Mateo and the Condor's Long Circle

About this story

As the shepherd Mateo folds his flock at dusk, the valley's condor rises on the last warm air and makes its one slow circle over everything, terraces, corrals, the river, the loom light in Justina's door, then settles on its crag for the night. The whole valley feels itself looked after and grows quiet.

Vast calm, the peace of being seen from above and left in peace.

The widest wings hurry least of all.

Read the beginning

High in the Weavers Valley, where the air is thin and bright and the sky begins at your shoulders, a small shepherd boy stood on top of the tallest rock above his flock with his arms flung out wide like wings. "Look at me, Wayra!" Mateo shouted up at the great condor sailing his long slow circle overhead. "I'm the biggest bird in the whole valley!" Mateo was seven, and more than sheep, more than supper, more than anything in the world, he wanted to be big. But while he stood up there being enormous, down below him, small and quiet, the newest lamb of the flock slipped through a gap in the stone wall and tottered away on her brand-new legs, and nobody saw her go at all.

High over the boy on his boasting rock, high even over the condor's wide circle, a glossy black raven crossed the violet evening sky, slow and calm, and turned one wide circle of its own above the flock, the way it does when a story is about to begin.

Mateo's grandfather Apolinar came up the path with his walking stick, and stopped, and looked up at Wayra with his old kind eyes. "The condor is the messenger between the earth and the sky," Grandfather said. "Of all the birds in the world, the mountain chose him to carry its words up to the sun. Why do you think the mountain chose him, little one?" Mateo puffed out his chest. "Because he's the biggest and the grandest, of course!" Grandfather only smiled his slow smile. "Watch him a while longer," he said. And just then, from the stone corral below, the mother ewe began to cry and cry toward the cliffs.

Mateo counted the flock on his fingers, and counted again, and his heart jumped like a trout. Eleven. There should have been twelve. And when he looked where the mother ewe was looking, and where Wayra's slow circle was sliding, he saw her: far along the cliff path, out on a little green lip of grass hanging right over the enormous drop, stood the newest lamb, small as a loaf of bread, wobbling on her new legs, crying her tiny cry into all that empty air. And night comes fast in the high mountains, and it comes down freezing.

"My old knees cannot climb to that ledge," Grandfather said quietly, "not tonight, not ever again." Mateo scrambled down from his big rock at once. "Then I will go," he said. "I'm big enough! I'm almost as big as you!" Grandfather tied his own rust-red sash around Mateo's waist, warm from his old poncho, and he looked at the boy a long moment. "Up there, the mountain listens to the small," was all he said. But Mateo was already marching away, as tall as he could make himself, and he did not hear.

Out along the cliff path strode Mateo, chin high, chest out, stamping his sandals like a soldier so the mountain would know that somebody important was coming. "Don't be afraid, little lamb!" he bellowed in his biggest, bravest voice. "It's me, Mateo, the greatest shepherd in the valley!" His shout bounced off the great stones. And out on the green lip, the little lamb heard the huge strange voice come booming round the cliff, and she did not know it, and her thin legs shook, and she skittered one small terrible step closer to the edge.

The story goes on in the video.