Guardian

by Jameson Grem

I am of leaf and rot. 

From Gaia’s first breath, I have been here, watching her children grow and flourish. I have walked alongside them, countless parades from birth to death, bud to wilt. I share in their joy and sorrow. I behold with awe their wondrous achievements. And when they expire, I welcome them home, back into the whole. 

For a very long time, my world consisted only of a single, vast forest. It could be said that I was the forest. When I was young, my energy went towards growing sprouts into mighty trees and carving into stone with patient streams. My songs were the breeze combing through the canopy, and my embrace was the sprouting of fungi on dead things in the brush. I was the spirit of that forest. The animals that lived there never needed me to be anything else. 

When the forest became self-sufficient, I roamed. I had heard from the mushrooms, who have always been wise and well-informed, of other places in need of care. So I built myself a body made up of parts not yet recycled, and I left my forest to visit other lands.

So began a long cycle of death and rebirth.

When I was needed, I would rise from the earth in a new body and travel. I would teach new things how to grow, and I would nurse the sick back to health through song. When I could not save the dying, I would welcome them home. And when I was no longer needed, I would, again, return to the earth. 

Humans were among those I cared for and communed with, back when they were still one with nature and did not fear entities like myself. I was able to interact with them all -- any who sought me or happened upon me in the wood -- until they began to see themselves as separate. Then, only the ordained and the very brave would seek me out: mystics, shamans, medicine men, witches; there were many names for them, but all it meant to me was that humans as a whole no longer felt comfortable in the wilds. Their drive for survival had mutated into a fear of death, for which they blamed nature, until their desperation turned to mania, and they created entirely new ideas to carve out a separate world for themselves within the one they had been born into. They domesticated themselves, made themselves alien. And the few who still felt their connection to the world around them were sent as envoys from Civilization to the wilderness. 

For a short time, the humans who encountered me with purpose still felt like peers. But humanity’s slide into their strange, disassociated realm was swift, and even the human practitioners who had helped them understand the Old Magic of Earth began to inspire fear in their hearts. These connected kin were demonized, ostracized, attacked...I did nothing, as it has never been my function to intervene in the affairs of humanity. But I could see how far they had strayed when their mystics would seek me out as outcasts of human Society, for the purpose of learning, rather than sharing a mutual understanding. They sought knowledge, challenges, and approval, as if they thought they must earn the right to co-create with nature. Humans had forgotten that it was their natural born right to do so. What had once come naturally was now considered a learned skill -- and to many, it had become something evil. 

After centuries of fulfilling the same function, I was happy to accept the title of ‘teacher’ in an effort to help humans find their way back home. They are part of the whole. No matter how lost they become, no matter how they morph and disfigure themselves in their own minds, they are welcome back always. I wanted to keep the path clear for them, and serve as a guide for those who wanted it. Those who did easily found me in the cradle of the earth’s bosom, where I attempted to help them reconnect with themselves, and with the earth from which they were born. It was heartening to see a steady flow of human students all over the world, all of them aware of how they suffered so separated from the whole. But the stream dried up over time. When I found myself in the absence of human inquirers, I resumed my duties to the earth. And when I wasn’t needed, I returned to it. 

I was dormant for a very long time. The earth was developed. Whether there was fire, flood, or storms, the forests knew how to regrow. If humanity hadn’t completely lost its desire to be led away from its self-inflicted illusions, it at least had forgotten about me. I was dormant, but it could not be said to have been a rejuvenating rest. Where there was normally peaceful darkness, there instead were nightmares. Mycelia and dirt cradled and protected me while quivering with restless anxiety. From inside of this cocoon, I heard awful sounds that filled me with despair; dirges of torment that told a tale of torture and abandonment, of a mother being slowly poisoned and malnourished by her offspring. 

I do not know how long this went on before the mycelial networks finally erupted with contempt. It was this cataclysmic protest which finally roused me from slumber and bored me back into the world. I felt instantly choked, with a desperate need to breathe. There were no living forests into which I could flee. Around me, a barren land of ruin, a field of corpses. I could not stand it on my own; I cobbled together the remains of animals nearby and rose bodily from the muck and mire, born anew. 

I am of ash and bone.

In the deepest darkness, at the peak of despair, it is impossible to be lost, for there is only one path: the search for light. I traversed the land, as I always had, teaching new things how to grow, tending to the sick and dying, and giving the earth council through the exchange of song. Through my travels, I learned that I had missed the rise and fall of many human Civilizations. They never found their way back home, opting instead to destroy it, bringing it all down around them until there was nothing left.

I continued on, across sun-burnt ground, bringing corpses to dirt and attempting to coax life back into the carcasses of valleys blanched by forces of which I was yet unaware. My efforts could only do so much; I am but one entity. But, still, I tried, and I searched without knowing what I was searching for. Life, perhaps? Companionship? Joy? This world had forgotten such things. 

Finally, I came upon the remains of a large human establishment. Their nostalgia for the forest was evident in the constructed clusters of towering buildings, the skeletons of which made unnatural yet beautiful shapes against the angry skies. I wondered if their cities served as monuments to their perceived greatness...or were they the physical manifestation of the distorted and disjointed images of nature they still had in their minds? Did they try to build wilds in which they controlled the rules? Did they desire wilds devoid of natural threats, yet inevitably filled with those of their own creation? ...In the end, it didn’t matter. Their fortress was overgrown already with mushrooms that dwarfed their feeble attempts to reach the heavens. Nature will always prevail. That is the one true law. 

There was still something odd in the air that I could not bring into my understanding. It was something familiar, and yet deranged. The city was still burning. It burned, and burned, sending toxic fumes into the air and choking out most of the sun’s rays, which cast the scene in blood red. In the center of this mass tomb, I rested my legs a while and played music. I invited any nearby living things to thrive and reclaim this land. Where there is death, there is infinite life. I thought this would be the perfect salve to treat the dissonance in the air, but I soon found the true culprit. 

