Gewa
| Type | Tree |
|---|---|
| Kingdom | Blighburrow |
| Ruler | Alistair Archibald |
| Sacred Book | Book of Land |
| Notable sites | Hollow of Gewa |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
Gewa is the great tree of Blighburrow, large enough that the kingdom's Sacred Chamber is cut into her trunk. The Book of Land is kept inside her, its energy runs through her bark and down her roots into the whole of Eslura, and Alistair Archibald introduces her to Beatrice Tidal as "natural-born protector and home of the Book of Land".[1] The chamber inside her takes her name: the Hollow of Gewa.[1]
The tree
Gewa is larger than Bea had believed a tree could grow. Her branches stretch high overhead and her canopy shields the ground beneath from the sunlight. Green light seeps from the veins of her bark and falls on those standing at her trunk and on the city far below.[1]
Her height is easiest to judge by the approach. A glass tunnel runs out of the city's greenhouse hundreds of feet above the ground and ends at Gewa's trunk, and even from there the canopy is still overhead. Blighburrow lies far below, made nearly invisible by its garden roofs, and Bea felt sick looking down at it.[1]
The approach
A door is cut into the side of the trunk at the end of the tunnel. Four towering figures of the Sacred Guard stand in front of it, cloaked in green, masked in wood with only their emerald eyes showing, spiked wooden staffs in their gloved hands. A single nod from Alistair was enough to part them and let visitors into the tree.[1] Behind the door the way narrows to a tunnel barely tall enough to stand in and wide enough only for single file, and then opens out into the hollow.[1]
Hollow of Gewa
The chamber inside the trunk is a circular cavern the size of a football field, or two, crossed by a narrow railless walkway that ends at a platform in the middle of the empty space. The Book of Land floats above the platform, pages down, pouring green light out of the emerald Heart rooted in its spine.[1]
The Book of Land
Gewa is not simply the place where the Book is stored. Alistair told Bea that Gewa hosts the Book inside her trunk, that the Book's energy courses through her and so over the city and the land, and that it travels down her roots and spreads across the whole of Eslura.[1] The traffic is visible in the hollow: green lightning rolls across the surface of the Book and shoots up through the darkness into the tree.[1]
That makes the tree the kingdom's protection and its exposure at once. Alistair says the Hollow of Gewa keeps its power for as long as he is still breathing, and that the three surviving Books will eventually run out of energy trying to cover the loss of the Book of Fire's Heart, after which their shields fall weak.[1][2]
Naming and worship
Gewa was named on purpose and by people who thought naming a plant mattered. Nordwelg says the first settlers of Blighburrow, and the kingdom's first Sacred Ruler in particular, were keen on naming plants and held it to be as important as naming people; that they worshipped the tree, and all the plants for that matter, more even than they worshipped Aezaros; and that they held a naming ceremony each time a new bud sprouted. He calls them "a little bit twisted up in the roots".[1] Alistair refuses the joke, and answers that many of the customs Blighburrow appreciates today would not exist without those ancestors.[1]
Alistair speaks of Gewa as a she throughout, and what he claims for her is protection rather than shelter: she hosts the Book, she carries its energy, she is the natural-born protector of his people. The narration, which follows Bea, keeps to the neuter and reaches for the vocabulary of size and light rather than of life.[1] Whether Gewa is alive in any sense past being a tree, how old she is, who named her and what the name means are none of them established.
Notable events
- Alistair Archibald walked Bea along the glass tunnel and into the hollow after a Shadow Reaper clawed her wrist, she leaning on a branch Nordwelg had cut her for a stick and he a step behind with his arms out. Inside, he drew the Book down with the green light of his claws and had her lay her hand on its Heart.[1]
Behind the scenes
The pronunciation guide at the back of both novels gives the name as Gee-wuh, and files it under the heading OTHER rather than under PLACES or SPECIES, alongside the names of the gangs of Varaar and of the Eyearke Stone.[3][4] The prose settles the question no better than the guide does.
Gewa appears only in Sacred: Eslura's Calling. Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened does not return to Blighburrow and names her only in that guide, so what became of the tree during the war is not recorded.[4]