ETHAN VILU - DEATH OF A FORAGER

Ethan Vilu is a student, writer, and generally confused human from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Their work has previously appeared in Peculiar Mormyrid, The Trinity Review, and The Newspaper.

Death of a Forager
​

​The enchanter’s nightshade had to be found - it was a matter of life and death. The forager stepped out of his shack, closed the door behind him, and started off on a lightly beaten path. A small satchel hung around his neck; as he walked, he clasped his hands in an upright position, and made a silent prayer to the God above. His son was in grave danger - the spring fever had taken him, and he lay weak and despondent in his bed. If action was not taken, he would shortly be sent up to the heavens. The spring fever had one known cure - the enchanter’s nightshade, applied in a poultice to the forehead. The forager’s pace quickened with each step, and his face reflected the deepest anxiety.
 
For as long as his son had walked the earth, the two of them had lived in their little wooden shack in the everlasting mountains. The dwelling stood amongst a stand of poplar and pine, at the edge of softly rambling brook. The forager always  found enough food for the two of them to survive, and they lived in peace, doing no harm and avoiding many of the problems which plagued those in the luminous cities. There were threats in the mountains, certainly, but the pair had thus far managed to steer clear of them. The forager was a deeply religious man, and he sought to live his life in accordance with the desires of the God above him - that is, to live simply, and in harmony with his natural surroundings. The sudden appearance of the spring fever had been a sharp and unwelcome surprise for a man who thought his life to be in accord with the divine. But appear it had, and it had taken hold of his only child. So he walked in mental anguish along the banks of the brook, his eyes scanning and scanning, trying to take in every mote of matter in his vicinity.
 
The forager continued to follow the brook, staring penetratingly at every minute growth and flowering as he passed. His feet passed over pebbles and mud, and his pace continued to quicken.  He heard a soft rumbling somewhere in the distance, but he paid it no heed - there was no time. As he continued to follow the dwindling path, he entered a stand of pine trees, not unlike the one which housed his shack. Flowers bloomed at the base of each tree, and the forager’s eyes were alight in their quest for the nightshade. He scanned the base of each of the pines, his face growing more and more concerned with each accruing failure. Suddenly, with a glance towards the base of one of the last trees in the stand, his face lit up with a seldom-seen, crystal-clear joy.
 
For he had found it; a cluster of the enchanter’s nightshade was growing from the roots of one  pine. Its shapely, ascending green leaves culminated in the smallest and purest of white blossoms. As he pulled his foraging knife from the satchel around his neck, his face was one of triumph; he only grew happier as he cut two of the stems at their base. He stood, and his feeling was that of ecstasy - he would save his son, and they would go on living in their peace and harmony. But as he turned to walk back down the fading path, his whole world turned, and he stepped into the depths of a waking nightmare.
 
For what had snuck up behind him as he basked in the glory of the nightshade was what he had grown to fear most in his time in the mountains, though until now he had never encountered one: the spectral mastodon, the most fearsome terror of the everlasting. It was a creature with tusks of granite and steel; its fur was of a hideous purple-red, and its eyes were of startling black and green. It was the stuff of nightmares, of screeching psychological torment, and it was rearing its head directly in the forager’s path. He held his foraging knife in front of him, but it was of no use - the spectre could not be stopped. In a flash, it surged forward; a diamond-hard tusk gored the forager directly through the all-too-flimsy ribcage. In pure shock, his arms flew to his sides, and the enchanter’s nightshade that he held fell limply into the slow-moving brook. As his life began to depart from him, the forager’s eyes closed, and all faded into stuttering blackness.
 
Then, just as suddenly, the whole breadth of the cosmos enveloped his vision, and a mystic bugle sounded a glorious, rapturous fanfare. As the spectral mastodon began its grim feast of the forager’s mortal body, the God above Themself appeared to him - a sight inescapable and yet invisible, all-consuming and yet utterly absent among the stars. Overtaken by Their presence, the forager momentarily lost his senses; but as he came back to them in short order, his thoughts were those of confusion, of hurt, and of anger. His voice, the same though disembodied from his mortal frame, rang out in a protest against the almighty:
 
“Why, God above? I have always sought to live my life in the utmost accordance with You. Why would you take me, and prevent me from saving the life of my only son?”
 
The mastodon pulled at the sinuous flesh of the forager’s corpse, and a heavenly voice rang out in return:
 
“Why? Why have I done as I have done? I ask you, who are you to know?”
 
The mastodon ripped away the forager’s muscles and tendons.
 
“Tell me, forager, was it you who created the eight winds and the nine seas? Was it you who made the mountains everlasting? Was it you who gave the power of light to the cities?”
 
The mastodon sucked at the marrow of the forager’s bones.
 
“Was it you who made the nightshade, and the ironweed, and the trillium? Was it you who cured the sick, who brought the very reality of life into being?”
 
The mastodon tore the last of the forager’s flesh from his skeletal frame.
 
“I bless some, and I curse others. Or perhaps I do the opposite. I do as I do, I am as I am. Your role is not to know. Your role is not to say.”
 
The mastodon, finally sated, disappeared into the mountains’ silent night, and the forager was sent up to the heavens.
 
------
 
The forager’s son, though afflicted and despondent in bed, felt a sudden, irrepressible urge to sit up. As he did, he noticed the door had swung open with the wind; he saw the babbling water of the brook. With great effort, he rose from the bed and walked to the door of the shack. Glancing at the lightly beaten path which led upwards along the brookside, he wondered where his father had gone. Suddenly, he noticed some plants floating placidly along in the brook; he felt the urge to reach out and grab them, and did so. With a flash of recognition, his face broke out into a smile. It was enchanter’s nightshade, the cure he needed, floating right to his very door. He took a moment to appreciate the miraculous good fortune bestowed on him by the God above, and then went inside to make the poultice. He would recover, and his father would surely be back soon.