Walking the Tree (6 page)

  Lillah thought back to when Magnolia's school had arrived at Ombu.

 

Lillah was nineteen and word came ahead that the Number Taker was coming, travelling with the school from his own Order, Torreyas. The Number Taker always came from Torreyas, receiving training in numbers above all else. The Number Takers were known to like things ordered. They usually wore broad-brimmed hats because they didn't like to look up; the Tree with its branches and leaves was far too chaotic to make them feel comfortable.

  The children at school with the Number Taker became well versed in counting, because everything was tallied.

  If there were no dwellings to count, or people, or animals, it would be stones on the beach, piled into tens and counted in thousands.

  The arrival of the Number Taker always brought great excitement. It was so rare a man travelled and stopped to visit. The women who had missed out on being teachers looked at the Number Taker as a potential husband. Word would be sent ahead about his looks and manner.

  This one was coming with eight teachers and fifteen children, a huge parade. Word was he liked to laugh. He wanted to be amused. And that the school teachers with him were beautiful.

  Logan carried on with his business: fishing and collecting the wood. He pretended he had no interest in the teachers, that he wanted to remain single and have to worry about no one but himself.

  "Why should I take on a dependant? I'm perfectly happy with you and our parents demanding things from me."

  "So why have you taken your shirt off, then? Not trying to get browner in the sun out there?" Lillah said. She cupped saltwater in her palms and flicked it at his back. The droplets hung on the pale hairs there and he shivered.

  "Right!" he said. He put down his net and picked up a wooden bucket. Lillah squealed as he scooped it full.

  "Children!" their mother had called. "Stop playing and get moving. Come on, they'll be here soon." They could see her shaking her head on the shore.

  "You see? If I get married, no one will call me a child anymore. I'll have to be a man."

  "There is nothing manly about you," Lillah said. "Nor will there ever be." They grinned at each other. Logan went back to catching fish.

  "They won't be here for three days, though," Logan said. "We'll need to keep the fish in the water basket."

  He lowered the fish into a basket kept anchored on the shore, then dropped it under the water. The fish swam frantically, banging against the walls of the basket, able to breathe but not able to escape.

  Lillah felt breathless for them. How awful, to be locked in a cage in the water. She grimaced. "The poor creatures. It must be terrible to be trapped like that, still able to breathe but not able to swim away. Or even move very much. It must be awful."

  "We have to keep the fish fresh, Lillah. We don't want to poison the Number Taker."

  They both widened their eyes at the very idea.

  "I'd better go back and see what Mother needs," Lillah said. "I hope she doesn't let hopelessness take over. Her knees go weak and that's all she can think about."

  Lillah walked back to shore, feeling excitement in her heart. She hoped Logan's future wife was coming. Someone fun, clever, to keep him thinking and not let him turn into a mess of a man, flesh with eyes, like so many of them once they'd fulfilled their parental seeding.

  She reached her parents' house and entered. She smelled baking bread and wondered how her mother would keep it fresh for three days. She found Olea with her head on the kitchen bench, surrounded by flour.

  "Mother! What's wrong?" Olea lifted her head and Lillah snorted with laughter before she could stop herself. Olea's tears left runnels in the flour on her cheeks.

  "It's not funny, Lillah. It's a disaster. The Number Taker's favourite sweet is semolina balls soaked through with cardamom and I can't find the main ingredient."

  "Someone'll have some cardamom, Mother. If no one here does, I'll run to the market and get it. You keep going with your other arrangements."

  "I can't do it, I just can't manage," Olea banged her head on the bench. Lillah stood beside her and stroked her back. "Mother, you've cooked for dozens before. You're famous for your cooking, not just here but in Aloes and Laburnum, too. People take your recipes away with them."

  "But what if they don't this time? What if I fail this time, make everyone sick at the thought of my food? It would be better if I wasn't known. Then they wouldn't have any expectations, be looking at me to fail."

  "Nobody wants you to fail and you won't. I'll find you what you need then we'll do it together. Is there anything else you haven't got?"

