Chapter 8: Roots of the Forgotten
"The earth remembers what the tongue forgets. And so, under moonlight, the roots began to whisper names that had not been heard in a thousand seasons."
The night after Tenggirang — no, Mubali — chose not to reseal the hollow, the forest shifted.
It began subtly.
First, the trees along the riverbanks began growing in strange spirals, their branches knotting into forgotten sigils.
Then, flowers bloomed where none had before — black-petaled, humming with unseen light.
The air thickened.
The ground seemed to breathe — slow, heavy, pulsing.
And in the stillness of midnight, if one listened closely, the roots beneath the soil could be heard murmuring:
"Mubali… Mubali…"
The earth remembered her true name.
But not only the earth.
Something else.
Something older.
Something deeper.
At the gathering house of the village of Padang Lumut, panic had begun to take hold.
Elders sat around low fires, hands wringing, heads bowed.
News traveled faster than even the black river.
The signs were clear:
The Kijang Emas (golden deer) had shed their horns too early.
The Beringin trees had opened their hollows.
And worst of all, the Batu Ngorok — the ancient "Sleeping Stone" at the edge of the sacred grove — had cracked straight down the center, oozing black sap.
These were omens.
Terrible ones.
"Something has been woken," muttered Pak Banu, the oldest of the elders, voice shaking.
"The Old Roots..." added another, a thin woman with clouded eyes.
"They will come," whispered the third, a man who had once been a spirit-walker before fear made him mortal again. "And they will not come kindly."
Meanwhile, far deeper into Alas Purwo, Mubali sat beneath a banyan tree whose trunk was wide enough to house an entire family.
Wira and Ki Ranu knelt beside her.
She stared into the soil, fingers tracing invisible patterns over its damp surface.
"They're moving," she said, voice distant.
"Who?" asked Wira carefully.
"The Forgotten."
Ki Ranu's face paled.
"You mean the Kawitan? The First Spirits?"
Mubali nodded slowly.
"They were never fully destroyed," she said. "Just... hidden. Their roots entwined with memory. Sleeping inside the oldest trees, the heaviest stones, the deepest wells."
"And now?" Wira pressed.
She lifted her eyes — and they shone with a fierce, almost alien light.
"They hear me."
A long silence.
"Some will follow," she added. "Others... will challenge."
Ki Ranu folded his hands together in a prayer he hadn't said since boyhood.
"You cannot let them rise," he said. "Alas Purwo will burn. The balance will tear."
Mubali smiled sadly.
"The balance was never real," she whispered. "Only a thin net cast over a roaring ocean."
Above them, the stars twisted — for just a moment — into shapes unseen by human eyes for a thousand years.
At the edges of the forest, cracks opened in the riverbanks.
From them crawled strange things — insects with shimmering wings, snakes with eyes like mirrors, birds whose songs bent the minds of those who heard them.
Creatures of the Old World.
Creatures made not by nature, but by memory and dream.
The villagers at Padang Lumut lit firewalls around their homes and prayed to the old gods — gods who, in truth, had already stopped listening.
Some fled inland, into the dry hills where nothing had ever taken root.
Some stayed — sharpening blades, blessing children with water drawn from the hidden springs.
But it was too late for most.
The forest was not merely growing.
It was awakening.
And with it came those who remembered the old pacts — those who had once ruled the green silence before men built houses and plowed soil.
Deep in the oldest part of Alas Purwo, at the foot of Mount Gampingan, a figure stirred.
Bound for centuries in chains of copper and salt, the creature known as Sang Janggut Hitam — the Black-Bearded One — opened its single golden eye.
He had been the first to fall when the human shamans broke the original compacts.
The first to be betrayed.
The first to sleep.
Now, sensing Mubali's awakening, he laughed — a low, creaking sound like dead trees rubbing together.
"The Root Daughter returns," he murmured.
"And so the harvest begins again."
He flexed massive fingers, bones cracking like thunder.
Chains snapped like dry vines.
And Sang Janggut Hitam began to climb out from the earth.
Toward the village.
Toward Mubali.
Toward the beating heart of the forest.
Mubali felt him waking.
Not just as a shiver in her spine — but as a deep ache in her bones.
Wira noticed the change.
"You're hurting," he said.
She nodded, lips pressed tightly.
"They're binding to me," she said. "One by one."
"Can you control them?"
She looked up, eyes shadowed.
"I don't know if I should."
Wira grabbed her hand.
"You must choose, Mubali. Before they choose for you."
She squeezed his hand once — and rose.
