Alan Foster - Kingdoms of Light

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.