Once, a poor fisherman saved a wounded bird from dying in winter. The kind fisherman took care of her until her broken wing mended. Throughout the time of healing, the bird came to trust the fisherman’s pure and simple heart. When she could finally move her wings to fly, she decided to
transform herself into a woman. She came back to his hut and offered to stay by his side as his wife. The unsuspecting fisherman was overjoyed by his great fortune, but, being poor, he soon found out having to feed two mouths a problem.
One day the woman offered to weave a cloth that he could sell in the village market. But she made him promise that he would never ever look in on her while she wove. The fisherman gave his word, and after many days, the woman handed him a bolt of fine silk. The cloth fetched a good price; for a while, the fisherman and the woman were happy.
Soon, their food ran out and the woman offered to weave for one last time a cloth he could sell for a very good price. Again, she wove for days and afterwards handed him a second bolt of fine silk. But she had grown pale and thin for the work of weaving had taken so much out of her. He gave her
his word that this was the last bolt of silk she would weave. He went to the castle to sell to the noble household the finest cloth anyone had ever seen. The lord of the castle was pleased and paid him enough money to provide for him and his wife throughout their lives. But on his way home, one of the merchants who had seen the exceptional quality of weaving that if the weaver wove another bolt of cloth, he would help the poor fisherman sell it for a much higher price to the emperor’s household.
The fisherman, dazzled by the idea of having more money than he could imagine, told his wife to weave another bolt of silk fit for the emperor. She was astonished and asked him what he would do with more money than they would ever need in their lifetime. But the fisherman insisted; she could not dissuade him from his obsession. She sadly closed the door of her weaving room and spent many days and nights working on the third bolt of cloth.
As it was taking longer than usual, the fisherman decided to find out what was happening. Forgetting his promise, he opened the door and saw instead of his wife a Great Heron plucking out of her own body her fine feathers that she used for weaving at the loom. It was a horrifying sight and the fisherman fainted from witnessing magic.
When he came to, he heard the Great Heron beside him sing her true story. She sang her sadness at leaving, but because he did not honor his promise and had looked in on her pain, she would now fly back to the wild and be free.
The third bolt of silk was the finest any human or eye had ever touched or seen. It was delicate as snow and stained with flecks of crimson.
*The Heron Woman is an old Japanese tale
