Walking the Tree (42 page)

  "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 the 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.

  Lillah knew she was reaching the top when the wood was old, so old it wasn't safe. Above her the canopy began and she couldn't climb in there. It was so dense, so thick. They had told her this; she hadn't believed them. Her way was smaller; sometimes she felt she was walking through hollow branches. Other times she sense she was close to the outside; she could feel a breeze, a light, clean breeze.

  She looked for a sign of the Rememberers. Something left by the men and women who had formed the Orders, who had landed and made this a place for them.

  She had seen remnants, these last few months. Bones. Crumbled remains of Bark, thick Bark. Metal rusted into a heap. Cups that looked like they were made of water but were hard. She saw bird nests so enormous four children could sleep in them. She saw a hugeness so vast it filled her with a sense of blankness.

  She saw emptiness and the past, scrawls and scraps. A shrine to the great botanist who set the place up. The books. Santala had told her that in these books were written the names of their communities, and their own names as well.

  She found boxes, many small boxes, some still filled with seeds. She had been told that the botanists brought thousands of seeds with them, giving Botanica its rich diversity.

  She found no Rememberers.

 

It was big in the canopy, so vast. She felt it filling her, the bigness, as it had elsewhere. A momentary understanding of the hugeness of it all.

  She tried to climb higher, but for the first time felt unsafe. She stepped inside a hollow branch, using the roof of it to rest her hands for support, but she had not taken more than fifteen steps when she heard a creaking noise.

  She stopped. It was not the settling sound she had grown used to. It was a harsher, rending noise. She took a step forward, but felt the branch tilt slightly. She stopped. It tilted more, making her lose her footing. A cracking noise forced her to action at last, and she stepped backwards, knowing that she was not far from the trunk. Seven steps, eight, the branch tilted so far forwards she was thrown to her knees and had to crawl, pushing herself backwards until her toes reached the more solid wood of the central trunk.

  She wriggled through. The branch she had been walking through cracked almost all the way through and she knew that if she'd been inside it, she would have plummeted with it through the branches below.

  She rested, then she began to climb down.

 

Lillah knew which way her Order lay because she could read the notations, but she would need help to find the ghost cave that led out. She spoke to rare people along the way; they all knew how to send her to the next junction. She missed speaking to people. She liked to talk, to learn, and to tell tales. She had enjoyed the silence as she climbed the Tree, but she would not need that silence again.

After many months she entered the ghost cave of Laburnum, just one Order from Ombu. They made perfume there; Lillah found the smell cloying. She wanted to walk home, feel the sand, get used to being outside again. She didn't want to emerge in Ombu. Too sudden. She did not want to be seen emerging from the Tree like a ghost. Santala had told her to sleep in the inner cavern before emerging into the ghost cave and outside.

  "Your eyes will settle while you're asleep, and your eyelids will filter the light. It will seem very bright to you for a while, but you'll soon be used to it."

 

They had given her a cloth to shade her eyes because the bright sunlight could blind her. She draped this over her head and touched the wall of the cave. Light filtered in and Lillah thought she could smell it.

  She stepped out of the Tree for the first time in five years.

  The light was too painful, and the noise out there bothered her. She stepped back into the ghost cave, stopped near the entrance and closed her eyes. She slept to allow her eyes, and her ears, to adjust.

  She awoke and stepped out again. The light was beautiful this time. Things seen in such detail, such perfect detail.