Miguk, the Holy Man

And then it began, as if everyone understood at once.  It began in the east as a thunder, rolled against the cliffs of Iwo as a pounding surf.  It was a chant.  It was a roar.  It was magnificent.

     “Miguk!” they cried out, called to each other.  “Miguk!” they shouted to the heavens, drummed into the silent sands, desolate dunes, of Iwo.  It spread the length of the Iwo Peninsula, reverberating up and down the coast line, startling gulls in flight, fish in the sea.  It descended upon Kotobi, would-be metropolis to the west, as an avalanche, not as bits and pieces of tiny rock and gravel, but as massive boulders rolling, rollicking through the city, each one echoing the chant, “Miguk!  Miguk!”

     It sounded the entire length of the island.  It rolled as waves, as thunder, to the north, over the placid waters of Lake Makli, sending ripples across its surface that never returned, that lapped on distant shores, then rolled on to the caves on the northern slopes of the island, echoing in their midst.

     It erupted in the sleepy hamlet of Nasaka to the south, as the roar of cannon fire across the morning sky, awakening people from their prayers.  “Miguk!  Miguk!  Miguk!” it exploded on their lives, in their ears.  It was faint, distant at first, then grew louder, more ominous, as the funeral procession approached, neared the great Nasaka Temple.

     Buddhist monks, in orange saffron robes, were startled by its force, its intensity.  They came out of their rooms, their studies, their lessons, to peer at the hills and the skies to the north.

     Two Buddhist monks approaching the Nasaka Temple along its great walkway were stopped, astonished by its muffled roar.  “What is it?” one asked the other.  “It cannot be thunder,” he observed.  “There are no clouds in the sky.”

     “No,” the other replied slowly.  “Can you not hear what they are saying?  It is the Miguk.  He is coming to Nasaka Temple.”

     Farmers in the field heard it, stopped their plowing for a moment to listen.  Their animals, their buffalo, heard it as well, and shit a brick – great grey pancakes of dung that splattered on the road, splashed into the rice fields, gladdening the farmers’ hearts.

     A lone groundhog heard it – the chant, the roar – stopped by his hole, his home in the ground, pricked up his ears, listened for a moment in some confusion and consideration.  In an instant, a flash, he was dead, picked up by a marauding hawk on its way to lunch.  Yet why had the hawk not heard, been startled in its flight, in the sky high above?

     Even Sorak heard it on the far side of the island.  He had been fishing that day, and at noon had started back to his cave when he heard, thought he detected, a faint rumble far to the south.  It couldn’t have been anything, he thought to himself, trying to shrug it off.  Kotobi was miles away.  Besides, Sorak didn’t even know the old man’s funeral procession had been scheduled for that day.  Of course, there could have been a storm in Nasaka, on the southern part of the island, and he never would have known.  It could have bypassed him altogether.

     Yet as he climbed higher to his home, his cave above the sea, he became conscious of an unmistakable rumble, an ominous thunder, coming from the south, that echoed above and beyond the roar of the sea below.  He had become attuned to the sounds of nature during his stays, his lonely forays, into this uninhabited part of the island, and he didn’t like what he sensed, what he felt.  As he hiked above the sea, through the dense foliage and rain forests, the jungle birds began to cry out, in fear and alarm, as if a fire, an electrical storm, was approaching; an alien, unwanted presence, was in their midst.

     Sorak climbed the highest ridge near his cave, tried to peer out over the land at Kotobi far in the distance, as if to see smoke from a distant fire.  But Kotobi was miles away, only hills and valleys and jungle between, stretching for as far as the eye could see.  And Sorak could see nothing unusual, out of the ordinary, on that bright sunshiny day.  Still, he felt uncomfortable, unsure of the situation.

     He looked down into the valley below, closer to home, thinking the danger could have been near rather than in far distant Kotobi.  Why did he think, know instantly, the sounds he heard were of human origin, of