One of Chris’s few clear memories of his school days is being fascinated by the ancient stories of gods, kings, and mere mortals as told by the Greeks and Romans. He has had a love for myth, legend, and parable ever since. The opportunity to create a few of his own, therefore, was just too good to miss.

Instead of stories about flying too close to the sun or leaving threads through mazes, however, most of Chris’s center around polar bears and dragons — with a few sibyls thrown in for good measure. He did come across one genuine old Inuit tale along the way, and that is the story of Sedna, the sea goddess. This made such an impression on him that he decided to not only include the original legend in The Fire Eternal, but also have Sedna appear as a character.

The legend of Sedna was almost as old as the ice itself. Like ice, it had many variations, fashioned by slips of the tongue on the wind. But the version which came to the Teller of Ways as he watched the sea goddess thrash her tail and squirm from her ocean home was this:

She had been a beautiful Inuit woman, courted by many worthy suitors, hunters of strength, agility, and passion, all of whom would have crossed the ice for her, drunk the ocean, sewn the clouds together with spears. But Sedna was vain and refused them all. She preferred to sit by her father’s igloo, admiring her reflection in the waters of the ocean, all the while combing her shining dark hair.

One day, her father grew tired of this. He said to her, “My daughter, we are starving. All the animals have deserted us. We do not even have a dog to slay. I am old and too weary to hunt. You must marry the next hunter who comes to our camp or we will be nothing but sacks of bones.”

But Sedna ignored him, selfishly, saying, “I am Sedna. I am beautiful. What more do I need?”

Her father despaired, and thought to take a knife to her and use her as bait to trap a passing bear. But the next day, while he sat aboard his sled, sharpening his blade and his will to live, another hunter entered the camp. He was tall and elegantly dressed in furs, but his face was hidden by the trimmings around his hood.

The man said, “I am in need of a wife.” He struck the shaft of his spear into the ice, making cracks that ran like claws.

Sedna’s father was afraid, but he boldly said, “I have a daughter, a beautiful daughter. She can cook and sew and chew skins to make shirts. What will you give in return for her, hunter?”

“I give fish,” said the man, from the darkness of his hood.

“Ai-yah.” Sedna’s father waved a hand, for he thought it a poor trade: fish — for a daughter! But fish was better than a hole in his stomach. And so he said this, “Tomorrow, bring your kayak, filled with char. Row it to the headland, and I will exchange the char for my daughter.”

The hunter made a crackling sound in his throat, but his face did not appear from his hood. He withdrew his spear from the glistening ice, pulling out with it a swirling storm. From the eye of the storm he cried, “So be it.” And he was gone, as if the wind had claimed him like a feather.

That night, Sedna’s father made up a potion, a sleeping potion squeezed from the bloodshot eye of a walrus, that laziest of Arctic creatures. This he stirred into a warming broth, made from the boiled skin of his mukluks, his boots. “Come, daughter,” he said, singing sweetly in her ear. “Come, eat with your aged father.” And he gave Sedna a bowl of his broth to drink. Within moments, she had fallen asleep at his feet. Her father then wrapped her loosely in furs and in the morning carried her out to his sled. Still she slept on as he tied her to it, unaware of the trade that awaited her. But there was little remorse in her father’s heart. For Sedna was idle, and char were char. With a great heave, he pulled her away from their camp. She had still not woken by the time they reached the headland.

The hunter stood by his kayak, waiting. Its skins were bulging, brim-full with fish. Their dead eyes watched a soulless father unload his daughter and roll her out at the hunter’s feet. The hunter made a chirring sound in his throat. He told the old man to empty the kayak. The Inuk, driven by greed and stupidity, gathered too many fish in his arms, and slipped and skidded and fell upon his back. As his head struck the ice his gluttonous gaze softened. His dizzied brain recoiled in horror as he watched the hunter pick up his only child, grow a pair of wings, and fly away with her to a distant cliff! “Come back!” he cried, and reached out a hand. A fish slithered out of it and lodged in his mouth. It was rotten from the tailbone through to the eye.

When Sedna awoke she found herself lying in a nest of hair and night-black feathers. She was on a high ledge, surrounded by ravens. Far below her, the sea was rushing at the rocks, dashing itself to foam and spray. “Oh, my father! Help me! Help!” she cried. Then appeared by her side the hunter who had claimed her.

“I am your husband now,” he said.

