Once upon a time, on the western edge of the world, a brown girl floated in a blue boat with a white handprint on its side. The channel in which she drifted was between the mainland and the small islands which were the last land to the west before the endless sea.

Isra, for that was the girl’s name, could not have told you what time it was except that it was between tides because the water’s surface was like an obsidian mirror with only a few subtle ridges and swirls betraying the violence of ocean waters forced through the narrow spaces between rocky, evergreen islands. It was daytime for the sun was bright and high in a turquoise sky.

She rowed into a small cove and admired the crabs, fish, and stones on the cove's floor, the opaque depths of water giving way to the transparent shallows. Isra pulled her boat onto the rocks and was gathering mussels to eat when she heard a chattering noise from a nest of kelp and driftwood and saw an otter swimming toward her.

“Girl,” said the otter, “is that your boat?”

“Yes it is, sir otter,” she replied, “or I would not have been rowing it but I didn’t know otters could talk.”

“We can,” said the otter, “but we don’t talk to two-legs unless we have to. May I have a mussel?”

“Certainly,” said Isra, “there are mussels to spare on this beach.”

“Then give me a mussel, girl, and I will tell you what I have to tell,” said the otter.

They feasted on mussels. The otter ate his mussels raw, both his neat paws raised to his sharp teeth. The girl steamed hers on hot rocks. When they had finished, he told her his news.

“You have the mark on your boat, blue with a white hand. Have you noticed there have been no tides?”

She had not. In fact, though she tired, Isra could not remember how she had come to be in the channel. She did, however, know her name and her boat.

“The moon,” said the otter, “is gone from the sky. She is being kept in the north by one of the ice witches. If she is not back before the nights are longer than the days, it will go hard with many creatures. Some are already perishing. The whales told me the one with the white hand could save her.”

Isra asked the otter “How can I find her when I know so little about myself?”

“You must go in the dark and follow the big lights and the small, the high lights and the low. They will lead you to the ice. That is what the whales said,” said the otter.

The girl was wondering what that meant when the otter said, “Oh, oh! I almost forgot. The whales told me to give you this.”

He extended a furry paw and gave her a large white stone on a gold chain. It was brighter than any diamond in the sun. With that, the otter plopped back in the water and was gone in a flash.


That night, Isra saw a trail of little, phosperescent creatures leading from the cove out into the channel and north. She decided these must be the otters “little lights” and the low ones, too. The little glows under the water and the milky vastness of stars in the clear night sky were her only markers.

Every night the stars in the sky and the diatoms in the water were there for her and Isra rowed for days until a great storm roared in from the north, obscuring the stars and sending the diatoms to light up the waves crashing against the shore. Isra took shelter on the only sandy beach she had ever seen. The rain was cold enough to bite but, when the clouds finally parted, the stars were not the only lights in the sky. Swirls and flashes of aquamarine and coral lit up the northern sky. She got in her boat and followed the lights.

For many more day she rowed until she was so far north there were no more trees on the shore. When she was hungry, the seals brought her fish and, when she was cold, an eagle dropped a furs into her boat.

It wasn’t long before she reached the ice. She did not know how she would proceed now she could no longer go by water when an enormous white wolf, large as a horse, came up to her and bowed.

“You seek the moon, lady,” said the wolf, “you may ride me.”

She got on his back and sprang across the white waste so quickly it felt like flying. The next night, Isra saw a white light on the horizon and knew she had come, at last, to the moon. In a great mountain of ice, a woman lay frozen. Her eyes were closed and she had white-gold hair and white skin and her dress was silver.

Before Isra could move toward the woman in the ice, another white woman appeared. Her dress was the color of the ocean at night. Isra knew this must be the witch.

“The moon is mine, little girl,” said the witch, “and all her power.”

“The moon belongs in the sky, witch,” said Isra.

The witch raised her hand but the wolf began to growl and leapt on the witch but not before she changed herself into a giant, which bear. While they fought, Isra ran towards the moon, though she had no idea how to free her.

The witch finally prevailed against the wolf, who, lay in a heap of blood-stained white fur, and turned her attention to Isra, who was trying to chip away at the ice surrounding the moon with a rock. A great spear of ice appeared in the witched hand and she threw it with sure aim and ran Isra through.

Blood darkened the ice and the witch thought she had triumphed but blood was on the white gem Isa wore around her neck as well. From this, a white fire started to kindle. It consumed the girl, the witch, and the mountain of ice.

The freed moon took her place in the sky and the white light that was Isra went into the sky as well for she was of the blood of stars. She remains there to this day and is the northern star, the white hand that guides sailors at night.