The Spider Who Wove the Sky

About this story

Long ago, before the sky has any color, there is only gray over the forest and the slow brown river and the little clay houses. High in the tallest silk cotton tree lives a small spider named Anansi, with eight quiet legs and one large heart. A glossy black raven tells him the sky is torn and empty, and that someone should fill it. Anansi says he is only the size of a leaf. Still, the gray presses on his small chest, and one night he climbs to the very top of the tree and pulls a single thread, thin as breath and the color of morning. Then the dew catches along it like small cool stars, and a storm comes up the river with a voice.

Read the beginning

Long ago, before the sky had any color at all, there was only gray. Gray over the forest. Gray over the slow brown river. Gray over the little clay houses where the people slept under woven blankets, waiting for a morning that never quite came.

High in the tallest silk-cotton tree lived a small spider named Anansi. He had eight quiet legs and one large heart, and he looked up at all that empty gray the way you look at something far too big to hold.

On the branch above him sat a glossy black raven, turning a slow circle of feathers, watching the gray with one bright eye. "Anansi," said the raven, "the sky is torn and empty. Someone, somewhere, should fill it."

"That is far too big for me," said Anansi. "Look at me. I am only the size of a leaf, and the sky has no edge anywhere." But the raven only ruffled its wings and said nothing, the way wise birds do when the answer must come from you.

That night, while the whole village slept, Anansi could not stop thinking about the gray. It pressed on the houses. It pressed on his small chest. So at last he climbed to the very top of the tree, and from the warm spinning place inside him, he pulled one single thread.

It was thin as breath and the color of morning. He stretched it across one small corner of the dark, from the silk-cotton tree to the top of a far blue hill. "There," he whispered. "One thread." It gleamed, all alone, a tiny line of light in all that gray.

When the first dew settled, it caught along his thread like a string of small cool stars. Anansi held very still and looked at them. He had never made anything that shone. Far below, a scruffy brown dog named Scout lifted his head, saw the gleam, and thumped his tail once in the dark.

So the next night Anansi spun another thread. And the next night, another. He did not hurry. A spider spins one thread at a time, or none at all, and slowly, slowly, the corner of the sky began to glow.

Then one night a great storm-wind came roaring up the river. It bent the silk-cotton tree. It tore Anansi's threads loose and flung them down like silver hair, and it had a voice, low and laughing, that curled close to his ear.

"Little spider," said the storm. "Why do you ache and climb each night? The sky is too big and you are too small. Let go. Sleep. No one will ever know you tried." And it pulled at him, soft and warm, and the letting go looked so easy.

Anansi clung to the swaying branch with all eight legs and did not let go. The wind howled. The threads fell. But he set his small jaw and said one word into the storm. "No." And the wind frayed, and thinned, and at last it blew itself away.

In the gray light after, Anansi looked out at the bare sky. Every thread was gone. The whole long season of spinning had drifted down into the wet grass. He was so tired his legs would not fold, and he was sure, all the way through, that he had failed.

"It is gone," he whispered, and his voice shook. "All of it. I am too small. I should never have begun." He curled up alone on the cold branch, and his eight eyes filled, and the little spider wept in the dark.

The story goes on in the video.