But the Kipalende were not truly gone.
The mwiti possessed a shared sentience, but it was not like that of humans or animals. The source of their awareness was not restricted to specific organs such as eyes or ears. Changes in sunlight, variations in vibrations in the air or ground, shifts in the direction of the breeze that carried chemical signals... these shaped the consciousness of the ubia-vines and the rest of the mwiti.
And because the mwiti had extended their consciousness to join with that of the Kipalende, the plant life had shared the torment their human symbiotes had suffered at the hands of the invaders. And the mwiti had absorbed the spirits of the Kipalende, and kept that part of the doomed people alive long after the dust of their bodies became an element of the islands’ soil. Now, the Kipalende were part of the mwiti, from the ubia-vines to the tallest of the trees.
No longer were the Kipalende timid. Their spirits had become vindictive, and they bent the inchoate consciousness of the mwiti to their influence, and to their goal: vengeance against the descendants of those whom had destroyed them. The powerful sorcery of the Uloans was all that prevented the mwiti from overrunning the islands in the aftermath of the Storm Wars. That had been the Kipalendes’ best chance to fulfill their desire for reprisal, and their spirits slipped into dormancy when that opportunity was thwarted.
And now, that protective sorcery was gone. The unseen barriers that had thwarted the Kipalendes’ revenge were gone. Freedom had come. And so had an unanticipated kind of Retribution Time for the Uloans who remained on the islands, with the reawakening of the Kipalendes’ spirits.
The mwiti were now capable of a full range of movement. Ubia-vines slid more swiftly than serpents along the ground. Grass blades whipped, curled and wove together, into vast, moving webworks, as though the air had become a gigantic loom. Even the thickest of tree-branches had become as limber as the tentacles of a squid or octopus. Flowers grasped and clawed like an eagle’s talons. Roots clutched the soil and propelled huge trees forward.
Immediately after the magic that had kept them at bay vanished, the mwitis’ consciousness had momentarily overwhelmed that of the Kipalende. The plants had revelled in their liberty, and underwent a period of anarchic growth and movement, during which they posed scant threat to the now-vulnerable Uloans.
In the midst of the chaos, however, a glimmer of greater purpose kindled in the consciousness of a single, aged papaya tree in a forest on Jayaya Island. The papaya was hardly an imposing tree; others were far larger and bore brighter blossoms and more plentiful fruit. But the consciousness of the Kipalende loomed larger in this papaya than in any of the other mwiti, for it was the refuge of the greatest among them, a shaman who was the principal link between his people and the plant life. As the others dueled with branches and leaves and roots, the lone papaya remained motionless, easily fending off the intrusions of its more aggressive neighbors.
The Kipalende part of the papaya’s consciousness reached out to the other mwiti, and it sent a message that soon worked its way into that of all the animate vegetation of the islands.
Destroy them, not us, the Kipalende shaman in the papaya urged. The time for vengeance has come.
Swiftly, the rest of the Kipalende spirits regained control over the mwiti. Swifter still came a new message from the spirit of their shaman.
Now it ends.
5
Awiwi cried out in fear and disgust as she kicked at an ubia that was trying to wrap itself around her ankle. The vine fell away. Then it snaked toward her again. Others followed.
Holding her baby tightly in her arms, Awiwi backed away. She had been retreating since the dawn of this terrible day. So had all the rest of those who had taken refuge on the Jayaya beach.
When the first light seeped into the morning sky, an army of ubias had swarmed out of the forest. The Uloans who were still asleep at the time died agonizing deaths, covered with ubias that leeched the blood out of their veins. Those who, like Awiwi, were fortunate enough to be awake had fought desperately to free themselves from their assailants. They fled their lean-tos and made for the beach, closer to the final embrace of the sea.
Behind them, their flimsy shelters were quickly overrun by swarms of ubias. People who had not been alert or swift enough to elude the attackers had become little more than struggling lumps barely visible beneath a writhing carpet of vines.
“Fire! Catch they on fire!” one of the elders shouted as he cut and tore ubias from his legs.
He rushed toward a cooking fire that still burned several yards away, and thrust a piece of wood from it into the mass of ubias that was still in front of him. With a sizzling sound, the vines shriveled and blackened in the flame. Wielding the brand like a flaming sword, the elder burned a wide swath through the ubias.
Others followed the elder’s example. Risking their lives to reach other fires, they lit the wreckage of their shelters, pieces of driftwood, patches of dry grass – anything that was combustible. Soon, a rampart of fire blazed between the Uloans and their attackers. The hiss and pop of burning ubias punctuated the crackle of the flames.
But the respite proved only temporary.
As the Uloans stared in renewed horror, the sheer mass of the ubias began to snuff out the flames. Unlike even the most obtuse form of beast, the animate plants of the Uloas bore no instinctive fear of fire, for all their vulnerability to that element. And they also had no fear of death. For them, the loss of hundreds, even thousands, of their numbers had no consequence. All that mattered to the Kipalende part of them
