Kanawa and the Living Forest

Kanawa silently drew the sacred horn knife as his child whimpered on his knee. Midday light beamed through the forest, a harbinger of the coming darkness. Blood trickled out of the harsh wound from the invader’s weapons upon the caribou's hindquarters, staining the undergrowth below. As the innocent blood soaked into the soil, Kanawa felt the desperate summoning begin–his last gambit to stem the tide rising on their shores.

And stem it he must.

“Hush, my child,” Kanawa, Watcher of the Living Forest, said, placing his hand over the caribou’s eyes. He could feel its pain—the rot and decay coursing through its once proud veins—as he felt the pain in all of the Living Forest's dwellers.

He struck.

No tears stained Kanawa’s cheek as the caribou's soul departed its broken body, for he rejoiced in his sacred duty. The proud creature would now run forever across the land of the Eternal Harvest. Kanawa laid its head down. Yes, you have suffered enough–no mountain pass nor river shall you cross. You will pass across the bridge of stars and run forever with your great herd. As he spoke, it became so. It was Kanawa’s duty to shepherd and protect those who dwelt in the depths of the Living Forest that spanned from sea to sea. The late leaves of the harvest season rustled around him as a cool breeze rushed through the woods, carrying away the soul of the great beast. Calm followed, the forest granting Kanawa its blessing. He pulled his long black hair into a bun as he let the thin beams of light warm his soft face.

The summoning would take time to complete. Kanawa laid his sacred bow and horn knife before him, checking the fletching on the eagle feathers and the blade's edges. It seemed like ten harvests since he had sat in the smoke-filled wigwam and saw into the land beyond the bridge of stars. He had felt the Living Forest's pain, its confusion at what befell it at the hands of these interlopers. Like the caribou before him, Kanawa had felt the soul of the forest slipping hopelessly from this world. Yet, what he felt beyond, as he traveled into the land over the bridge of stars, shook him to the core. It bloated with more souls than it could sustain as the Living Forest bled. Skeletons danced among the souls, half formed and agonized. And over the shadowed horizon, scores of countless others stood…waiting. He could not protect them all, yet he would feel all their pain. Such was his curse, this gift, this duty, granted by the forest itself in exchange for his immortality.

It pierced the tranquility of the forest, a crashing, hammering sound of foreign metal on stone and wood. Kanawa fought the urge to scream as pain radiated through his skull. He had watched them for days, for months, and his hatred grew as the massive fair-skinned men in their iron suits took and took. They had come from the sea in boats propelled by wind and oar, salt caked into their strange beards. The first trees fell not long after they landed. At first, curiosity had consumed the denizens of the Living Forest, but the sea winds carried the harsh intentions of these interlopers, and Kanawa had retreated within the wigwam. After, he formulated his plan to dispel them forever.

As he sat in the clearing, Kanawa placed his hands upon the root of the great cedar beside him. With a touch, he felt the very heartbeat of the Living Forest that stretched from sea to sea. Every bird, and leaf, and rushing elk, all that they felt and saw, Kanawa felt, and the power of the Living Forest flowed through him, empowering him to do what needed to be done. It was in their names that he would now strike.

Their hammering lasted until sunset. The summoning—his trap—would begin soon. Kanawa gathered his weapons and asked the forest for its blessing. The wind blew its response, and no clouds graced the evening, a good night. As the moon and stars rose to their tremendous height, he arrived.

“This will not achieve what you wish it to.”

The voice came from the shadow. Kanawa closed his eyes again. Living Forest, I am your servant, your steward. Grant me the strength to do your will. He knew it was desperate, but it was his duty to protect.

Silence filled the small clearing as Kanawa opened his eyes.

Mepwawiweni stood before him, cloaked in shadows and swarms of flies. His figure constantly shifted as he circled Kanawa, and his body was one with the evening shadows. Kanawa had difficulty tracking his anointed equal.

“I did not think you would come.”

“You do your duty; I do mine,” Mepwawiweni said in a buzzing voice that mimicked his macabre form. “We are twins, brothers born to the same terrible fate. The question is will you do what you must.”

Mepwawiweni approached the caribou’s carcass, and Kanawa fought the urge to recoil at his disgusting, malformed visage. Kneeling beside it, Mepwawiweni placed his hand on the carcass, and from above descended a great black raven.

“I do my duty,” Mepwawiweni said as the raven tore out the fallen beast's heart. Kanawa felt the forest shudder around them as the body died, a brutal sacrifice so that the Living Forest may continue.

“And I must do mine,” Kanawa said, again drawing his horn knife behind his back. Mepwawiweni still knelt beside the caribou, his back turned. Kanawa hated his brother, and yet his hand shook as he held the blade.

“You believe it is I who bring this plague to the shores of the Living Forest. I tell you now, there are gods at work here beyond our comprehension. Strike me down if you must, but I warn you now: my power untethered will not stem this tide. There is but one option that will save us, and its time has yet to come.”

“Then, brother, what would you have me do? Watch as the forest succumbs to your blights? No. I cannot. This is my duty.”

“If I could, I would shepherd you across the bridge of stars like the soul of this caribou. But I cannot. When you understand what we must do, we will speak again," Mepwawiweni said nothing more.

Kanawa stuck.

