Ellen Datlow - The Beastly Bride

Singing the song of tsirnikoela is one of the greatest acts of a woman’s life.

But she remembers when Aella came out of the forest, how Aella’s eyes were filled with horror and madness. Aella had fallen on her knees in the middle of the women’s circle and screamed so long that everyone’s ears ached. The women had waited silently until Aella finally quieted; she had lifted up her dirty, teary face, and her eyes again had a true expression. Then Akka Ismia lifted her to her feet, telling the others, “That was her song.”

Now it is Kataya who stands before Akka Ismia, surrounded by the women’s circle. Kataya tries to stand up straight and proud, although her head is spinning. With a look somehow both friendly and stern, Akka Ismia intones the ritual question:

The old woman’s voice is soft but demanding.

Kataya knows the answer. Yes, she is full of bear, as if a bear were growing inside her, as if a bear’s heart were beating in her breast; even now she senses the mind of the sleeping bear like second thoughts, like a stranger inside herself, but so familiar, oh so familiar.

Kataya feels for the right words:

She feels encouraged, hearing the new strength in her own voice. Memories of the summer fill her mind. Horrible and beautiful are equal words for the summer she has spent, rooted in tussocks, grown into moss, not letting the bear go for a moment. She knows the bear like only a bear’s bride can know it.

Kataya shakes, remembering the day that the bear had swept its ferocious paw at the heather, and how a snake had hurtled from the underbrush — black, shining, poisonous. The bear broke the creature in two, and then ate the snake halves, growling and snorting.

The bear had found an elk carcass, and a wolf, pale pelted, had come to the same catch. When the wolf drew close and spotted Kataya, she hadn’t even had enough time to get scared before the bear showed its teeth with a hollow rumble and the wolf sidled off into the spruce copse. The bear, it seemed, was now protecting her, the silent, stubborn shadow that had become part of its life.

A hum of laughter goes through the group of women: this is very daring. Surely no one has ever dreamed of disturbing a bear as it mates! Kataya’s allusion to this is, of course, a proud exaggeration; and saying the bruin’s holy name aloud is something that may only be done in situations like this. But Kataya remembers the terror and excitement when the big male was covering her bear, just a few steps away from where she sat. She’d felt the hot, rumbling thoughts of the female bear, and the bittersweet lust that filled its every cell while the male kept puffing and growling on its neck, biting the neck-skin hard, without giving hurt.

Kataya finishes the song, chest heaving, heart beating wildly. The women of the tribe look at one another. They have heard something new today, something quite different from any other tsirnikoela , ever. It is, perhaps, the best tsirnikoela song that has ever been made.

Especially the final lines, which refer to the power of the bloodsister paste and the mushroom to stop the moon-cycle blood during tsirnikoela so that the bear is not enraged by the smell of blood. Here Kataya proclaims that she knows her bear well enough to approach it while she bleeds. Oh, that is a proud and beautiful song! Akka Ismia steps forward and grips Kataya’s shoulders.

“Men!” she shouts.

The men of the tribe approach cautiously, looking askance at the emaciated, filthy, but triumphant young woman who has come back from the forest. Kataya sees Kesh among them, and to her eyes he seems a little boy, though when she’d left for tsirnikoela , Kesh had looked like a young man to her.

“Akka Kataya,” says Akka Ismia, and the men understand. They all go down on one knee in the snow and bow their heads.

It’s only then that Kataya lets herself weep.

Stepping firmly, Kataya walks toward the dwelling she now knows has been reserved for her. Tears have rinsed the last traces of bloodsister paste off of her cheeks. Pots of water have been warmed up for her, and young boys stand ready to wash her up in the shouna dug into the riverbank. Behind her, she hears the women celebrating. They are singing her song.

And it’s then Kataya dares to laugh.

By the time JOHANNA SINISALO left her fifteen-years-long career in advertising and decided to be a full-time writer in 1997, she had already won the Finnish national award Atorox six times for the year’s best science fiction and fantasy short story. (Today, she’s got seven of them.) In 2000, she published her first novel Not Before Sundown (published in 2004 in the United States as Troll, a Love Story ). It won both the foremost Finnish literature award, Finlandia, and a James Tiptree Jr. Award in the United States in 2004. Since then, she has published three more novels and a collection of short stories, and edited anthologies such as The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy .

Sinisalo’s story “Baby Doll,” first published in English in 2007, was a final nominee for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and the Nebula Award. Sinisalo is especially proud of the fact that her short story “Red Star” has been included on the international DVD multimedia disc “Visions of Mars,” which was sent to the planet Mars with the Phoenix lander and reached the planet’s surface in 2008.

Sinisalo has written movie, television, and comics scripts, articles, columns, and essays. Mythology, feminism, and ecological issues are the themes central to her prose writing.

Old Finnish folklore tells about a rite in which a slain bear is symbolically wedded with a virgin maiden. In ancient Finland, and as a general rule among all primitive peoples, the bear was a highly respected and awe-inspiring animal, a spirit of the woods who merited all kinds of homage to appease him when he was slain. Even the bear’s name should never be said aloud; instead, people used various roundabout expressions.