Slights (42 page)

  "Is that your wife?" Lillah said. "She looks angry."

  He shook his head. "That is not my wife." He didn't smile when he said this, and Lillah lost some interest in him. A man without humour was not so attractive.

  "You don't use the caves here?"

  "No! Never! It's dangerous inside the Tree. Once a teller stepped in there to speak more closely to the Tree and he was never seen again. We found a clump of his hair three days later; that's all. It was stuck in a clump of sap and we knew this meant that the Tree is blood and flesh and bone inside. We like the Treehouses. They are warmer. Who would sleep inside the Tree?"

  "You have no courage. I would sleep in the Tree." This from another man, one Lillah hadn't noticed before. He was grey about the temples, although he didn't seem old.

  "Don't listen to him. He's gone grey with terror, can't you see? From stepping inside the Tree."

  "There's a place where the Tree whispers. You can sit and listen if you like. If you close your eyes, you can almost make out the words sometimes," the grey man said.

  "Is it the ghosts?" Lillah asked.

  "I think it's people living on the other side of the Tree. I think the island is around, not along, and that if we tunnelled through the Tree we'd be able to visit each other." Lillah looked at the grey-haired man with admiration. His thoughtfulness reminded her of the sensitive market holder.

  The curly haired man said, "He knows that if he tunnels through the Tree he'll kill it, so his crazy theory will never be disproved."

  The grey-haired man said, "Sometimes I whisper back. Tell them things I don't want people to know."

  Lillah chose him. At least he was brave, and curious.

  He stopped to listen, standing still, unblinking. It frightened her; she felt if she collapsed to the floor in a faint he wouldn't even notice.

  She took off her shirt and began massaging her nipples, rubbing them roughly and enjoying the allover tingle when they hardened. This he noticed; took one of her nipples in his mouth.

  His sucking was too loud, almost squeaky. Lillah wondered how she could get away from here. Could she just push him away and say no? But her body took over and she desired sex after all. It's very addictive, she thought.

Afterwards, she said, "Aren't you more afraid of the sea than the Tree? Of what dwells in the sea, what lies beyond the sea?"

  "That's not our business. The Tree is our business. We think nothing of monsters of the deep here."

  He had a second small room in his house, walls lined with metal, and the floor was hard, too, striped through with metal and tough on the feet.

  "You are clever with metal, all right."

  He nodded. "We have to be. We are taming the Tree by not being so reliant on it. The Tree grows each year, towards water. Stealing our land sliver by sliver."

  Lillah found this adversarial relationship with the Tree odd, and wondered if other Orders she'd visit would have a similar attitude. They carved symbols into the Trunk, things she didn't understand.

    
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