'barasradley'

Many have told the story of Sedna, once a beautiful Inuit woman, and now the goddess of the sea. Sedna lived with her father in an Inuit village. They were quite happy, but during cold winter months, the quest for food was impossible.

Her home was small, but comfortable; she had soft pillows and blankets made from hide, boiled water to drink, and a father to keep her company. Sedna’s father however, treasured his daughter so much that because of his constant praise, she became vain and self-centered. Most winter days, instead of helping her father hunt and fish, she would sit by the ice, mesmerized by her own reflection.

So when it came time for her to marry a man, Sedna refused. She thought herself too beautiful – too special – to marry. Though many men came to their village in search of wives, Sedna showed no interest. She kept herself hidden away, locked in the gaze of her icy reflection.

But times grew tough. The winter winds picked up more speed each year, the hunt became harder, and the food was less available. Sedna’s father feared for their safety.

Finally one day, he made a decision that he hoped would save his daughter's life, and more importantly, his own. He ordered Sedna to marry, insisting that she wed the next man that came into their village. Of course, because Sedna was so beautiful, he knew this would be an easy task; though he was sad to part from her, he could no longer afford to feed two mouths.

So when the cloaked man came into their village, Sedna, unhappily following her father’s orders, married him. He promised her a life of richness and an abundance of food. Sedna’s father was so happy that he did not care what the cloaked man looked like – for his face was completely hidden.

As Sedna lay to sleep, the evening before the couple was set to depart for the cloaked man’s village, the man slipped a sleeping serum into her glass of boiled water. When she awoke the next morning, she drank her water, bid her father a tearful farewell, and promised to visit him as often as she could. Once she left her childhood home, everything went black as the sleeping serum took hold.

When she awoke once more, she found herself at the top of a large cliff overlooking the sea. She was shocked to find out that the cloaked man was no man at all; instead, he was a large black raven!

Sedna cried and cried. Her life was miserable. She had no pillows or blankets, no boiled water to drink, and no father to keep her company. She was heartbroken. And the raven had no sympathy for the vain girl. Though he brought her raw fish everyday, he mocked her and cackled at her sadness:

        “Oh, you poor girl! Those tears could fill the ocean twice over!”

He had a large nest to sleep on, but left Sedna only with a few feathers for warmth. When the winds picked up Sedna howled in pain. The cold air cut at her skin and tore her hair. She cried every day and every night, in the hopes that her father would rescue her.    

He did.

The sharp winter winds had carried her cries to his village. He had been struck with guilt for forcing Sedna to marry a stranger, and decided to rescue her.

He paddled his kayak, following the sound of Sedna’s cries. When he arrived, he was shocked to discover her living situation high up on the cliffs overlooking the sea. He ordered her to jump from the cliff into his boat. Luckily, he had come at the perfect time, as the raven was off hunting for fish to bring back to Sedna.

Sedna jumped into her father’s kayak and sat tightly wrapped in hide and furs as her father paddled as quickly as he could away. They had been travelling only for a few hours when Sedna saw a black dot in the near distance. She trembled with fear, knowing that her husband was searching for her. The kayak was now in the middle of the ocean, rocking back and forth. Her father was becoming exhausted. He stopped the kayak for a rest.

Suddenly the kayak began to rock back and forth violently. The father and daughter looked behind them to see the raven flapping his wings.

The raven stirred up the ocean waters. His large black wings seemed to grow in size as his anger grew and grew.

“You have decided to forsake me have you? Then you shall forsake this earth, as well!” the raven screeched. The harder he flapped, the more violent the sea storm grew. The wind tangled Sedna’s long black hair.

Sedna’s father decided that he had made a mistake in trying to rescue his daughter. In his fit of exhaustion he cried, “Take her back! Take her! Please! She will never abandon you again!”

With these words, Sedna’s father pushed her into the raging sea. He raised his paddle in the air and called out the raven, “Have her! HAVE HER!”

Sedna was hit with the shock of the ocean’s icy temperature. She cried out to her father. She screamed at the raven.

She was left with no one but herself.

In a desperate attempt to live, she grabbed back onto the kayak with all her might. Her father took his raised paddle and tried to pry her clasped fingers off; but because the ocean had frozen them almost solid, they broke off.

Sedna’s fingers slowly floated to the bottom of the sea, transforming into seals, sea lions, otters and walruses. The raven’s wings flapped harder and harder.

Again, Sedna, in an attempt to live, wrapped her elbows around the side of the kayak. Her father slammed his paddle on her arms, trying desperately to save himself from the wrath of the raven’s storm. Her hands, too, broke off. As they floated to the bottom of the sea, they transformed into whales, porpoises, and the like.

Sedna had no more fight left in her. She, too, sank to the bottom of the sea.

