We're happy to have with us today Kali Kucera, author of the mythical realism book, UNAWQI, HUNTER OF THE SUN. Please leave a comment to let him know you stopped by!
Title:
Unawqi, Hunter of the Sun
Author: Kali Kucera
Publisher: Independent
Pages: 218
Genre: Mythical Realism
In a time when
supernatural and industrial worlds are staged to collide, an Andean boy finds
himself in the center of an epic struggle between the cosmos and the earth.
Unawqi is born with both insurmountable power and a fate of certain death, both
of which are challenged by his hunt of the emperor, Aakti, the Sun: the very
force that desires to abandon the earth unless Unawqi can overcome him.
Premise:
How easily we take the Sun for granted. We are conditioned to its rising and
setting on time, and assume it enjoys doing so, or more likely is indifferent. Unawqi,
Hunter of the Sun reveals a more perilous tale: the Sun, Aakti, is a being
who is a reluctant player in providing light and warmth to our world, and even
more has always desired to leave us to die if he didn’t have certain personal
complications standing in his way. Aakti will stop at nothing to get what he
wants, even if that involves murder of his own kin or annihilation of an entire
living planet. Ironically, what holds him back is the very life he is creating;
the family from which he tries to but cannot wrest control, and among them a
young intrepid boy emerges, a hunter who sets out on a journey, not to stop the
Sun, but to overcome him with a force we also take for granted: our humanity.
Book Excerpt:
THANKSGIVING
Beware
the empty chair.
It was
the only one unclaimed in the room of hungry diners in the basement of St.
Rita’s church in Tacoma.
The legs were slightly turned out, as if an invisible waiter had pulled
it back to let me slide in.
Guilt
had gotten the best of me to be there in the first place. It was Thanksgiving morning, and a day
earlier, my neighbors, who were never ones to shirk a promise, came to me with panic
on their faces. Their son’s house had
burned down, they said, and they needed to leave immediately.
I gave
them my sympathies, but something else was bothering them still. They had obligated themselves to help prepare
free breakfast at St. Rita’s in the morning, an annual tradition for the city’s
homeless. I tried not to wince at the
pious sound of it all, but I could sense what they were leading up to and I
remembered the many times they'd watered my garden when I was out of town. I knew my morning would be free before
needing to drive to my aunt’s house for our family dinner, so, of course, I
told my neighbors I would be glad to fill in for them and they should think no
more of it.
Never
having even been to St. Rita’s, I was loathe to socialize and threw myself into
the work, but after a couple hours of scrambling eggs, I was impressed by my
neighbor’s commitment to do this year after year. My feet felt like two ends of a barbell, and
I was just about ready to grab a plate myself and take a break.
If I
had not been so tired, my finicky nature would have guided me to pass up the
solitary chair and look for a less conspicuous corner of the room where perhaps
there were fewer people. The less
forgiving angel on my shoulder bit me with the words: “You hypocritical,
insincere, lazy ass.” It was right. The
people were streaming in through the door. Most had no home, no job, and no
money. Their bodies told their stories
of broken dreams, crippling work, and damaged minds. And here I was, fancying an emperor’s throne
somewhere, so I could separate myself off to swallow my grits and baked
apples?
The
lonely chair in front of me could have been reserved for someone else, so I
asked the person sitting on the opposite side of the table if it was taken. He said no, gestured for me to claim it, and
I sat down with my plate and coffee without giving it another thought.
It
wasn’t until I looked back up that I noticed something about him seemed out of
place. I glanced at him across the table
as he salted his eggs, observing how his right hand moved gracefully to the
shaker. He had none of the typical
displays of mental edginess. He was not
disheveled, or weary on the brow. His
hair was combed, and he wore a leather jacket that didn’t bear a single tear. His eyes were calm, like having emerged from
a prayer, and he was happily occupied with his own thoughts.
But
his left hand remained fixed in place on the table, appearing to be hiding
something underneath his palm.
I must
admit, it was also plain to me how strikingly handsome he was. His jet black hair, and his face with the
sheen of a brown eggshell suggested he was Latino, and I wondered what had
brought him here, far from where he might have been born.
Normally,
it’s prudent in these settings not to ask.
People are scarred enough by their circumstances and they don’t want to
be interviewed as the price for their meal.
I wanted to protect his privacy and let him eat in peace, and in my own
defense, didn’t want to unleash an emotional outbreak. But still, his appearance challenged me, and
his seeming self-confidence broke through my etiquette, and I asked him that
inadvisable question anyway: “So, what’s
your story?”
His
face sprung up like a soldier’s salute and he gave me a smile, wide with contentment.
“I am
Unawqi. I am hunting the Sun.”
It was
such a terse thing to say, and he was so oddly composed in saying it, that I
could only smile and nod back, disguising my disappointment, sure he was just
as crazy as the rest, albeit happily crazy.
