Shuna's Journey

Set in an indeterminate time that "may have happened long ago" or "may be still to come" (1), the story follows a young prince named Shuna who leaves his impoverished homeland to search for a legendary grain that could save his people from starvation. The work is an illustrated narrative, or emonogatari, based on a Tibetan folktale.

At the bottom of an ancient glacier-carved valley lies a small, forgotten kingdom where the wind thins the air and the sun's warmth never reaches. The people plant hiwabie seedlings, but the barren land yields only meager crops. Their yakul, yak-like beasts of burden, are always starving. Shuna, destined to succeed his father as ruler, grows up amid this poverty.

One day, Shuna discovers a collapsed stranger on the road, a prince from a distant eastern country near death from hunger. On his deathbed, the traveler shows Shuna a pouch of large, heavy seeds and explains that those who possess this grain will never know hunger. However, these seeds are dead, their hulls removed. Living seeds, encased in golden hulls, grow in a land far to the west at the world's edge. The traveler dies having never found this land, leaving a fire burning in Shuna's heart.

Though his father and the elders insist their poverty is their fate, Shuna's mind is made up. Under a new moon, he breaks the law of the kingdom and departs alone into the west on his yakul.

For weeks, Shuna travels through lifeless wastelands, narrowly escaping man-eating ghouls. When his supplies run out, survival becomes desperate. As the air thickens, he encounters abandoned villages and armored wagons packed with people. A sprawling fortress town appears on the barren plain, where the main commodity traded is human beings. Among heaps of grain at a merchant's stall, Shuna spots the seeds he has been searching for, but they have all been threshed and are dead. The merchant explains that no one tends fields anymore; slave traders bring grain in exchange for people.

Shuna encounters two sisters in chains, one older and one very young. A slave merchant offers them to Shuna, but the older girl warns him not to trade away his weapon, as the slavers will kidnap him too. The merchant beats her. Shuna tries to intervene but is forced to leave, tears streaming down his face.

That night, an old man at Shuna's campfire taunts him, suggesting Shuna return to the comfort and safety of his royal life, but then reveals crucial knowledge. Beyond a precipice at the world's edge lies the land of the god-folk, mythical beings who alone possess the living golden grain, in a place where the moon is born and returns to die. People once grew the grain themselves but began selling humans to the god-folk in exchange for dead seeds. No one who has entered that land has ever returned. By dawn, the old man has vanished.

Shuna rides back to the fortress town and discovers the sisters were sold to traders heading south. He overtakes the traders and attacks, shooting them down. He opens the iron door and calls out that anyone who desires freedom should come out. Only the two sisters emerge. As pursuers appear on the horizon, Shuna lifts the girls onto the saddle and races westward.

Two nights later, the ground abruptly disappears: They have reached the precipice at the world's edge. The yakul collapses from exhaustion. Shuna tells the sisters to take the yakul and go, planning to face the pursuers alone and then continue to the god-folk's land. The older girl tells Shuna her name is Thea and asks him to head north when he returns, promising they will wait however long it takes.

Shuna sets a trap near the cliff edge and destroys the pursuers with explosive shells. He then climbs down the vertical cliff face, using the forms of ancient gods carved into the rock as handholds, descending through clouds and along the skeletons of primeval dragons. He reaches a beach, crosses the shallows at low tide, and sets foot on the island of the god-folk.

The island is covered in woodland, where green giants walk silently to their deaths with serene expressions. Beyond the forest, Shuna discovers farmland dominated by a mysterious towering structure. In the night, the moon halts above the structure and humans pour from its mouth: the people collected by slave traders. The towering structure swallows them, then slowly rocks. When it stills, phosphorescent water flows into the canals, and green giants rise from the water, newly born. The giants scatter golden seeds from their mouths and tend the fields. By sunrise, seedlings appear; by midday, grain is forming. Shuna's rifle has rusted in half a day. Time flows differently here.

He reaches for the ripening grain. The giants writhe and cry out, and a voice from deep within him commands him to stop. He plucks some ears anyway. A terrible shock convulses his body. Clutching the grain, he runs through the forest and leaps into the raging sea.

The narrative shifts to Thea. Nearly a year has passed since she and her sister fled to a poor village in the north. One night, sensing Shuna's distress, Thea rides south and finds him on the road: a ghostly figure with vacant eyes, stripped of memory, speech, and identity. Inside a pouch around his neck, she discovers the golden grain and resolves that it is now her turn to help.

Through winter, Thea cares for Shuna in secret. In spring, she plows a hidden plot and patiently teaches him to sow the seeds, though at first he digs them up at night. Eventually the seeds sprout. As the midsummer festival approaches, the old woman who houses the sisters insists Thea choose a husband or leave. At the festival, Thea declares she will marry the man who can ride the yakul. The proud animal throws every suitor. Then Thea's little sister leads Shuna forward, dressed in clothes Thea has woven from yakul fur. The villagers understand: He is the animal's master.

A violent storm threatens the crops, but Thea shields them through a night of hail. When the sky clears, Shuna calls her name: He has recovered his speech. Thea weeps for the first time since her own village was destroyed. As the crops ripen, Shuna continues to heal until he stands holding a sheaf of grain, looking like someone returned from a long journey.

Before going home, Shuna spends another year in the village, fighting manhunters and expanding the plot into a whole field. The second harvest dwarfs the first. When the day comes to depart, he has enough golden seeds to leave half with the village. The story closes by noting that Shuna's journey is not yet over, but that is a story for another time.