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93 pages

English

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Description

In the fertile crescent of folklore, the fruit of knowledge is plucked. At that same moment, on the other side of the world, a rabbit named Joonie is born, nearly lifeless. Nurtured by the Sun and the Moon, Joonie must grow to understand his destiny while thundering clouds of change gather across the front range and threaten existence itself.

Informations

Publié par	First Edition Design Publishing
Date de parution	17 décembre 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781622872411
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0240€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Joonie And The Great Harbinger Stampede
Copyright © 2012 by Daniel Landes
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Sakura Publishing in 2012. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
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Digital Edition of Joonie And The Great Harbinger Stampede Is Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing
ISBN 978-1622872-41-1
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com
(worldwide distribution)
----------------------
Sakura Publishing PO BOX 1681 Hermitage, PA 16148 www.sakura-publishing.com
Ordering Information: Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address above.
Orders by U.S. trade bookstores and wholesalers. Please contact Sakura Publishing: Tel: (330) 360-5131; or visit www.sakura-publishing.com .
Printed in the United States of America
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First Edition ISBN-10: 0984678549 ISBN-13: 978-0-9846785-4-9 Book cover and design by Michael King Book editing by Jason Heller
www.sakura-publishing.com
Printed in the United States of America
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Table of Contents
FOREWORD
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
EPILOGUE

To the Brothers Landes: breathe & behold
FOREWORD
The best authors nourish the soul. In Dan Landes’ case, that nourishment is literal.
Many years ago I began eating at his Denver restaurant WaterCourse Foods, which had just opened. It was a small, humble vegetarian place. That said, WaterCourse was committed—and it still is—to serving food that’s far heartier than what people might expect from a meat-free eatery.
But it was more than Dan’s food that nourished. Even as WaterCourse grew into the thriving cornerstone of Denver’s community that it is now, it had a vibe. It was warm. It was earthy. It was soulful.
And that was all before Ravi Zupa came along.
Ravi is a visual artist from Denver whom Dan commissioned to begin painting murals inside WaterCourse. They were gorgeous. Lavishly detailed, they depicted herds of buffalo, families of rabbits, and other animals coexisting in a prairie setting. On a deeper level, they illustrated the ethic of empathy and sustainability that WaterCourse embodies. But on the surface, they were simply stunning to look at.
Later I came to learn that Ravi’s murals weren’t conceived as mere wallpaper.
There was a story behind them.
For years Dan has had this story bubbling in the back of his mind. It involves his own grappling with certain questions, some of which have haunted him since childhood. Questions like, how can organisms coexist peacefully? What is the nature of individual self-awareness versus collective identity, and how do beings come to possess it? The future restaurateur in him also wondered about humankind’s biblical fall from grace—specifically the role eating played in that fall.
From there, Dan’s ideas and Ravi’s artwork began to take on a shape of their own. That shape? A book: Joonie and the Great Harbinger Stampede.
As a book, Joonie is a fun, thrilling read. It has an intrepid young hero on a journey of self-discovery, brave friends, horrifying villains, and an epic adventure that leaves none unchanged.
But, like the murals in WaterCourse, there’s a deeper level.
Joonie is a young, frail rabbit, and he is on a quest. He didn’t ask to go on that quest. He has no choice. But along the way, he begins to embrace his destiny. He grows. That growth, though, isn’t measured in inches. Its measured in spirit. It’s measured in the way Joonie’s own consciousness, his own identity, is pitted against the wants and needs of the many.
Animals, Joonie comes to discover, are tribal in nature. That tribalism takes many forms. It can be used for good or for ill. It can be healthy or dysfunctional. Usually it’s some combination of these elements. Like an ecosystem, collectives seek their own balance. But what happens when different collectives, different tribes, come in conflict with each other? When there are only so many resources to go around? Does it all boil down to Might Makes Right? Kill Or Be Killed? Is there a more humane path? And in the midst of these species-wide conflicts, how much power—if any—does the individual have? And if?
These are heavy questions. Indeed, long before Dan pondered them, philosophers since the dawn of time have debated them. Joonie doesn’t necessarily find the answers, any more than Dan (or the philosophers) do. In fact, Joonie and the Great Harbinger Stampede is far more than a book of ideas. It’s a book of action. It’s a book of horror. It’s a book about Joonie’s coming-of-age, during which he confronts the limits of his own instincts and compassion and fear—and then learns how to push beyond them.
That said, it’s also a book of great laughter. Like one’s head-strong best friend, the porcupine known as Pencilthin is as brave and valiant as he is hilariously foolhardy. Like a Zen master, the character of Grandfather Tortoise speaks in infuriating riddles, with a wry sense of humor concerning even the most frightening aspects of the universe.
And that, at its heart, is what Joonie and the Great Harbinger Stampede is all about. It’s about how the big questions and giant forces in the world can be embodied in the smallest beings. It’s about the ironies and paradoxes that make life both absurd and rich in wonder.
And it’s about nourishment: of the body, of the mind, and of the soul. After all, for as long as I’ve known Dan and partaken of his food, his friendship, and his wisdom, that’s always been his bread and butter.
—Jason Heller

