The world is ending, but life goes on. As everything burns around him, washed-out college professor John Groff searches for his lost friend and stumbles into a plot to bring back the natural world. Welcome to Mothwick. You are just in time. Mothwick is David Durkmann's first published novel. Durkmann lives in a cabin in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia. He writes on a manual typewriter and does not use social media. The novel begins as a campus mystery, veers through various surreal landscapes, to become a tale of defiance against colonial order. While the main characters struggle with the collapse of the ecosystem, an ancient force works slow magic in the background. The excerpt below presents the city of Mothwick before the dam was built, before the arrival of European colonizers, when the first white explorers made their destructive way into a land that will never be fully suppressed.
Excerpt Chapter Twenty-Three: In the Beginning Looking south through the broad grasses of the swamp and past the roiling water, the unprecedented cataract steaming out from the oceanic lake, a body of freshwater without shoreline, endless, exhausting the eyes, one could see the dark stands of white pine on the river’s south banks. The Deacon wondered why he sat under a deer hide tarp nearly mad from mosquitoes, soaked to skin, when the south shore was a dry ribbon of high sand and stone at the edge of a rich forest. This is where he’d been sent. Anyone could have been directed to the southern shore of that nameless river and, in the relative comfort of the dry treeless land, forgotten his purpose. The Deacon was here to suffer. This world was made for suffering. Since he was a boy, he’d heard of Terra Nova, but there was nothing new about it. Here, the ancient dark worked its ill intentions. It was a land before the Light of God, a land forgotten, abandoned. A land that had not risen after the fall of man. This land would be the cross upon which he leapt; his heart full and willing. Here he would give his life. Here he would discover the full nature of his calling, the reason God had breathed spirit into worthless clay. His guide was greasing his broad iron pan. Blackflies and mosquitoes twitched in the lard. The fire had cooled into pulsing coals. All around it, stacks of split wood spat and sizzled, drying in the dimming heat. The Deacon wouldn’t have minded an extra log on the fire, higher flames, perhaps a bit of smoke to drive away the cold, to drive away blood-thirsty wings. He ran a hand across his brow. It came away red, a band of blood mixing with sweat above his eyes. The Deacon wiped the blood and bugs from his hand. Blood. Christ’s blood. My blood. I shed so this land may be freed of the Fallen One’s grip. May the willing sacrifice of my blood drive the devil from this place. May the enchanted hearts of the dwellers of the forest be free from his influence… The cook, who was also canoe man, guide, and translator, looked up from the pan and the hunks of pork he’d dropped in. “Did you say something, Father?” he asked the young priest. “I was praying,” said the Deacon. “We can use your prayers.” The guide didn’t believe in The Word anymore. After five trips up the lakes, Jules had lost some of his old world reverence. Much of it seemed like superstition. Out here, there were bugs and cold, bears and wolves, and the slow rot that never fully dried. The faith clotted and stuck to this world but never found its roots in the pores. It would stain the surface but would never leach into the soil. Jules had wanted to dive into the river, the bugs were so bad. Even knowing he’d die from the cold, die with the current, he’d wanted to jump in. The bugs made you that way. Having lived through it before, having had his body drained by the black clouds, did not prepare him. He never got used to it. It was the Deacon’s first trip up the lakes. Jules thought it might be the Deacon’s last. He had the martyr’s stare about him. Deep blackness beneath his eyes. The pallor that never browned no matter how much sun the good world gave him. Now he had the fever, shook sweating through the chill nights. “Come closer to the fire, Father.” Jules stacked the driest logs above the coals. He’d have to cook over the flame although he preferred a low fire. He built a small pyramid of the jagged logs and breathed into the small chamber. The white bark, dry and coiled, swelled red. Soon the pit was roaring. “Get as close as you can.” The Deacon inched toward the pit, opening the bear robe to let in the heat. Jules could smell the sourness of the man’s body. One who smelled that way would soon be in the ground. “We might have to find you a change of clothing before nightfall,” said Jules. “You can’t sleep in those wet things. I might have to cross to the camp to see what the