It happened on the windiest night anyone in the Realm can remember. The wind came down from the mountains, rattled every shutter, blew out every lantern and then, right at the top of the sky, gave one enormous sneeze.
Every single star fell.
They did not fall the way rain falls. They floated down slowly, like feathers, drifting over the Realm with a soft tinkling sound. By morning they were everywhere. One sat at the bottom of the village well, lighting it up like a lamp. Three had landed on a goat, who was extremely pleased with herself. One was stuck in a scarecrow’s hat, one had rolled into the miller’s flour sack, and a very small one had dropped into Grandmother Olla’s teacup and would not come out.
That night the sky was completely dark. No stars, no pictures, nothing to steer by. The fishing boats could not find their way home, and the owls kept bumping into things.
“They must go back,” said the Keeper, “and they must go back to the right places. A star in the wrong place is only a light. A star in the right place is part of a picture, and the pictures are how the sky remembers its stories.”
So the whole Realm went to work. Children collected stars in baskets and jam jars. The goat was persuaded, eventually. Mira climbed onto the library roof with the Keeper’s oldest star chart, which showed every constellation there is: the Lantern, the Sleeping Fox, the Great Owl and the Apprentice’s Hat.
It was slow work. Each star had to be lifted up and set exactly in its place, then joined to its neighbours with a thin silver line, one by one, until the picture was whole. Get one line wrong, and the Sleeping Fox had five legs.
An hour before dawn, the sky was full again. Only one gap was left, in the very middle of the Great Owl, right where its eye should be.
Mira knocked on Grandmother Olla’s door. The little star was still in the teacup, glowing happily in the warm tea.
“I can’t blame it,” said Grandmother Olla. “It is very good tea.”
In the end, they agreed. The star went back up to be the Great Owl’s eye, and Grandmother Olla kept the cup, which still glows a little if you look at it in the dark.
The stars have stayed in the sky ever since. But the wind still sneezes now and then, so it is good to know where the pictures go. If you would like to learn, Constellations will show you how to join the stars.
