Ellen Datlow - The Beastly Bride

Kataya is learning.

When the bear walks in the bog, eating cloudberries — it knows how to pick only the ripe ones with its lips, as if with fingers — Kataya walks a couple of steps behind, head humming with shomja , and picks berries. She is the bear’s shadow. When the bear opens a rotting stump with its fierce paws, rips it open and eats the grubs, Kataya follows and finds a few more grubs, swallowing them quickly. Bit by bit, Kataya is learning to read the bear’s mind. And at the same time, thousands of other minds are impressing themselves on her: the mind of a red-breasted bird in the trees above and the mind of a fox speeding far away and the mind of a hare scared off by the bear and the mind of a badger digging in its hummock.

When the bear dines on delicious mushrooms in the spruce copse, Kataya picks both those and shomja and eats. When the bear finds a young deer with a broken leg, Kataya is the one who helps the bear; she calms the deer and lets the bear do the killing. And after the bear has eaten, Kataya goes and gnaws on what’s left. Kataya is the bear’s shadow, Kataya is the bear’s bride. Kataya eats cranberries, and Kataya walks behind, the corners of her mouth red. Kataya is there. Kataya is the breathing, Kataya is the shredding of fur. Kataya is part of the bear’s life.

Kataya’s bear is a female, a friend of Akka Ismia. By and by, that too is coming clear to her. Kataya is there, watching everything, experiencing everything, even when the she-bear finds a suitor. Kataya feels the mind of the male bear too but she’s careful not to intrude herself. That is only the beginning.

Nights and days melt together. And then one night there comes the first freeze. That night Kataya sleeps side by side with the bear, and the bear allows her to do so. As Kataya humbly lies down with the bear, the bruin lifts its muzzle and sniffs at Kataya’s face, deeply, like a kiss.

Kataya will never forget the smell of the bruin’s breath. Nor the still-quivering suspicion toward her that she senses in the bear’s mind. Nor the feeling of relief when the bruin accepts her, recognizing the touch of tsirnika .

Very soon after this the bear starts digging a winter lair beneath the roots of a big spruce, throwing earth several paces off while Kataya helps by scattering the dirt, for that’s what the bear wants. She gathers spruce needles, dwarf-birch twigs, pungent marsh tea, bunches of heather, grass, and moss. The last of the frostbitten shomja too. When the lair is finished and the bear crawls in, Kataya follows behind on all fours, head humming. There’s hardly any space for her, however much she pushes, and she senses a fierce hostility; but Kataya has learned. She strokes the bruin’s mind and sweet talks it and soothes it with her own mind. The moons-old bloodsisterpaste on Kataya’s skin is peeling off. She swallows the last pieces of shomja , presses herself to the bear’s side, and closes her eyes. Outside it is snowing. The snow makes the silence grow, deepens the bear’s sleep and Kataya’s sleep.

The silence grows, and Kataya grows along with it. The bear’s mind fills the cramped winter lair, and Kataya’s mind sucks at the bear’s, catching parts of it, assimilating it, while the seed of tsirnika germinates inside her.

Kataya sucks on the bear’s mind. She sucks it like a cub sucks on its mother’s teat, and tiny particles in Kataya’s body change direction and form and function. Burrowed in the lair, Kataya should have perished of thirst and the poisons of her own body, but the same forces that govern the bear’s mind and body now also govern Kataya’s mind; and the wastes of her body turn into her body’s powers, and the powers of her body turn into its sleep. And all the while, the bruin’s mind is feeding the tsirnika .

Kataya sleeps, the bear’s muzzle on her shoulder.

One midwinter day, Kataya wakes up.

For a moment she’s filled with a choking fear. A grimy, frosty ceiling of roots is half a finger above her nose and eyes, and the air is thick with the smells of marsh tea, dirt, excretion, and beast. She finds herself lying tight against the side of a female bear, as if grown into its pelt. She is weak, dizzy, about to throw up. The bear has been pregnant since the middle of summer, and now Kataya’s tsirnika has grown strong enough to reach the minds of the bear’s two cubs. She senses that they are ready to be born, and she knows that she must leave. Later, she will recognize the minds of these cubs too. Though now they are small and blind, unborn, nonetheless they are known to her. Yes, she will meet them yet.

Kataya moves with the uttermost care. Little by little, she creeps toward the lair’s snow-covered opening, her fingers scratching on ice caused by the warm fumes of their breath. She knows that breaking the snow-sealed door is likely to disturb the bear, so she covers it up behind her, using tsirnika to sing the bruin back to sleep.

That done, she straightens and looks up at the sky. Akka Ismia will be expecting her.

Kataya walks toward the tribe’s abode with hunger-heavy, dragging steps. She is filthy, thin, a mere skeleton, smelling of bloodsister paste and shomja and bear, and she can no longer say whether these are bad smells or good smells; they’re just part of her, a part of her forever.

Her feet, in their ragged birch bark shoes, do not feel the cold of the snow-covered path. Her mind is empty, her mind is full. Kataya stops by her favorite place, where snow now covers the trails made by the ants. When she remembers playing here only a few moons back, she no longer knows that Kataya.

The anthill by the path is a sizeable one, and Kataya is beginning to understand that it’s the tsirnika of the tribe’s women that has kept the bears away from places like this. One of the bruins would have made its winter lair out of this very anthill had they not been told to stay farther from the village. Kataya knows that now, for half of her being is still thinking like a bear.

As she stands above the hill, her tsirnika swells up inside with such a fierce surge that Kataya feels dizzy and sick. The winter day hums and rustles around her, the gray sky hangs low upon the tops of the spruce. And out of the snowy cover of the anthill, small dark spots begin to erupt. The ants do not know why they are on the move when it’s quite the wrong season to leave the hill, but they pour out of the ground, seized by a power too great to withstand.

Kataya smiles a tired smile. She knows she’s guilty of pride, and of abusing tsirnika , so she quickly sends the ants back into their hill, to sleep their little death. She kneels, and with her own hands, she covers up the hole the ants have made in the snow, so the frost will not wreak destruction inside the anthill.

Kataya straightens up and sighs. Her steps a little brisker now as she heads for home.

Akka Ismia comes to meet her. Akka Ismia knows she has left the bear. Of course. It’s as simple as that.

All the women of the tribe have gathered in the open. They watch her arrive expectantly. And Kataya knows that, after all she’s been through, nothing ought to feel difficult. But this is. This is difficult. The song of tsirnikoela is important; it’s the song that cleanses; it’s the song that tells how one has taken possession of tsirnika ; it’s the song that sparks the souls of the younger girls; and above all it is the song that confirms that a woman has really done what must be done.