At the passing of the cold time and the onset of the new owers, the people await the celestial unfolding of the new moon. It is a point in time that marks the moment when all children entering their eleventh year are beckoned to make the journey. A journey they will embark as children, only to return as adults upon the completion of a time honored rite of passage. The children are tasked to end and kill the Taniwha.
The Taniwha, an animal revered as much by man as it is by the majestic forest itself, waits patiently for the children to arrive, for it knows that without the children its kind would one day perish.
The ritual is twofold. For the children, it is a time to prove themselves to their community and claim their rightful station. For the Taniwha, it is a time of renewal and rejuvenation. The forest will bear witness to, and chronicle the children’s thirty day Journey. They will set out in the darkness of the new moon and cannot return to their home until the moon cycle is complete and rises once again full in the sky.

Their mission and quest is to retrieve the seed of the Taniwha and sow it back into the forest. To do so, the children must rst nd the creature before courting it. According to legend, many children have been known to sleep alongside the Taniwha for days on end before being permitted to enter its hallowed and sacred space. Once inside, they must retrieve the Taniwha stone before exiting through the life force of the Taniwha. This act of exiting kills the Taniwha, but it is a sacri ce the creature openly welcomes for it is through the forfeiture of its own life that the preservation of its kind is interminably insured.

If successful, the children would have retrieved the Taniwha stone buried within the animal’s sacred innards. Upon exiting, the stone is to be split open, revealing the Taniwha seeds. The child must rst gently pluck the seeds from the warm, protective uid, then sow them back into the rich and fertile soil of the forest as they nd and make their way home. This visceral collaboration of life and death insures the continuation of the mythical creature as well as preserving the life and future of their very own community. For without the Taniwha ritual, they would remain forever as children in the mnemonic sanctuary of legend and lore.

 

According to traditional edict, they are instructed to return home with the shell of the Taniwha stone as evidence and proof of their journey and devoted respect for creature and forest alike.