The Sun, hearth of affection and life, pours burning love on the delighted earth.

Arthur Rimbaud
PROLOGUE
The First War
She lay in the shade of a tree adorned with fragrant blossoms, watching the clouds drift by. She thought of nothing, and almost nothing thought of her.
The Sun illuminated first her toes and then began a slow promenade up her legs.
In the shade he scratched his head, beheld his fingernails, and gave them a curious sniff. He looked at her and then the tree. He followed her eyes up to the drifting clouds. To him, his fingernails, her, the tree, and the clouds were all the same. He chewed on grasses and continued to scratch himself. The Sun did not shine on him.
Across the fecund ground It slithered from the shade into the light and coiled at her feet. It was in love with her. Its eyes moved slowly over her. Nothing It had ever seen rivaled her flawless beauty. It listened to the slow exchange of her breath, in and out, in and out, the exchange in perfect harmony with the tree.
She saw It coiled at her feet in the soft grasses. She smelled the fragrance of the blossoms, felt the warmth of the sun on her skin, and heard the ripple of the joining rivers nearby. To her, the grasses, the blossoms, the sun, It, and the rivers were all the same.
It knew love, and because that love was unrequited, It knew pain.
Him and Her knew no love, they knew no pain, to them everything is everything. Except one thing, and this one thing they knew to be different and forbidden. How they knew this they did not know. They just knew. And because of that singular knowledge they avoided that which they knew to be forbidden… for a while .
It lay coiled at her feet, admiring her, staring at her, waiting. Waiting to be noticed. It watched her bathe and sleep. Across the entire garden it watched her gather food and eat. It noticed everything she did, and she noticed nothing about It.
It noticed she never, ever, ate the fruit from the tree.
Why do you not eat the fruit from the tree? It engaged her.
It is forbidden, she said.
It uncoiled and slithered right up to her perfect feet and pressed on, Ahhh, is that so… And who forbade it?
Prologue: The First War
She stared at It and blinked.
Seizing the moment, It concluded, It was I that forbade it. Again she blinked.
She reached down and picked up the ripened fruit at her feet. She took a bite. She became aware of the juice running down her chin. She noticed she was naked.
Who are you? It asked.
I am… She began but before she could finish It had returned to the hole from which It slithered, victorious.
At that very moment, far away in the Front Range of the high plains desert, a mother gave birth.
On the hottest day of the year Hat Rabbit gave birth to three beautiful bunnies. One appeared stillborn. As was tradition, the mother nursed her newborns while the nurse-mother took the limp babe to the mouth of the old hole which overlooks the Front Range and laid him facing south, in a nest of soft down to await his return into the earth.
When rabbits die inside the warren, which is rare, most succumb to predators and are taken into