  Olea named a few things and Lillah nodded.

  "Don't take a long time. No chatting or news spreading today. Hurry hurry hurry," Olea said. She wiped away her tears and got flour in her eyes. Lillah smothered a laugh.

  "It's all very well for you to laugh. You didn't grow up in the same Order I did. I would be beaten for failure, there. They hate success and envy it, yet they punished failure with great cruelty. If it wasn't for your uncle, I don't know that I would have survived. Yet he was Outcast, because my cruel mother didn't feed him from the breast."

  Lillah didn't really believe Olea, who loved to dramatise things.

  Lillah went out of the house leaving her mother blinded, dabbing at her eyes with a cloth.

  It was nightfall before Lillah returned from knocking at every door in the community. She was laden with prizes of all kinds, treasures.

  Dried fish, slow salted and delicious. Dried berries, very rare. Small cakes you could fit in your mouth all at once. The cardamom her mother needed.

  She hoped it would help to relax Olea. She was glad she'd found all the ingredients on Ombu. She didn't want to run to the market between Ombu and Laburnum because it was far away and the walk stony, until you reached the market where seaweed washed up to the sand. Closer to Laburnum, seaweed covered the sand. Seaweed always came to the beach in Laburnum. Lillah and her friends were sure that was why Laburnum was known for the perfume they made. They needed to cover up the smell.

  Only in a powerful wind did the smell reach Ombu. At those times people felt lucky to live in Ombu, not Laburnum.

  Although the time alone, walking six days to market and back again would have been nice, her mother could not have borne the time. Lillah reminded herself to talk to the trader, ask for some spices on his next trip.

  The Number Taker's group was spotted on the horizon at dawn.

  "They're here! The school!" shouted one of the children. The arrival of new people lifted them all. The Tree Hall had been cleaned to perfection, and colourful material draped about to make the room look welcoming. The single men had washed and scrubbed, scraped away hair, pulled on their best clothes. Even Logan had done it, "out of respect for the Number Taker", though he winked at Lillah as he said it. At the very least he would have sex with one of the teachers. All the men knew they had a good chance of sex, and their voices were louder, talking over one another, and they wrestled, physically unable to keep still.

  The women laughed at them, though kindly. The men all worked hard and deserved some release. This was the natural way of things.

  The single men had all arranged places they could go to be alone with an interested teacher. Some had arranged bedrooms, sending roommates to sleep elsewhere. Others had warm woodcaves, prepared with rugs, candles, sweet treats.

  Lillah watched it all and fantasised about the day she, too, would be welcomed like a queen.

  "They're coming! They're coming!" the children yelled on the run, racing along the beach to greet the schoolchildren, wanting them now to come into the village to show them toys, hideouts, climbing places, swimming spots.

  The adults were more restrained, but all gathered on the beach to greet the Number Taker and the teachers.

  "He's very tall," whispered one girl. They squinted. He did seem very tall. Too tall.

  "No, he's got a teacher on his shoulders," someone shouted, and they laughed, all of them, joyful at the joke of the Number Taker carrying a teacher.

  "How many teachers with them?" called Thea's oldest brother, Tax.

  "Too many for you to manage!" a father said.

  "Here's one, running for me. She can't wait," Tax said, pushing his way forward.

The teacher ran towards him, arms out.

  "Civilisation! Hooray!" she said, and the crowd surrounded her, all chattering at once and offering her sustenance. The other teachers followed more sedately.

  Lillah watched the Number Taker. "He seems to be struggling," she called. Logan turned to look, squinted, then ran along the beach.

  The Number Taker fell to his knees as Logan approached, grappling with the young woman riding on his shoulders. Logan dashed forward and grabbed her. He held her in his arms as the Number Taker rose, then they walked together, Logan carrying the teacher, towards the crowd.

  The crowd moved forward to greet the Number Taker, take him in, look after him.

  Lillah ran to find a blanket then laid it down so Logan could place the teacher on it.

  "Thank you," the teacher said. She winced. "I cut my foot on a sea urchin." Lillah glanced at the foot and could see it was swollen and discoloured.

