“You’ve worked hard,” said the huntsman. Father Hawk could see his large blue body looming high in the black expanse and hear him as well. However, Father Hawk couldn’t see himself and he certainly couldn’t hear any sound he would normally create whether that be his feathers shifting against each other or his own breathing.
What Father Hawk could tell about himself was that he was worn down and tired. He felt disjointed. His perception felt fragmented. He was looking up at the huntsman from many different angles below.
Even though he felt no body of his, he felt some sense of direction in that he felt as if the black expanse was an oppressive weight pushing down into a thin place of existence– in other words, him, Father Hawk.
“You’ve done a lot, my boy,” croaked the huntsman. He sighed and looked up at – at nowhere really in the black expanse. The huntsman’s long silvery beard now dominated Father Hawk’s view, shimmering with a bright glow as it quivered and moved with the huntsman’s head.
“You see,” said the huntsman in a steadier voice. He still looked up, away from Father Hawk. “When I hunt the animals of the canyons, I get to know them very intimately. It’s the only way, really. Only way to track them down is to understand their life and where it will take them.”
“Therefore, I love them dearly. I see them for their unique habits, movements and characteristics. It makes me love them for who they are.”
“The threat I pose in the canyons forces them to move and work and burrow and sometimes build. I am their hardship which forces them to grow. I am the pressure which builds them up.”
“So I……………am their father.
“The huntsman was quiet for a bit, so his words settled in on Father Hawk, allowing him to register their weight. They seemed to be sinking in the huntsman’s mind too, for he was looking up with a thoughtful and open-ended expression. His eyelids were open pretty wide, but they were crinkled at the edges towards his ears. His pupils dropped down in weariness and his eyelids drooped. His mouth opened a crack and his dark blue lips sagged. There was a soft rushing sound as if a wind were rustling grass. It was the huntsman inhaling through his nostrils.
Little silver strands of glowing hair rustled and revealed themselves to Father Hawk inside of the huntsman’s nostrils before disappearing with their layer into darkness.
They rippled. Parts glowed in Father Hawk’s view before darkening and being replaced by a luminosity that made its way to the right. Moving. Changing. The light rippled from side to side.
The huntsman’s large mouth opened wide, letting a gaping black hole emerge, almost as black as the expanse around them. He sighed, letting out a noise like a roaring hail of a waterfall frothing with foam.
The black and empty void of a world heaved forward. Though Father Hawk couldn’t feel his own body, he felt a rising– pushing weight from below. He felt like he was being impelled towards the huntsman, moving closer to him, even though he wasn’t.
It was the force of an emotion turning into a thought about to burst into speech. In the form of a question.
“You’re my father?” asked Father Hawk. “Are you my father?”
The huntsman looked down at Father Hawk with a smile and eyes that crinkled in the smile. He chuckled loudly. The noise seemed to consume the space of the void and in turn was consumed by the vacuum of the space, made whole and constant.
“Why yes,” he grated. “The father of Father Hawk! Now isn’t that quite the enigma?”
Enabled by the words he’d spoken, Father Hawk felt the new power of being able to summon a voice in the void, to speak more.
First, he chuckled. Then he spoke:
“Yeah. I mean, I guess. I never thought of having a father. I was a god so I assumed that the universe was made for me instead of the universe having made me.”
“Ahhhhhhhhh……….,” said the huntsman. “That is where you are changing. Once you are able to willfully subject yourself to your world– your environments, subject yourself to its legacy. Subject yourself to me!”
There was a thundering in the void that punctuated the huntsman’s last words. A deafening crackle followed by many echoes that seemed to bounce across the void.
“Ahhh……….,” repeated the huntsman. “I see what is happening. Keep listening, Father Hawk. You are like the phoenix, sent to oblivion by the fiery throes of death and then reborn by the fire. We are in oblivion– the shadow of my psyche and soul. You are reborn only through self transformation.”
“Self transformation starts with subjection. Subject! To responsibility. Subject yourself to your limitations. Do you realize what I am saying?’
A thin web of blue lightning coursed through the black void, first appearing as random glowing lines, then edging down around the huntsman in larger beams of jagged light.
They sizzled and electrified wherever the final ends touched in the destinations of their glowing path. Father Hawk knew this because he could feel wherever they touched. Wherever the lightning struck, the sensation of touch was returning to Father Hawk. It was almost as if he had………………. a body.
Shocking white beams coursed through the space in jagged shapes, dodging the huntsman. Auras of blue light emanated from the jagged white paths, creating edges and an outline. All of the lightning clustered together in a bundle of blue fraying, spindly, twisting and morphing electricity. Lightning struck from many different directions – up, left and right. It was a tapestry of change and twisting that all ended up in the same focal point. It was a net that had been cast down from above and situated like a hemisphere.
