Something struck him in the eye with such force that he cried out. Instantly, a flurry of concerned voices reverberated in his ears.
"Oskar—! What is it, what's wrong? What hurt you?"
He swallowed. At least he could do that much. "Light—I see light!"
"Impossible!" growled Cezer. "There's no light inside this damned tree."
"And something else," the dog-man added.
"What?" an anxious Mamakitty demanded to know.
Oskar hesitated only briefly. "I don't know—but it sees me."
The small figure that was staring back at him querulously cocked its head to one side. Then, apparently satisfied, it resumed its work. So did its several dozen colleagues. The source of both the vibration and the peculiar loud clicking noise was now clear. It was the sound a woodpecker made while searching for the insects that scuttled about beneath a tree's bark.
Only in this instance, it was a sound generated not by one but by hundreds of woodpeckers, all working in unison with a unanimity of purpose otherwise unknown to their kind, summoned hither at the behest of a certain song propounded and somehow successfully put forth by a former master winged warbler named Taj.
"I don't know how I did it."
The songster was sitting on the rim of the great cavity the woodpeckers and flickers and all their multifarious, industrious relatives had made in the flank of the fallen kauri. Oskar relaxed nearby, engaged in the ongoing task of removing a seemingly infinite supply of splinters and sawdust from his skin, hair, and clothing. Mamakitty was helping Cocoa to do the same. Below them, thousands of sharp-beaked birds had exposed the bodies of and were working hard to free Cezer and Samm, who alone among the travelers were still imprisoned within the tree.
"You must have some idea." Oskar extracted a sliver of durable kauri from beneath his right arm.
Hands clasped between his knees, the songster watched his feathery brethren at work and smiled ingenuously. "I really don't. As you know, the Master was always fond of my singing. He used to try to teach me his favorite songs, but I preferred my own. My kind is very good at piling variation on top of variation. Stuck inside the tree, I found myself wondering what could get us out. A human would have thought about a drill, or a saw. A dog, maybe, about digging, and a snake about wriggling out a crack or a hole." He looked away shyly.
"Me, I thought about pecking. But canaries aren't very well equipped for that sort of work, and humans even less so. So I wondered who would be good at it, and what kind of song might bring them to help us." He gestured at the hollow in which woodpeckers swarmed like ants, battering at the kauri heartwood with their beaks. "And here they are."
Oskar's brows creased. "But how could they hear you singing through all that wood, and so many, from so far away?"
Once again the songster could only shrug. "To know that, you would have to ask Master Evyndd. But each of us has been given a little magic that is part and parcel of ourselves. What more natural than that my singing should be similarly so fortified?"
"I wish Evyndd had been more explicit, instead of leaving us to find these things out for ourselves."
Taj flicked wood dust from his boots. "Perhaps he felt it would have frightened us to learn of such abilities before we had spent time getting used to our human forms. Perhaps he feared that, inexperienced and clumsy as we are, we might have done more damage knowing about them than not. Again, you would have to ask him."
"I wish I could." Rising to his feet, Oskar brushed at his pants and peered down into the cavity. Cezer was almost free, while Samm's bulkier frame would require a bit more effort on the part of the diligent birds. "I wish he was here now, to guide us and help us, instead of leaving us to stumble onward by ourselves, suffering and learning as we go."
Taj's tone was unusually contemplative for the normally high-strung singer. "I imagine that the suffering is a component of the learning."
Oskar grunted. "That sounds like something a sorcerer would say. Don't let Cezer hear you say that. Our excitable swordsman is of a different opinion."
"And at the moment, of mouth." Looking down, rhythmically tapping the side of the wood depression with the heels of his boots, Taj could not repress a grin. "It's full of wood dust."
Together they watched and waited as the army of woodpeckers finished freeing the remaining two members of the party. Then, their work done, the ivory-bills and flickers, three-toeds and chestnuts, short-tails and long-tails, rose individually and in groups to disappear back into the depths of the forest. As for those inimical woods, they remained still and silent. Perhaps, Oskar mused, the ill-natured nature of this place was still stunned by the travelers' escape from the entombing gravitas of the sacrificing kauri. If so, then now would be an especially auspicious time to resume their journey, before the denizens of the Kingdom of Green could regain their wits and conjure yet another devilment to place in the visitors' way.
