East Tree
Author's Note: Enjoy the story and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of Magic: The Gathering.
Summary:
The tale of the Kodama of the East Tree, who withdraws the bountiful gifts it once showered upon its monks.
The history of Kamigawa runs rampant with the stories of great heroes and others of legendary status. Lands once trembled and worshipped the all-powerful daimyo, Konda. Jushi students mastered mystical arts at the Minamo School under the guidance of Sensei Hisoka and Lady Azami. Trees and fields of flowers grew wherever the monk, Azusa, passed. The rats bowed down to their lord, Marrow-Gnawer, and Akki poets recited praise of Zo-Zu the Punisher.
So begins the tale of the Kodama of the East Tree.
…
Jukai, Kamigawa's magnificent forest, contained five great trees. These were taller than other cedars in the Sea of Trees, fostered by five monastic orders dedicated to the reverence of nature and daily prayer venerating the spirits alive in the wood, the leaves, the soil, and the rocks.
While every object and concept conceivable is believed to hold a hidden kami – an arcane link to the Kakuriyo – there is an accepted hierarchy among them. The forest is within the scope of the kodama, whose shifting influences are tracked by Sekki, Seasons' Guide. They and Sekki are superseded by the Myojin of Life's Web, one of the major gods.
The kodama's temperaments varied as wildly as the seasons themselves.
North embodied the repose in activity winter wrought, but could easily be harsh like unforgiving weather if awoken from hibernation.
South exuded summer's warmth, nurturing a friendly sense of community throughout the green.
West represented autumn's turn toward gloominess, wariness toward uncontrollable rhythms that changed moods to the changing colours.
Center personified all the seasons, the cumulative bulk of oral sagas upkept in each tree's age rings.
If its relative to the north was an angry bear, its relative to the south an amicable arthropod, its relative to the west a feral hunter, and its relative in Jukai's center a wise hermit, the Kodama of the East Tree was as spring: A burgeoning force.
Vernal and proud compared to its older relations, and especially full of zest compared to the oldest shut-in collecting samaras, East's adolescent vigour spread joyous respite.
The young budoka who worshipped the eastern demesne mourned when the lord rebelled. When it retreated into dormancy.
But the period of unresponsiveness was a cheat.
Lashing out with a might that felt like it'd been gestating beneath rot and root for fifteen years of the Kami War, mossy shoots twined into thicker barked stalks, providing locomotion and expanding the kodama's reach across the forest floor.
Master Dosan, the world's most seasoned kannushi, famously said "The land grows only where the kami will it."
A sorrow he should be correct.
Where verdancy flourished before, the sylvan bounties were forgotten and choked bare. The god sharing its abundance with Jukai rescinded its hand, leaving some to wonder why it forsook its votaries, if not leaving them outright dead.
Clumps of weeds rippled around fiery yolks.
Spores dried life's essence from their bodies.
At much cost in human lives, the epic of the Kodama of the East Tree and its sleuth eventually made it into human writing:
The monks of the East Tree treated their kodama's pranks with geniality. Then came the Kami War, and all its harmless jests grew into one gnarled, pernicious trick strangling the joy from their windpipes.
— "Poem of the Five Trees"