As the story goes, Sedna is responsible for all sea storms. Her rage towards mankind, brought about by her father’s betrayal, has led all Inuit hunters to show great respect to the sea. It is said that only a special kind of person – a Shaman – special enough for Sedna, must travel to the bottom of the sea to comb through Sedna’s tangled long black hair. This is what calms Sedna's storm.

as told by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

She had done something of which her father disapproved, although no one any longer remembered what it was. But her father had dragged her to the cliffs and thrown her over and into the sea. There, the fish ate her flesh away and plucked out her eyes. As she lay under the sea, her skeleton turned over and over in the currents.

One day a fisherman came fishing, well, in truth many came to this bay once. But this fisherman had drifted far from his home place and did not know that the local fisherman stayed away, saying this inlet was haunted. The fisherman’s hook drifted down through the water, and caught of all places, in the bones of Skeleton Woman’s rib cage.

The fisherman thought, “Oh, now I’ve really got a big one! Now I really have one!” In his mind he was thinking of how many people this great fish would feed, how long it would last, how long he might be free from the chore of hunting. And as he struggled with this great weight on the end of the hook, the sea was stirred to a thrashing froth, and his kayak bucked and shook, for she who was beneath struggled to disentangle herself. And the more she struggled, the more she tangled in the line. No matter what she did, she was inexorably dragged upward, tugged up by the bones of her own ribs. The hunter had turned to scoop up his net, so he did not see her bald head rise above the waves, he did not see the little coral creatures glinting in the orbs of her skull, he did not see the crustaceans on her old ivory teeth. When he turned back with his net, her entire body, such as it was, had come to the surface and was hanging from the tip of his kayak by her long front teeth.

“Agh!” cried the man, and his heart fell into his knees, his eyes hid in terror on the back of his head, and his ears blazed bright red. “Agh!” he screamed, and knocked her off the prow with his oar and began paddling like a demon toward shoreline. And not realizing she was tangled in his line, he was frightened all the more for she appeared to stand upon her toes while chasing him all the way to shore.

No matter which way he zigged his kayak, she stayed right behind, and her breath rolled over the water in clouds of steam, and her arms flailed out as though to snatch him down into the depths. “Agh!” he wailed as he ran aground. In one leap he was out of his kayak, clutching his fishing stick and running, and the coral white corpse of skeleton woman, still snagged in the fishing line, bumpety-bumped behind right after him. Over the rocks he ran, and she followed. Over the frozen tundra he ran, and she kept right up. Over the meat laid out to dry he ran, cracking it to pieces as his mukluks bore down.

Throughout it all she kept right up, in fact, she grabbed some of the frozen fish as she was dragged behind. This she began to eat, for she had not gorged in a long, long time. Finally, the man reached his snowhouse and dove right into the tunnel and on hands and knees scrabbled his way into the interior. Panting and sobbing he lay there in the dark, his heart a drum, a mighty drum. Safe at last, oh so safe, yes, safe thank the Gods, Raven, yes, thank Raven, yes, and all bountiful Sedna, safe… at…last. Imagine when he lit his whale oil lamp, there she – it – lay in a tumble upon his snow floor, one heel over her shoulder, one knee inside her rib cage, one foot over her elbow.

He could not say later what it was, perhaps the firelight softened her features, or the fact that he was a lonely man… but a feeling of some kindness came into his breathing, and slowly he reached out his grimy hands and using words softly like a mother to child, began to untangle her from the fishing line. “Oh, na, na, na.” First he untangled the toes, then the ankles. “Oh, na, na, na.” On and on he worked into the night, until dressing her in furs to keep her warm, Skeleton Woman’s bones were all in the order a human’s should be. He felt into his leather cuffs for his flint and used some of his hair to light a little more fire. He gazed at her from time to time as he oiled the precious wood of his fishing stick and rewound the gut line.

And she in the furs uttered not a word – she did not dare – lest this hunter take her out and throw her down to the rocks and break her bones to pieces utterly. The man became drowsy, slid under his sleeping skins, and soon was dreaming. And sometimes as humans sleep, you know, a tear escapes from the dreamer’s eye; we never know what sort of dream causes this, but we know it is either a dream of sadness or longing. And this is what happened to the man. Skeleton Woman saw the tear glisten in the firelight and she became suddenly soooo thirsty. She tinkled and clanked and crawled over to the sleeping man and put her mouth to his tear.

The single tear was like a river and she drank and drank and drank until her many-years-long thirst was slaked. While lying beside him, she reached inside the sleeping man and took out his heart, the mighty drum. She sat up and banged on both sides of it: Bom Bomm!…..Bom Bomm! As she drummed, she began to sing out “Flesh, flesh, flesh! Flesh, Flesh, Flesh!” And the more she sang, the more her body filled out with flesh. She sang for hair and good eyes and nice fat hands. She sang the divide between her legs, and breasts long enough to wrap for warmth, and all the things a woman needs. And when she was all done, she also sang the sleeping man’s clothes off and crept into his bed with him, skin against skin.

She returned the great drum, his heart, to his body, and that is how they awakened, wrapped one around the other, tangled from their night, in another way now, a good and lasting way. The people who cannot remember how she came to her first ill fortune say she and the fisherman went away and were consistently well fed by the creatures she had known in her life under water. The people say that it is true and that is all they know.