For my version of “How evil came into this world”, I decided to try meshing both themes from the Genesis story and the story of “The Woman Who Fell From the Sky”, while attempting to embed my own understanding of evil that exists today. Through my re-telling of this story, The bear represents the mother, and the feminine cycles, while the baker and his family represent the people stuck under the authority of capitalism. Lily is born into the world on a blood moon, and this connection with the cycles, although inherent, can be lost when one does not listen to them. When Lily decides to leave her mother, and the seasonal cycles that are essential to her well-being, she enters a new world where these cycles are undermined by profit incentives. In this world, Lily loses her deep connection to the cycles and faces stressors that influence her health. The young woman loses her moon-cycle, which is common in today’s society, often caused by stress and/or eating disorders. Hore it found a way to transcend the message of what it lacked. When Lily listened to her body and the earth’s natural cycles, she knew what she had to do. She found her way home, entered hibernation, and found great internal healing.
My Story
It has been many winters since Bear was born. Many moons since the Lunar eclipse that had brought her to this earth. It was the evening of the Blood Moon when the earth came between the light of Father sun, and as Mother moon darkened, she laid bear onto a young earth. During that chill January, Bear who was only a young cub, walked the new earth curious and unsure.
Coming out of winter, bear learned through trial and error. She learned that in the seasons cold, the land was barren, the days were shorter and darker. Most importantly, she learned that her body had felt tired. From her first winter on earth, she came to learn that within the earth’s seasonal cycle, she would need to make time for hibernation.
In Bears first year on earth, the seasons flowed into each other, and her own cycles started to align with them. In spring, Bear felt a surge of excitement and energy. She saw colors appear she never imagined. She knew she would have to stay awake for this season. In the summer, she moved between the mountains and valleys catching fish and foraging for berries. A nomad, her wanderings allowed her to meet other creatures along the way and learn from their inherent knowledge.
When fall came, Bear noticed a change. The colors were fading and the days were becoming shorter and darker. She was a quick learner, so she harvested as much food as she could, preparing for the cold and dark season approaching. After finding a comfortable den, Bear breathed heavy and deep and fell fast asleep.
This cycle is how it went, for many many years. That is until the next blood moon approached. It was nearing the end of January, Bear lied asleep in her den. It was quiet in warm, but on that cold lunar eve, bear noticed something pulse inside her. Bear had felt different, she felt as though she had expanded. Bear was pregnant.
When sounds of spring penetrated the walls of Bears den, the mother-to-be, knew it was time. She exited the dark warmth of winter, into the fresh sprouting of spring. It was then she gave birth to her daughter, Lily.
Lily did not look the same as her mother Bear. She has smooth skin and only a single furry bushel upon the top of her head. She crawled like her, but as summer approached it was clear that Lily wanted to stand. Was she part squirrel? thought her mother.
Many years passed in an exciting harmony. Young Lily would spend summers running through the forests picking berries with her mother, and in winter, shed cuddle up within her mother’s fur coat, and fall into a deep sleep. But as Lily got older, she began to veer away from her mother’s cycle. Bear was very disappointed at first, but she knew that Lily must learn the cycles of the earth on her own.
On Lily’s first winter alone, she walked the valleys, now icy and bare, looking for her friends. Nobody was to be found, not squirrel, not robin, not even toad. She roamed further beyond where she had ever been before, upon a great cliff, she looked down and spotted a land most peculiar looking. Under the dark grey backdrop of the sky, there were colors and sounds and movement she had not seen before on her endeavors. Lily was curious. What was that place? She’d have to find out.
After seven long days and nights traversing the margins of the forest, Lily approached this land. She was cold and she was hungry, wearing her salmon skin dress she had made in the summer. Looking ghost-like, there was not a face in sight at this time of night. As she walked upon the land made of hard flat slabs of ground, Lily realized the emptiness inside her. She’d missed her mother.
