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Long ago, a people lived on the other side of the mountains. From season to season they moved between the rich valleys and the distant sea. They worshiped the bear god. Every year they fed him and clothed him and praised him and then sent him to his home in heaven so he would send them good hunting and rich harvests in return.
When this story happened, the people had been suffering for several years. The weather had been growing colder. Many of the animals were very difficult to find.
The good chief of this people told them to double their devotions to the bear god, and so they did. They gave up their best treasures to the god. They lived humbly and bravely. They prayed.
Still, the bear god was deaf to their prayers. The people began to grow thin. Many became ill, and some died.
The people grew angry with their chief, blaming him for the anger of their god. They said that perhaps they should seek a new chief and a new god. The chief silenced them. He said that he himself would seek the bear god and entreat the god on his honor to bestow good things upon the people who worshiped him.
So the chief left, tall and proud and strong even dressed in the simple grass cloak of a sacrifice.
He left to climb the mountain where the bear god lived.
He left, and he never returned.
The next winter was the hardest the people had ever known. They cursed the memory of their chief, who had failed.
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This chief had left a daughter. Half-daughter, half-son. She was his only child. After his wife died the grieving chief had raised the child as if she were a son. He taught her to hunt and to pray just like a man.
This girl-man became distraught and angry at the words of her people. She challenged them to stay true to her father. The people shunned her and cursed her, and finally the girl declared that she would find the bear god for herself.
The bear god had abandoned them.
The bear god had taken her father's life.
The bear god had stolen his memory's pride.
If he would not respond to her pleas, she would fight him for his treachery.
Clothed in the plain grass cloak of a sacrifice and carrying a spear, the girl set out into the mountain, following the same path her father had walked.
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The bear god was sleeping when she found him. The body of her father had frozen, kneeling at the altar before the bear god's lair, kneeling and frozen and buried in the snow.
"Bear god, hear me!" The girl shouted through her tears. "Hear your people! We have suffered and prayed for you! We are starving! We rely on you! Listen to my father's prayers!"
The bear god growled in his sleep.
"Bear god, hear me! The people are seeking a new god! And for the honor of my father, I will fight you!"
The bear god growled and yawned and finally began to laugh. His body was enormous. His jaw stretched wide open, and his teeth gleamed longer and stronger and sharper than the best of her people's spears.
"Little speck, do you really wish to rouse me? Do you really wish my attention?" His enormous eyes glowed like embers, and his fur glistened.
"You have abandoned my people, and you have killed my father! If you do not accept my sacrifice as an offering and agree to help us, then kill me in self-defense, because I will fight you!"
"Foolish, foolish mortals. Sometimes we notice you and sometimes we do not. I was sleeping. It is you who is wrong. A god is never beholden to mortals. But you, mortal, you have insulted a god."
His eyes flashed, and the girl cried out in her sorrow and her rage and she lunged toward the god. Her spear pierced his thick, glistening pelt and the bear god laughed and laughed before swatting her aside. Her head struck a boulder and she slumped motionless to the ground.
He yawned again and curled back toward sleep when a soft voice interrupted.
"You will not accept her sacrifice?"
The snow woman, guardian of his deep winters, spoke from a nearby tree.
The bear god snorted. "What does a mortal's sacrifice mean to me? Amusing at times, but they must learn their place. A mortal does not command a god."
The snow woman shrugged. "Still, she had more spark than most. There are so many mortals, so many seasons, all the same."
The bear god shuddered and then moved his great body out of his burrow. Awake now, he had decided he would abandon this mountain. He spoke over his shoulder. "You keep her, then, if she interests you."
"A dead mortal is no use to me," the snow woman answered.
"Feed her to your brother, then!" the bear god laughed. "Or turn her to ice. The snows last forever here. Her flesh will keep."
That way, joking, the bear god disappeared like a thundercloud down the mountain side. He left behind the snow woman and the body of the mortal girl who had sacrificed herself out of sorrow and rage.
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