The Falling of the Leaves

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: I chose to translate The Falling of the Leaves¹ not because I think it tells a simple, easily translatable story (because frankly, it doesn't), but because when I met its composer, Lulica², spoke to her about the poem's background, and then saw it being performed myself, I was completely and utterly enchanted by it. I wanted to share the sense of wonder I experienced with as many people as I could, and so I decided to do my best to translate it into Common Leonic. I hope (though I seriously doubt) that I was able to do such a poem justice.

A little bit of context: ballads³ from Rellica tend to retell the stories of ancient Rellican myths, and while those myths' plots are expected to be common knowledge, different retellings will show different interpretations and perspectives of them — poetry in Rellica is a culture of iteration and exploration of the same fundamentally understood stories; A striving towards the beauty and divinity of the myths they retell. Now, The Falling of the Leaves is a retelling of the myth of the wind god⁴ Aollica, who is best known for being the creator of winter. Given that winter has a tendency to devastate crops (and is, just generally, an unpopular season), Aollica isn't often a well-liked character. But what drew me to the piece is that The Falling of the Leaves was born out of a desire to resist that portrayal, and so, in Lulica's retelling, Aollica is actually presented as the hero.

[Aihwua]⁵
An old woman stood on a ridge in the rain,
Looking out as she braced under gusts of the cold.
She saw to the east the vast kingdom's domain,
And to its south, the Lone Forest⁶ which glistened like gold.

She is Aollica, Gardener of Winds⁷,
And she sees before her what what alone saw:
A danger which at the old kingdom begins,
And that is because she has seen it before.

When she was a child, she happily played,
Ha'anele Ruaku⁸, a village, is where she resided.
But she grew scared of what to the south swayed:
Trees, which grew closer each day, while unguided.

Her family had laughed and said she should be gleeful;
The god of the forest was noble and fair⁹!
More of his trees would not be any evil.
And Aollica, laughed at, felt they did not care.

[Chorus]
Oh Aollica, you were ever lonely;
Ever since childhood, distrusted and scorned.
No wonder you grew to stay by yourself only,
When even your loved ones would leave you ignored.
Perhaps if they treated you fair as a kid,
You never would need to have done what you did.¹⁰
Still, you had no choice in the crime you committed,
Yet you're now remembered forever for it.

[Aihwua]
One day the village was changed when she woke;
Root, tree, and rock¹¹ had through each building grown.
But worst was what came unto the village folk:
Aollica found them now frozen as stone.

A voice from behind greeted her in the street.
There stood a man, handsome, his skin a bright lime.
His chest had been sculpted, his hair short and neat,
And from horns on his head there hung silver wind chimes.

He called himself Kone'ehwuica, and spoke with a fervour:
He was god of the forest; she should not be scared.
He told her that he was not going to hurt her,
And he seemed so sincere she was almost ensnared.

He walked up towards her, and tall did he loom,
And reached out a hand to Aollica's shoulder.
But Aollica bolted! Away from her doom,
Away from the village, alone to grow older.

[Chorus]
Oh Aollica, you were ever tortured,
But the suff'ring you faced, it would not be in vain.
You were only a child, alone, scared, and cornered,
When he took it all and let nothing remain.
Grief is what had you set out on your deed,
How could you know where it one day would lead?
You had no choice in the crime you committed,
Yet you're now remembered forever for it.

[Aihwua]
On that ridge passed decades as Aollica bided,
Towns being consumed¹² in an endless attrition.
But now it was time, for she had decided,
To save the kingdom — her ultimate mission.

The roads were exhausting, but she yet survived,
League after league, remaining steadfast.
In Kahulehulele Ani¹³, at last she arrived:
City of Mirrors, the kingdom's vain heart.

In the hall of the king she arrived after days,
And in the throne room, above her, there sat a blonde man.
And though he seemed absent as at his mirror he gazed,
King Kahio'anica held power in his hand.

Of the danger that choked out his kingdom she spoke,
But spoke also of a plan to avoid such a loss:
With a great wind she'd vanquish the forest with one stroke,
But it may cause great damage in bringing a frost.