Cezer proved uncharacteristically subdued as he climbed out of the gaping hole in the side of the fallen colossus. No doubt, Oskar decided, his friend's term of interment had given him ample, if unwanted, time for reflection. In any event, his tone was conciliatory rather than contrary, and his sentences short on (though not entirely devoid of) the expected flurry of expletives. As for Samm, he was his usual stolid self. Used as he was to remaining motionless for extended periods of time, he had been less affected than any of his companions by the potentially traumatizing incident. Brushing chunks of woodpecker-pecked wood from his shoulders, he walked a short distance from the fallen giant to recover his axe, which lay where he had thrown it during his attempt to escape the falling bole.
Freed from their inscrutable wooden prison and gathered together again, they spent the rest of the day searching for their missing forest friends. Of hopeful willow and stoic oak, eager sycamore and unrepentant maple, there was no sign save the millions of splinters that formed a broken and shattered bed beneath the immense bulk of the fallen kauri. By unspoken agreement, no one knelt to examine individual fragments too closely, lest they discover bits and pieces of their former guides. It was not the first time Oskar had wept over the loss of a memorable tree.
Without anyone to lead them, they were forced to continue eastward on their own, using their shared innate sense of direction while trying to keep to the course set by the absent quartet. Oskar's conjecture that the hostile woodland had been left dazed by their woodpecker-aided escape could not be proven, but for whatever reason, they were not attacked as they trekked steadily to the east. No concussion-causing nuts came their way, no flying thorns, no looping vines. Swiftly upthrusting saplings did not arise to form an obstructing palisade in front of them, and roots failed to erupt from the bare earth to clutch at their feet. If the forest had not been left stunned by their unexpected breakout, neither did it act to further hinder their progress. Or perhaps it simply feared the threatening presence of the great cutting axe that rode on Samm's broad shoulder.
Then there came a day when the trees finally began to thin out in front of them. The pale green light ahead darkened slightly, turning a marvelous shade of aquamarine. In the distance they could see clearly the sun setting behind a bright blue sea, above which blue clouds hung in a cerulean sky. After marching for days between oppressive walls of green that might at any moment choose to crumple inward or otherwise assail them, the travelers were mightily grateful to emerge from their soaring company.
Of course, the sea presented an entirely new and, in its own way, potentially far more awkward barrier to their advancement. Oskar didn't care. Anything was better than being trapped among the troublesome trees and their inimical ilk.
"Behold the Kingdom of Blue!" Cezer declared grandly as he spread his arms wide. "For such it must surely be. See where the color change takes place midway between kingdoms?"
Previously, it had been difficult to determine exactly where one kingdom of light ended and another began. No such confusion reigned here. The boundary between the two was clearly delineated
by the sandy beach that ran from the outskirts of the forest down to the water's edge. Where sea met land, there lay the border between kingdoms. The fact that it was in a constant, if placid, state of flux determined by the movement of the minuscule waves lapping at the shore did not trouble anyone. Certainly the trees that ruled the Kingdom of Green did not object, and if there were any inhabitants of the Kingdom of Blue who felt contrariwise about the continuously shifting line, they apparently felt no need to comment on the matter.
"We're going to need some kind of boat or raft." Advancing, Mamakitty pushed past an unprotesting young sapling.
Stumbling against a protruding root, Taj looked over at her more sharply than he intended. "I concur, but don't expect me to try and cut any wood for it. Not when the wood in question is liable to object strenuously to the action."
"We've passed many dead trees." Samm hefted his axe. "If we lash them together with vines, I'm sure we can put together a craft capable of carrying all of us."
"Fssst, yes—but carrying us to where?" Cezer wondered aloud. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm no sailor. In fact, I've never been fond of pond water, much less the ocean." He nodded toward the tranquil sea. "Now that I've actually set eyes on it, I'm even less enthusiastic."
