By G.R. Nanda
“Great,” said Father Hawk. “Great.” He looked down and squinted. “But…………..I am great!” he shouted as he looked back up, frowning at the huntsman who hovered placidly in the sky.
“I-I’m a god. Or I was. I was a god. I could fly all through the universe. I already was great.”
The huntsman cocked an eyebrow.
“Were you?” he asked. “Was that chance or did you actually do something to make you deserve to be a god?”
Father Hawk was silent. He finally sighed and answered.
“No, yeah. I guess I didn’t do anything to……………deserve being a god.”
“That was at the hands of the universe, wasn’t it?” said the huntsman. “Only the universe is truly great. Greater than you. Greater than me. You were given godhood. You didn’t earn it. That cannot be called great.”
“What you choose to do with what you are given is what makes you great.”
“Yeah? Well!” started Father Hawk. “The godhood given to me is gone! You took it away from me!”
“To teach you a lesson. Your goodhood made you weak. You grew comfortable in your power. You became restless and the lives of your wife and child are paying for it.”
“How do you know these things about me?” said Father Hawk.
“The soul of every animal I kill in my canyons passes into me in its death. I learn about every animal and then give it a safe sanctuary to exist in for all of its toil.”
“You are now in that sanctuary: the ethereal grasslands.”
“But,” started Father Hawk, “I don’t want to be here!”
“I know,” said the huntsman. “You and I know that flowing through your blood and heart and locked into your brain is the yearning for flight into the stars. You were meant to be a god. And you can strive to rightfully claim your godhood and in doing so, prove………….greatness. “
“But look!” said Father Hawk. “I can’t use the powers of god anymore. I can’t go get that flower!” he pointed in the direction of the rock formation and its flower. “I have nothing.”
“Do you?” implored the huntsman. “Do you have legs and arms? Do you have eyes and a brain? You have the gifts of being an animal.”
“Do not forget that an animal you are!” said the huntsman, pointing at Father Hawk.”And before you can be a great god, you must be a great animal.”
“Because that’s what you are, aren’t you?” he asked. “An animal.”
“And what kind of god were you before? You were a hawk god. An animal that was a god.”
Father Hawk’s eyes dropped as he let the words sink in.
“Some of the other animals hated me because I was a god,” said Father Hawk. “In the canyons.”
“So they did,” said the huntsman. “They didn’t want to share their lands with someone who’s lived with so much more than them. There’s nothing you can do about that. What can you do right now?”
“You have lost your godhood, but have you lost your will?”
“I-I-I don’t know,” said Father Hawk.
“Well, you must know and soon or else you’ll be too late to return to godhood and save your wife and child,” said the huntsman.
“If you really care!” said Father Hawk, “why don’t you just give the flower to my wife? You don’t even have to give me godhood! But I can’t bear what I’ve let happen to my wife and my child! That’s the reason why I left and ended up in your canyons!”
“Well, here’s a start!” said the huntsman who’d started beaming. “Putting someone else before you. And not just any someone. The mother of your child and the child itself. Would you have done that without hard times? If your godhood had not been taken away? If you were still flying through the universe from star to planet to asteroid to star, without a bit of physical harm laid on your feathers, would you have put someone else before your gratification, thrill and escape?”
“I don’t know,” muttered Father Hawk. There was silence for a few seconds.
“Anyway,” said the huntsman, “like I said, the coyote guards the flower that I could once pluck freely. It was a flower that grew in random places, waiting for me to water it and eat and then share its petals with the universe.”
“The eternal coyote was a pup growing on the Misty Moon. He was the only animal bigger than me I’d ever seen. But since he was merely a babe, I let him be. I was actually scared of him. He grew so big on the Moon, with only the Mists to look through, so I let him be. But he was looking over my canyons too. And the bigger he got, the more he needed to eat. The small plants of the Misty Moon weren’t enough. So he spotted my flower and leaped for it, falling into the dark cavern you walked in.”
“Scared he would do harm in my canyons, I closed off the hole with rocks. I thought he would die in the dark without food or water. But I didn’t know there was a pool below his ledge and glowing crystals to keep him pleased and seeds from the flower to consume.”
“Those were seeds I was supposed to plant to grow new flowers. I can’t do that anymore and one day, the seeds will run out.”
“I underestimated the coyote and the darkest depths of my canyons. Now, he prowls there, haunting my spirit and mind,” he said, pointing towards the coyote in the distance and his rock formations which were shrouded in darkness. “The deepest and darkest of ourselves can feed our monsters if we don’t intervene. If we do nothing. I learned the hard way.”
“Wait,” said Father Hawk. “You…………..were…………….scared?”
“Why yes!” exclaimed the huntsman, chuckling. “Even I, the eternal huntsman who’s been prowling these canyons for age immemorial, have my own shortcomings. I am powerful, but I am not perfect. I am flawed and like everything and the universe itself, I am always learning.”
“That is something you have to accept soon because you can’t keep running away from all that plagues you. You can’t run away from your mistakes as you’ve been doing.”
“I am too big to reach into the coyote’s dwelling. The stars and my constellations make me big and give me many views, but even the cosmos have their limitations. Only an animal as small as you can reach in it. I have bequeathed this quest to you because of your mind. While your godly powers are gone, you still have the intellect of a god. You are smart enough to converse with me and to deal with the coyote.”
“So………………….what do you say?” asked the huntsman. “Do you accept the quest for the flower?”
“I want to,” said Father Hawk. “It’s just that I’ve never really done anything like this before. I’ve become so used to running away from my problems that confronting something like the coyote seems……………impossible.”
“It will become possible in your mind as soon as you prove it,” said the huntsman. “Like any challenge, you will learn more about it and yourself as you work on it than if you don’t.”
“You will make mistakes along the way, but learning from them will make you stronger.” Father Hawk pondered everything he heard. The journey of this quest seemed to promise hardships and frightening experiences. But what was the other path? It was being stuck here.
In the grasslands, trapped amongst other animals in the endless fields– fields of the same. Same everything. Same grass stretching on and on.
The mass of green needles swaying gently smelled fresh and earthly. The gentle breeze wafted the natural scents from all around.
However, staying in one place against the moving grass, the needles were prickly on Father Hawk. He realized that he had to move with the current or the current would scathe him.
It was time. To take a stand and venture forth for a greater thing. Father Hawk had a wife and child to save, an invading coyote to destroy and a godhood to reclaim. No matter how fresh the air was, if he stayed here too long, he knew he would grow sick of it. If he couldn’t bear the same small terrain of a planet for so long that he had to soar into the cosmos, he knew he wouldn’t be able to bear the same lands of grass for so long.
He had to move and venture to the coyote.
“I accept the quest,” said Father Hawk. He looked up into the pale eyes outlined in the ghostly apparition of the huntsman with a furrowed, scrunched determination.
The darkness of night behind the huntsman was fading away to light. The stars were fading and blinking out. The six large stars that made up the huntsman’s body were disappearing alongside the huntsman himself included.
As he faded away, he spoke his final words that morning:
“Venture forth towards the coyote’s rock, travel lightly, but gather your resources and look out for the beady-eyed eagle for she will guide you further.”
And with that, he faded away completely, replaced by the baby blue of the morning sky.
G.R. Nanda 