Walking the Tree by Kaaron Warren

worry."
    "He'll have to know eventually."
      "I know, but if he's away from me when it happens, the distance will help. It will give him time to get used to it. It won't seem real until he gets back home."
      Lillah stood up and went to hug Rhizo. "I can't believe how brave you are," she said.
      "I guess I am brave."
      "Is there anything for now? Anything you want?"
      Rhizo sighed. "You know what I miss? The smell of the leaves. I'm so closed in no smell reaches. Could you bring me some leaves? I don't want to ask my husband. I don't want him to know how much I miss outside, or he would make me go out."
      "Why don't you go out?"
      Rhizo started to speak. Her eyes shifted slightly as she thought, and Lillah wondered what it was she was hiding.
      "I don't want people to know I'm sick," she said. "It is so different here. Where I'm from, we were worshipped by the people in the next Order. Worshipped! Can you imagine? Here I am nothing."
      Lillah felt too inexperienced to see beyond the words. "I'll get some leaves," she said. "A sackful, different colours."
      Outside, Morace and some of the children waited. Rham, with big eyes and a quiet tongue, saw all. She nodded at Lillah. "Will he be coming? I hope he comes. He is good to talk to." She had a small carved wooden puzzle only she could solve; she carried it everywhere.
      "You will have plenty of children to talk to along the way."
      "But many of them are so dull. I like the bright ones. I'd rather talk to grown ups."
      As she collected the leaves, it dawned upon Lillah what Rhizo was asking her to do. Risk every Order they visited. Take Spikes with them, perhaps. Leave each Order sick, all to keep one child from treatment.
      Lillah returned with her leaves. "I'm sorry, Rhizo. I don't think I can do such a thing. This is not how we are brought up to think."
      "No. No. You're right. I shouldn't ask you. But I did ask you for a reason. I thought you knew; I thought your father would have told you."
      "Told me what?"
      "I have held him back from school these last two years until you became a teacher. I know the others think it is because I cannot bear to let him go. That is true. But there is another reason. It is something most people are not concerned about, but that my husband," here, she lowered her voice and looked in the direction of the room Pittos sat in, "does not know. He is an unusual man in that he suffers great anger if I am not his alone."
      "I am confused. What is this to do with my decision?"
      "Morace is your half-brother, Lillah. My husband could not give me a child, so I went to your father. Morace is your family. You have to look after him."
     
    Lillah walked to her father, who fished at the water's edge.
      "I have been talking to Rhizo," she said.
      "I thought she might talk to you. I wondered if she would call upon you."
      "I wonder why you didn't say anything. I have always liked Morace and would have cared for him anyway, but I wonder he wasn't part of our family."
      "Rhizo is a very odd woman. She was more bothered by the process than anyone else I have met." He put down his fishing pole. "I'm sorry not to have told you. I would have, at some stage."
      "It doesn't matter." It was odd, though, to realise there had been a secret for ten years.
      "I think perhaps you should not tell the other teachers. We do not want them judging your teaching or his learning because of your relationship."
      "You're right. We will keep the secret."
     
    Lillah's best friend, Melia, emerged from the water. Her hair was wet, slicked back, shiny as a seal's. Her skin glowed with good health and her body was brown. She was a sun worshipper, always had been. When she was too young to understand about cycles and shade she would cry in the days of darkness.
      Lillah and Melia had been to school together; had learnt about the sun and the Treeshadow, how when part of the country was in shade, the other part