Week 10 Storytelling: The Raven's Path

A raven’s call startled him awake. Confusingly, he stared up at cold, open sky. It wasn’t until he tried to sit up that he realized he was in a box. His bare feet bumped its thin wooden sides as he climbed out, and landed in chilled, wet grass.

As he stretched out his unusually stiff limbs, he looked around. A single trail on a flat plain stretched out to the horizon on both sides of him. He couldn’t remember anything—why he had fallen asleep here, where he had been going, or most importantly, where his shoes were.

The raven cawed again, and he jumped. He looked around for a moment before he found the source—a sleek, black bird with cobalt undertones in its iridescent feathers. It hopped close enough to latch onto the side of the box and tilted its head to stare at him with one dark eye. Suddenly unnerved, the man felt inclined to walk in the opposite direction. He started down the path, hoping to find civilization somewhere close. The raven’s raspy call echoed after him.

No matter how many steps he took, how many hours passed as he walked, the sun never rose. The sky only darkened from day, to dusk, to twilight.

Then, at last, dawn broke, and for a moment the cloudy sky cleared. The path ended at the edge of a broad white lake. A village sprawled out on the other side in the distance. Houses dotted the shoreline and a single black canoe drifted over the lake’s mirror-like surface.

He cupped his hands around his mouth and called, “Hey! Excuse me!”

No answer.

“Is anyone there?”

Nobody seemed to hear him. Irate, he walked about, fidgeting with his hands. He could skirt the lake, but it would take hours, and he was impatient to know where he was and what he was doing there. He knew if he could get there, he could get help.

A raven’s call interrupted him again. He looked behind him and saw the raven from before approaching from the distance. It cried out as it flew past him, so low he felt the wind from its wings ruffle his hair. He watched as it soared over the lake towards the distant village. Blinking, he also realized at once that the black canoe had drifted much closer to him. He waded out into the clear water, knee-deep, to grab hold of it.

He climbed in. The morning sun disappeared behind low clouds.

The raven circled high above him as he made his way across the lake. As he drew closer, he realized something: not a single person could be seen there.

When he arrived to the other shore, the silence was deafening. He found footprints in the marshy loam near the water near where he had seen the canoe upon arriving, like someone had been pacing the shore and pushed the boat out onto the water for him. Walking through the village, he saw storefronts and homes. One house had a wood stump in its yard with a pile of chopped wood in a pile on one side, and unchopped on the other. An axe laid flat on the stump, like someone had abandoned the project halfway through.

“Hello?” he called out. There was no answer, but for a moment, there was a sound like rustling whispers.

He began to look inside windows and found more and more evidence of people, but no evidence of where they had gone. Eventually, he came to a long, cafeteria-like building with the doors standing open. Inside, a variety of food lined every table, fresh and steaming: salmon and halibut, wild berries, goat cheese, seal, and venison, all seasoned with every spice imaginable. He couldn’t imagine such a feast would be abandoned by the entire village.

This would be a good place to wait, he decided. After all, nobody would notice if he took just a few bites. Curiously, he hadn’t been hungry, but the food looked so good he couldn’t resist tasting it.

As he ate, the whispers grew louder. His senses sharpened. He tasted notes of warmness and bitterness in the spices he hadn’t noticed before. He smelled wood and the murky fog of haze hanging from the clouds overhead. He heard the bustle return—dogs barking, the dull hum of conversation outside, footsteps scraping against grass and stone paths. Most of all, he began to see things. Vague shapes and outlines moving around him. He kept eating until they became ghostly shades of humans inside the cabin, whispering to themselves and to him.

“You’ve returned.”

“Does he know? Does he see us?”

He slowed and stopped eating. They must have noticed him looking around at them. One woman approached around his age. She seemed so familiar, but he couldn’t place why. The raven perched on her shoulder, its tail feathers twitching with its rapid heartbeat.

“Do you remember me?” she asked.

“Remember you? I don’t understand. Who are you? What is this village?”

She was visibly upset for a moment, her brows drawing in and mouth pursing as though she wanted to say something, but couldn’t. “This is the Village of the Dead. Your home.”

He recoiled from the woman’s shade, bracing his arms against the table. “This isn’t my home! I have no memory of this place!”

“Every night, you venture out into the Ghost Lands. Every day, you return with your memory lost. Please,” she pleaded, “won’t you just stay this time?”

