Twenty years ago a small story was published in Fantasy Quarterly #1, a tale of a tribe of elves, lovingly drawn by Wendy Pini, assisted by her husband Richard. Shortly thereafter this story became an independant-press comic book that has forever left its mark on not only the comic book industry, but on Fantasy writers, and even children s literature. At the center of this phenomenon is the tale of one elf, Cutter, who is perhaps the one character most appropriate for the title Mythic Hero, though he is surrounded by others who have followed their own Mythic Quests, and who are drawn from Mythic traditions almost older than time.
The tradition of the Mythic Hero as presented by Joseph Campbell in Hero with a Thousand Faces, is a simple one, and it repeats over and over again in story and legend. First, the Hero has an unusual birth, though this is necessarily a vague requirement. Next, the individual is marked from childhood in some way, or initiated into greatness. Then the Call to Adventure is issued, and the Hero refuses the Call, only to accept it later. Then the Road of Trials, on which the Hero is assisted by companions, without whom success would be impossible. The Hero undertakes a journey to the Underworld, either literal, as in Orpheus' Journey, or metaphorical, or a turning back on all that was held dear for a time. But the Hero rises again, and returns from the Underworld and gains immortality as a result of the Quest, again either literal or metaphoric.
Cutters Birth was exceptional in several ways. He was born to two elves, Bearclaw and Joyleaf. They were lifemates, but more than that, they were Recognized lifemates. Recognition is a specialized form of soul-bonding, "soul meets soul" (Book One, 69), specific to the elves Wendy and Richard have created, and its purpose is to create new life, a child who would "number among the strongest and most gifted of their race" (Book One, 139). Even though Recognition is the rule more often than the exception in childcreation, it is still exceptional. Also, Bearclaw was the chief of the tribe of elves, and as his son, Cutter would one day take his place.
Cutter's Childhood started calm and peaceful, or at least as much as it could be when the elves were actively hunted by the humans in the area in addition to the dangers of the semi-nomadic, hunter lifestyle they had adopted so many thousands of years before that no one could even remember the time before, or wanted to remember. The elves were bound to wolves, through the shared blood of a common ancestor who changed her shape, Timmain, (Book One), and so had adopted certain aspects of the lupine lifestyle as fit the circumstances.
His Initiation into his Quest happened early. It wasn't a true Call to Adventure, for that was later, but it primed the pump, so to speak. When Cutter was only sixteen his life was forever changed by the attack of a terrible beast named Madcoil (Book One, 101- 119). Madcoil decimated the small tribe, taking with it not only Cutter's mother, Joyleaf, but his father as well, who, in his terrible, soul-rending grief challenged the beast to battle. Cutter was able to defeat Madcoil only with the help of all the elves.
Some six years after Madcoil's attack, humans burn down the forest where the elves live, and they are forced to flee for their lives, and end up crossing a terrible desert to find an oasis, Sorrow's End, and there discover other elves, a tribe called the Sun Villagers. They had thought themselves the only ones. This discovery sets Cutter on the path that would take him all across the world and would change the histories of not only elvenkind, but humankind as well. The discovery of other elves on the world was his Call to Adventure.
However, this early Quest is not Cutter's only Quest. His larger Quest found its Call to Adventure in the scheming of a certain half-elf/half-troll named Two-Edge, the same smith who created Cutter's sword, New Moon, which had been his father's sword. Hidden in the pommel of the sword is a key, the Key to Cutter's early Quest for the Palace (Book Two), for the key opens the door to a vault (Book Four) wherein is hidden Two- Edge s treasure, a collection of elf-sized armor.
However, after journeying a great deal, and finding yet another group of elves, called the Gliders, hidden in a mountain, which they called Blue Mountain and which they had shaped to fit their hazy memories of the home of the High Ones, Cutter wanted nothing more than to rest a while and take comfort in the Wolfrider Way, a code of behavior that combined lupine behaviors with elven ones, and is the closes thing the Wolfriders had to a law (Book Three 139-140). But the leader of the elves of Blue Mountain, Lord Voll, had issued a challenge of his own, to seek out the ancestral home of the elves, the Palace, and he would not be refused. Cutter refused the Call to Adventure, and so the Quest from him was usurped, and in the usurpation, Lord Voll died (Book Three 149-151). The Quest was not his to take, and he was cut down for it.
After Lord Voll's death, Cutter and his tribemates once again discover more elves, a tribe called the Go-Backs, who are camped on the base of the last mountain stretch between them and the Palace and locked in a war with the Trolls who live in the mountain and who wish to claim the Palace for themselves, not because they value it, but because the elves want it. The Palace calls to the Elves deep in their souls, and the call gets stronger the closer to the Palace the elf is. Some years before, the tribe was caught by the pull of the Palace and sought it out, taking the name Go-Backs to signify this. In the Go-Back lodge, Cutter gives a stirring speech (Book Four 43), convincing his people to go to war for the Palace, but in accepting the challenge, he accepts not just the war for the Palace, but all that it implies and symbolizes, the history of his people and an irrevocable change from what has been. He accepts the Call to lead his people down paths they have never trod, but that they must follow for the future of their two-mooned world which would one day be called Abode.