  The Birthman stood over them. "The Number Taker said we had an injury here," he said. "Wouldn't take any refreshment until he knew you were okay."

  "He's very kind," the teacher said.

  "This is our Birthman, Pittos. We call him Mr Miracles."

  The Birthman blushed. He was a shy, red-faced man whose wife had just lost their sixth child. She had Morace, a lively child, ninety-six moons old. They had failed to have more.

  "I'm Lillah, and this is my brother Logan."

  "I'm Magnolia," the teacher said. She held out her hand and Logan took it. He sat beside her, still holding the hand.

  "Thank you for carrying me," she whispered. Logan leant close to hear and she kissed his cheek. He said nothing.

  "He's a bit shy," Lillah said, dropping on to the blanket beside them. The Birthman cleared his throat.

  "It's too crowded here for me to work. Lillah, go get some juice for our patient. Logan, you can stay and hold her hand. This may hurt." Logan squeezed his face up.

  "Not you, me!" Magnolia said.

  The Birthman removed the spines and cleaned the wound

  "Thank you, Birthman," Magnolia said. Her cheeks were flushed from the pain. Logan took a washcloth and ran to the water to soak it. He came back and gently stroked her cheeks and forehead with the coolness.

  Her skirt had worked its way up to her thighs. When Lillah came back with the juice, she saw Tax lying a short way down the beach, angling his head and grinning at what he thought he could see.

  "Shoo, Tax," Lillah said. "Shoo, fly. Go find a rock pool to put your head in."

  Magnolia laughed and fixed her skirt. "Don't worry, I've seen worse than him."

  The three sat on the blanket and laughed and talked until a messenger came for Lillah.

  "Your Mother's crying on the front step," he said.

  "Oh, rubbish," Lillah said, rolling her eyes. "I'd better go help. She's preparing the feast singlehanded, according to her."

  "I'll help, too," Magnolia said. She lumbered into a standing position and tested her heel by putting her full weight on it. She winced slightly. "It's fine," she said. "If you could help me up there then I'll sit to chop or roll or whatever," she said.

  Magnolia walked between Lillah and Logan. They exchanged smiles behind her back, nods.

  Magnolia and Lillah had met twice before. When Magnolia's school walked through Ombu, Lillah was nine and about to leave for school herself, Magnolia eleven. Logan was eleven, walking the Tree, at school. Lillah hated him being away. She was sad, even as an adult, about those years they could have shared. Lillah's school walked through Magnolia's Order when Lillah was eleven and Magnolia thirteen, and just returned from her five years away. They both remembered that meeting very clearly. Magnolia had been very kind to Lillah, finding her sweets to eat when she felt sad and left out.

  Magnolia was good with numbers and Logan watched, bemused, as she made the figures show who had been what age at what time.

  The feast was a great success. In the end everyone helped with the cooking and the serving, even the Number Taker who took great delight in cutting the bread into perfect slices.

  "Look at that!" he'd say after each piece. "Perfect!"

  "Is that how they slice it in Torreyas?" one of the women asked.

  "I barely know how they do things in Torreyas, I'm there so rarely." He tipped his broad-brimmed hat back, leaving a shiny forehead.

  The men in particular listened to his every word. A man who travelled was such a rarity, and from the way he spoke, they could see why. 'Who would want a life like that?' the men said to each other. 'Never at home. Always away. How could you know who you are?'

  Lillah and Magnolia had screeched with laughter at the sight of Tax the swaggering so-called heartthrob of the village (not Logan. There was no swagger about Logan). Leaving his trousers to sag loosely below his hips, showing pubic bush combed with twigs, the fashion of the day amongst some. Leaving tiny twigs amongst the curls. Lillah had turned away, her shoulders shaking at the foolishness of him. Magnolia had joined her, laughing too. Two teachers were fooled by Tax, though; they fought for his affections. Lillah, Melia and Agara watched the women snarl at each other with fixed smiles. One managed to spill hot food on the other but that plan backfired: Tax took her away to clean her up.