She reached a ghostly hand out to him, but he pulled back. Looking down at himself, he realized he, too, was becoming a shade.

“What are you saying? That I’m dead?” he said, his voice rising.

“You’re a spirit, like the rest of us. When you died, your spirit came to rest here, in the village.”

“No, that’s impossible. I’m not dead.”

“You are! I saw it happen—we died together! Why can’t you accept that? Why won’t you stay?” Angry tears collected in the woman’s eyes. The raven cawed and flapped its feathers at him.

He shook his head. He couldn’t believe it—not without proof. “Then where is my body?”

She sighed and smoothed down the raven’s feathers, collecting herself and squaring her shoulders in resignation. “It’s in the coffin box on the side of the trail.”

“I have to go see it. I need to know for sure.”

“You do this every time,” she said. “You leave and you forget and you return, because this is the only place you have to return to. And then you refuse to believe, so you leave again.”

He pushed through the spectral crowd to the door, speeding away.

The woman looked at the raven on her shoulder. “When he wakes up, lead him back again.”

It took off after him with a cry.

She sighed, wiping her eyes. “Maybe this will be the last time.”

Author's note:

This story is somewhat of a re-imagining of the Tlingit story “The Ghost Land” with some inspiration also taken from “The Land of the Dead.” I was pleasantly surprised to find what we would probably refer to as ghost stories in this collection, and I immediately knew I wanted to rewrite one of them.

In “The Ghost Land,” the main character sets out to find the village of spirits because he is grieving over his recently deceased wife. Walking on the "Death Trail," he eventually comes to a lake and calls to the village on the other side. He finds his wife there, who warns him not to eat any food the villagers there give him. She returns with him to their home village, but that night, when the husband goes to sleep, he passes away too, and they return to the ghost land together. In “The Land of the Dead,” the story begins with a woman dying and being put into a “grave box,” but she is then woken up by her deceased grandfather, who tells her she is not dead. I combined the two ideas to write a story about a man who is wandering with no memory of why he is there, and doesn’t realize he’s dead.

The biggest appeal of these two stories is that they are about a place. When I wrote this piece, I left out all reference of time, so it could be set in any era. Because, of course, places don’t evaporate with time. I also added the raven in reference to the other stories in the collection, for Raven, a trickster god common in Alaskan myth.

Sources:
The Ghost Land, from Myths and Legends of Alaska, edited by Katharine Berry Judson
The Land of the Dead, from Myths and Legends of Alaska, edited by Katharine Berry Judson
First Americans: Tlingit Food

Image:
Raven on Pixabay

Reading Notes: Alaskan Legends, Part B

Two stories stood out to me in this set of readings: "The Land of the Dead" and "The Ghost Land." I'm so pleasantly surprised to find what are basically a set of ghost stories here. So spooky.

The Land of the Dead is an Eskimo story about a woman who dies and is put in a "grave box," but is woken up by her grandfather, who tells her she is not dead. She visits a village of dog shades, where she is whipped like a dog, either because she is a shade herself, or because she appears to be a dog to them. Either way, this is an aesop about being kind to dogs and not beating them. Next, she comes to a river made of tears from people who weep for the dead, which is about as heavy metal as you can get. Excellent setting for a ghost story. After she crosses the river, she ends up in a village on the other side, the "land of the shades." She meets her grandmother, who tells her that her grandfather led her here because "the last person thought of by a dying person hurries away to show the road to the new shade." The very last line drops this on us: "Thoughts are heard in the land of the shades." Ghostly whispers for the living, maybe?

This would make a fantastic horror story or ghost story. It could be Sixth Sense-esque, where the girl wakes up without any memory of how she ended up in a grave box/coffin, and comes across these fantastical locations. She would only realize she's dead once she came to the village of the shades. Maybe, taking the final line of the reading into account, she could hear people's thoughts, too.

The Ghost Land is a Tlingit legend similar to the above. A man's wife dies and he grieves endlessly. The only way he can deal with it is to walk--so he walks for days and nights on end on the "Death Trail." He eventually comes to a lake and calls to the village on the other side. They seem not to hear him, but notice his presence, saying, "Some one has come up from Dreamland. Go and bring him over." He finds his wife there, who warns him not to eat any food the villagers there give him. She returns with him to their home village, but nobody can see the wife. That night, when the husband goes to sleep, he passes away too, and they return to the ghost land together.

