Walking the Tree by Kaaron Warren Read Free Book Online Page B

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