Week 9 Storytelling: The Song of the Stars

(Amateur photograph of the Pleiades, via Wikipedia)

It was quiet at the end of the lake. In fact, some said that it was so quiet that some nights, when the sky was clear and the water was still, you could hear the stars singing in the sky.

When I say “Some said,” of course, what I really mean is that my mother, and her mother, and her mother, and her mother all said. They liked to tell stories, and when I was younger I liked to listen. I even believed the stories they told: about the maidens who sang and danced in the sky, and the brave and indestructible Turtle, and the swans who caught the chief’s daughter, who fell out of the sky.

Then when I was twelve I went to middle school, where real life hit me, and I didn’t believe any of the silly Indian story crap anymore. And that was that.

But was it? Those stories were, maybe, the reason why I was sitting in this cabin, at this lake, so hungry I couldn’t see straight. My family had always stayed in this cabin to fast—they were traditional and actually did things like fast and stuff, although I always believed that if my grandmother hadn’t been such a scary woman that everyone else didn’t dare to cross her and say they didn’t believe in the Old Religion, as she called it, that my family wouldn’t have been quite so traditional. In any case, the Old Religion wasn’t really like it had been before the Methodists came and the tribe moved to Kansas. We were still pretty Methodist, just with some quirks. But anyway. This was the lake that they told all the stories about. And here I was, fasting in the middle of nowhere, traditionally, because my grandmother had told me to.

And here I was, listening to a song that was so beautiful it made my teeth ache and my hair stand on end. And I had to stop myself from going outside, because I knew that I shouldn’t go back to the beach that night. Nothing good could come of falling in love with a star.

That didn’t mean I hadn’t fallen in love with her, though.

The first night I’d heard the music, I thought it was the hunger playing with my brain. I was sitting in the cabin just like I was now, with the lights off and the moonlight spilling in the window and onto the walls and floor. Everything was silent except my complaining stomach and the squeak of the leather chair beneath me when I moved. The musk of the summer night—damp, mellow dirt, dusky fur, and the sharp tang of stagnant water—had wrapped around me, and I was drowsing pleasantly, warm beneath my blanket.

Then I heard the song: faint, wistful, and old—so, so old. The kind of old that speaks to the part of you that isn’t quite your heart, blood, or body, but something else.

I was out the door before I knew what I was doing.

I had nearly reached the beach before I knew where I was going.

There on the beach were the maidens, their white coats heavy with beading, and their black braids heavy with length, all of it swinging and catching the moonlight and shimmering as they danced. There were seven of them, but they seemed like more and they moved as one, their mouths were open in that wonderful song, the music gaining strength until I didn’t think I could bear it.

I shifted. My foot knocked a pebble into a larger pebble, making a clear sound like a bell. A warning bell.

The maidens stopped dancing and glanced at one another. Then they ran—towards a basket that was standing at the edge of the water. They leapt in, dresses rippling like moonlight, their hair flapping like ravens’ wings behind them.

The basket rose up, and was gone.

I watched the spot in the sand where the basket had stood for hours afterward, the stillness pressing in on me from all around, before I turned back to the cabin. I didn’t sleep that night.

The next night I went to the beach again. And the next. It was a week for clear nights: every night the stars were shining, and the wind was calm, and the lake was still. And every night they came back to the beach, and watch them from behind the reeds as they danced, and after a while—sometimes a long while, but sometimes not—I would forget myself and make a noise. My breath would rustle the reeds. My joints would pop as I moved. Once, I turned my head too quickly and scared a bullfrog, who let out a surprised bellow and jumped back into the mud with a plop and a sucking sound.

Tonight, though, I would not go back. I had started dreaming about one of the maidens: her shy smile and the glint of humor in her eyes as she swayed and sang.

Nothing good could come of falling in love with one of the Sky People.

I went anyway, of course. I’d never had any self control. That night, I made the noise for a purpose. And, that night, I gave chase.

My fingers caught the edge of her sleeve just before she leapt into the basket. She turned to look at me, and in her eyes, instead of fear, I saw a kind of amusement.

“We were wondering when you would,” she said. “I’ve been watching you—ever since you were small, I have loved you. You stopped believing, and it nearly broke my heart. But—“ her eyes searched my face—“it’s a different sort of love now. Will you come with us?”

I swallowed. I thought of my grandmother, who would have given a toe, a leg, her life—all just to see the Sky People. She’d told me, once, that if she ever saw the face of a sky person then she might die happy, and I had thought that I would pray for them to show up so she would stop sticking around.

“Yes,” I said. And she pulled me into the basket after her.

Author's note: Once again, I am short on time when writing this, but basically this story is based on a Wyandot myth about why one star of the constellation known as the Pleiades isn't quite as bright as the others. One night, a man who is fasting in a cabin on a deserted part of a lake hears music, and goes out to investigate: he sees seven maidens dancing on the beach, but makes a noise and the maidens vanish into the sky via the basket, as in the story. For several nights he goes back, and keeps making noises, and they keep vanishing, until one night he decides that he's going to capture out of them to make his bride. So he gives chase when they run for the basket, and catches the youngest of the sisters, who says that she will only marry him if she will come live in the sky with her people. 

I wanted to pull this story into the present day, because that's something that I haven't really done yet this semester and I love seeing how some parts of the myths are compatible with modern-day stuff, and some stuff you have to think really hard about to make it fit. This story wasn't nearly as well-researched as I wanted it to be, but basically the Wyandot are also known as the Huron, and they have tribal lands in both Canada and the US--the tribe that the boy from this story belongs to was forced to emigrate to Kansas, where they founded a settlement that eventually became Kansas City. So that was interesting. And then there was all the current-day tribal stuff that I tried to get right, but I probably got wrong, so if anyone knows any better than please correct me....

Source: Myths and Legends of British North America by Katharine Berry Judson (1917).

Links that may be interesting: Wyandot History