This story has several "otherworld" or "reverse world" elements, the most obvious of which is that the people from the two villages are not able to mix. It's interesting that in the ghost land, the living village and its world is referred to as "dreamland." This makes it seem like death is just a progression to another type of life, not an afterlife in the traditional sense. Just a graduation to a different village across the lake you could find by following the Death Trail.

Sources:
Myths and Legends of Alaska, edited by Katharine Berry

Image:
"Death Canyon Trail" via Wikimedia Commons

Reading Notes: Alaskan Legends, Part A

Raven is a shapeshifter: an animal and a human, but neither. He is a villain and a savior, and a god and an annoyance. His contradictory nature probably comes about as a result of the many, many stories about him. I'd love to read something that explores him more closely as a character. He's symbolic of many humanlike qualities, and very quirky.

According to Wikipedia, "Raven and eagle are known by many different names by many different peoples and is an important figure amongst written and verbal stories. His tales are passed down through the generations of story tellers of the people and are of cultural and historical significance. It's important to note that Native myths such as the Raven Tales, as opposed to tall tales and little stories for children, are not entertainment and are cultural property of the clan or individual that the story originates from." This explains many of the shorter stories. They seem random to a modern-day American reader, but that's because we can't relate to the daily life experiences of a Native American child to whom stories like this would be told.

Also of interest, noted on Wikipedia: "It is customary that others should not tell stories that are owned by another clan, especially if they do not live in the same area" (Giese, Paula (1996). "Who Owns the Stories — A Letter to Eldrbarry").

This raises questions. Should I try retelling any of these myths, or should I make a different story in a similar style to avoid encroaching on others' cultural property, so to speak?

I'm considering the idea of writing a story that features Raven as the main character, but that also pulls elements from several different stories in the collection. For the most part, those stories would be "Raven's Marriage" and "The Naming of the Birds." By the time these stories take place, Raven has detatched himself from human civilization despite all his work to help it. He seems to prefer the company of animals--or bird shapeshifters like himself, rather. These birds are sapient and shift back and forth between human and avian like he does, but they don't seem to associate with humans at all.

In "Raven's Marriage," Raven finds himself in want of a wife. For all his travel and mischief, he's lonely--or maybe he just wants a new target to bother. After some searching among the other birds, he finds a family of geese, including a young female goose. They are married for a matter of days, before the family of geese' large wings leave Raven unable to keep up with them and he is left behind.

I like the image of the dark-feathered Raven being visually contrasted with a white bird. A goose isn't exactly the ideal counterpart for a raven. Geese aren't very mysterious. However, Wikipedia gave me this: "The Sioux tell of how a white raven used to warn buffalo of approaching hunters. Eventually an angry shaman caught the bird and threw it into a fire, turning it black."

Sources:
Myths and Legends of Alaska, edited by Katharine Berry
Wikipedia: Raven Tales 

Image:
"The Raven" via Flickr

Week 9 Storytelling: Uko and the Sun

The trees in one small Okanagon village were growing barren, and the sun grew more distant each day. However, the villagers weren’t concerned with the coming of winter. Instead, they were busy preparing for a contest: the chief had announced that the village’s best hunter would earn the right to marry his daughter.

She was named Nak, and known for her beauty, with her freckled skin and glossy hair. Many of the village’s unmarried men pursued her—and she had refused them all. Exasperated, her father had told her, “If you don’t choose one, they’ll only get more restless for your attention.”

“I think they’re all caught up in competition,” she’d replied.

The chief thought on this. The candidates were plentiful and he wanted the strongest, most qualified man as a husband for his daughter.

And so, he had declared a contest.

The village was so intent on preparing that hardly anyone noticed the lodge that suddenly appeared on the outskirts of the village. It was shoddy and dirty, and looked like it was in the process of falling apart.

The boy who emerged from it was even more ramshackle. His eyes were sickly sunken into his skull, and his short hair stuck out in all directions. His limbs were so bony and knobby it was a wonder he could walk.

The other villagers ignored the boy, until he said, “I’d like to try my hand at this marriage competition."

~

Nak’s younger sister, Uko, was curious about this stranger. Just as the townsfolk treated him with contempt because of his muddied, skinny form, they often ignored the unsightly Nak in favor of her sister.