Cutter's Road of Trials actually began that day that the humans burned down the forest in an effort to destroy the elves. Though he didn't know it then, his feet had been laid on a path that he could not help but follow. On his journey he has the assistance of the other elves that he has already encountered. His best friend, his brother in all but blood, is Skywise, an introspective proto-astronomer, who is also a Wolfrider, who was born to tragedy when his parents died on the day of his birth (Hidden Years 5). Cutter s lifemate is Leetah, a Sun Villager and a healer of tremendous ability, who is a Mythic Heroine in her own right, having faced down death personally and having come back from that journey (Hidden Years 9). And later the High One, Timmain, the mother of the Wolfrider tribe, also travels with him. She is the Great Mother (Leeming 135), the past, and the future of their race. She was the memory keeper for the ancestors of the elves before they came to the World of Two Moons (Hidden Years 6), and she is a living emblem of all they were and can yet be. Two-Edge, a Trickster, also helps Cutter on his Quest. As does Lord Voll, whose death calls up images of the Dying God-King, and even Winnowill, who, in her destruction of the Palace, forces the elves to become even more involved with humans (Hidden Years 10, Shards)
It is interesting to note that the courtship of Cutter and Leetah is a mini-Quest all its own, preparatory to the later Quests. Leetah is the one who refuses the call of Recognition, though, only to relent in the end. Cutter suffers through three tests to prove himself to her as a result of Rayek's challenge (Book One). Rayek was Leetah's lovemate, and the assumption had been that they would eventually become lifemates. The immortality of this Quest is not in either Cutter or Leetah, but in the result, their children, and offspring has always been a form of immortality. Cutter faces many places where he, for a time, sets aside the Quest of his life, and loses himself in the Way, but these are not his real journeys to the Underworld, he does not turn his back on what he is. He does not do that until that terrible day when Rayek steals his family from him, his lifemate, his children, and his best friend, and takes them into the future in an effort to prevent the accident which caused the High Ones to be stranded, and caused the Wolfriders to be (Book Eight 58-59). His heart dies that day and he turns his back, not just on his lifetime's Quest, but on the Way as well, counting the years as they pass, losing that which makes him Elf, and counting, forever counting, as the humans do (Book Eight 61-90). Elves do not think as Humans do. Elfin thought has a timelessness to it that is neccessary if they are to live millions of years, which is the potential for those with pure elfin blood. Timelessness is also a quality of the Wolfrider Way, they call it the Now of Wolf Thought, and it enables them to pass centuries peacefully. Cutter waits 500 years like this until the pain that gnaws at his heart can be endured no longer. At that time he, and his tribemates, go into Wrapsleep, a form of suspended animation, a move Cutter had previously condemned (Book Eight 79). Even after he wakes up, and is reunited with his family, he is still tormented by those five hundred years, and cannot stop counting the years. After his grudge with Rayek is dealt with in a tremendous fight, Cutter is cleansed, but he is not yet freed from his Underworld completely (Hidden Years 9.5).
Cutter emerges from his Underworld only after the Palace is lost (Hidden Years 10), shattered into a million pieces, which are gathered up by the humans for their leader, Grohmul Djun. Because the Palace holds the souls of all the Elves, who are bound to it by their very nature, it is crucial to the Elves that they recover it, at almost any cost. It is at the time of the Shattering of the Palace that Cutter finally bonds with a wolf-cub again (Hidden Years 11), and feels himself to be back in his proper place. It is a new beginning for him, and he is so much the stronger for the trials.
Cutter s trials have not ended though. He splits his tribe into two (Hidden Years 15), sending some away with his daughter to protect the Way, and once again separating him from his family, and taking the rest, fighters all, with him to war for the Palace, and for the fate of all Elfinkind. On the way he loses two tribemates to death (Shards 10 and 12), and one to a heart-attack (Shards 3), even though that elf survives to fight another day. In the end Cutter and his band succeed, and rebuild the Palace with Love and the High One's help. Then they go back to the place of the old Holt, the one that burned down, and settle for peace, after gathering up as many of the elves as would come (Shards 16).
Cutter's immortality is, at the moment, an elusive thing. He is, by virtue of the wolf- blood in his veins, mortal. Leetah, Cutter's lifemate, has the ability to purge the wolf-blood from him. She has not done so, but the possibility is there. He has irrevocably changed the history of elves and men, and the humans will continue to be influenced by the elven cultures. However, the tale is yet unfinished. At some point in time the Elves leave their World of Two Moons, Abode, in the Palace, and go exploring, and event the fans of the series call "elfgottdammerung", and even if Cutter has died by then, his legacy of Change goes with the elves wherever they go.
Cutter's Quest is a lifelong one, and it is Change. His life is a series of little Quests that build into bigger ones, ever cycling bigger and bigger. In Kings of the Broken Wheel, it was mentioned that Cutter was the only Chief who could keep the "whole, barking, four-tribe mess" (Book Eight) of what the Wolfriders had become together because his was the vision and the power. He was the one chosen by fate to walk the path of Change, and Change has been his Quest since the beginning. He led his people across the desert to an oasis where they learned that there were other ways to go, and then he led them into a Mountain where they saw the danger that Stagnation brought, and he brought Change with him. Then he led his hunters into War, and greater change was not seen until they saw the truth of their birth and their heritage, and they met a High One. He has led his people into Change after Change after Change, and it not so great a stretch to accept the much heralded "Final Quest" as being also about Change, and the ability to accept all the Universe as their world to be travelled. After all, that is the rule of life. Change or die. Bend with the winds or snap like the dried-out stick of wood you have become.
Mythic images and patterns abound in Elfquest, from the central Mythic Hero, Cutter, to all his companions. This is part of the enduring genius of Elfquest. By tapping into these primal threads, Wendy and Richard give their well-crafted World of Two Moons a strong base to stand on, and stand it does, and has for twenty wonderful years, and will for many twenties more.
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