Inca Myth Choice #Two—"The Boy Who Rose to the Sky"
Also from Bierhorst's Black Rainbow, "The Boy Who Rose to the Sky" has many elements of the hero's journey mixed with a love story. The boy is obviously the hero. The condor is the mentor and herald. The star princess is the shapeshifter. The world is the ordinary world and the sky is the special world. This tale is also about not wanting to grow up, because as the boy ages, he becomes unattractive to his star-bride. Twice he turns old and twice he bathes in the water and becomes young again. He always remains a boy and never a man. Age can be seen as the shadow.
This is also a tale in which the bride escapes back to her people. She talks of her mother and father—the moon and the sun, but all the boy and we see are women just like her. The bride says she wants to return with the boy, but is never able to. She hides the boy, her husband, but grows tired and neglectful of him. She, too, does not want to grow up. This story parallels another myth called "Coiraya and Cahuillaca," except for the ending.
Bierhorst notes of "The Boy Who Rose to the Sky" that the ending seems to have been altered to a European sentimentality. The narrator laments over the fate of the boy and even says that he has also suffered such a sad affair of the heart. This is not typical of a myth. Beirhorst conjectures that there is a school of thought that Peruvian tales have a melancholy tinge due to unresolved sadness over their conquest and loss of past (22-3). This myth is placed in the chapter Bierhorst terms "Myths That Have Survived." In the introduction, Bierhorst notes that the myths in this section have "an ancient status," but were collected in the twentieth century (18-9). Without a doubt, the myth has been affected by modern times, but the core of the story is harkens back in time.
There are several interesting leaps of faith or unexplained gaps in the story. The first is why the boy on the third night finally sees the princesses from the sky even though like the two times before he falls asleep. The second is after he has captured the princess, her parents do not come as she says they will. Her parents are the powerful sun and moon, but show no emotion. For that matter, does the girl ever show much emotion? And finally how does the boy's mother see the girl even though the boy keeps her hidden in the hut? These unanswered questions need to be addressed to the students for them to see how the narrative skips and what does this mean from a writing standpoint.
The choice of the condor as the bird that helps the boy is due to the belief that the condor is the bird of the upper world or heights. The bird of the middle earth is the hawk and swallows are the bird of the ground and underworld.
Seemingly the boy fails in his mission to retrieve his bride and in his return to earth he will no longer be able to bathe in the waters that made him young again. He returns to his parents, who even though they are old, vow to care for him. Thus, he will remain their child. Remember a child cannot have a wife or a husband, so the boy and the princess maintain their youth.
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