When she approached his abode, she noticed a strange, intense light radiating through cracks in the makeshift roof. It disappeared as she rapped her knuckles on the door.

“What happened to that bright firelight?” she asked after she had introduced herself and stepped inside.

The boy, laid out on a blanket, shrugged his bony shoulders.

“Are you the one who wants to marry my sister?” Uko asked.

“I’m considering it,” he replied.

“You’ll have to compete with Raven and Coyote,” she said. “They like her, too.”

“What’s so special about her?”

“She’s beautiful, but she’s so independent. I guess it makes them want her more.”

“Not you, though?”

She shook her head. “Nobody pays attention to me. Mostly I wander around and pick the wild herbs and flowers that grow nearby. Maybe…” She grew a little embarrassed, pulling at her short hair nervously. “Maybe you would want to come with me sometime? It wouldn't be as lonely, and nobody would bother with us."

“Their dismissal doesn’t bother me,” the boy said simply.

“How’s that?” Uko asked.

“Instead of looking at the ground,” he said, “I look up to the sun.”

~

That night, Uko dreamed of a tall, hooded figure in a tawny cloak. The figure's eyes shone with pinpricks of glimmering white light from the darkness until the hood fell and revealed the face of a woman. Her skin glowed with beauty and radiant power.

"Who are you?" Uko asked her.

"My name is Star," the woman said. "I'm searching for my brother. He radiates light, like I do. Have you seen him?"

Uko shook her head. "Where did you last hear from him?"

"He spoke with me about winning the hand of a girl in a competition before he disappeared."

"I see--maybe he means my sister! The village says she's radiant. Maybe he thinks she's one of you."

Star nodded slowly. "Perhaps. He did mention finding someone with whom he believed he could share a sense of understanding." She pulled back her cloak with one glimmering arm and held out a golden vial dangling on a red string. "I have a feeling you'll encounter him soon. Give this to him when you do."

So Uko took it, and when she awoke, the vial hung from her neck, tightly sealed.

~

The morning of the competition, the chief announced that each man would go out and spear a fish. The largest fish would win its fisher his daughter’s hand.

The boy’s gnarled spear looked like it would snap after one thrust.

Instead of waiting for the competitors to return, Nak tagged along with Raven and Coyote. They came to the stream where the villagers often laid fishing nets. Nak waded in with a spear of her own.

The boys seemed more concerned with her than with catching fish.

“Here, you hold the spear like this… no, not like that, put your thumb here,” said Coyote.

“You’ll never catch a fish with that stance, too weak. Your legs are all wrong,” Raven admonished.

Nak huffed. “Well, if you’d just let me try, maybe you’d be surprised!

~

Uko tagged along with the boy, and was surprised when he walked past the small stream altogether.

“What are you doing?”

“Sometimes you have to travel farther to get a better reward. Even if something looks appealing, it doesn’t always hold the best value.”

~

Nak’s fish turned out to be the most colorful one among all competitors. It was also the largest, followed by Raven’s fish and Coyote’s fish, which they insisted were the same size as Nak’s.

Then the boy appeared. The crowd went silent. Nobody knew how his small shoulders could even support the large fish he toted along with him. It was all black and bulged with fat. Its large, white eyes rolled heavenward.

“Clearly,” the chief said with a resigned sigh, “you have shown yourself to be more capable a hunter than any other man in my tribe. You earned the right to marry my daughter.”

The boy said, “I accept your offer, sir. I choose to marry Uko.”

Coyote burst into laughter at Nak rejection. Nak’s face darkened like a thunderstorm and she turned to Coyote. In a flash, he was on the ground and Nak dusted her hands off primly.

“Clearly,” she said, “hunting is more my speed than marriage.”

~

The villagers had been shocked at the boy’s initial decision to marry the ugly sister, but they were even more shocked on the day of the wedding ceremony.

When Uko approached the boy’s house, dressed in her best clothes, he waited outside, the same dirty, emaciated form as had arrived to the village before the competition. Beside him, however, stood the tall form Uko recognized as the woman from her dream, Star.

"I thought I would find you here, Sun," Star said, looking at him. "You've been gone for long enough. There will be no more sunlight left if you stay here for much longer." She glanced at Uko, who was marveling at Star's glimmering skin in her waking clarity. "Is this the girl, after all?"