Mepwawiweni did not move to defend himself, did not move at all as the knife entered where Mepwawiweni’s mortal jugular would be. The swarms of flies that surrounded him scattered into the depths of the forest. Kanawa wept as he struck again and again, his blade striking true each time. The ground below him shook as a veritable gale arose in the forest. The wind, fortified with the cold of the sea, tore at Kanawa’s skin.

Mepwawiweni went limp in his arms, and Kanawa, Watcher of the Living Forest, laid his body on the forest floor. His brother’s true form returned, and Kanawa confronted a face that was a mirror of his own. He traced his hand along the jaw that would never grow old, and closed the lids of eyes that would not see again until the end of days. In his grief, Kanawa retreated into the heart of the forest.

Within the now empty clearing, the power of Mepwawiweni flowed through the undergrowth, despoiling leaf and root alike, until all but ash and smoke remained, choking all that encroached upon it. Above, the crow cawed.

Harvests passed. From the cliffs overlooking the interloper’s camp, Kanawa watched as the untethered power of Mepwawiweni scourged the invaders. Crops failed, and the bounty of their captured livestock decreased harvest after harvest until the ships propelled by wind and sail came fewer and farther between. A generation of Kanawa’s children came and went before the glorious day when the last red-haired interloper, with his skin of metal, looked over their rotted camp one last time before he boarded his ship to a land back beyond the sea.

In their absence, the forest rejoiced. Kanawa felt it as he walked through the undergrowth. And yet, in the celebration, there was an absence. Those souls that departed this world had only half their shepherd, and Kanawa felt their cries as they struggled over the raging rivers and windswept peaks between this world and what lay beyond the bridge of stars. He had done his duty, and yet Kanawa felt no joy in their victory, only more pain.

But the reprieve was short lived. Wave after wave of a new plague broke upon the shore, and field by field, Kanawa watched as the Living Forest burned. He resisted, yet his strength failed against the advance of this new world. Kanawa patrolled the vast leagues of the forest, but even the unleashed power of Mepwawiweni could not stem the tide. Kanawa rode the rivers south and north, responding to the calls of the wild. As he lay amongst the cotton fields, he watched as the shackled men sang, their only resistance to the cracking whip’s song. Kanawa wished for the return of the red haired men in their iron suits, for these new desecrations were beyond the veil of his imagination. The Watcher of the Living Forest wept as he reached for an arrow, only to find the quiver empty.

"What must I do!" he screamed to the stars. Around him, the winds stirred, swirling the falling leaves into the depths of the endless sky. Impotent and alone against such indifference, Kanawa retreated far to the north.

Eventually, only pockets remained of the once vast forest that ran uninterrupted from sea to sea. When Kanawa laid hands upon cedar and oak, his reach extended only so far as the little patch around him that became smaller and smaller with each setting moon.

The sun rose, and Kanawa lay in his bed after rest evaded him, his body as broken as the forest he swore to protect. He had failed, and that understanding, coupled with his guilt, finally and truly overcame him. The Watcher of the Forest had slain his brother and, with it, ushered in a new era of destruction. He walked out of his hut and laid his hands upon the great cedar under which he found shade. Where he once felt its vast rushing power, he now felt but a trickle. A croak replaced what was once a vast chorus.

“I am sorry. I have failed you. Release me from your service. Anoint a new Watcher and cast me down to forever cross the frigid mountains and raging rivers. Do not let me bloat the lands beyond the bridge of stars. I do not deserve such honor.”

Above, the moon drifted in front of the sun, casting the world in unnatural shadow. A voice, familiar and terrible, broke the silence at the hour of Kanawa’s reckoning.

“How many harvests have passed, brother?”

“Come to have your revenge, Mepwawiweni?” Kanawa said. He clung to the great tree that had been his home. He accepted his fate yet could not muster the courage to face it.

“I have no revenge to take.”

“I have failed. Around us, the forest burns. Field by field, day by day. I feel her pain, her screams as these interlopers cut and burn. She screams Mepwawiweni, and her screams fill my nights! There is no rest for me to be found, here nor beyond.”

Mepwawiweni stood behind Kanawa as he knelt on the forest floor. The Watcher of the Dead Forest spoke, “After you unleashed me, I ferried souls across the river, shepherded souls across the mountains, and I watched. Oh, did I watch. I watched your struggle against them, your toil done in vain. You never heeded me, Kanawa. I tried to speak to you. I spoke with the Great Mother, the heart of the forest, and she tried in vain to speak with you, to tell you to come home. Yet you did not listen. Do you remember what I said…the last time we spoke all those harvests ago?”

“Before I slew you?” Kanawa said, resigned to his guilt.

“You cannot slay what is both the beginning and the end.”

“You said the time has yet to come,” Kanawa said.

“And still, it has not. But I was wrong. There are no gods here that oppose us. The time has yet to come, but when it does, only we who outlast will be ready. Come with me,” Mepwawiweni, Watcher of the Dead Forest, said, extending his open hand.

Kanawa waited for the butcher’s strike.

It never came.

At that moment, Kanawa, Watcher of the Living Forest, understood.

“These interlopers serve none but themselves. Only rejoice in themselves. With that truth, we must sleep soundly until our time comes again. At their end, there will only be us, and we will reclaim what is ours.”

Kanawa rose.

The moon passed beyond the veil of the sun, and light fell upon an empty clearing. In the distance, the buzz of a chainsaw sparking to life filled the air. Before its master could bite into the bark of a great cedar, he choked out a hacking cough as the machine’s black smoke filled his mortal lungs.

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A/N:

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