I
thought some more about the strangeness of his name, sounding out the phonemes
in my mind. Was it Finnish or
Japanese? Apache, perhaps? A second later I thought again that maybe he
was making a clever joke in order to break the ice. After all, Tacoma has plenty of days of being overcast
with gloomy clouds refusing to budge, and talking about the weather is indeed
how we all usually start a conversation.
So I returned to him again and said, “Yes, the Sun has a lot of good
hiding places in November.”
Unawqi
dropped his fork on his plate and his eyes bore into me as if I had just given
him the key to paradise.
“So
you have seen him?” Unawqi beamed.
Regretting,
now, that I had not taken the warning sign of the empty chair, I searched my
mind for an excuse to get up and return to the kitchen. But before I could finish my breakfast,
Unawqi had lined out enough of his story that I found myself not only glued to
my seat, but devoid of any fatigue or hunger but for the feast of his very next
word.
I fell
in love with Unawqi instantly, as I imagined everyone did. In the first thirty minutes he made me laugh
more than I had over the course of a year.
It puzzled me how such an energetically positive young man could end up
in a basement of broken heartedness, but this only compelled me to listen all
the more.
I
wouldn’t be telling you this story if Unawqi was, in fact, merely making a joke
about the weather. His opening line was
literally and plainly what he'd meant: he was a hunter, the Sun was his prey,
and his extraordinary pursuit, which had begun ages ago, had finally brought
him here, to Tacoma, of all places. And it was here, in Tacoma, that he was just as zealous as he had
always been to see his hunt come to an end.
Naturally,
I had to ask why would one hunt the Sun, and this was when his story grew more
complicated, his face showing pain, at many points, as he struggled to justify
the emotional struggle of his journey.
He set
his plate aside, for the heaviness in his heart overtook any appetite he had
left, and he reached out and took my hand, asking me to listen.
“Think
back, if you will, to the first time your father took you for a walk in the
night. The darkness, how it horrified
you. It swallowed you whole, and the
only link you had to the light was the touch of your father’s fingers in your
palm. So small and tenuous a wall, you
remembered, separating your life from your death.
"For
a brief second he let go of your hand, to, instead, put it on your shoulder,
and in that moment you felt what it was like to be forsaken. You cried out in terror, and even when his
hand returned, you realized it could leave again, throwing you into the
vastness of space to be on your own.
"Still,
he urged you to continue, to go further, deeper into space, farther away from
home. So you trusted him again, and you
walked together until you shivered from the cold.
"But
for some reason still a mystery, imagine that he truly chose to let his hand
go, and his voice to go silent. You
would pray it wasn't true, that he must soon return, and yet he would not. No matter how many times you called, he would
not answer. He just left.
"This
time you would be all alone, a boy, abandoned to face the boundless night, led
to the loveless abyss, rejected by your own genesis, without a compass or line
to find your way back.
"No
greater a cruelty can be imagined than this.
But this is just between one father and his son. How much greater is the cruelty when the
father casts a million sons, indeed, the whole world, to the abyss?
"That
is the crime. That is why I'm here.
"But
there is more, for now the father is no less the boy, and the boy no less his
father.
"We
are all in danger of casting each other out.”
Unawqi
told me he was not hunting for sport or pleasure. He was a bounty hunter of sorts, and the Sun
had committed a crime against humanity, a preconceived crime that had not yet
come to pass, but still could, if the right conditions were met. It was a crime that Unawqi said he himself
needed to overcome. Indeed, that we all must do the same, at some point or
another.
My
mind came around again to his left hand, which still had not moved.
“And
what is this you’re keeping?” I asked.
“Oh,
this,’’ he answered with a little chagrin and lifting his palm. “This is a gift. A little silk worm I hope will bring me good
fortune and make things right.”
The
tiny insect was crawling around in a nest of straw, making spindles of silk
that played with the overhead light.
This smallest of living things, manufacturing the miraculous in the
middle of such a somber place, enchanted me to no end.
Unawqi,
of course, wanted to protect it, which is why he kept it covered so
securely. His hand was its shelter, its
mighty fortress, and he would be certain to never abandon this creation for as long
as he lived.
His
story would not have come from Finland or Japan or the mesas of Arizona.
His beginning belonged to a patch of green, high in the Andes, where farmers herded goats, and
unearthed potatoes, when they were not dancing to the sounds of their magical
flutes. It was a peaceful place, and he
longed to return home, as soon as he was able, but only if he could bring the
whole world home with him.
About the Author
Kali Kucera is an American lorist and short story writer
living in Quito, Ecuador,
where he also rides and writes about bus and train travel. Since he was 9 years
old he has been composing plays, operas, short stories, and multi-disciplinary
experiences. He has been both a teacher and performer as well as an arts
mobilizer, and founded the Tacoma Poet Laureate competition in 2008.