Realization dawned on Uko just as her father began the rites of the wedding ceremony. The boy, Sun, took Uko's hands. “I’m sorry I never told you," he said, just as the chief declared his and Uko's marriage in front of the village.

He took the golden vial around her neck and opened it, melting the sealing wax with a burst of warmth. Tilting the viscous gold liquid inside into his palm, he smoothed it over his face and hair, and transformed. In a flash, his skin lost its dirt-smeared façade and gained a bronze glow. His thin limbs swelled with muscle, and his short hair grew into a mane that brushed the ground. He poured out another few drops and let them fall onto Uko's hair and cheeks. It clung like syrup and glowed like sunlight.

"The sky is a lonely place," he said. "Even Star disappears during the day. But I needed someone who could understand me. Would you like to come with me?" he asked with a small smile. "Nobody would bother with us."

Recognizing her own turn of phrase, Uko laughed, and she accepted.

Liquid Gold via mcdarius on Flickr

Author's note:

The original story involves a competition in which the winner will earn the privilege of marrying both of the chief's beautiful daughters. Sun, with his sister Star, decides to enter the competition and wins. In the original, both sisters are beautiful and practically indistinguishable in terms of character. Since lots of heroines and important female figures in myths are beautiful, I decided to write a story involving one who wasn’t. As a result of her looks, Uko bonds with the outsider who come to the town. Her sister Nak doesn’t bond with anyone, partially as a result of being put on a pedestal, which is why she chooses not to get married at the end.

I spent two weeks making changes to this story after initially posting it. In the first version, Star and Sun had the same role. Sun was an old woman who was the dirty boy's grandmother. The next version, I cut Star from the story altogether. In the final version, I added her back in and gave her a different role, as someone who adds more magic elements into the story as she searches for her brother. In a longer version of this story, I would give her a bigger role, and have her meet Uko before Sun appears in the village. She would also have a bigger role in explaining why Sun left the sky, the effects it had, and what he is searching for.

Sources:
"Dirty-Boy" from Tales of the North American Indian by Stith Thompson
Okanagon Indian Fact Sheet
Mourning Dove's "Coyote Tales"

Reading Notes: Native American Hero Tales, Part B

Lodge-Boy and Thrown-Away is so weird and cool. So many questions raised and never answered: Who is the Red Woman and why did she kill the twins' mother and impale her like a puppet? Thrown-Behind the Curtain (hereafter "Thrown-Behind") is every bit the prodigal hero as Hector or King Arthur--he's less sophisticated, but arguably way more cool. He slays a massive alligator whose organs are apparently in plain view, kills a witch with her own cauldron, and raises the dead on one occasion. Because he feels like it. This culminates into the legendary Thunder-Bird itself giving Thrown-Behind the task of killing a giant otter that has been threatening its eggs.

Dirty-Boy was more of a classic example of mythology, revolving around two gods, Sun and Star, who disguise themselves and infiltrate an Okanagon village. I especially loved the descriptions the writer gives for Sun and Star. Star is "a woman ... wearing a long skin dress covered with star pendants, with bright stars in her hair," while Sun is a handsome man, and "his garments and hair were decorated with bright suns." Up to this point, Sun and Star have been a haggard old woman and a dirty, scrawny young man respectively, so interestingly, this story is like an Okanagon version of Beauty and the Beast.

I'm hurting for more portfolio stories, so I need to pick one of the above stories to rewrite. Dirty-Boy would be interesting if the two sisters--who sort of function as point of view characters--were plain or even ugly instead of beautiful. The story involves the young men of the village pursuing them. But what if they weren't beautiful on the outside? A simple change, not as big a reversal as the other two stories in my portfolio right now, but it would alter the story in a big way. Instead of being pursued, the sisters--one or both of them--would be lonely. Sun's disguise of a "dirty, sore-eyed boy," and Star's disguise of "a very old woman in ragged clothes," would be off-putting to other villagers, but perhaps not to a girl (or girls) who feels just as cast aside. Ultimately, the pair could take the main character(s) up to the sky, with an opportunity to include the story's ending with stardust: "when the liquid ran down over [the sister's] hair and body, lines of sparkling small stars formed on her ... the liquid ran to the chief's lodge, forming a path, as of gold-dust."

"Glitter" on Pixabay

Source: Tales of the North American Indian by Stith Thompson