-The Odyssey, Homer
The Anchor
The box was growling.
Cairn could hear it over the flames crackling in the library fireplace and the thunderstorm battering the windows outside. Her mother, Ahna, smiled at her expectantly as Cairn cradled the gift in her lap.
To my fearless daughter on her 18th birthday, the tag read. Cairn traced her fingers over the pattern of air holes punctured through the foil wrapping paper.
“I’m going to guess this isn’t the Jeep I asked for,” Cairn said at last. The box quivered in response as if to say, “No, I am not.”
“Go on,” Ahna urged her. The firelight danced across her face.
As Cairn tugged the silver ribbon to undo the bow, the box abruptly went still. Cautiously, she lifted the lid an inch.
A pair of vibrantly ice blue eyes peered out, regarding her curiously. Cairn’s breath caught.
Nestled in a blanket inside was a kitten unlike any she’d ever seen. He had a spotted gray coat thick enough to withstand the fiercest Arctic chill and disproportionately broad paws built like fur-covered snowshoes. His tufted ears bristled as he backed his stubby tail into the corner of the box.
“Lower your hand in,” her mother instructed. “Let him meet you halfway when he’s ready.”
Cairn left her trembling fingers outstretched six inches from the creature’s muzzle. He cocked his head to the side, and after a moment’s hesitation, he extended one of his comically enormous paws and batted at Cairn’s fingertips. Apparently, she passed his test, because all at once he rushed forward, nuzzling the glands beneath his foxlike ears against the bony ridges of her knuckles.
When Cairn could finally form words again, she repeated, “This is not a Jeep.”
“No, but he’s great at off-roading.” Ahna was smirking now, her maternal X-ray vision penetrating Cairn’s nonchalance into the melting heart beneath. “He’s a Canadian lynx. When I visited your grandparents up in Labrador, I found him in their garden one morning, nibbling away at a crowberry bush. A predator had mauled the mother just beyond the fence. I couldn’t bear to leave him to fend for himself.”
The kitten awkwardly clambered out of the box, his plump white belly momentarily getting caught before he flopped out onto the shag carpet. Cairn watched him stagger across the room toward the bookcases that housed her father’s collection of rock and mineral specimens. His tail wiggled in anticipation right before he made a dramatic leap for one of the shelves—
—and failed spectacularly. He dropped back to the floor, rattled. A second attempt yielded the same result. On the third try, however, the lynx clung defiantly to the edge by two paws, and after some frantic scrabbling, he pulled himself up to the ledge. Cairn and Ahna applauded.
“Ahna …” Cairn’s father, Emile, appeared in the doorway, arms crossed, a pair of jeweler’s magnifying glasses perched atop his disheveled hair. He pointed at the tiny creature, which was using the craggy surface of an amethyst as a chin-scratching post. “How many times have we talked about smuggling exotic pets into the country?”
Cairn scooped the kitten off the shelf and held him inches from her father’s nose. “Come on, how could a face this cute possibly be illegal?” The fluff ball hung limply in her hand and blinked.
Emile’s wistful eyes landed on his wife. “In my experience, it’s always the cute ones that get you in the most trouble.”
Ahna blew him a kiss. “He’ll need a name,” she said.
The lynx crawled down into Cairn’s lap and curled into a ball. Within seconds, he was snoring softly, unfazed by the fierce winds raging outside the Delacroix’s seaside home.
Cairn gingerly ruffled the hair on his neck. “We’ll name him Squall.”
“Tonight, I’ll tell you the myth of Sedna.”
Ahna sat at the foot of her daughter’s bed, as she had so many nights since Cairn was old enough to remember. Squall claimed the space behind his owner’s knees and nestled in for warmth. While still technically a kitten, he grew bigger by the day.
Ahna gathered her stories from every mythology, every region of the world, and every century, but she always came back to the myths of the Inuit people—their people.
Sedna was the goddess of sea life, and while the details changed with every iteration Ahna told, the myth always remained as unforgiving as the tundra from which it had originated.
“And so,” her mother continued, “Sedna angered her father by turning away all of her male suitors, claiming she’d just as soon marry her dog. To punish Sedna, her father lured her into his kayak, rowed out to the middle of the icy bay, and before she could fight back, he cast her into the frigid waters. Sedna pleaded with him and attempted to climb back into the boat, but with a mighty slash of his knife, he severed all ten of her fingers. The spurned young woman sank to the bottom of the ocean. But from violence and death springs life anew. As her severed fingers slipped into the dark depths, they transformed into the sea’s most remarkable creatures—the salmon, the walrus, the seal, the whale, the narwhal. Sedna herself was reborn as their master and presided over Adlivun, the underworld where we will all one day eternally rest.”
The myth of Sedna had always been Cairn’s favorite, and for good reason:
The story was about her mother.
The gods and goddesses of every pantheon were real. Reincarnated every century, these powerful beings returned to earth with no memories of their previous lives. Some lurked in the shadows, masquerading as mortals, while others embraced the celebrity status of their godhood, publicly “coming out” as they launched careers in Hollywood or Washington. For better or worse, the gods were destined to love each other, clash with each other, and more often than not, kill one another.
Ahna Delacroix—the latest reincarnation of Sedna—had chosen the quieter path, marrying a mortal, bearing his child, and establishing herself as a respected marine biologist, a role that provided a convenient outlet for surreptitiously using her abilities.
From the moment she became a mother eighteen years ago, Ahna had vowed to do whatever it took to keep her family safe from those who feared or reviled the gods walking among them. For every mortal who had accepted the “mythological born” as just another subset of the population, several more had deemed their very existence an abomination.
And then there were the gods with a vendetta to settle …
Cairn, who had learned of her mother’s divine identity several years earlier, still found the macabre nature of Sedna’s myths amusing. “I can’t believe you’ve been reciting this story to me since preschool,” she said when Ahna finished the latest retelling. “You’re lucky I didn’t turn out more emo.”
Her mother rolled her eyes. “You’re eighteen. Your default setting is emo.”
“Touché.”
“Plus, you’re looking at the myth all wrong, Cairn. It’s not a tragedy; it’s about being tenacious and tough as nails and surviving in the face of insurmountable odds. It’s about transformation. For thousands of years, our ancestors carved out an existence in the most treacherous landscape imaginable, thriving above the timberline where few plants could grow. They learned to make tents from sealskin and houses from sod and igloos from ice, a different house to weather every season. They built kayaks to fish, and fearlessly hunted whales and caribou and polar bears for meat.” Her mother brushed a thumb along Cairn’s cheekbone. “That ruggedness is in your blood, whether you live here in Massachusetts or back in Canada like your grandparents. Whenever life beats you down, remember that.”