And he threw off his furs to show himself to be a raven. The king of ravens. The darkest of birds.

Sedna screamed and screamed, until her voice broke to the cark of a bird. Her fear was so great that the north wind wrestled with her terror for weeks, finally carrying it howling to her father. It beat about his ears, his soul, his heart. How could you do this? it whistled at him. How could you marry your daughter to a bird? Do you want to be known as the grandfather of ravens?

The old man was wracked with sadness and guilt. He chattered to his heart and his heart chattered back. He must go out and rescue his daughter, it said.

So, the very next morning, he loaded up his patched old kayak and paddled through the frigid Arctic waters, until he reached the cliff that was Sedna’s new home. Sedna, who now had eyes as sharp as any bird, had seen him coming and was waiting at the shore. “Oh, my father,” she said and hugged him tightly, smelling his furs, which still reeked of fish.

“Quickly,” he said, “while the mist is about us.” And they climbed into his kayak and paddled away.

They had traveled for many hours and still had the calm of the ocean all about them when Sedna saw a black speck high in the sky. Fear welled up inside her, for she knew this was her husband coming to find her!

“Paddle faster!” she urged her father.

But her father’s arms were slow with age and exhaustion. The raven was upon their boat as swiftly as a ray of sunlight. It swooped down and set the kayak bobbing. “Give me back my wife!” it screamed.

Sedna’s father struck at the thing with his paddle. He missed and almost fell into the water. “Trickster be gone!” he shouted in vain.

The bird caarked in anger and swooped again. This time it came down low to the water, beating one wing against the surface. A ferocious storm began to blow and the waters became a raging torrent, tossing the kayak to and fro. Sedna screamed, but not as loudly as her father. Once more, cowardice had rooted in his heart. With a mighty shove, he pushed his daughter into the ocean. “Be gone! Leave me be! Here is your precious wife!” he cried. “Take her back and trouble me no more!”

Sedna cried out in disbelief. “Father, do not desert me!” she begged. She swam to the kayak and reached up, grasping the side of the boat. But the icy waters had made her arms numb and she could not haul herself back to safety.

Still the raven plunged and swooped. The storm grew worse. In his madness, Sedna’s father saw a shoal of rotten char coming to the surface to feed, if he fell. Addled by terror, he grabbed his kayak paddle once more and pounded Sedna’s fingers with it. She wailed in agony but he would not stop. “Take her! Take her!” he shouted crazily, believing that the only way to save his life was to sacrifice his daughter’s life instead. Over and over again he struck, until one by one, her frozen fingers cracked. They dropped into the ocean where they turned into seals and small whales as they sank. With her hands broken, Sedna could not hold on to the boat. Her mutilated body slipped under the water and slowly faded out of sight….

… Yet, she did not perish. Poisoned by the magic of a raven’s bile and further tormented by unresolved grief, she made her house at the bottom of the sea, where she became the goddess of the ocean, raging at men through violent storms….

 

If you want to know why David Rain calls the now terrifying, rather than terrified, Sedna up from her home at the bottom of the ocean, and what he has to offer her to get her aid, you’ll have to read the book! (In this instance, The Fire Eternal, the fourth in the series.)

The following pages relate several snippets from some of Chris’s own myths and legends, but so your enjoyment of the books won’t be spoiled, I won’t tell you the endings. Sorry! An extract from Lucy’s journal would be a good place to start.

 

My name is Lucy. Lucy Pennykettle. I’m sixteen. I turn heads. I get noticed. A lot. Mainly for the bright green eyes and mass of red hair. I live in a leafy little town called Scrubbley with my mom, Liz, and her partner, Arthur, and my part-sister, Zanna, and her sweet kid, Alexa. My cat, Bonnington, is the weirdest feline you’ll ever meet. We share the house with a bunch of special dragons, like the one sitting next to my keyboard, Gwendolen. Dragons. More about them in a mo.

Arthur (wise stepdad, sort of) told me once that people believe what they see in print. So here are a few small truths about me, just to get things into perspective:

 

My favorite food is vanilla-flavored yogurt.

I’m slightly scared of moths.

Squirrels break my heart.

I think I’m in love with a guy named Tam.

I’m totally in awe of the author David Rain.

I’m worried about the mist that’s covering the Arctic.

I’m haunted by the shadow of beings called the Ix.

 

But there’s one thing that keeps me awake most nights, and lately I can’t wrap my head around it:

 

I look like a girl. I think like a girl. I walk and talk like a girl.

