Raven and the Star That Fell

About this story

Long ago, when the cedars are young, Raven keeps things. His hollow tree is full of bright stones and shells, and the more he keeps the more he wants. One night the sky tears open and a star falls soft into the mossy roots of the oldest tree. It glows in his claws like a coal made of moonlight, and it hums the way the sea hums inside a shell, and it turns its small face up toward the open sky the way a child turns toward a window. Raven says it is his and hides it behind a knot of moss. In the morning the brown bear who keeps the woods comes and stands beneath his tree, and asks him to walk with her.

Read the beginning

Long ago, when the cedars were young, Raven flew over the cold green sea. He was black as wet rock, and clever, and he liked to keep things. His hollow tree was full of bright stones and shells and a mirror from a tide pool.

The more he kept, the more he wanted. Each morning he counted his treasures, and each night he wished for more. The other birds wondered why a creature with so much could look so hungry.

One night, the sky tore open. A star fell, trailing a long silver tail, and came down soft in the deep woods, in the mossy roots of the oldest tree. Raven folded his wings and dropped like a black stone.

The star glowed in his claws like a coal made of moonlight. It hummed, very quietly, the way the sea hums inside a shell. It was warm, and alive, and the most beautiful thing he had ever held.

"Mine," said Raven. But the little light pulsed against his claws, and turned its small face up toward the open sky, the way a child turns toward a window. It was reaching for home.

Below him, curled in the roots, lay a scruffy dog the color of old cedar bark. Scout watched Raven with his chin on his paws. "That is not yours," he said. He did not bark it. He said it the way an old friend says a true thing.

"Everything bright is mine," said Raven, and he hid the star in his hollow tree with all his treasures, and he pulled a knot of moss across the door so no light could leak out.

In the morning the bear came. She was the keeper of the woods, broad and slow and brown, and she had walked these trees since before Raven was hatched. She stood beneath his tree, and the ground knew her weight.

"Raven," she said, "you have something that is only passing through. Walk with me." So Raven flew, and the bear walked, and Scout trotted beside her through the ferns, and the woods breathed mist all around them.

The bear showed him the river. "This water is not the river's," she said. "It comes from the snow and goes to the sea. The river only holds it as it passes." But Raven held the thought of the star tight in his chest.

Then the woods grew cold. Not the cold of winter, but the cold of something that does not love. Where the sea slid black between the rocks, a shape rose out of the deep cold water, tangled with black kelp, cold as the deep where no salmon go, with a voice like the tide dragging stones. "Little Raven," it whispered, "give me the star, and I will give you a hundred bright things. No more carrying. No more climbing. So easy."

The fog-shape glittered with the promise of treasure, and Raven's tired claws ached, and for one long breath he wanted to let go and take the easy gift. But the bear stepped between them, broad as a wall, and Scout's fur rose along his back, and Raven said one small word. "No."

The fog thinned, and frayed, and sank back beneath the cold black tide. "That one only takes," said the bear softly. "It trades you a little gold for the thing that is alive. Some gifts are only thieves that smile."

The story goes on in the video.