It wasn’t until the next day that people noticed the lost young woman walking aimlessly around the neighborhood. A well-known baker approached the girl before starting his shift, offering her some of yesterday’s bread. Lily was startled. She had never seen a human, especially one whose skin reflected the light of the moon. The girl was shocked, but she was so hungry she took his offering.
She stayed with the baker and his family, learning their language, their practices and eventually, how to become a baker herself. She longed to go back to her mother, but she’d owed the baker and his family money and services for the time she had stayed with them. They were a nice family and cared deeply for Lily, but they had debt they needed to pay, and Lily was indebted to them.
So years passed, and Lily became more distant from the rhythm of her past. She had even forgotten how she had arrived in this land in the first place, which meant she’d also forgot how to get home. Lily fell into a dark head space. All she could think about was how she could repay the baker and his family and get back to her mother. Her heart was so heavy, and her body lacked energy. She knew she needed hibernation. Evil entered the world when her inherent cycles were broken.
The young girl was so detached from her natural element, she had lost her moon cycle. Conceived under the full blood moon, Lily was disconnected from herself and her future. She fell sick, as her body new she was not in sync with the lifestyle that had once fueled her. Despite the heavy weight of debt that the baker had held over her, Lily new deep within her that she had to leave. So on October the 31st, Lily put on the Baker’s wives fur coat and disappeared out of the concrete world.
Under the warmth of the fur coat, that felt similar to her mothers, Lily trusted something inside her. Above her, a full moon bloomed, lighting the path ahead. It took many days and many nights for Lily to find the land that once nourished all her needs, but once she arrived, she had felt it. Outside of the den that Lily has spotted her mother asleep and much skinnier than she had remembered. As Lily approached her sleeping mother, Bears eyes started to open. Without hesitation, the mother bear sighed happily and gave her daughter the biggest bear hug.
Both Bear and Lily entered the years’ hibernation with the food that Bear had saved for her daughters’ anticipated arrival. Lily was quickly replenished from her much needed rest and entered spring with a new, deeper connection to the cycles of the earth, the seasons, and herself.
The end.
Bellow I have included two links. The first is for an interview with Thomas King about his novel: The Inconvenient Indian. I highly recommend reading this book, as it offers a counter narrative to the history and identity of the North American Indian.
The second link leads you to the website of the Idle no more movement. This movement started in 2012 by three Indigenous women and one ally, to take a stand for Indigenous sovereignty and land protection initiatives. I found this relates to both the topic I wrote about in my short story, as well as the theme of “listening to voices we don’t often hear”.
Thanks for listening,
Lexi
Works cited
Channel, Canada Art. YouTube, YouTube, 30 Jan. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZMXQTsksic.
Caven, Febna. “Being Idle No More: The Women Behind the Movement.” Cultural Survival, www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/being-idle-no-more-women-behind-movement.
Hi,
I really enjoyed your piece of writing. I thought the merging of multiple story narratives was really intriguing and appreciated how you encapsulated point of view within the figure of a human child caught between two worlds. I found it particularly interesting that you seemed to use her experiences as the “story” that could not be taken back; this was really thought-provoking to me in terms of how stories are not just what we tell others, but also how we experience the world, how we are shaped by it, and what we tell ourselves about our own narratives. I would love to hear more about what inspired you to approach the theme so experientially, and the process you took in translating that to the page. Do you think in reality people deal with the duality and tension in your story between their experiences and what they tell themselves their life is or should be? How does the story we tell ourselves interact with the stories others tell about us?
Those are two really interesting questions! I’m glad my story brought further inquiries! Wooohooo! To answer the first question, the inspiration from this story came from my own questions around what healing and hibernation mean to me. During the winter time, many people feel energetically low, suffering from SADS disorder, and just the general feeling of fatigue. My own experience with winter has made me consider what our own cycles are trying to say. Rather than continuing to follow the dominant ideas society imposes on us on what productivity should look like, I considered what might be the opposite. I do believe that we as humans face a contradiction between our natural experience and the cultural and social traditions we live by. We tell ourselves winter is just a season, but could it be a time to truly retreat, and take better care of ourselves? Maybe, maybe not.