Alan Foster - Kingdoms of Light

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 cross 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."

"Maybe you won't have to," announced a familiar voice. From contemplating the ominous depths of the waiting woods, they all turned to see Cocoa standing in the water. Quite a ways out in the water, in fact. One arm held high, she waved cheerily back at her friends.

"Come on in," she called to them. "Not only is the water fine—it's not even up to my knees!"

Feeling a little light-headed, Oskar rushed to join her. The others followed at a more decorous pace: Cezer and Mamakitty because to them entry into even shallow water was a disagreeable business to be embarked upon only after sober consideration, Taj because the experience was wholly new to him, and Samm simply because when given the choice, he tended to do things more deliberately than his companions.

Not Oskar. Knees lifting high with each stride, legs pumping energetically, he made a joyous, splashing dash to catch up with Cocoa. If not precisely in his element, he was for once in their long journey more comfortable in new surroundings than any of his friends. She shut her eyes and turned away from him as his flailing legs threw water in all directions.