Walking the Tree by Kaaron Warren Page A

here, you aren't, Thea," he said. "But you can learn that from the other teachers and all you meet."
      Thea threw down her bonsai and ran. The others girls stared at the mess, the precious dirt, the denuded branches.
      "Somebody clean it up," Melia's father snapped.
      Dickson and Lillah followed Thea. "I will send you a message so you know I am thinking of you, sister."
      They drew her back to the farewellfire. Tilla was shouting at them: "Don't know where you think you're going. No one can walk around the Tree. No one. Can't be done."
      The Order laughed. "But you did it!" Lillah said. "You went to school."
      "I never did."
      Somehow the old man had forgotten every leaving. For him, the world began and ended only as far as he could see.
      Lillah would meet others like him on her travels.
      "But what about people who leave in this direction and come back in that, five years later?"
      "Liars. All of them. Don't ask me why. I don't know how liars think."
      Lillah stood ready, the children who were about to travel with her running at her feet, the noise of them lively and setting an edge to her nerves.
      There were no tears. The leaving of the school was accepted because it had always been that way. Women and children left. Children came back; women sometimes did, many years later.
      "You know if you just keep walking you'll get there eventually. There is no way to get lost. Keep the Tree to your right shoulder and just keep walking," Erica's father said.
      "We send our best away! Why do we send our best away?" Dickson said.
      Pittos put his hand on Dickson's shoulder. "Because the best are sent to us. That is the way it works."
      "And the best are the ones who deserve to find a place with fresh water," Melia said. She hated salt water.
      Aquifolia gave Lillah a message for her home Order. It was a bundle of twigs, marked and etched. It would be difficult to carry and Lillah wondered if she would get away without delivering it. She'd rather throw it into the scrub before too long passed. She also handed them a pouch of dried moss. "Take a small pinch of this every morning after you take a lover. It will stop you from catching child. The most important thing is to see my mother. Everybody wants to see her. She has no time for her own children, but she will find time for you."
      Lillah thought it would be hard to have a mother so sought after.
      "She'll tell you your future by reading your burn scars. Fire is cleansing."
      Everybody had at least one burn scar. Worship and fearfulness of the fire somehow led to a lack of wariness. Some people had more scars than others. Aquifolia reached behind her and the ember she had was still red. She thrust into onto Lillah's forearm.
      Lillah recoiled, too shocked to scream. "Run to the water," Aquifolia said. "The water will take the heat from you."
      "You burnt me," Lillah said. She wanted to take a stick and thrust it into the woman's eye.
      "You will thank me when you meet my mother."
     
    "See you children in five years," Logan said.
      "Make sure my nephew knows who I am, where to find me when he goes to school. I'll look for a child who looks like you. Our strong family features."
      Rhizo had asked Lillah not to share the secret with anybody, but Logan should know he had a brother.
      "Walk the seawalk with me, Logan."
      They walked closely together, shoulder to shoulder, and she told him about Morace, and Rhizo and the illness.
      "She shouldn't ask you to do this. I never liked that woman. If he's sick, he's sick."
    "But he's our brother."
      "And this is our Order. Our world." He paused. Looked back at shore. "Brother, huh? So my son has an uncle?"
      They walked back together, joining the others.
      Magnolia held him from behind. "You find a good man like your brother. You will have to look hard. You watch out for the men in Douglas. I grew up with them as my neighbours and I thought that's what