[Chorus]
Oh Aollica, you were ever patient;
Plain as you brought your proposal to bear.
But you could have been kinder with your dry dictation;
For you spoke of famine like you didn't care.
Your bluntness¹⁴ may've been what tore your plan apart,
Or maybe you hadn't a chance from the start.
Still you had no choice in the crime you committed,
Yet you're now remembered forever for it.

[Aihwua]
Only after she spoke did Kahio¹⁵ turn around,
And he spoke just so slowly, like he relished the sound.
He called her a lying, disgusting, old worm.
The forest was beautiful¹⁶ and of no concern.

He claimed that Aollica insulted his name,
By suggesting that he was not fitting to rule.
"She just wants to make us all starve," he proclaimed.
"Let her be banished! Away with the fool!"

So by the arms was Aollica bound.
Though she hung her head low, she was silent, inert.
Outside the gates, she was thrown to the ground,
And they slammed them behind her, now banished, and hurt.

With eyes wet she bit the inside of her mouth.
She knew not what do, yet she took a deep breath.
Stumbling on, she then stepped to the south,
Where the forest then waited, offering death.

[Chorus]
Oh Aollica, you were ever hated;
They called you evil and named you a villain.
And though you stayed quiet, you deeply frustrated,
For you sought to save them yet they would not listen.
With the beauty of him all too charmed were those folk,
They would not consider a word that you spoke!
No, you had no choice in the crime you committed,
Yet you're now remembered forever for it.

[Aihwua]
Knowing that she could not do this alone,
She went between towns asking them for their aid.
But every time, away she was thrown,
Like when she was a child, laughed and distained,

With every step south hatred's all she could hear,
'Til she stood then before where his forest now grew.
Alone, now unable to bite back her tears,
She found herself questioning what she should do:

[Bridge]¹⁷
For all but her thought his forest to be harmless!
And should she now do it, they all would so hate her.
She'd wanted to help, yet they'd think her heartless;
"The turncoat who starved us in malice, a traitor".

But if she now turned tail and fled,
It is sure that the kingdom the forest would swallow!
Every last child by his hand would be dead;
Innocent people turned cold and left hollow.

There's naught else to do, she proclaimed to herself!
Even if her name would never be mourned,
She must give herself up; do all she can to help.
So she stood up, determined, To death she was sworn.

[Chorus]
Oh Aollica, you were ever stoic;
Despite all your struggles you still persevered.
You decided to do what was truly heroic,
To sacrifice all yet be never revered.
This final choice is all what it came down to,
But no-one should blame you for what you had chose.
Because you had no choice in the crime you committed,
Yet you're now remembered forever for it.

[Aihwua]
Lead by mended resolve into that which she dreaded,
Through verdant woodlands of people now gone,
Aollica knew not where she was now headed,
But the path then felt true, and so she pushed on.

Until she stumbled on something familiar,
A statue, seemingly made of stone;
Looking up at her was a human figure,
For she now stood in the ruins of her home.¹⁸

Again a cold voice greeted her from behind,
And Aollica turned, saw his face as he smiled.
"Hello." he said, his voice sharp in her mind,
And she felt like she was once again a scared child.

Though her will wavered, she stood and stayed sure.
"Kone'ehwuica," she spoke, and put fist to the sky,
"Too many you've hurt; I won't let you hurt more."
And around her the leaves rose to flutter and fly.

[Chorus]
Oh Aollica, you were ever mighty;
With one foul motion, you sundered the forest:
Leaves turning red swirled from trees in a blizzard,
As Kone'ehwuica looked on in terror, and withered.
No man alive has since seen you appear,
But the frost you created now echoes each year.
Though you had no choice in the crime you committed,
You're now remembered forever for it.

Oh Aollica, you were never honoured;
Through ages past you were cast as the villain:
The wicked demon who murdered a forest,
Who brought in the frost and invented a season.
You knew what you, through your sacrifice, sold,
But how tragic it's been how your story's retold,
Because you had no choice in the crime you committed,
Yet you're now remembered forever for it.

