Jikalu Wood

Jikalu Wood is a working landscape where knowledge of animal behavior and distance becomes a matter of survival. Van relies on the forest’s familiar seasonal patterns to care for pyuika, while Hohsalle later seeks to use a hunting manor there as a treatment center, positioned far enough from nearby communities to limit exposure without being impossibly remote.

Setting and Seasonal Ecology

The wood is presented through changing seasons and the needs of animals moving through it. Van knows that pyuika calving grounds are almost always in the same place, and that their narrower roaming range and familiar routes make their movements more predictable than those of reindeer. Such knowledge is learned by children who accompany adults in the forest, observing the herd and its habits from an early age.

The forest also supplies food important to breeding. In winter, Van digs fresh ashimi from beneath the snow and feeds it to the pyuika, especially during mating season and pregnancy, when the animals seem to crave it. The work is arduous, but it supports the prospect of strong calves. For Van, ashimi’s scent is more than a practical guide: it stirs memories of the night the rochai came, making the forest’s resources inseparable from the dangers remembered there.

Pyuika and the Uses of Local Knowledge

Pyuika are affectionate but poorly suited to confinement. Once bonded, they remember their human companions and become lonely when separated. Tsupi’s repeated nudging of Van had shown that she was attached to him; lost in unfamiliar woods, with no herd nearby to accept her, she was likely to return once the scent of an ossam faded. But the timing mattered: in fall, the mating season, the scent of a bull elk had put her in heat and drawn her into the forest.

Knowledge of plant behavior could also make these high-spirited animals manageable without forcing them into a life for which they were unsuited. Mohoki, a lichen growing on old trees, repels pyuika. Braided into ropes and placed around a fence, it can keep them penned; planted strategically along their habitual routes, it can influence where they travel. Yet enclosure is a poor substitute for free movement: pyuika may leap a fence or decline if trapped behind one, and herders prefer to let them roam by day, penning them at night when wolves prowl. Van is saddened to learn that traders from Okuba sold pyuika without telling their buyers about mohoki, leaving them ignorant of a basic means of handling the animals.

Herding, Migration, and Shared Work

Van’s experience is tested when he helps Ohma’s family raise pyuika alongside reindeer. He had persuaded the family to let the pyuika roam freely in spring, despite their fear that the animals would not return. The animals’ resistance to restraint made ordinary livestock methods unsuitable; the more dependable approach was to accustom them to people from birth and cultivate a lasting individual bond.

The two species’ seasonal needs then created a practical conflict. Reindeer had to move to summer pasture, where sea winds kept horseflies and mosquitoes away and better grazing was available. But that migration coincided with pyuika calving, and the previous year’s forced journey—when the animals were hitched to a rope and led after the reindeer—may have contributed to their failure to breed. The family and Van therefore sought help from neighboring Zolian immigrant families, many of whom also struggled to breed pyuika. Three of Kiya’s nephews stayed to learn from Van and Tohma, while the others took the reindeer to summer pasture; Kiya remained to care for Yuna. The arrangement turned specialized forest knowledge into shared work, even as Van’s battlefield memories made the nephews’ Zolian appearance difficult for him to bear.

A Place for Preventive Medicine

Jikalu Wood later acquires a second, public-health purpose. After Izam is bitten, Hohsalle asks the king to lend him the hunting manor in the wood so he can establish a temporary treatment center and isolate anyone with mittsual. He argues that waiting until someone becomes ill would be too late. The site is at a useful distance from the manor where they are speaking, Kazan, and the governor’s palace: neither so close as to compromise separation nor so far that it cannot serve them.

The king agrees and promises to send workmen to prepare the manor. Hohsalle cannot yet determine whether Izam has rabies; because the bite is on the ankle and the interval is short, he considers rabies unlikely, and notes that the symptoms could also follow a dog bite or deep wound. His request is precautionary rather than a claim of diagnosis. On the afternoon of the ninth day after the falcon hunt, a messenger from the governor summons him from the infirmary to the palace, where the possibility of a rash in Utalu signals that the threat has become urgent. The planned isolation site thus reflects the same principle that governs Van’s animal care: decisions made before a crisis can matter more than attempts to contain its consequences afterward.