The Bean Nighe of Sit'kú Héen
Thirteen moons have passed since I began this journey of tales. Bookended by dragons, the first year feels complete. I want to mark this moment with my heartfelt gratitude to all of you readers who have stuck with me from the beginning, found me along the way, and especially those of you who have inspired some of my stories. Thank you for all of the encouraging words you give back, both in person and from afar. Each response helps me to feel like my words are landing like seeds on fertile land, rather than disappearing into some electronic black hole. Thank you for making the time in your busy, full lives to read the tales I have been alchemizing each moon cycle. I sincerely hope you find meaning in them, and that they help you to connect more deeply to the living world around and within you.
And now, on with the tale.
The Old Woman startles awake to the whispers of fiber sliding past fiber and claw catching on cloth.
“Get off of my tapestry, Raven, you Trickster!” she waves her arm as she rises slowly from her bed at the back of the cave, careful not to disturb Little Snake’s makeshift den. She trundles over toward the loom and the dim, overcast light of morning, but stops suddenly with a sharp intake of breath.
“Raven,” she whispers, “did you—? How are you—? Are you a ghost?”
The white Raven perched on The Old Woman’s tapestry stops pecking at the weaving and turns a blue eye upon her. They stare at one another for a long, still moment. Could it be possible, after ages of close calls, that Raven has finally met his end?
A slight movement at the cave entrance catches The Old Woman’s eye.
“Raven, you pest!” she calls to the black-feathered bird peeking in.
“Rhak! Rhak! Rhak!” His game up, he bursts out laughing, and skip-hops into the cave. “I got you good! Admit it! Admit it!”
With a huff of annoyance and relief, The Old Woman grumbles, “Yes, you got me.” She turns to the white Raven silently watching their interaction. “But who are you, and what did this Trickster promise you if you would help him play his trick on me?”
“The other corvids call me Spirit, I suppose for my white feathers,” replies the blue-eyed bird. “Your friend here said all I would have to do was peck something apart and I would have food and a dry place to roost, so I couldn’t pass up that offer.”
“Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?” hints The Old Woman.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” explains The Old Woman, “that particular Raven is Trickster himself, and everyone who lives here has to work hard to keep warm and fed.” With a wave of her hand, she sends the birds out into the rain for breakfast. Together, they leave in a blur of black and white feathers.
As the dust motes drift slowly toward the cave floor, The Old Woman steps closer to her loom, studying the pattern Spirit has pecked out of the tapestry. “I have never seen a pattern like this before, and yet,” with a weathered finger, The Old Woman traces the raw edges of one of the holes. “And yet, there are shapes here that are so ancient, I have not seen them in ever so long.”
The Old Woman washes, sweeps, and drinks her morning brew before wrapping her heavy, woven shawl around her shoulders and stepping out into the lashing rain. With the cross-quarter having just passed, and Winter Solstice will on its way, the days are growing dimmer and the weather colder and stormier. The Old Woman gathers extra driftwood these days to dry beside her hearth. The work is hard and heavy, but keeps her warm as she carries her wood across the beach and up the cliff, then comes back down for another load.
Raven croaks above her and she looks up to see his dark figure against the pale clouds. She can barely make out the form of the white Raven beside him, but something about Spirit’s shape looks odd. The Old Woman sets her load of driftwood inside the cave, and cold and tired as she is, she lets curiosity lead her up the path to the top of the island.
Black-headed Xéishx’w Jays1 cavort noisily in the trees. The budworms were especially abundant over the past couple of summers and the Xéishx’w Jays enjoyed the feast and were flourishing in numbers. The Old Woman greets them, but continues on in search of the Raven pair. She finds them in a grizzled old Hemlock.
“What’s that you’re carrying, Spirit?” The Old Woman calls up to the white Raven.
“Just something I found where the stream meets the ocean.”
“Will you drop it down so I may see it?”
“No! It’s my find!”
“Then will you bring it to the cave when you are ready to dry your feathers?”
“Why should I?” Spirit demands.
“Because I will tell you a story if you do,” offers The Old Woman.
