Frankenstein of the Forest
All it takes is the taste of flesh for a dog to go mad. All it takes is the tang of the forest for the fire to go manic; an alive, wild thing with demented eyes as it descends upon the stretch of woodland. Grayhound the hawk angles his lithe, strong body against the shadows of the black plumes of smoke rising from the burning forest and dives into hell.
Forest guardians know no foe. Others, like the gentle creatures he is sworn to protect, are not so lucky.
An inhuman screech tears through his grim thoughts. Wildfires are loud, raging beasts with cavernous mouths and voices he cannot bear to be subjected to. Far past time to cull the beasts. He cannot do it alone, but that is what the spool of sticky, fine manzanita hair clutched in his talons is for.
Mere minutes, as the crows and hawks fly, toward the canopy gap.
Those minutes feel like hours. At long last the starlight dips its vibrant head through the slim gap left by a felled fir and drifts lazily over the heads of his fellow guardians. All his feathers, gray as his name, are slick with soot and damp with heat as he soars through the gap and finds the solid grip of a heavy branch curling around his talons. The forest always knows, and she always answers.
“Something must be done.”
Grayhound inclines his head towards the Stygian Mother and her declaration. She is a kindred spirit nestled in her large, behemoth body. Behemoth, because although Grayhound’s avian form is a giant compared to the rest of his species, the Stygian Mother is even more intimidating. She is all clever ears and knowing eyes and warm fur, all of which she uses to cradle her three toddling cubs. Grayhound visits them, sometimes, watching from beneath the cover of an overhanging branch, away from the cubs’ shaking, ungainly paws.
He is pulled away from his musing by the slow groan of a stone staggering through fern and soil. The sprawling mass of the sallow rock by the Stygian Mother’s tender paw is half the size of her massive body, and smells like the fresh stream singing yonder.
She turns her snout to the canopy gap and the stars beyond. “For a body that can withstand all flame.”
A crown of branch and bone rises. Grayhound watches as his elken friend, the king of the herd scattered within the ferny hands of the forest, nudges something with one long, tan foreleg. It is a thorny heap of shed antlers. They are so strangely and yet beautifully entwined, such a wondrous curvature of the strong body as they curl around the rock in its entirety.
Their smaller friend is perched upon Prince’s ever-growing antlers. “A gift from his heir,” she says softly, a tiny paw against his large head. Valiance the chipmunk has warrior stripes of brown and white etched across her milky-white eyes, and she speaks for herself and the elk. “A crown to fortify his heart.”
Where teeth and bone and tongue should reach for the air there is nothing but smooth hide. Prince does not speak. Valiance, in his place, does.
The sweeping whisper of wings breaks the ensuing silence. He hovers over the growing stones and lets the fine hair fall from his grasp and grow into the callouses of the slate, etching deep within the mountain this creature will come to be.
“Tomorrow,” says the Stygian Mother, and they all agree.
Tomorrow, and three nights more, and then war.
***
Burnt orange and umber is waning in the wake of a dozing sun. Sunset is passing and the ravens are enclosing the forest within the cloak of the night. Tonight they will ride into battle.
Far away the flames of death are still roaring.
Grayhound ignores them and feels the wind buffet his wings upward and onward; each motion he arcs his body into is bound in trust to the forest. Trusting it to be there with those same shaggy branches beneath the sharp edges of his talons. All of the veins running through the crackling leaves filling up the bowed heads of the trees call out in response to the trust, guiding him to where he needs to be.
He drops down from a low branch and lays the soft mesh of fine white hair over the full body.
Meters and meters of towering stone. Slate and granite build up the creature’s two arms and two legs, covered in the sheen of hair that has darkened into rough, warm fur cloaking the rock of his skeleton. Arcane markings etch over the frame, barely visible through the tan covering of hair, oddly reminiscent of the ways in which elk antlers often bend.
Movement slices through the dim evening. Prince raises his ancient head to the unmoving creation’s. Tonight, Valiance rests atop his head. Tenderly the elk king’s own antlers touch stone and shiver, ever so slightly, before clumping away from his head and sinking deep into the rock. The markings crawl over the granite that is meant to serve as head and brain, inking in a kind face and a gentle mouth.
Valiance murmurs, “all creation demands sacrifice.”
Just in time.
Over the sacred canopy night has pulled across the sky. Starlight, what is left of it after the endless devouring of the scraggly plumes of black smoke, ambles towards the opening and drifts through, settling on the head.
Of its own accord the giant structure of the rock quivers. It is a gentle, soothing movement that rocks through the sculpture: like that of lungs drinking in air. Cracks dig in and around stone, carving and whittling away everything into the creature that wants to be born. The breathing, living protector.
Softly, curious eyes open.
He is still growing. Grayhound feels joy and grief bubble up deep within his old feathers as the last of the manzanita, offered gracefully from the tree he considers an old friend, turn into the long shaggy coat sprouting from the body: first it is white like the tree hair, then it softens and lovingly seeps into sepia, dark and safe in the forest at night. It is a draping curtain of dainty shrubbery around the rough arms, legs, and strong torso that gives a sudden grunt, and then lurches forward, and then before they can blink it is standing.
Mother Stygian sculpts her pale snout into a joyous, victorious smile. So does Prince, as he strains his elegant throat to lift Valiance as high as he can without his glorious crown.
He finds himself unable to resist as he leaps off a branch, and then another, and then another, and then he is weaving through the endless green of lush leaves and closed buds not yet in bloom before he bursts from their cover and stills in the wind. Hovering, he is at eye-level to the magnificent golem before him, and he is staring into eyes the colour of the deepest red.
The creature raises his arms and slowly, with wonder tracing every move, raises and rests two arms around the hulking bodies of both Prince and the Stygian Mother. Coarse, warm hair settles around Valiance like a cloak fit for a queen before it swivels its head and gazes at him again, holding the stare for a brief moment before it dips into a bow.
Talons touch stone and the war cry of victory shrills from deep within Grayhound’s aching throat. It is the call of success and rescue as they turn their heads towards the rising smoke that would soon be nothing.
The forest had birthed its newest guardian, and no flame nor man would bring it to its knees.