Walking the Tree by Kaaron Warren Read Free Book Online

painted after a glorious dream. Can you imagine living in the clouds like that?"
      Lillah closed her eyes and tried to memorise her home with her other senses. She knew how it looked: two rooms downstairs, two up. One bedroom she had shared with her brother until his marriage; now she slept there again, some nights, wanting to spend more time with her father before school left.
      Her father's bedroom, much smaller. His clothes were stacked in outboards, the cupboards built outside the walls of the house, wooden doors flat with the walls. The large bed almost filled the room. It was made of the same wood as the floor and Lillah imagined it had grown there, a complicated mesh of limbs twisting into the family bed. The baby slept in her arms and she didn't think she had ever seen anything so peaceful.
      Her old bedroom smelled damp. It was the room closest to the Tree, so it got no sunlight. It never really dried out. To the touch it was also damp. Not so her fingers would get wet, but if she was pressed hard against the wall, held there while being kissed, the damp would penetrate her shirt at the shoulder blades, her skirt at the buttocks. She used to keep her clothes folded under the bed.
      Her father's room caught more of the sun so it was brighter. The smell there was of him, an aged liquid long gone yellow. The smell was a combination of the leaves in the forest by the Tree, when they have lain on the forest floor and have almost turned to sludge, mixed with the perfume of the head-like flowers that grew in the next Order and could be dried and crushed for the scent. Her mother had loved this perfume more than she did the sea.
      Downstairs was the kitchen and storage room, kept cool with thick walls of wood, Bark, mud and sap. They kept their food here. Lillah's mother once had a complex system of rotation, where the new food was placed behind the old. To Lillah, this meant she never ate food absolutely fresh. It was always a day, a few days old. The fruit browned, the bread covered with mould. She swore that when she ran a house she would eat the freshest food first and throw old food onto the compost, for the roots of the Tree to enjoy. Still, she couldn't bring herself to completely ignore her mother's teaching.
      Then there was the gathering room, with its woven rug on the floor. The rug scratched you if you sat on it; its bark and leaf weave was so harsh it left marks on your buttocks and the backs of your thighs. You had to shift positions many times so the discomfort could be spread about.
      "Don't fidget," her mother had snapped at her when she was just three or so. Maybe four; at no age to be forced to sit still like that. Her mother was telling a story about school; the time she was a teacher. How she chose to stay in Ombu, what food she missed.
      And she liked full attention. Otherwise tears would come to her eyes and she'd say, "I'll go tell it to the Tree." Lillah had shrugged. That didn't sound like a bad thing. She often saw the grownups lined up whispering, whispering: secrets and confessions they could never speak aloud.
      The houses in Ombu were built to fit; no wasted space. Enough room above the head so they didn't feel like they were in a woodcave. They liked to feel the air above them.
      The kitchen was the best room in the house. Everybody made it a place to be happy in. Doors opening out to the sea, though Lillah's mother used to keep hers closed, to keep the salt air out of her food, she said. "You want to know the secret of my great success? No salt in my cooking. Salt kills other flavours. Without it the other flavours can grow and exaggerate themselves until you can
    identify the taste individually."
      The kitchen smelled of bread and raw vegetables. It smelled of things growing. The bench felt smooth, worn to a satin from years of work. Lillah's father had sanded the wood when her mother caught child, picking up handfuls of sand and rubbing for hours of every