Spirit makes no promises, but when the two Ravens flap into the cave, splattering water all over the floor, the blue-eyed Raven’s beak clasps a worn and stained old cloth. The two birds find their respective roosts: the Trickster on his ledge over the cave entrance and Spirit above the hearth. The fire sizzles and pops from the water dripping from Spirit’s cloth.
The Old Woman steps toward the white Raven, staring at the drenched and battered piece of fabric. “I wonder whom that cloth once clothed,” she speaks softly, as if to herself, “and why it washed up here, of all places.”
“So what’s the story?” demands Raven.
“Ah, yes,” The Old Woman’s eyes refocus. “I promised to tell you a tale, didn’t I? Well, this story begins with a Rowan sapling. This little tree sprouted up alongside the river Sit’kú Héen2, thus named because her journey to the sea begins in a glacier high up in the mountains. Her spirit is old, and heavy, for she crumbles and tumbles mountainsides into pebbles and silt, which line her shifting banks and wash out into a shallow channel.
“Now, this Rowan began life in the silty soil among Alders and Willows, young Spruces and Cottonwoods. Through the spring and summer, enough sunlight filtered in through the clouds and green leaves above that the Rowan unfurled two tiny feather-leafed branches. However, the rains fell heavy that year, and in the late summer torrents, Sit’kú Héen rushed along her banks, crumbling silt and tearing out whole sections of her wooded shores.
“Around the time when the Salmon were laying their eggs in their redds and the Rowans were bearing their berries so red, the copse of Alders and Willows around the tiny Rowan split and fell into the river. The tiny Rowan nearly went in as well, but ever so tenuously clung to the riverbank. An ancient memory of flying Rowan ancestors shivered through the young one’s xylem, keeping the tiny tree’s roots grasping, hanging nearly upside down.
“Days passed with the falling Rowan in this precarious position. Every time footsteps reverberated, the Rowan sent out a cry for help, a hope that whispered through the water droplets hanging in the air, unheard, unfelt. The Rowan began to despair, but the ancestral trees flowing in that young one’s sap offered tenacity when most needed.
“Slow footsteps reverberated in the soil. A voice spoke to the river as if to a grandmother. The Rowan cried out for help once more, sending a desire to nurture a Rowan baby. The voice greeted the other Rowans growing nearby. Just when the footsteps stood on the shore above the tiny Rowan, they stopped and traveled on no more.
“A Five-Fingered One jumped down onto the muddy wet edge of the river, where the fallen trees angled out over the water. The voice wrapped lovingly around the falling Rowan, as did those five fingers, and the Rowan felt safe at last. The Five-Fingered One planted the tiny Rowan away from the river’s edge, but close enough to feel at home.
“Sit’kú Héen is a generous giver, as long as the receiver follows the proper etiquette. For she is an Old Bone Woman, and the land she flows through grows powerful females, a culture based on reciprocity of opposites, generosity, and a sense of humor. So, bring her your wild wishes for healing, bring her a story, feed her birds in winter, and clean the trash from her shores, and she will offer you gifts in turn.
“That day in late summer, the Five-Fingered One dropped wild wishes in the form of herbs and feathers into Sit’kú Héen before carrying the Rowan to firmer land, and the river considered the exchange complete. However, there is another spirit who lives along Sit’kú Héen who perhaps keeps her own tally of such matters.
“Along a side channel, where the land bleeds rusty iron into the water, lives a Bean Nighe.”
“What is a Bean Nighe?” interrupts Spirit.
“She is the Washer at the Ford, who makes her home where the earth’s own blood seeps out into the water. Legend says that if a person were to catch a Bean Nighe while she was doing her washing, they could ask whose shirt she held in her wet hands, and she would have to tell them who was the next fated to die.
“How long this particular Bean Nighe has lived at Sit’kú Héen, I cannot say. Perhaps she took to the sky as a Magpie and blew on the air currents, or followed a family of Five-Fingered Ones halfway across the world. Long ago, she, like her sisters, washed the blood from the garments of the dying, but her journey changed her.
“Naark! Why a Magpie?” demands Raven. “What’s wrong with a Raven?”
The Old Woman turns to face him. “Do you really want me to answer that question?”
Raven quickly retraces his words, “I mean, why doesn’t the Bean Nighe turn into a Raven instead of a silly Magpie?”
