Tenashar’s strength was in his inner being, a part of him that he didn’t know about as he was growing up. As a child, he played around the red hills; he sensed that there were people and miners long ago. Like other children and adults, he avoided cursed places or where strange happenings transpired. The feelings from those hills always bothered him. He sensed that there was something buried there that was deliberately forgotten. What was this thing? Perhaps it was knowledge stored in containers of strange shapes that superficially resembled a tree with foliage and exposed roots? The roots were strangely shaped into faces and human hands. This was no coincidence. There was some power reshaping the roots and leaves. Tenashar was communicating with the trees and their hearts and leaves. He saw the past miners being taken away by the tiny hairy beings called the hairy people, which was a derogatory remark by the villagers. His inner strength kept him from walking alone into the abandoned mines and, probably in his imagination, being taken away by the small hairy people or losing his mind. As a small child, so many strange fantasies were circulating that caused him great fear. Although he was a child, he knew this wouldn’t happen because perhaps the small hairy people were a legend or they were gone. There was evidence people had lived in the high mountains once. He had seen something furry looking at him. It could have been a squirrel or monkey; monkeys were known to migrate from the south. His mental strength was boosted by being different from the village’s other children. His special education from Heitac and his father gave him some inner wisdom, yet he gained comfort from being alone with nature because the other children abused him.
Strength for Tenashar was about the road of hardship; nothing ever gains strength without the opposing forces of life. This was what he was taught, but this philosophy wasn’t comforting. Knowledge and wisdom develop from an inner strength powered by suffering and hardship, which is what Tenashar had in abundance, probably too much of. Fate or life seemed to be harsh and strange to him. For Tenashar and the Senetha people, there was much struggle, although the things they had developed made them far better than compared to our world. In all ways, their world was higher than ours, but there were problems that we could not comprehend. No society was without struggle and adversity.
From one of the strange trees, a female figure emerged, she was shiny as if she were made of metal, but with intricate human features, her age seemed that of a teenager or young adult. She is wearing what seems like a robe, which seemed part of the tree. She is not a spirit but a natural being that has existed for centuries before humans. Tenashar had seen her and such people. Was it his imagination, or was she genuine? Through trial and error, Tenashar had to figure out what was real; he needed the strength to understand what was happening. Legend said her people came from a highly advanced civilization long before humans. They were not flesh and blood people, which means they couldn’t have been material beings, yet they were material, perhaps a type of light made of something solid that resembled metal or parts of a tree. These people could never be described in human terms; Tenashar couldn’t have known if they were spirits or people. He just left it there and didn’t try to analyze these people any further. But they still seemed to exist, although their cities didn’t exist anymore—almost no trace, except perhaps the lamps that still lighted some paths at night.
Robert J. Matsunaga
