Underground

As with many legends, Sisiutl’s tales are occasionally contradictory and change with the telling or the teller. I ended up picking and choosing in order to make the monster suit my story, but I hope I was true to the spirit of the creature.

The mythology and legends of the Pacific Northwest Salish are rich and weird, and I owe a lot to the Seattle Public Library’s collection, which includes a reprint of Mythology of Southern Puget Sound: Legends Shared by Tribal Elders, which was collected and translated from the Lushootseed principally by Seattle historian Arthur Ballard. It’s a great book, and it offers a wonderful peek into the culture of the local tribes at the time. I was also able to find audio recordings of spoken Lushootseed online at the Seattle Times Web site (seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/local/seattle_history/about_ audio).

As I was writing the story, Seattle experienced one of its coldest winters on record—with overnight temperatures in the single digits. The drama of the unusual weather was an irresistible addition to the book. Yes, it was that cold.

Of course, I consulted a lot of other sources for my background research, and I hope I utilized the information well—or at least haven’t enraged the authors by clumsy handling. I’ve made every effort to neither plagiarize nor distort, and to present as realistic a picture as possible of my rather fantastical Seattle, but this is still a work of fiction and isn’t intended as anything else. Where I’ve twisted history, fact, or geography, I’ve done it for artistic reasons, meaning no malice or insult, nor any attempt to present my story as fact. Where there are errors, they are entirely my fault.