 

But I was not born the way other girls are.

I hatched — from an egg.

I

AM

NOT

HUMAN

 

One of the special dragons, Gadzooks, eventually goes to visit a man named Professor Steiner and writes something on one of the professor’s parchments:

 

He crossed over to his desk and unlocked a drawer. From it he withdrew a single sheet of paper. It appeared to be made of thick gray cotton, like a small hand towel stiffened with starch. He passed it first to Lucy, who glanced at the pen marks and said, with disappointment, “It looks like a doodle.”

“Many ancient languages do,” said Arthur. “If you’d never seen Japanese or Arabic writing you would probably not associate the characters with the words at first. What do you make of it, Elizabeth?”

She took the paper and examined it. “I see what Lucy means. There doesn’t appear to be a formal phonetic structure. Though the strokes suggest it. They’re very deliberate.”

“I agree,” said Rupert Steiner, buoyed by her assessment, “but it’s quite unlike anything I’ve interpreted before. I couldn’t even guess at its country of origin. The frustrating thing is, I’m sure I’ve seen another example of this, but I can’t place it.”

“Could it be a drawing, perhaps?” Arthur asked.

The professor rubbed the question into his cheek. “The recording of history through storytelling and drawing was prevalent in our earliest ancestors, but even the wildest imagination couldn’t pull these marks into a meaningful picture. No, I’m convinced it’s a text of some kind.”

“Can I have another look?” Lucy took the page onto her knees again, turning it through several angles. “It reminds me a bit of the marks I saw on a wall in that cave on the Tooth of Ragnar.”

“The Tooth of Ragnar?” Steiner jerked back as if he’d been shot. “You’ve been there? But that island is — or rather was — in one of the remotest parts of the Arctic. Were you taken there on a school trip or something?”

“Erm … something,” Lucy replied, putting the sheet down on the coffee table. Her mind flashed back five years to when she’d been abducted by Gwilanna and taken to the island as a part of the sibyl’s bungled attempt to raise Gawain from the dead. Many times she’d been left to fend for herself, with nothing but wild mushrooms to eat and a female polar bear for company. That had been one heck of a “school trip.”

“How extraordinary,” Rupert said. “You must have been awfully young. You were lucky to visit it before it was destroyed by volcanic activity. The Tooth of Ragnar is a fascinating place, steeped in all sorts of Inuit myth. Why —”

“Just a moment, Professor.” Liz cut him off and turned her attention to Gwendolen, who’d just given out a startled hurr. The little dragon was on the coffee table, standing by the sheet of paper.

“What’s the matter?” Liz asked her.

The professor steered his gaze between the dragon and the woman. “Goodness! Can you converse with it?”

“Yes,” said Liz, without looking up. “Go on, Gwendolen.”

Gwendolen stepped forward and pointed to the writing. I know how to read it, she hurred.

“How?” said Lucy.

It’s dragontongue, Gwendolen said (rather proudly).

Lucy moved her aside. “Dragontongue? I didn’t even know you could write it down.”

“Me neither,” Liz admitted, sitting back, stunned. She glanced at Arthur, who was stroking his chin in what she always called his “pondering” mode.

“Elizabeth’s dragons speak a language roughly akin to Gaelic, Rupert. It’s possible to learn it, given time.”

Steiner bent over the coffee table and peered at Gwendolen as if she were a prize. The dragon warily flicked her tail. She hurred again at length.

“Did she speak then? I thought I saw smoke. And did her eyes also change color?”

“You’re making her nervous,” said Liz. “She wouldn’t normally be allowed to act this freely in human company and you shouldn’t, by rights, be able to see her. Somehow, Gadzooks must have made that possible.”

“Speaking of which …” Lucy gestured a hand.

Liz glanced at the writing again. “Gwendolen has just explained that the curves on the paper are like the way she moves her throat to make growling sounds.”

“Yeah, but what does it say?” pressed Lucy.

Gwendolen gathered her eye ridges together and frowned at the markings again. It was not a word she recognized, she said, but she thought she could speak the pronunciation correctly. She cleared her throat and uttered a long, low hurr.

Lucy glanced at her mother, who gave the translation. “Scuffenbury,” said Liz.

 

After a chat with David, Lucy now thinks she knows a bit more about why Gadzooks wrote “Scuffenbury” on Professor Steiner’s parchment.