Keepers of the Forest

“So, that’s really it then, isn’t it?” Alva said, picking up a broken God’s Eye. They had gone around hanging them up, the Keepers, hoping to manifest more light for the coming winter. Levi didn’t respond. Instead he listened for the Redwoods to offer an answer. They didn’t. Now that the storm had passed, the forest hung heavy and thick. No squirrels scurrying through the underbrush, nor birds chirping into the unveiling blue. All was silent, sterile. Foreboding. Even Alva, still but a sapling, knew that something was off. “Why isn’t—” she started, but was hushed by Levi. He held a finger to his lips, still listening. The stillness frightened Levi, and he was determined to hear something—anything—before he made a move. Alva too tried to be very still. Just hours ago the whole village had been romping around rejoicing in the rain, soaking in the deep inhale of the Earth. Alva had spent her time dancing in the mud around Rhema, her favorite old growth. Indeed the night had been magical, the sound of her giggles and Rhema’s humming joining in with the pitter-patter of raindrops, til she felt herself a raindrop split-splattering from the swelling clouds down the expansive branches and finally to the thick roots, deep below.  But the storm had passed, and with it the time of celebration. Alva couldn’t remember the forest ever being so still, so quiet. There was always something moving, even if just the fungi spores growing around Rhema’s ankles. Focusing intently on the broken God’s Eye in her hands, Alva thought of the first deer she ever felled, Levi guiding her bow and Rhema guiding her arrow. So long as there is movement there is life, Levi whispered as they knelt over the writhing beast, saying the prayers that would solidify the bond between flesh eaten and flesh grown. Alva remembered how its entrails steamed in the cool air, its eyes, ever reaching, and the warm stickiness of the blood on her brow as Levi marked her a Keeper. Back then the forest trembled with movement, and one had to climb very high just to get an echo of quietude. Now, as she clutched close the broken God’s Eye, she felt stuck in thick molasses and feared that the stagnation would absorb her too, even the Redwoods too paralyzed to save her. She shivered at the thought. “Let’s move,” Levi said finally, his low voice splintering the silence. Although he heard nothing from the towering trees, the stillness was pressing in harder now, and he could feel Alva’s discomfort. Silence is an answer, too, he reassured himself, heading back to the Village. Levi enjoyed the feeling of mud between his toes, taking solace in the familiar sensation even now when the Redwoods were uncharacteristically silent. From the forest floor, only the learned eye could tell which tree marked the boundary of the Village. Looking up, the huts and platforms were camouflaged in the canopy of green, built seamlessly around the ample branches and spanning many a treetop. Levi and Alva climbed up, the bark still soft from the rain.  The Village hummed with news of their return, and round familiar faces popped out of hammocks and hovels to say hello, littluns running around and playing hide-and-go-seek in the giant oyster mushroom clusters near the eastern end of the platforms. Alva almost forgot about the silence that lurked just below them, feeling again the warmth of her people. Levi on the other hand wasn’t so easily distracted. He beelined towards Grandad’s hut, the large dome near the center of the Village.  Inside, thick with Palos Santos fumes, Grandad sat with a silly grin sipping eucalyptus tea. Or perhaps it wasn’t the grin that was silly, Alva noted, stumbling in seconds behind Levi, but Grandad himself—so wrapped up in vines and foliage that it was hard to say where his beard ended and the vegetation began. His eyes, crystallized honey, fell on Levi. Into is a better word, Levi thought, as he felt the old man staring into him, through him, raveling the freckles of his irises into constellations, digging deep into the galaxies that made up his memories and thoughts and foreseeable actions, wrapping round again—crystallized honey on willow green—Levi watching the whole thing unfurl  in Grandad’s reflective pupils.  “You bring news of the Undergrowth?” He asked, and Levi felt that Grandad already knew all that had happened, perhaps even knew it as it was happening, but asked out of sheer politeness. So Levi told him anyway, Grandad nodding to the information. Alva presented the broken God’s Eye, which caused Grandad’s smile to stretch into a thin line. For a while, he said nothing. “The next full moon marks seven years since the last starlight channeling,” he said finally, eyes on Levi. “We’ll have to travel to Arashar. Swell in the stinging this time.” Grandad paced the room, vines of his beard swaying. Each step left an imprint of trailing moss. Alva imagined that if he stayed put for too long, the moss would build and build and rise into the great trunk of a giant tree, old man Grandad encased inside. She giggled, picturing him floating in tree sap.  Arashar was still a mystery to Alva. He was the oldest old growth, much older than Rhema, and meeting Him was a special rite of passage. Some said that Grandad had known Arashar since He was just a sapling (some even said that Grandad planted Arashar) but he denied it whenever asked. How old do you think I am? He’d reply with a laugh that always left Alva wondering. She wanted to meet Him (what an honor!) and for a starlight channeling at that! The first one in seven years! As if hearing her thoughts, Grandad turned to her, eyes tunneling deep.  “The ceremony must be earned,” he said, his stern calmness unaffected by Alva’s apparent disappointment. “Come child, it’s not your place.” He punctuated his words with a quick grin and small wink, as if to say, not yet.   “You will stay,” he continued, vines swaying with each step. They seemed to move on their own accord, sort of floated around him, disregarding gravity. Alva wondered if he could use them like extra arms, or if they had a mind of their own and he had to bargain with them sometimes, or—Levi nudged her shoulder and nodded to Grandad, the old man cusping giggles. She made a mental note to ask later.  “You stay,” he continued (again), “monsooned on the ground. Perhap bring some littluns to Rhema? She’ll like that.” He added, an afterthought. Alva nodded, disappointed but not disheartened. Arashar and the starlight channeling ceremony was not her place. Yet. She left Levi and Grandad, wandering back to her hammock. It was lined with the pelts of every animal she ever felled. Wrapping herself up tight, she felt their spirits (deers, rabbits, mountain lions) cocooning her in a warm embrace, and she dreamt of soaring past Rhema, past the Enchaac River, past the Kukulan Chasm, all the way to Arashar the Old—and then beyond.