The Story of the Crane Woman

It is true that in the beginning he loved her and healed a mortal wound; that when she was vulnerable he took her into his home and gave her rest and love and comfort.

And that is how a crane came to give up her wings and roost with an earthbound sail maker, becoming his wife and living with her heavy human feet bound to the earth. Bare of her splendorous and downy garments, she grew together with her love, made a home with him, replacing the comfort of her lost feathers with his body and learning to sing to the thumping sound of her fleshy feet and solid bones which trod daily over floorboards, forest floors, and mountain paths.  And so the sail maker, who thought he knew something about the wind unwittingly fell into love with the spirit of a great bird and the great bird who knew nothing of the earth knowingly loved the soul of a human man.

They thought that love would save them but the woman was of the wind and sea and the man of the earth and wood. Feeling their time unraveling the woman chose in desperation to reach into her deepest secret and give freely of her very essence to save them.  Shut up behind a screen, she began the undoing of her silken feathered soul, pulling all the wind and light from her heart to weave into resplendence a great gesture of love for the sail maker, who profited and became happy by her sacrifice.

In time the sail maker grew rich and enjoyed praise and fame for the sails made of her soul while she quietly withered in her unwinged, earthly body.  He didn't notice when she stopped singing and careless in his comfort,  neither did he perceive her cold and thinning skin as she wound herself in blankets under moonlight.

In his ignorance, the sail maker betrayed her. The shroud around the suffering crane was broken away.

Mottled, and bleeding at the loom, a great bare heaving creature beat her wings for freedom and in the defiance all her splendor returned. As though she had never left it, she took wing, returning to the sky.

She never returned, her long life with the man on earth becoming a dream that belonged to another world.