Alan Foster - Kingdoms of Light

"What does that matter?" groused Cezer. "What we need now is a giant drill, operated from the outside, to liberate us. If I could reach my sword, I might be able to at least start to cut us free. But as Samm has pointed out, while our hands are not tied, they are completely immobilized. All we can do is talk. That will open only old wounds, not a way out."

Especially if I have to listen to your interminable bitchingand moaning until I expire. Oskar kept the thought to himself. Snapping at one another would only make an already unpleasant situation intolerable.

Silence descended within the imprisoning expanse of the fallen tree as a sense of utter hopelessness came to dominate the thoughts of the entombed. We've failed you, Master Evyndd, Oskar thought glumly. Not Cezer's elongating blade, nor the cats' ability to meld with shadows, not Samm's great strength, nor his own unique talent for inspiring movement in other trees, were of any use to them now. They would be mummified within the kauri, interred out of sight and mind of the rest of the world. No one would find them, no one would know what had happened to them, and no one would care. And why should they? After all, the adventurers were no more than common household pets who had momentarily been raised above their station.

For a little while, that raising had given them dignity and abilities beyond understanding. It appeared now that it was all for naught.

He was not certain when Taj began to whistle. It was a pleasant change from the episodes of deathly silence, and certainly more uplifting than Cezer's sporadic whining. Oskar appreciated the songster's attempt to lighten their mental burden. If nothing else, a little buoyant minstrelsy would help to raise their spirits. He would have thanked Taj, but he was enjoying the tuneful warbling too much to interrupt. Apparently, everyone else felt the same way.

Time passed, until a subtle vibrating in his ears caused Oskar to wonder if the inevitable loss of cognition, with its concurrent mental disturbances, had begun to take hold of his mind. As the noise intensified, however, he came to the conclusion that it was a real sound and not a deranged figment of his lonely imagination.

"Mamakitty?"

"I hear it also." Though careful and qualified, her positive response was heartening. "What it is I do not know."

"Kind of a wild, clucking noise," Cocoa ventured.

Cezer was not one to be easily encouraged. "But of course! We are in the process of being rescued by a giant chicken with an unquenchable taste for pine knots."

"Be quiet," Mamakitty chided him, "and listen. Or have you failed to note that Taj continues with his singing?"

It was true, Oskar realized. Ignoring his companions' increasingly vigorous debate, the songster maintained his steady trilling. Trying to find something in it besides the purely euphonic, Oskar failed completely. But then, except for an occasional howl at the moon more notable for its enthusiasm than any resemblance to actual harmony, he was no connoisseur of music.

The clacking vibration continued to increase in volume, leaving those imprisoned within the body of the fallen tree as apprehensive as they were bemused. What impending event could it portend? Of what significance was Taj's uninterrupted song? Between incessant warble and unceasing vibration, Oskar felt he might go mad. He would have given anything simply to have been able to clap his hands over the sides of his head, but his limbs remained imprisoned at his sides.

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."