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 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
