The Beastly Bride

BEAR’S BRIDE Johanna Sinisalo[3]

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?”

“No, not yet,” Kataya had answered.

“That’s good, for it’s much better to have some tsirnika years before children — the children will be stronger and the mothers healthier.”

Now, as her tsirnikoela approaches, Kataya curses the day she decided to keep the Bruin’s gift and acquire a real, strong tsirnika. She remembers the horror stories about tsirnikoela that the old men spread by evening fires, stories the women meet with snorts of contempt, yet still they fill Kataya with fear.

But it must be done.

Kataya walks toward the commanding voice of Akka Ismia, toward the familiar gathering place of the village, which looks foreign to her now, almost menacing. As she enters the crowd, Akka Ismia is still speaking.

“For as clay spreads out in water, so is the ability of tsirnika spread out in the tribe, spread out and thinned. As the blood of the Brown-furred One would spread in water, so has the gift of the heavenly Bruin spread out and thinned. And that is why we ourselves have to strengthen it.”

The other women of the tribe stand back as Kataya approaches Akka Ismia, looking her straight in the face. There are no men in sight. The women carry a big leather container and a small basket made of birch bark.

As Akka Ismia recites the traditional story, two women, Aella and Mitar, come forward, carrying the big leather container between them. They put it down, grip Kataya’s clothes, and undress her, leaving only her birch bark shoes. Kataya is startled when they open the container. Inside is a red-brown, black-spotted swarm of ladybugs, or bloodsisterbugs, churning about in the container. It must have taken the whole of the summer so far to collect so many.

“Only when it’s a proper kind of year, only then can we gather enough sisterbugs for tsirnikoela,” Akka Ismia explains. Kataya realizes two things at once: that the shield of the bloodsisters, domed and spotted, resembles the vault of heaven; and that it’s true there weren’t as many ladybugs every summer, but this summer there had been enough to cover their favorite places in red. The ladybugs are red-brown like blood, which gives them their second name.

Kataya stands naked, shivering, as Aella and Mitar lift wooden cudgels and give the mass of ladybugs a crushing blow. There’s crackling and rustling, and a sharp smell reaches Kataya’s nostrils. She remembers playing with bloodsisterbugs as a child, and how they left small orange-red drops on her skin if she poked them carelessly. Now the leather container is filling with a red and black paste of ladybug shells and wings, but also with that sharp excretion.

It takes a long while to crush all the bloodsisterbugs — but for Kataya, the moment when Aella and Mitar straighten their backs seems to come all too soon. Akka Ismia steps close to her and, taking a handful of the sticky crushed stuff from the container, spreads the paste on Kataya’s neck and breasts and behind each ear. She then signs to Aella and Mitar to do the same, and soon all the other women have joined in, except Arrah, who holds the birch bark basket. They cover Kataya with the crushed reddish spread, rhythmically rubbing it everywhere, especially on places where her skin is thinnest and the veins show dimly through.

As the women recite the ritual words, Kataya is covered completely with bloodsisters. She is feeling giddy, her skin tingles, and suddenly all sounds are enormously loud.

Arrah steps forward and presents the birch bark basket. Inside is the cap of a mushroom, bright red and spotted with white. Another image of the vault of heaven.

“Get the boy,” Kataya hears Akka Ismia say, as though from a great distance.

Aella runs off and returns with Kesh, a young man a little older than Kataya. He cannot hide his curiosity as he stares at Kataya, who’s covered with crushed bloodsisters up to her hair and face. Arrah hands the basket to Kesh, who swallows nervously as he takes the mushroom cap out of the basket, breaks off a bit, and puts it in his mouth. He chews a moment, makes a face, then spits the mass out on a piece of birch bark that Arrah holds out to him.

Arrah gives the chewed-up mass to Kataya, who is feeling increasingly tingly and strange. She keeps noticing everything around her with a wonderful clarity and yet, at the same time, she also feels as if nothing matters. The mass is still warm, soft, and a bit slimy as she takes it into her mouth and swallows. At the same moment, she sees Kesh bend double and start to throw up violently.

“There’s always some poison in shomja,” Akka Ismia explains to Kataya, who doesn’t care. “The bad effect of the poison goes away when it’s been chewed.”

Akka Ismia retrieves Kataya’s clothing from the ground and helps her to put it on, then she scoops up a handful of the crushed bloodsisters and rubs it into Kataya’s dress. Far in the background, Kesh is kneeling in the lichen, gray faced, covered with sweat, and spitting yellow bile.

As Kataya stands surrounded by the women, a feeling like a wave flushes through her head.

“Go, my child,” Akka Ismia says, passing the birch bark basket from Arrah to Kataya. “Go and find your Bruin.”

Kataya takes root and joins into a tussock. Kataya drinks the forest and the air and the night. How long? Kataya doesn’t know. Kataya is sitting and Kataya is lying down; her skin itches and burns with the skysister excretion and her soul itches and burns with the skymushroom poison. Except it’s not poison. Shomja no longer makes her throw up; she has eaten all the shomja there was in the basket and has searched for new ones. The red sky vault of shomja might shine by any thicket, near any alder. Inside her head, Kataya is humming.

The bear arrives so quietly she doesn’t even notice.

The bear sees her, smells at her, but Kataya’s smell is the smell of earth and insects.

The bear looks at her with Akka Ismia’s eyes, and since Kataya is but a spot of earth and tussock, the bear has nothing against her. Over the next three evenings the bear comes to eat crowberries in the neighborhood, and on the third night, Kataya follows the bear.

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.

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.

Our national epic Kalevala tells that the bear hails from space and landed on Earth in a golden cradle. Such a detail cannot but fascinate the mind of a science fiction writer. In 1985 I wrote a story about the roots of the virginity myth and constructed a fictive ancient Finnish tribe where the maidens who kept their virginity were able to communicate with animals. In “Bear’s Bride” I returned to that tribe and set out to combine the idea with the bear myth.

The association of the fly agaric with the sky-vault and the shamanistic dimensions of their resemblance (including of course the narcotic qualities of the mushroom) are part of Finnish folklore, as is regarding the ladybug as helper and guide. Incantations asking for the ladybug’s help are kept alive to this day as nursery rhymes. It was gratifying to combine all these elements when I considered what kind of a practical basis such myths might have.

It should be mentioned that Kataya’s song at the end of the story is a genuine, well-known, and very old piece of Finnish folklore, a song sung to one’s beloved. Not a single word was changed in the original text, and it felt bewildering to notice how well the poem fitted, even when addressed to a bear.

This is the first English translation and publication of “Bear’s Bride,” which originally appeared as “Metsän tuttu” in the Finnish magazine Aikakone.