"As am I." Mamakitty's reaction was not unexpected, Oskar knew. Cocoa mentioned her own distaste a moment later.
"Like it or not, we're going to have to cross it." Shading his eyes with one hand, Oskar tried to see across the water and found that he could not. Unlike the cat-folk, he was not troubled by the prospect of an ocean voyage. Like every dog he'd ever met, he loved the water. In this he shared an affinity with Samm. As for Taj, the songster was indifferent. It would be a new experience for him to have to travel on water instead of high above it.
Oskar was pondering whether a suitable dugout could be fashioned from a fallen spruce when the first pale coils exploded from the sand to wrap around him. Yells of alarm and shouts of surprise confirmed that his companions were under similar assault from beneath the surface.
Reaching for his sword, he looked on in horrified fascination as a pair of pallid wooden tentacles promptly punched their way out of a parent trunk to lock themselves around his wrist before he could draw the weapon. Though they might well have belonged to some fantastical sea creature, they did not represent an assault from the Kingdom of Blue. They were not soft, like flesh, but hard, like—wood.
Roots, he thought. Then he noted their smoothness, the absence of tiny cilia or branchlets capable of extracting water and nutrients from the soil. If not roots, then what? he wondered as the rapidly expanding tentacles tightened around him. He could not get loose; neither could he make use of his sharp-edged blade to cut his way free. From nearby, the book-loving Mamakitty (well, she loved curling up and going to sleep on them, anyway) shouted a warning that came too late. It confirmed his fear that the forest of the Kingdom of Green had not done with them yet.
"Strangler fig!" she managed to gasp out.
So that was what had surprised and overwhelmed him and his friends while their attention had been distracted by the newly revealed beach and the sea beyond. They were under attack from trees that even in their normal, natural, nonsentient state, were endowed with the ability to commit murder. Normally, the lethality of the strangler fig was confined to other trees, which it encircled and smothered from the ground up, eventually choking the host growth to death. Now several members of that quietly murderous tribe had been given the task of doing to the intruders what they would normally do to their woody brethren. The abnormal growth spurt the figs at the edge of the forest were demonstrating must have been in preparation for days, as the travelers came closer and closer. The deadly rate of growth was nothing short of phenomenal.
Oskar could feel the multiple wooden shoots swelling around him. As they expanded, they formed a tighter and tighter cage around his pinioned body. The pressure on his ribs was becoming intense. To one side, he could see Cocoa frantically sawing away with her knife. Though she still had both hands free to wield the blade, she was making little headway toward freedom. The fig that now enclosed her put on new wood faster than she could cut it away.
"Help, somebody, please!" That was Taj. The songster was in obvious pain. What denizens of the sky could he whistle up to aid him? Oskar wondered. It would take a thousand eagles clawing away in unison just to keep up with the stranglers' impossibly rapid growth.
One bulging bole was putting exceptional pressure on the dog-man's right side. When he tried to force it back, he found it was like pushing against a wall. Beyond his line of sight, even the always poised Mamakitty was starting to moan.
Could he influence these trees as he had influenced others? Desperately, he tried to repeat his actions of days before. Unfortunately, he was so terrified that his insides refused to cooperate. As he struggled with his recalcitrant bladder, he found himself wondering if Master Evyndd had ever suffered from a similar problem. He suspected not.
Where, he wondered frantically, was incontinence when you needed it?
Something snapped loudly. He swallowed hard. But if someone's bones had been broken with such audible force, he concluded, surely that individual would have uttered a scream before fainting? And if not bones, then what could make a noise like that?
Another snap and crack inspired him to wrench his head as far around to the left as he could manage within the limiting confines of his rapidly contracting prison. What he saw gave him hope, even though time was running short for all of them.
