The Monarch of the Forest Read online

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  Jason was alone in his apartment in town. Foe Hammer was in the kitchen, wiped down and ready.

  The story of the forging of Foe Hammer and the hunt of the Monarch were akin to Tolkien's legends, and Grandpa told them word-for-word all through Jason's life. To Jason, it didn't matter if the stories were true; they became true in the telling.

  If Grandpa wanted to see the Monarch, then Jason would try to find the gray, white-tailed deer of mythical power and lifespan.

  He was awake before dawn and parked in Grandpa's driveway. The old man was waiting for him in the door.

  “Good luck,” Grandpa said.

  “Grandpa, what's the moral of the story? You and the deer?” Jason asked.

  Grandpa smiled and saluted Jason with his cup of decaffeinated coffee. Jason sighed and walked into the woods.

  The gun was forged by an old man who died after he made it. Family legend says that he told Grandpa, “This gun ties you to the Monarch. Slay him, and slay the past, and, perhaps, yourself.”

  That was the sort of theatrical speech that people gave in Grandpa's stories. Whether they were tales of the army, hunting, or building bridges, everyone talked like they were in an epic poem.

  Maybe Grandpa was the epic poem, living each day like a stanza. Jason didn't know. He simply hiked into the forest, navigating by memory in the darkness. He sat on a fallen tree and watched the sun come up. Light streamed through the trees and illuminated orange Xs all around Jason. Somewhere over a hill behind him, an engine coughed to life as construction resumed for the day.

  There wasn't any snow on the ground, but it was cold. Jason's breath floated in the air in front of him as his chilled fingers held onto the weapon. When he turned to look behind him, he almost fell off his tree.

  The forest only continued for two hundred yards behind him. They suddenly ended and a barren land of progress began.

  Jason shivered as he remembered the next part of his grandfather's tale. So armed with Foe Hammer, Grandpa hiked back into the forest, prepared to face the Monarch. He searched through the forest from sunrise to sunset, never seeing a deer. As he hiked home, a sound made him stop dead in his tracks. The sun was almost down and the forest was dark.

  “There he stood,” Grandpa's voice in Jason's head narrated. “He was as big as life. His eyes blazed with some sort of ancient knowledge and power. I felt like he looked through me, like he looked into my very soul. I couldn't move! His gaze had frozen me to the spot. His eyes cut me to the quick. I felt naked, small, in those terrible, beautiful eyes.”

  “Yeah,” Jason said to the empty forest in front of him. “I'm out here hunting a seventy-year-old legend. If Grandpa isn't crazy, I sure am.”

  Jason hadn't interned to hunt here. The forests around his father's house were still mostly unmolested. He abandoned his plans to sit here on a log waiting for a legend to come.

  “Well, Foe Hammer, let's go see what's out there,” Jason said. He got to his feet and put his back to the clearing. He hunted from sunrise to sunset and never saw a deer.

  Jason decided that it would be easier to follow the construction road out of the forest. He unloaded his gun, just in case he ran into a developer, and began the hike.

  The skeletons of houses rose out of concrete graves. The sun seemed to run from the place like it was fleeing a curse.

  Jason remembered when this whole patch was just woods. Progress, it seems, has no time for history.

  A sound from the treeline made Jason stop in his tracks.

  Jason slowly turned his head. A snorting sound made him focus on a big shape standing just as the forest met the clearing. One mighty hoof tentatively touched the clearing, but was withdrawn. The whole body of the animal shook, and the antlers on his head looked like two trees.

  It was the biggest deer Jason had ever seen.

  The huge dear turned and vanished into the dark forest. It was very dark when Jason found the strength to keep walking out of the Monarch's forest.

  Grandpa was standing in the doorway of his old, crooked house. The wind blew the porch swing and it creaked. Grandpa's hands shook, but he didn't look cold.

  Jason couldn't speak. He gaped at his grandfather and pointed at the forest.

  “Come in and warm your bones,” Grandpa said. Jason followed him inside.

  A cup of warm, too-strong coffee was shoved into Jason's hands before he sat down. Jason saw his father in the kitchen, preparing Jason's grandfather's medications.

  “Saw 'im, didja?” Grandpa asked as he crashed onto the recliner.

  Jason had to take a sip of his coffee before he could talk. “Just as I was leaving. He was as big as life!”

  “Did you look into his eyes?” Grandpa asked.

  Jason shook his head. “He tried to walk toward me, but stopped at the treeline. I couldn't move.”

  “You saw a deer, that's all,” Dad said.

  “No, Dad,” Jason said. He got to his feet. “You don't understand. I saw him. I saw the Monarch.”

  “You have buck fever,” Dad said.

  “Antlers like trees,” Jason said. “He was as big as an elk, but it was a deer. It was as if the whole forest swallowed him up when he ran. Like...”

  “Like he's only seen when he wants to be seen,” Grandpa said.

  “That's it!” Jason said.

  “Dad!” Dad said, pointing. “I humor you your stories, but now I see that they've gone too far. My adult son is having childlike fantasies. For the last time, there is no Monarch of the Forest!”

  Without saying another word, Jason's father left the house.

  Jason and Grandpa sat in silence for a long while. Finally, Jason spoke again.

  “What is he?”

  Grandpa looked out the window at what used to be trees.

  “A thing of the past,” he answered. “Like me. I wonder if we're connected, like the old gunsmith said. Me and the Monarch, two peas in a pod. Old men who have outlived our usefulness.”

  Jason sank back onto the couch. His grandfather looked older, somehow. His skin looked gray and thin. His eyes didn't have their old light. His hair stood out as white as a new snow. A shaking hand reached for a can of peanuts.

  “You're not going to die on me, are you?” Jason asked. His voice sounded almost like a child's.

  Grandpa smiled, but it was a sad smile.

  “Everybody dies, Jay,” he said. “I'm old and full of years. Sometimes, I think it'd be nice to die. If I hadta leave the noble family name in anyone's hands, I'm sure glad they're yours.”

  Somehow, Jason got home and cleaned Foe Hammer. His dreams that night were vivid. He ran from a big, gray deer until he finally brought the animal down.

  As the deer fell, so did the woods.

  Jason woke up with the sound of that crash in his ears.