Free Rain & Fire by Chris D'Lacey Page A

attention of the public. But Chris feels that such a grand gesture may not be necessary. He believes (and has David and Tam Farrell believe, too) that a solution to global warming can be achieved with a single sentence: Make polar bears an endangered species. Tell this to the big industrial nations. If they approve it, they will be forced to protect the beasts’ icy habitat, and in doing so, they might just save the world.

O ne 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 onlyinclude 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 animalshave 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?”
    â€œI give fish,” said the man, from the darkness of his hood.
    â€œAi-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