Footnotes

In Lelo Ekani, it is named "Ke Ha'ule Kaosi", which I've chosen to translate as "The Falling of the Leaves", but which could be validly translated with any form of definiteness or plurality on the word "Leaves". This is actually one of my favourite parts of Lelo Ekani; some may consider it as being a language full of ambiguity, but I prefer to think of it as really being full of intentional vagueness; it's not that saying "Ke Ha'ule Kaosi" is ambiguous, it's that the author doesn't need to be any more specific for you to understand what she's trying to say.
For the record, she gave me permission to refer to her here as "Lula", the informal form of "Lulica". Now, I don't care much for formalities, but I think I will still use "Lulica", if only because I think this version of the name sounds nicer.
The Lelo Ekani term is "melaho ahi" (literally, "fire song"), and "ballad" probably isn't a great translation. Aside from singing, it often also involves acting and dancing as key aspects, and I regret not being able to record that here.
"God" is a misleading term. The Lelo Ekani word is "melua", which just means "myth-people". They're said to be the semi-divine people who existed during the Age of Myth millennia ago, and whose actions still "Echo" to this day.
The square brackets throughout are used to designate which sections of the poem are spoken by the aihwua and which are spoken by the chorus.
In Lelo Ekani, it is called the "Nahele Meha", and it is actually a real forest, found on the south side of Rellica.
Written as "Kiha'apua Makani". "makani" translates plainly as "wind", but "kiha'apua" normally means "farmer". It was, however, clarified to me that in this context "kiha'apua" only means someone who cuts or tends to plants — a gardener.
It felt odd to translate the name of a village, so I've left it as is. However, this leads to the loss of the name's connotations, which I believe are important: "Ha'anele Ruaku" can be broken up into "ha'ani" (gift) + "-ele" (place) + "ruaku" (death). Literally, it means "deathly gift-place", but it may be more accurate to call it "Place of Death-gifts" or "Place of Sacrifice".
The original poem uses the word "pona" here, which conveys a concept that we don't actually have in Leona. It's this dual idea of both moral goodness and physical beauty — but speakers of Lelo Ekani don't view it as if it were a duality, as if it were two separate meanings of the word; it's a single meaning, a single word: "pona", which describes a perfect beauty of both body and spirit.
The poem returns to the idea again and again of "If things had gone differently, this terrible event would never need to have happened", but also seems to suggest that things were inevitable in the first place. This back and forth between fate and fault is a common theme in many pieces of mele ahi, and is one of the things that I, personally, really like about this poem.
To the Leonid audience, it may feel weird to lump in plants and rocks as being of the same domain of divinity. But Rellicans see them both as just being different parts of nature, and so Kone'ehwuica is as much a good of the forest as he is god of the dirt and stone beneath it.
The phrase used in the original poem actually means "to make (something) perfect", but is also associated with the idea of taking control over something in order to improve it. Its closest translation in Leonic is probably "consummate", but I'd like to avoid the modern connotations of that word.
"kahulehulele" is a redoubling of "kahule", which means town, and "ani" can mean either "glass" or "mirror". Kahulehulele Ani is a city that pops up in many Rellican myths — it's the centre of the world in the Age of Myth, so to speak. There's no evidence it was ever a real city, despite how many people have looked for it or its ruins.
In other myths or other retellings of this myth, being cold and ruthless is actually Aollica's primary characterisation. In fact, in more comical poems, Aollica is portrayed with incredibly dry humour.
It is typical to shorten "Kahio'anica" to just "Kahio" as a sly sign of disrespect. The name is actually related to the elvish "Cassius".
Again, the word "pona" is used. It's interesting that throughout the original version of the poem, both (and only) Kone'ehwuica and Kahio'anica are described as having pona. While for Kone'ehwuica this is a normal description, with Kahio'anica it's more typical to describe him as "nari", a word which similarly means beautiful, but in a more frivolous or narcissistic way (I've translated it as "vain").
A "bridge" is a traditional section of a work of mele ahi, and is used to reinforce the most emotionally charged part of the poem. The exact nature of the bridge in a performance depends on the emotion intended to be conveyed by the poem. In the Falling of the Leaves, the music and vocalisation becomes slower, but significantly more intense.
The equivalent of this scene in older retellings is actually the subject of the famous autumnal painting by Alois Vidius (That painting is also my favorite of his works that we have found).