When it appeared to me, it was so disfigured, I could not immediately recognize it -- a tentacled face with many eyes that burned like dying embers. It informed me my work was done here, I must leave, for I could not contribute to what it referred to as a “new order”. When I would not be dismissed, the deity attacked, raising a wall of fire and incinerating the area around us. I did my best to fend it off, but it is a more powerful creature than I am. It had gorged itself on hate, greed, and malice, all things abundant in this human-leeched world. And I was starved in this cataclysmic wasteland. In a last ditch effort, I played a song for the hateful thing. Through each strummed chord, I attempted to pull out the truth of my adversary, for such sustained anger is unnatural. I tried to bring the creature to peace, back to its senses, back to balance. It did not like that. For just a moment, just before its counter attack buried me, I saw a familiar face within the ugly confusion of pain and thought one thing: Demiurge. 

I do not know if I was spared during a moment of weakness, or if the creature could not destroy me even when it tried. My body was gone, but I awoke shortly after, far too weak to continue my work. Like water, I slipped through the cracks, down, down, into the belly of the city, making each fissure an avenue until I found a reasonably comfortable spot underground, protected by concrete bones save for an unlikely skylight that would allow sunlight. Here, I found soil, and sprouted into a fresh sapling as I nursed hungrily from the sparse nutrients in the ground. I could not tell where The Adversary had disappeared to. I thought perhaps it was all over, and, once I recovered, I would go back to helping Earth recover from its myriad maladies. Even the Sun seemed exhausted, yet in its tireless efforts, it reached like a lifeline through dense ash into the depths of the earth to nourish me with weak, hazy light. 

My recovery had been underway only one or two rises and falls of the sun and moon when I felt the Adversary’s energy once more. I could not move, and could only observe in an exhausted state as it displayed malicious pleasure. I sensed the intent to destroy, to intervene...but knew not what its new target was. Shortly following, there was an explosion far off in the desert outside of the city. It detonated with such force that it shook the earth and ripped the sky open. Rain fell in torrents, lightning crackled in a web overhead. From my small peephole into the outer world, I saw daylight ripple and felt a wave of heat scorch the ground. In the chaos, I felt the presence of many. Their lights streaked across the sky like shooting stars, and then disappeared. In the silence that followed, the fungi told me what it had beheld. A lair destroyed, yet hope escaped. Into another time, it went, far from here with intent to change this dire fate. Humanity wanted to create a second chance for themselves. The Adversary wanted to stop them. I still do not know why. Even the wise keepers of the mycelial network cannot know such an entity’s mind. 

A lightness began to blossom within me that I had not realized I was missing. Hope? I reached out for it and found one last shooting star. I took hold of it. “Come...” I requested without knowing to whom or what I was speaking. To my relief, the mysterious presence remained. But unlike its peers, its progress towards the city was slow. As I waited patiently, I continued to grow. In my surroundings I could see scant traces of past times flickering into existence and then dissipating like mirages, pale faces in a dissonant mist. The departure of whatever had detonated had left this world changed and full of holes... 

What eventually stepped out of the shadows and into my sun spot was some manner of creature I had never beheld before. They appeared to be a mixture of human and machine -- or machine built in its creators’ image? As I frequently have been, I was in awe of humanity’s enginuity. In their quest to find themselves again, had they made beings like this in an attempt to get an objective view of the disconnect? There were so many mysteries I hoped they would be able to shed light upon, but the person who had answered my call seemed to be just as filled with questions. They did not appear to remember their identity or function. They, likewise, did not know what had happened prior to their awakening. I alleviated their ignorance to the best of my abilities, but more importantly, I made them aware of The Demiurge, and its current derangement and attempts to foil whatever mission this person and their cohort had been sent on. I urged them to find their peers, wherever their destination happened to be, and wished them luck on their journey to bring humanity back from the brink of extinction. 

It took all that I had left to keep the traveler there with me, so I had to let them go. The best way I can describe how they left was that they...broke apart into many tiny pieces, dust on the wind that then scattered, out of sight. Their fear in the face of their great task had been palpable; so potent, it remained behind even after they had gone. I soaked it in as I remained rooted and resting. As I regained power, I began singing to the organisms around me, rallying them, inviting them. My slumber was, again, disturbed with anxiety. The mycelia embracing my roots trembled with residual contempt, the product of centuries of stress and abuse….But nature is as indifferent as it is powerful. Its wrath is not directed towards any particular population. Its exhaustion was understandable, but the anger was unnatural. I could not get it off my mind. 

As I contemplated it further, the fungi began feeding me images of an earlier time. Through its infinite memory, I saw all realities laid out before me, undulating, roiling like a boiling ocean of what is and what could have been. Slowly, it coalesced into a singular focal point along the timeline I was currently in. It was years before...the message was murky -- until I saw their face again. The person I had spoken to a short time ago. I saw other faces, as well, that were only vague concepts in the back of my mind, ideas barely formed. Believing the message to have been delivered, I accepted it and thanked the fungi. But they continued to communicate. Hope, hope, hope, bright and shining, blinding in its intensity, just within reach! A whole world that needed to be reminded of how to grow...how to coexist...how to cocreate. I understood, then. 

I understand. 

I am of death and hope. 

Now I prepare myself for a voyage through the mycelial pathways, through the memory of the earth itself, through the memories of the fungi, the custodians of this planet. I will take to the enlightened path, riding the electric waves into the past, into a memory of a world not yet on the brink, but barreling straight for it. I am but one entity here. But in that place, I will be one of many peers working together to bring balance.