and the two women shared their first adult laugh.

 

Pandana had many children living with her. The parents could work harder for the Order that way. Morace and the other children of Ombu were urged to join the crowd but they felt overwhelmed. Lillah and the other teachers found they had a child holding each hand most of the day.

  The feast took place as the sun began to set, out on the seawalk. Men played music, dropping heavy, tethered items into the water rhythmically, restfully. Lillah thought she could get used to this place; Pandana was there, the music was good. There was the cleanliness, though, and the obsession with deformity.

  The food was sea-based, and very tasty, served in the most highly polished coconut shells Lillah had seen. The men served it to them, and Lillah saw that the women would sometimes pinch their legs, their arms, scratch at them with little sticks. Lillah noticed they ate every scrap, and even the bones they tossed into a pot to be boiled later for stock. Lillah wondered why the men were treated badly here. Did it all come down to the lack of ability to catch child?

  "They do not waste here. They come from a different type of land than yours, Lillah. You come from a place of great privilege, plenty of land, set back from the water. You are on the sunny side of the island. Your needs are met so much more easily when your land provides." Pandana sucked on a bone, and limped over to the pot to drop it in.

  "I hadn't thought about it until we travelled. I always thought everybody had the same sort of place to live as I did."

  "No. No. Not at all."

  The musicians began a different kind of music, a great clanging of metal that hurt the ears.

  "It's the parade," Pandana said. "The Cautionary Parade. You should have seen it before you stopped at the last place, but it seems you didn't need it."

  "Need what?"

  "The reason not to mate with your relatives," Pandana said. "Shhh."

  Along the seawalk came children carrying thin earthenware pots. They held these out to the visitors to see; the school children started crying to see it. Lillah stepped forward. "What are you showing them? Let me see." She was angry; she trusted every Order not to hurt her charges, upset them needlessly.

  In the pots were the babies who should never have been born. Who had died at birth, or been exposed. The ones who could not expect to live at all. Babies swollen up, or with too many limbs, or not enough. Babies distorted by bulges and splits; the sight made Lillah sick.

  "Now, the recital," announced one of the fathers. The teachers stood up and recited their family Trees. The young men did, too; while this was a habit in other Orders, here it appeared to be a way to entertain. They did it with flair, humour, music.

  "We take the list very seriously, as you can imagine," Pandana said. "So many deformities. But that doesn't mean we can't enjoy it. People listen more carefully this way."

  The young men were very handsome, though Lillah thought perhaps she was more forgiving and needy after the last Order, where to her they had smelt strange and were very unattractive.

  "I don't like it here," Morace whispered to Lillah. She looked at him, annoyed. The thought had crossed her mind to stay here. She loved being with Pandana. But she couldn't leave Morace. He was weaker, now, and she needed to keep him safe.

  The Tale-teller watched all, nodding. He seemed so sleepy Lillah wondered how he'd manage to remember everything well enough to tell it.

  In a deep, carved bowl rested roots, the ones which grew up pale and broke off to rest on the earth.

  Lillah picked one up, even though she knew that in most Orders, it was considered the same as touching a ghost.

  The root was like a miniature naked person, limbs and groin, arms raised, small twisted face.

  Lillah picked another up; it was the same. She could see why this food was taboo in most places.

  The children's smoothstones here were carved with distorted figures, which Lillah thought was wrong. The stones were supposed to give comfort, not cause fear. Dead babies are to be forgotten, not thought about it. In Ombu, they would be grieving too often.

 

The man Lillah chose to be her lover was so attentive and delightful, after a very pleasant evening her skin was smooth. Fine sandpaper as their skin rubbed together. Lillah had noticed there were no old men in the Order. "What happens to your old men?"

  "They like to walk the sea." Lillah's lover took her hand and led her to a place in the Bark. Depicted there was a man with weights around his ankles, the list of his offspring beside him.

  "They walk into the sea when they lose their beauty," he said. He bent and kissed her lips softly.

  She said, "That could never happen to you." He smiled; she had said the right thing.

  He gave her some red salt and showed her how to dissolve it in water to make a face wash. She loved the smoothness of her skin afterwards; so did he. He reminded her of the market holder they had met so soon after leaving Ombu. Understanding, thoughtful.

 

Lillah wondered why Pandana had so little respect for the men here. She had caught child, at least. But others hadn't. Perhaps that was it.

  During school, on the long walk, Pandana had kept them alert, always asking questions. She wanted them to think, to analyse, to understand. She did not seem to want to answer questions now, though. Lillah asked her about the men and why they were treated badly, but they began to talk about the school they had shared and about Lillah's return to Ombu at the end of it.

 

The parents had been waiting; parents who knew them in an instant, despite the five years that had passed. Lillah had barely recognised her mother; in her mind's eye she had a beautiful glow, like the sun behind the Tree sometimes, almost like the branches were on fire.

  In reality the woman standing there, arms outstretched, eyes only for Lillah, looked old and grey. There was nothing glowing about her at all, in fact she could barely make her mouth work well enough to say "Lillah!" Lillah felt nervous, seeing this woman.

  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."