others can spare.” “Shouldn’t they be coming back to us soon?” the Deacon said. “Soon. Yes, soon.” That was the first lie Jules Turmain told the Deacon. The others were not coming back. They’d been gone for two days without axes, knives, food or flint. One had run off into the bush in his long pants. They’d been driven mad by bugs, by the same fever that had the Deacon. Jules had brought the group of them north across the river away from the encampment once the fevers began. The young priest insisted on coming although he had been healthy then. He didn’t want the others to die without rites. Now there would be no one to give the rites to the priest. For whatever reason – luck, strength, stubbornness – Jules seemed immune to the fever. He could not catch his death no matter what. The rapids burned the Deacon’s ears. The sound of his blood, the sound of the rapids: both cataracts that hollowed out his skull. The fever had taken him to an ill-defined place, a place where his faith meant nothing, a place that made him forget God. It wasn’t the temptation of doubt that plagued him. He’d faced that abyss many times. Long nights that echoed with questions had been part of his training. He’d embraced the doubt as part of this faith, the shadow of faith, as if doubt was evidence of God’s light. But this land, the fever, brought him a different trouble. Not doubt, but nothingness. It was the absence of any emotion, thought or vexation that worried him now. When he closed his eyes he saw darkness. Wrapping his mind in a string of prayers, he faded into a visionless stupor, into a place where nothing from this world or the next appeared. Was this death? No loving arms, no angelic host, just an unnameable darkness, the absence of God. He fought to stay awake. And waking was worse than the eternal absence. This body throbbed with its pains. And although he accepted the pain, had in fact endured stronger discomforts, he was growing weak, his will was weakening, and the pain, the desire – yes, there was that – the desire to be rid of pain grew stronger. He knew if he died in this hollow place, he would die forever. He took no comfort in the promise of death if death held nothing. “Please, God. Do not take this from me,” he said of his last thread of faith. Jules sat nearby. The fire was one of the finest he’d built, ever. It’d been rolling now for hours without a sputtering. The deep caverns of the Deacon’s cheeks played shadows across his face. It was death. Jules had seen it many times in the faces of friends and other priests who’d followed their faith into unmarked graves. Here it was again. The Deacon would not last the night. Jules became aware of a thick scent, not the rotting sourness of the priest, but a deep musk. He could smell it through his skin. It was the stench of a lifetime living wild, unwashed. He choked on the dense air. The Deacon roused from his sleep as if dosed with smelling salts. He looked at Jules across the fire pit. “What have you done?” said the Deacon. Jules loaded his rifle, quickly, carefully tapping the wadding and shot. He drew his long knife from its scabbard and kicked up the fire. Embers spread through the air, raining down in the brush nearby. The fire might spread, he knew it. Panic overrode his senses. Let the north shore, its swamps and blood-hungry forests burn like the sun. He wanted out from the putrid cloud. In the expanded light he saw it: grey, almost black, a streak of gold on its head. A bushman. Spirit of the forest. For a moment in the orange light, it allowed itself to be seen. Crouching down, its arms on its knees, the unblinking blackness of its eyes on the men. The Deacon was awake now, more awake than he’d been in days. “A demon,” he said in a voice that howled from a depth he didn’t know existed. Jules felt the rifle in his hands and knew he could have held a canon and be just as helpless. There was no way to steady his hand, no way to instruct his finger on the trigger. His mind screamed “aim, fire,” but the connection to his body was severed. The creature crouching at the edge of shadow was easily as tall as Jules when standing. A deep rolling growl came from its chest, a high whistle from its mouth. It made clicking sounds like dried reeds hanging from string. It reached out one hand to a flat stone. Then it was gone. Without a sound, it was gone, leaving only a bundle of leaves and twigs on the flat stone. Somehow in the sound of the rapids, in the memory of the creature’s steady growl, in the sharp clicks and tweets it made, Jules heard – or understood – the word “drink.” The image of the leaf bundle boiling in a pot accompanied the thought. Jules boiled the leaves and twigs until the water was the colour of clay. He cooled it with water from his canteen and gave it to the Deacon who drank with sacramental zeal.