"I will go to them," she said.
Ki Ranu stood.
"Alone?" he asked.
She smiled.
"No," she said, looking at Wira.
"With him."
And so the two of them set out toward Mount Gampingan, where the first of the Old Roots rose.
The road ahead was full of danger.
And destiny.
It took them two days to reach the base of the mountain.
Along the way, they passed sights both wondrous and terrifying:
Trees blooming with golden fruits that wept blood.
Pools of water where reflections showed not faces, but futures.
Stones that sang hymns when touched.
Wira kept his hand on his kris at all times, though he knew steel would be useless against many of these things.
At night, they camped under trees that whispered lullabies in dead languages.
And through it all, Mubali could feel the pull.
The forest did not just welcome her.
It claimed her.
By the time they reached Mount Gampingan, she barely felt the difference between herself and the roots underfoot.
Wira touched her shoulder.
"We're here."
Mubali looked up.
The mountain loomed — dark, jagged, breathing mist.
And there, standing atop a black boulder, was a giant.
His beard flowed like dark moss.
His eye glowed like captured lightning.
And his grin was full of old, hungry wisdom.
Sang Janggut Hitam.
He bowed mockingly.
"Root Daughter," he said, voice a rumble.
"You have come at last."
Wira stepped protectively in front of Mubali.
Sang Janggut chuckled.
"The boy thinks he can shield you," he said. "Admirable. Foolish."
Mubali placed a hand on Wira's shoulder.
"Let me speak," she said.
Wira hesitated, then nodded and stepped aside.
Mubali approached the giant.
"I have not come to bow," she said.
Sang Janggut tilted his head.
"No," he said. "You have come to lead."
She frowned.
"Lead?"
He laughed — a terrible, beautiful sound.
"You are the bridge between what was and what is. The old blood sings in your veins. You are the heir of silence, daughter of root and river."
He stepped closer.
"And we, the Forgotten, are your army."
Mubali swallowed.
An army.
To tear down the villages.
To drown the new world in old magic.
To reclaim everything.
Was that truly what she had awakened for?
She looked back at Wira.
At Ki Ranu's lessons.
At the small laughter of children by the rice fields.
The simple songs sung over cooking fires.
The kindness of new life.
Was it right to destroy them?
Even for justice?
Even for memory?
Sang Janggut leaned closer.
"Command us," he whispered. "And the world shall be green again."
Mubali closed her eyes.
And listened.
Not to the giant.
Not even to the forest.
But to her own heart.
When she opened her eyes, they blazed with silver fire.
"I will not destroy for the sake of memory," she said.
Sang Janggut's smile faltered.
"I will not rule over ash."
The forest around them quivered.
The giant's eye narrowed.
"You deny your own blood?"
Mubali lifted her chin.
"I honor it."
By choosing not to become what the world feared.
By becoming something new.
Sang Janggut growled.
"You are no true daughter of the roots."
Mubali smiled.
"No," she said. "I am their future."
The mountain shook.
Sang Janggut roared — a sound that cracked stones and flattened trees.
But Mubali stood firm.
Roots burst from the ground — not to attack her, but to protect her.
Branches wove themselves into shields.
Flowers bloomed in a circle around her feet.
Even the air thickened into a wall of shimmering force.
Sang Janggut raised his fist.
But before he could strike, a voice rang out:
"Enough!"
It was Ki Ranu — standing at the edge of the clearing, holding aloft a staff carved with every ancient rune.
"The pact is broken," he cried.
"But balance can be reborn."
Mubali extended her hands.
And the world answered.
The giant froze — bound not by chains, but by memory itself.
By the promise once made by the First Spirits:
That life would not exist to dominate.
That power would not exist to destroy.
That roots and wings would rise together.
Mubali whispered a single word:
"Peace."
And Sang Janggut Hitam bowed.
Not in defeat.
But in recognition.
Of a power greater than rage.
Greater than vengeance.
The power of becoming.
When dawn rose over Alas Purwo, it touched a new world.
The forests still whispered old songs — but now, new verses grew among them.
The villagers of Padang Lumut emerged from their barricades to find strange flowers blooming along their streets — and an eerie, profound peace in the air.
The spirits no longer demanded fear.
They offered partnership.
And at the center of it all stood Mubali — child of root and river, girl and goddess, memory and future.
A new legend.
A new beginning.
But far beneath the earth, deeper than even the oldest roots, something else stirred.
Something that had not sung in millennia.
Something that had been waiting.
Watching.
Smiling.
The true battle, it seemed, had only just begun.