Walking the Tree (45 page)

 

The last thing Lillah did each night was to place a pouch of salt inside the ghost cave, for those inside to spice their food. She hoped it helped.

  While she was there she told the Tree all she had heard in the day, all she had seen, all she had learned.

  She told the Tree the truth.

 
 
 

 

Lillah

Main teacher

 

Morace

Main student

 

Logan 

Lillah's brother

 

Magnolia 

Logan's wife

 

Melia 

Lillah's best friend

 

Thea 

Teacher

 

Dickson 

Thea's brother

 

Tax 

Thea's brother

 

Pandana 

Lillah's favourite teacher

 

Olea

Lillah's mother

 

Rhizo 

Morace's mother

 

Erica 

Teacher

 

Tilla 

Old man in Ombu

 

Sapin 

Lillah's true love

 

Cynthia 

Melia's mother

 

Gingko 

Teacher who replaces Agara

 

Ruth 

First female botanist

 

Tamarica 

Teacher who replaces Thea

 

Rubica 

Teacher who replaces Gingko

 

Musa 

Teacher who replaces Erica

 

Agara 

Teacher

 

Ster 

Teacher who replaces Melia

 

Aquifolia 

Woman who organises the teachers

 

Araucari 

Aquifolia's husband

 

Santala 

Guide inside the Tree

 

Borag 

Student who loves to cook

 

Rham 

Smart student

 

Zygo 

Student

 

Corma 

Pregnant girl

 

Hippocast 

Corma's husband

 

David 

Original male botanist

 

Annan 

Tale-teller at Ombu

 

Bursen 

Lillah's first lover

 

Gutt 

Aquifolia's lover

 

Pittos 

Morace's father, Ombu's birthman

 

Simarou 

Lillah's Aunt, Olea's sister

 

Ebena 

Magnolia's brother

 

Capri 

Dickson's wife

 

Ulma 

Melia's sister

 

Legum 

Lillah's uncle, Myrist's brother

 

Ruta 

Ombu's trader

 

 

 

RECORD 18779/ddgrf/c(i)/9032

The rising tide swallowed many islands as the third millennium closed. By then, humankind had returned to basic survival. Hand to mouth subsistence farming. The Spikes epidemic, which took ninety percent of the population in the years between 2107 and 2212, had died with its last victim, but the rise of the animals and insects made human life precarious. Plant life was at risk through disease and the needs of the food chain. Plagues of locusts, intent on survival, roared through food crops. Domesticated cattle chewed grass to the ground and tore out the roots with their flat teeth.

  In some areas, volcanic mud spewed for centuries, and in others new land masses were thrown up by the shifting plates.

  In 2519 a group of scientists, the last existing perhaps, set sail for what they had identified as the highest point in the Pacific, an island perhaps five hundred years old and approximately 800,000 km², the size of Turkey, filled with a legendary, ancient Tree. They were botanists and plant biologists and they took with them a Noah's Ark of seeds. They did not bother with animals, wanting to avoid the virulent nature of breeding and the future temptation to farm animals for food. Spikes had come from abusive animal consumption and other manipulations.

  The island of Botanica was only sparsely inhabited; most of the area's people believing it to be filled with spirits.

  The cause of fear was the massive Tree which almost filled the island. Such a monstrous thing in nature must have grown on the spirits of man; most people would not step foot on the land, or even sail close to shore.

  Rainfall was adequate on the island and the Tree itself grew year by year.

  The inhabitants were an undeveloped, disparate group living at far extremes in small communities. With the Tree filling most of the island, there was no cross-country travel and very little circumnavigation.

  When the colonists arrived, life changed.

 
 

 

Kaaron Warren's award-winning short fiction has appeared in Y
ear's Best Horror & Fantasy, Fantasy
magazine,
Paper Cities
, and many other places in Australia, Europe and the US. She has stories in Ellen Datlow's
Poe
and
Haunted Legends
anthologies.

  Her short story "A Positive" has been made into a short film called
Patience
, and her first published story, "White Bed" has been dramatised for the stage in Australia, where she lives. Her first novel,
Slights
, is also available from Angry Robot, who will also be publishing her modern-day fantasy about immortal magicians,
Mistification.

 

 

 
 

 

Keeping track of all of the different communities was one of the key challenges I faced in writing
Walking the Tree
. As a result, I have an exercise book where I kept notes about what they ate, how the spoke, whether or not they had a platform out over the sea, what their relationship with the Tree was. I added to, changed, referred back to this constantly.

  The other thing I had to keep straight was something I called
Threads
. These were my many, many thoughts on the things I wanted to say. Character traits, actions, plot developments, philosophical thoughts, language; everything. These appeared throughout the first couple of drafts in square brackets, but I realised I couldn't keep them all in my head that way, so I pulled them all out, categorised them, and labelled them Threads.

  The fourth draft was all about lacing these threads through the novel. Some of them didn't work; others became irrelevant. This lacing helped to determine some of the story line. Part of writing is to use your threads as part of the story, rather than as a download of info.

