Walking the Tree (41 page)

  "Come and eat. This fire is a great comfort. The eternity of it gives us faith. My grandfather sat by this flame. His grandfather."

  As her eyes focussed, she saw there were others in the cave.

  "There are other flames burning. This is ours. This one has been burning for many years, and it is a reminder of battles that should never be fought. A battle between two good men ended with the flame going out so long ago. It was many years before it was lit again. Now we are wary of war and careful with our fire."

  The cavern filled with whispering people. Mostly they were naked though some wore strips of material around their necks to wipe their fingers and noses on.

  They watched Lillah, and smiled if she looked at them, but did not surround her.

  "They'd love to talk to you, but don't want to frighten you," Santala said. "They feel like they know you; we watch you all out there."

  "They can talk to me. I'm not frightened," though she felt overwhelmed. There had been much interest in her travels, but this was different.

  "They know less about you than others. They don't hear the whispering as much. The secrets. One young girl, the story goes, hid and listened. She knew all the secrets. She didn't use them wisely. The people killed her for knowing the secrets, but before she died, she cursed her killers. She said, 'With me dies the Tree'. But the Tree still stands, and she is long gone."

  Santala handed Lillah something, twice the size of her fist, on a skewer of wood.

  "What is it?"

  "It's delicious," he said.

  "But it's…"

  "Spider. It's spider. We farm them not far from here."

  "I can't eat that!" Lillah said. The insiders looked at each other.

  "We've seen the terrible things you eat out there. You eat crab, which goes red when you cook it."

  "Crab? Crab is good to eat. Some people don't eat crab, though. I can understand why you might be cautious. We never eat the crabs that eat people, though. We've seen them, and we've seen the bodies left, chewed and meatless. We don't eat those crabs."

  "Spider is delicious."

  Lillah looked around at her and knew this was an important moment. She had to eat. She had to be brave. They may not be offended but they would think her a complete fool if she starved herself to death.

  "We see the spider as something to be worshipped. We don't eat the things we worship," she said.

  "Anyone worthy of worship would rather be eaten than let his people die." Lillah could see the sense in that.

  An old woman squatted beside them, staring at Lillah.

  "We don't see you here. Not young ones."

  "Old ones? Some old ones come inside?" Once, she would have been excited at the possibility her mother had walked inside. She wished for a moment this had been the truth, that Olea was alive and well and living inside. "Do they?" She spoke more loudly than usual.

  The old woman winced at the noise.

  "A few old women come in. The ones looking for home."

  "But this is not home to an outsider. How could it be home? The old women walk, my mother walked, they walk around the Tree until they reach their birth Order."

  "Yes, that's right. And most will stop there. But some… not your mother… some will feel the draw into the Tree."

  They paused to collect a colony of spiders. "Not that one. See? She's got babies inside. That's next month's meal."

  "So I'm the first smooth-skinned person inside? The first young person?"

  The old woman seemed frustrated. "No, not the first. I didn't mean to give you something to be proud of. But very rare. That's all."

  "They haven't seen too many from outthere," Santala said. "Certainly not as many as are sent outward."

  "What happens to those who enter? Who survive?"

  "They are absorbed into Tree life. They may live alone in a Tree cave. They may climb higher. Some become members of our small community."

  The old woman leaned forward. She was toothless, and Lillah found it hard to understand her words. She touched Lillah, saying, "I thought I was cold while waiting for the sun. But here the sun has never reached. Here is never warm. We did not always eat the spider. Until one day one long time in the past, when the moss was gone, the mushrooms, the sacrifices and the findings. All gone. We were dying inside and out. It was then that the spiders began to drop, many, many spiders dropping to us, some into the fire and some beside it. It was a sign to eat the spiders, to stay alive. And this is what we did." She gave Lillah a piece of bread, mimed eating it.

  "All food has a partner, an opposite. Tomato and basil. Corn and potato. The spider once had an opposite: a white bird that flew low, caught fish and like to eat on the shore. A foolish creature. The last of his kind was eaten by those outthere many generations ago. The bird and the spider worked together. Spider flew on bird's back and bit the bird. In the spit of that bite was a good thing, it kept the bird travelling. Outthere, if they knew it; they would take every last spider for themselves. The spider survived, the bird did not. We always thank the spider when we eat it." She sprinkled one grain, maybe two, of sea salt onto the spider. "This is to remember the saltiness of the bird's blood. Salt is precious inside. You don't know that out there, where you have it in abundance."

  "Not everywhere. And you need to work for it."

  Lillah took the skewer and sniffed the spider. It smelt like cooked bird. Charred. They'd taken all the fur off, and removed the legs, though these Lillah could see on a plate close by.

  She closed her eyes and bit into the spider. She chewed. "It's not bad. It actually tastes a bit like crab!"

  Lillah closed her eyes and imagined she was eating crab. The texture was nasty; much chewier than it should be. And the thought of it made her ill. But she could feel it doing her good; every bite restored energy.

 

"Would you like to view a baby new born?"

  "How do you know there's one? Nobody has brought a message."

  He cupped his hand to his ear. "Hear the quiet talking? They call out who gave birth and where the child."

  They travelled to see the baby. Lillah asked Santala where the placenta would be buried, or how they cooked to eat it.

  "We would not eat it. How would we know which will be our leaders?"

  Lillah remembered then that he had told her; they buried the placenta, then dug it up when the child became an adult. If the placenta was still perfect, that child would be a leader.

  The mother wept. The tears of the insiders were thicker than those of the outsiders; opaque. Saltier, perhaps, Lillah thought.

  She did not feel inclined to lick a tear from the face of the crying mother to find out.

  "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.