Legend

The woodcutters of the old forest said that Eldana Saryn understood crows better than people. Her Crow Feathers came from beneath the old birches beyond the stubble field, where every evening the whole flock gathered for the night – black as soot, bound at the quills with a strip of bast.

At dusk she brought a young scribe from the town there. He had not slept for weeks.

“There’s such a din in my head that I can’t hear myself,” he said. “I chase some thoughts away, and others come back.”

Above the birches the sky darkened with wings. Crows flew in from every side, quarrelled over branches, rose and settled again. The cawing was so loud that the scribe covered his ears and swung his arm at them.

“Let them shout.”

Eldana sat him on a stump and settled next to him. With every passing moment there were fewer birds in the sky. Each found its branch and its place beside a neighbour. When night fell, the only sound over the field was a rustle of feathers.

“Thoughts are like crows,” said Eldana. “Chase them, and they shout all the louder. Leave them be, and they find a branch of their own.”

That night the scribe slept until dawn. From then on Eldana took anyone who came to her with a din in their head to the birches, sending them off with one of the Crow Feathers for the road.