  So if my thread says "the bachelor house", I didn't want to write a paragraph about how the bachelors all lived together in one house, I wanted to have that bachelor house as part of the story. Either moving the story forward, or building the mood in a particular community, and/or developing character. I used the bachelor house in the community of Douglas (or Bad Men, as I nicknamed it). Douglas was an important community because it is where we realise just how filled with self-hatred Thea is. It also shows the women in control, as they leave early rather than "put up with" the men of Douglas.

  Part of my inspiration came from stories of habitual rape on Pitcairn Island. Abuse as an accepted part of a society is horrifying. I also had at the back of my mind a small story told to me years ago, about an innocent young girl and a group of men who teased her about wearing a "pearl necklace". They didn't do anything about it, but they mocked her and to me the intent was very strong. A "pearl necklace" is something you probably don't want to google. This was the sort of man I wanted to inhabit Douglas.

 

We thought you might find it interesting to see this in action, so what follows here are just a few pages of my Threads. I had about forty of these pages – that fourth draft took a long time!

 

Back home; what is organiser doing? Does Lillah lie or tell the truth about what happened to the parcel organ. Sent? She could easily get away with the lie.

  Living arrangements; girls will live with an auntie between 13-18 years old.

  Need to talk about variety of living arrangements. Not just male/female.

  Need to think about the dwellings. This will be part of who the people are.

  Now here's a thought; when the children come back from school, they don't live with their parents. They are sent in groups to the homes. So the family unit could be two carers and three 11 year-old girls, or two carers and two 10 year-old boys etc. This way the children are not physically reliant on one set of adults; the kid groups are never broken up, but they move about to different homes together. So Lillah, Melia and Thea have been together like sisters.

  Or perhaps not in this community, but it other communities.

  The bachelor house.

  Details of the homes, the things they have – all wooden, or from the sea. Lots of shells large shells for bowls etc. Coral for scrubbing. Sea sponges, sea weed, etc. Add to existing descriptions.

  Do most houses have 360 degree veranda, all made of wood from the tree and driftwood? In words.

  Enough about houses? Distinguishing feature? More metal used here?

  Furniture. What sort of rooms do they have Some of this will depend on how/when the sun is there. They sleep more if there's less sun. Rooms will change depending on how their life is.

  I think the houses are simple. Four rooms. Perhaps they all like a little privacy. Covered?

  What is slightly different about their houses? The distinguishing feature.

 

Tall women. "So long ago that no one remembers, the people who lived here were as tall as ten women." (ALL THESE KINDS OF REFERENCES TO WOMEN.)

 

Are there more males born than females?

  Babies born with longer fingernails to catch onto the mothers insides so they don't slip out.

  Deformities left hanging off branches instead? This as an underlying tale; beauty/great ugliness.

  Discovery of malformed babies. Here, in community 6, so we see it afterwards on the journey?

  Have they heard the rumours before? Will need to add that in.

  From
New Scientist
: In societies where women are promiscuous, sperm competition is greater; bigger testes, higher sperm count, more viscous sperm to prevent later partners; sperm reaching egg. Higher rates of protein evolution. Sexual selection drives changes in the protein.

  So the people of the tree are highly developed. Examples of.

  Losing a child. The younger the child, the less actual life he lived, but more imaginary life. A child who dies a little older has more actual life, less possible life. And his possible life is more confined because of the character developed. So a newborn who dies had an entire possible life. An entire perfect life.

  Mention placenta in a couple of communities. Inside the tree as well.

  Pregnancy called "catching a child".

  Re: pregnancy. Realisation that a virgin is never pregnant.

  She stretched in the sunlight. Lillah saw her belly as her shirt lifted up; broad, white, stretched, it looked uncomfortable.

  Behind her an elder appeared. "It's well past time. It will take you too long to reach Ailanthus if you don't leave soon. You don't want to birth it in the sand, do you?"

  "She is testing her resolve," Melia said. "What is the point?" Lillah said. She learns why as she travels; thinking/realisation that superstition for superstition's sake can be dangerous. Where do the people with no new babies live?

 

Death seen as failure.

  Is a baby who's mother dies thought less of? Does someone say, it only ever happens with the boy babies.

  Mourning; how is it approached: physically ie shave heads etc? or will great acceptance? Or with a sense of denial. They believe a body lives forever, will look to a bird, a baby, a turtle, as the vessel for the soul. Will not kill a turtle if they think it has a human soul.

  Names of different suicides.

  Death. Ongoing responses to deaths of Rham, Gingko (residual response: nightmares?), Thea, Rhizo

  Some will prop a corpse up, pretending it is still alive.

  When does kid die? Or does lilla keep them all safe?

  When does teacher die? Bad men, i think.

  When the tree sheds leaves, it can be natural disaster. Houses crushed sometimes. People killed under the weight. Standing right next to the trunk is the safest place.

  X 2 story told of insiders 'dead but walking' and slaughtered.

 

• • •

 

Plague

One thing all the communities share: distrusts of deformity/illness.

  Any ill person is killed. Hung from a limb. They don't want disease to spread after the lesson of the plague. Each community has a special hanging limb. It is done with respect. It is like a sacrifice to the community.

  Does their fear of disease make them repel any sailors?

  From 11. Thread pushing forward here is Morace: news of his mother makes him nervous.