Bujiji thought about the spy who had sent the message from the Mainland. He did not know the identity of the man or woman; those who were to be sent to the Mainland were singled out at a young age and isolated from the rest of the islands’ populace until the time came for them to go across the sea. Of necessity, informants were left blank-skinned, like the Matile.
And for that, Bujiji pitied the spies, regardless of their value to the ultimate cause of Retribution Time. He was glad that he had not fit the specifications that would have placed him in their ranks.
Without conscious thought, the Uloan ducked away from an ubia vine that had extended itself from an overhanging tree limb. The sweet scent of the clenching flowers tickled his nostrils. He ignored the smell. If the petals of those flowers ever touched his skin, they would fasten onto it like the waving grass, and they were even more difficult to tear away. Yet if they were not removed, they would cling until all the blood had been leeched from his body.
As he trotted through the weaving grass and towering trees, Bujiji passed charred, twisted ruins caught in the embrace of encroaching mwiti trees – remnants of the destruction the Storm Wars had wrought. Bujiji paid the relics no heed. The Dying Time was part of the far-distant past. And Retribution Time – the time when vengeance would be wrought against the Mainlanders – belonged to an unknowable future that would soon come, however long “soon” proved to be.
Then a chittering sound from a nearby tree caught his attention. Bujiji looked up, and saw a vaguely manlike shape capering in the branches. The creature pointed at him and its screeches sounded like imprecations.
“Hush, munkimun,” Bujiji said. “You got no quarrel with I.”
Unlike on the Mainland, there were no true monkeys in the islands. But the swarms of long-armed, long-tailed arboreal creatures the first settlers had encountered when they arrived bore a strong resemblance to the simians they had left behind. However, the islands’ tree-dwellers had huge, round eyes, and the ears that jutted from their heads resembled those of a cat more than they did a monkey or ape. The creatures were lemurs, distant relations of monkeykind that had mostly died out on the Mainland ages ago.
Even on the islands, there were few munkimun left now. And whenever one of them saw a human, it would scream out its grievances over the ravages of the Storm Wars, and their displacement from the home that was theirs before the humans cleared parts of the forest to build their own dwellings.
Bujiji listened to the munkimun’s imprecations a few moments longer. Then he found a fruit – one that did not pulsate – and tossed it to the arboreal creature, which caught it deftly and began to chew on it. And he continued his journey away from the beach without having to hear anything more from the lemur.
Soon there were no more ruins to be seen. The grass no longer moved, nor did the fruits on the trees pulsate. Bujiji was now back among the flat-roofed coral houses of Ompong, the capital city of Jayaya and the last outpost of the Uloans’ former splendor in the time when they were truly the Happy Isles.
Bujiji greeted the other spider-scarred people he passed. As they returned his calls and waves, the other Uloans cast a wary glance toward the damp tube in his hand. Their eyes were sharp enough to see the marks the ubia’s teeth had made, and they knew what would waiting for Bujiji when he delivered the spy’s message to Jass Imbiah. After he passed, they sucked their teeth and shook their heads in sympathy even as they thanked Legaba that they were not in Bujiji’s boots.
Jass Imbiah will not be too vexed with I, he tried to reassure himself as the notched tube pressed hard against his palm. At least I catched the message before that ubia did ...
3
Jass Imbiah held the message tube in her slender hands. She sat on an ivory throne in her palace of pink coral. The ivory from which the throne was carved had been brought over from the Mainland in ancient days; no Uloan had seen an elephant since the days before the Storm Wars, when travel and trade between the Mainland and the islands had been frequent.
Although Jass Imbiah had lived for a long time, her true age was impossible to guess from her appearance. Her body was swathed in a voluminous chamma of red and green stripes, and a cap of silver decorated with a carved spiderweb covered her head; only her face and hands could be seen. Her fingernails jutted like talons. And every visible inch of her umber skin was covered with small scars cut in the shape of spiders, making the usual indications of age difficult to discern.
Six heavily muscled guards flanked Jass Imbiah’s throne, three to each side. Their hands rested on the hilts of huge, curved swords that could lop off a man’s head at a single stroke. Thick, v-shaped incisions marked their chests, and rows of spider-scars lined their arms. Thin lines resembling whiskers were cut into their cheeks. They wore headgear of dry yellow grass that simulated the mane of a lion – a beast that, like the elephant, no Uloan had seen in centuries. Yet those animals of the Mainland continued to serve as powerful symbols in the Islanders’ memories, and a connection to ancestors far away in time.
Also present were huangi, the priests and priestesses who wielded the dark ashuma of Legaba. They were clad in costumes made from the radiant plumage of birds that lived nowhere other than on the Uloas. For all the