A massive strangler had sprung up around the largest member of their party. But as it contracted around him, instead of fighting the pressure, Samm had let his torso relax. Demonstrating a flexibility that would have awed a circus acrobat, the giant's unfettered arms and legs had wrapped themselves around the trunk of the fig. Now it was their turn to tighten, as the giant fought his assailant at its own game. What an awestruck Oskar found himself witnessing was a battle between two of the world's most relentless constrictors: one from the kingdom of animals, the other from that of plants. Both killed by contracting, by exerting relentless, unforgiving pressure on their prey, be it motile or fixed in place.
The sharp cracks Oskar had heard had come from the sound of wood snapping.
All those magical abilities the prescient Master Evyndd had bequeathed to his companions sprang ultimately from natural talents they had already possessed in their previous states: Taj's singing to call the squadron of woodpeckers, the cats' ability to blend in with and fight shadows, Oskar's special hereditary bond with trees. Now it was the turn of, not Samm the giant, but Samm the great constrictor, to squeeze back. As his increasingly put-upon companions cheered him on, the giant broke first one limb, and then another, and another, until chunks of shattered wood lay piled at his feet. At last unencumbered, he repeated these mighty efforts to free his friends, breaking apart one at a time the tentacles of the strangler figs that imprisoned them.
It had been a near thing. Mamakitty was in the last stages of asphyxiation by the time Samm managed to reach her, and Taj unconscious. Steady massage applied by a throatily purring Cocoa (massage being another specialty of cats, Oskar knew) helped to revive the songster, leading Cezer to lament aloud the fact that he had not been permitted to pass out himself.
"The axe would have been faster," Samm apologized when the last of them had been freed from the wooden embrace, "but dangerous." He gestured to where the imposing instrument lay resting on the sand. "It's not good for close-in work." Envisioning that massive stone blade chopping away next to his formerly captive flesh, Oskar could only agree.
"Everyone's okay, then?" As she spoke, Mamakitty was rubbing her upper arms where the embrace of the strangler fig had been particularly unforgiving. When the last of her comrades assented or otherwise indicated in the affirmative, she nodded tersely. "All right, then. Enough of the Kingdom of Green. It's time to build a boat! And remember as we work that we have only this last territory to cro
ss to reach the Kingdom of Purple, wherein hopefully lies the white light that contains all colors, which we shall restore to the Gowdlands!"
A few weakened cheers greeted her attempt to inspire them. It was not that her words were lacking in vigor or animation: just that her companions were still too sore from the bruising effects of the strangler figs to respond with more than desultory expansions of sorely afflicted rib cages and lungs.
It was Cezer who was first back into the forest, and therefore first to cry out with dismay.
"There was a big fallen log here." He did not have to identify the exact spot where the bole he spoke of had lain. A long, wide depression marred the earth. "Now it's gone!"
"We can see that." Mamakitty was more puzzled than concerned. "It's all right, Cezer. We'll find another."
But they didn't. And though they braved a resurgence of flung thorns and whipping vines to probe ever farther back the way they had come, and even did some scouting off to the sides of their previous path, they found nothing suitable for the building of a dugout canoe, or even a raft. Every single fallen log had been removed, or concealed, by the forest. Unable to stop them, it had apparently chosen to deny them even the use of its dead.
"What now?" Taj would have sat down on a log had they been able to find one. In its absence they had to make do with sitting on the beach. "Do we make use of living trees in the absence of dead ones?" He eyed Samm's axe suggestively.
"It appears we have no choice." Mamakitty gazed hopefully at the giant. "Do you think you can do it, Samm? It would take too long and therefore expose you to too many attacks from multiple sources for you to cut down a tree big enough to serve as a dugout. So we'll have to use smaller trees and try to fashion some kind of a raft."
He shrugged broad, powerful shoulders. "I'm willing to try. But if the forest has gone and defended its dead so dynamically, I'm sure it will exert even greater efforts to protect those trees still living. Still"—he rose to his feet, brushing sand from his lower legs—"I've cut down plenty of thorn trees and nut-throwers already. It shouldn't be impossible to manage a few more." His soft smile was as unintentionally mesmerizing as his unblinking stare. "I can deal with a few cuts and bruises."
Kingdoms of Light Page 24