“Ahh, Magpies have their own potent magic. You would do well not to underestimate them,” warns The Old Woman.
“Nowadays, few visit the Bean Nighe’s blood channel, besides the birds, the Deer, and the Bears. She visits with them, but as they do not wear shirts of linen, she has no garments to wash before their deaths. So now, sitting on the shore, lonely as can be, she washes the blood of the earth onto the stones in her little channel.
“Then one day, the Five-Fingered One brought her a swath of linen to wash.
“‘Wash the blood back into this linen for when my daughter begins her moon cycle,’ she asked of the water.
“It was a dangerous request, but the Five-Fingered One did not realize at the time to whom she was speaking. The Bean Nighe hungrily accepted. Accustomed to washing stones, the linen felt soft once more in her stained old hands. But she would not do such work without payment.
“‘For the Rowan you carried home, you must bring me three.’
“The Five-Fingered One brought three Rowan saplings as tiny as the first, and planted them where the Bean Nighe wanted, to help her feel more at home.
“‘I will need more blood to wash into this linen.’
“The Five-Fingered One brought a jar of her own moontime blood and poured it in the water before the Bean Nighe.
“‘This water is so, so cold, coming down from the glacier as it does.’
“The Five-Fingered One brought her a candle. The moment the wick lit with flame, the Bean Nighe felt her whole being revive and she flew up as a Magpie - her favorite bird - to rest in a Cottonwood overhead, just for a moment, to remember the heat of feathers and blood flowing from the heart. Thus warmed, she returned to her work.
“She washed that linen for a whole moon cycle - from one new moon to the next - and as the Five-Fingered One carried her bloody linen away, the Bean Nighe felt some of her old purpose and strength return. She considered taking the life she had washed the linen for. The Bean Nighe took one reverberating step toward the Five-Fingered One, but sensing danger, Sit’kú Héen ushered the mortal on her way. The river sent a Porcupine to stand guard, and a handsome Xéishx’w Jay with blue eyebrows in his black-feathered head to watch over the Five-Fingered One until she was safely beyond the wooded path and the Bean Nighe.”
“What do you think the Bean Nighe would have done to the Five-Fingered One?” asks Spirit.
“You see, a Bean Nighe is a harbinger of death,” explains The Old Woman. “While people from time to time have caught one and begged for her to spare the life of the one whose shirt she washed, I doubt very much if anyone has ever asked her to wash the blood of life back into a piece of cloth. It just isn’t done. But the Bean Nighe of Sit’kú Héen was so far from home, and so faded from loneliness and neglect that she agreed to such an unusual request.
“Just like that pattern you pecked into my tapestry, old textures are meeting new shapes. The living have become as faded and lonely as that Bean Nighe, so perhaps, to revive each other, the two entities need to swap energies for a while. What if the Bean Nighes of this world washed the living blood of this earth into the cloth of the half-dead living? What if, like the Bean Nighe, they need someone to light a candle to warm their hearts and get their blood flowing?”
“I’ve been telling you: these are Trickster times!” Raven interjects.
“And I have been agreeing with you,” replies The Old Woman. “But as for the danger, I wonder if that Bean Nighe3 struggled to let go of her long-held ways of being. After all, old habits are never easy to shake. For, never did anyone take the cloth she washed away from her. Those old linen shirts belonged to her once she began her washing. Perhaps she sought to frighten the Five-Fingered One into leaving her linen behind.”
“Lucky for her, Sit’kú Héen was watching out,” comments Spirit.
“Indeed,” agrees The Old Woman. “It’s always the ones who love the unloved and befriend the wild beings who have help when they need it most.”
X'éishx'w is the Lingít word for Stellar's bluejay. Personally, I find the Tlingit name more fitting than a German explorer’s. The pronunciation is a mouthful for us English-speakers, though. Substack won’t let me underline the “x’”, but the sound is short and made at the back of the throat, as if trying to clear one’s throat. I love how the name sounds quite a lot like Jays’ own calls.
Sit’kú Héen translates from Lingít to English as “glacier area river.” You won’t find this name on a map, but I did find it in the book, _Haa Léelk'w Has Aaní Saax'u / Our Grandparents' Names on the Land_, edited by Thomas F. Thornton.