Ellen Datlow - The Beastly Bride

All the folklore about seal maidens tends to focus on the forced marriages, the romantic betrayals, the unhappy relationships ending with the seal wife finding the skin her (at best) clueless husband has hidden under the thatch and swimming away, with or without her selkie children. I began by thinking about one of those traditional seal mothers, embittered and traumatized by her sojourn in the world of men. But I ended up writing about her daughter’s journey. My thanks to Claudia Carlson and Ellen Kushner, who both gave me very helpful advice in working out the pattern of my seal maiden’s story.

Kataya lies among the lichen, enjoying herself. In front of her runs the path the ants have furrowed in the moss, and she finds the seemingly pointless yet purposeful dashing to and fro very funny. She is playing; she puts little obstacles on the ants’ path: pine needles, cone scales, new spruce shoots, her own hairs. The ants just keep on creeping over, past, or under the obstacles; or, in the best case, they accept her gift and bring it inside their nest, even if they don’t actually know what to do with it.

Kataya concentrates, telling the ants in which direction she wants them to take a pine seed. She knows she cannot order the ants to take the booty far from the nest, or into a puddle, for instance. That’s not for tsirnika . But she may guide the ants. Kataya starts on the ant struggling next to her. She partly closes her eyes and tries to reach the ant’s mind. It’s a small mind, divided into tight compartments, tasting sour, very simple, and strong in its simplicity.

The ant is quite stubborn and goes its own way, and Kataya doesn’t approve. She lifts up her hand, but doing that, remembers the teachings. She imagines a huge hand rising up from behind the spruce tops, rising and then descending to crush her. Kataya shivers and looks again at the ants. It may be that her tsirnika isn’t very strong yet, only what any girl possesses from birth and what will be completed and thoroughly learned only by tsirnikoela , but she is capable of something. At least she knows enough not to break the rules of tsirnika .

Tsirnikoela.

Kataya shivers again; she doesn’t want to think of tsirnikoela . It is something each woman of the tribe will experience, one way or another, either while it’s happening to her personally or while participating in the ritual, and although the event is fascinating and right and proper, it’s also scary. Kataya remembers at least two girls who never returned from tsirnikoela .

Kataya would rather be concentrating on the ants. The one she’s been observing hesitates, as if reconsidering its direction. Lightly, she senses the ant’s mind, how it brushes on the edges of her own; the little mind of must-go-forward, the mind of part-of-tribe, and the large mind of doing-what-is-necessary.

Kataya concentrates very hard. She weaves a large pattern in her head, a pattern even the ant can understand, and there’s a place in the pattern for what she wants the ant to do. It seems to work. For a moment, she feels the colors of sunset spreading over herself, and, hesitatingly, the ant on the path drops its burden.

“Kataya!”

Kataya recognizes the voice. Yes, she has been expecting this, and yet she had chosen to come to her favorite place to play, right up to the last moment.

Tsirnikoela.

Kataya had been very young when she’d heard the story of tsirnika for the first time. Since then, it has become her favorite tale; although it’s not just a tale. It had really happened, many, many, many generations ago. When they were little, even the boys of her tribe listened to the tsirnika story with shining eyes; but as the boys grew up, they found the story harder and harder to understand, while the girls began to talk about tsirnika only among themselves.

Kataya can still hear the voice of Akka Ismia, the eldest of the tribe women, beginning the tale of tsirnika :

“What did the Bruin bring us?” Akka Ismia would ask the children at this point.

“ Tsirnika ,” even the smallest ones knew to answer.

Although Kataya has herself retold the story numerous times by now, the way Akka Ismia tells it is the most proper and traditional.

It was the first Akka who had seen the golden cradle of the Bruin descending from the heavens and the Heavenly Honeypaws walking toward her. He’d been fur covered, like the Brown One of the forest, but he’d walked on two legs and could talk and had a human mouth. Touching her, the heavenly Bruin had given the first Akka the tsirnika , as well as the ability to teach its use. And then he had returned to the golden cradle with its silver belt, and the cradle had ascended like a bird back to the heavens — rising toward the Big Dipper, the group of stars that the tribe now calls the Bruin Stars.

Now this Akka discovered that she was able to control animals: to chase off the wolf and call the deer, to charm the trout from the brook and ask the snake to yield way. But then one day she slept with a man, and tsirnika disappeared. The gift had been given to an untouched one, and the Bruin had not known that the woman might change. But over time the Akka bore many daughters, and each of her daughters was born with the gift of tsirnika , just like a singer’s daughters may have the gift of singing. And the Akka taught them to use their gift, and so the tribe grew and prospered.

When Kataya had first received the blood sign of the moon that marked her transition from child to woman, Akka Ismia had spoken with her seriously. “Kataya, you’ll have to decide soon whether you wish to keep your tsirnika . Each daughter of the tribe has the Bruin’s gift, but only the ritual of tsirnikoela will make it as strong as it was with the first Akka’s daughters. Unless you wish to have children straightaway?”