“Yes, yes,” muttered the huntsman. “You are changing, Father Hawk! Change is how you are reborn from the darkness and from death.”
At the focal point of electricity, Father Hawk could finally feel. The lightning was slowly materializing into a shape. Beams of light were joining into glowing white lines that smoldered and produced steam as they were formed out of the heat and the light.
Wherever lightning kept striking, thunder crackled, louder than ever. Faster than ever. They were like echoing drums that beat faster and faster in a victorious melody that was escalating to-.”
“My son is born,” said the huntsman, looking down with half-closed awestruck eyes.
Escalating to Father Hawk’s return. The storm of lightning was bequeathing a body for Father Hawk. Out of the focused bundle of electricity, Father Hawk was given smoldering limbs to wade in the blackness. And eyes to look out of at the storm of lightning cascading around the Huntsman like hailing rain that brushed and bounced off of his looming blue body.
A chest, Father Hawk’s head and limbs appeared. The lightning kept coursing down even though Father Hawk was now able to move his wings in front of him to his chest. He could barely make out his feathers when glowing light dripped off of him like magma and steam arose wherever the lightning bolts danced on his body.
“I knew it!” shouted the Huntsman over the roar of thunder. “I knew you had it in you! You called the storm with your understanding. Now, since you have a body, I can cast you out of the shadow of my soul!”
“Return to the grasslands, Father Hawk! Do not fear pain! Subject yourself to it. And you may become GREAT!”
With that, the Huntsman pushed his hands down, sending a wave through the void that pushed Father Hawk in his glowing hot body and the swarming lightning away. Father Hawk was pummeled down so hard that he couldn’t even flap his wings.
“REMEMBER!” boomed the Huntsman as his voice grew ever fainter and his image was blocked out by Father Hawk’s trailing electricity.
“I only spoke the words. It was you who did the changing!”
The world roared around Father Hawk. He crashed into dark waters that submerged him in shallow ground. The cold shocked him and dampened the light. The dying embers of light illuminated bubbles arising from Father Hawk’s sizzling body.
Struggling for air, Father Hawk pushed himself up with his claws. He emerged with his torso sticking out of the pool, dripping water and steaming.
His heart pounded and his beak was agape, panting for air.
The grasslands were darkened by the night sky. In front of him was the reflection of the glowing white moon, rippling in the pool due to Father Hawk’s emergence.
He waded through the water and found that the ground was inclining. He quickly made it to the shore, a crusty material of damp dirt and stone. Ahead of him was a small clearing and short grasses, shrubs and bushes. At the circular edge, the clearing gave way to a grouping of piled rock boulders directly ahead. They were surrounded by twisting vines that wrapped around the rocks and the bark of trees with masses of fluttering green leaves. Their broccoli shaped heads intersected each other and formed a wall Father Hawk could not see through.
Even in between tree trunks and vines was a shrouded darkness with only faint figures of even more trees.
Father Hawk’s breathing had slowed and his panting had receded into a more even and calm breathing.
While the light had faded from his body, little sparks and tailings of electricity remained, dancing across his body. They skidded across his feathers, disappearing and then suddenly reappearing somewhere else on his body. They gradually became smaller, narrower and fewer. Their incessant buzzing grew quieter.
His body was the same as before, but with none of the cuts, bent feathers, grime or other injuries sustained on his previous time in the Holy Grasslands. He was also more fit. He had more fat under his feathers and patting himself, discovered harder muscles.
Countless and myriad white stars dotted the sky, but the Huntsman wasn’t to be seen amongst any of them.
Father Hawk was on his own.
Several stealthy wolves emerged out of the woods, slipping around tree trunks, under vines and over them.
They were all furry and had muscles popping out from under the fur. Their worming backs, underbellies and chests were bulky, the moving muscles rippling under the dark gray fur. Meanwhile, their legs were angular from strong solid bones and narrowed on the way to their paws. Their ears were tall and pointy and underneath, their eyes glinted yellow with a predatory hunger.
Three emerged from the left, one from straight ahead and two from the right. The closer they moved to Father Hawk, the more they advanced in a circular line, closer to each other than they initially were.
They snarled and growled in low grating voices. They bared their sharp triangular teeth and fangs, licking them with long tongues.
Father Hawk stood still, frowning.
Was he ready?
If he wasn’t ready now, he never would be ready.
He would submit himself to any challenge that lay ahead here on out.
Father Hawk crouched and raised his wings, ready to fight the monsters ahead of him.
G.R. Nanda 