The Story Of The Ravens

Once some climbers were stranded on a hill top without food and they wondered how they could survive without breaking the terrible taboo of cannibalism but then one of the men had an idea.

"Which ever of us dies", he said, "We shall put out his body for the ravens to eat and when they come down to feed upon him we shall eat them and then atleast we shall not be cannibals".

But when one of the men died, his bother refused to follow the plan.

"I cannot eat the raven that ate my brother", he said, "I would rather break my teeth trying to feed upon a rock".

But the other men chided him,

"And yet if it were another mans brother you would eat it?", they said.

Still the man refused to eat raven and the next day, because he alone died of hunger, the ravens fed upon him.

Yet when the men, after surviving on the hill top, were finally rescued some of them suffered from a terrible hallucination, swearing that they saw a black silent shape moving slowly in the air like the shadow of a raven.

"There is a raven of guilt overshadowing us all", said one of the men, "Surely one of hells ravens circling and when I die it will come down upon my soul".

And another man started to doubt his memory and his sanity.

"Were there really ravens on the hilltop?", he asked the others, "Or did our minds simply invent them to ease our consciences; did we eat what the ravens ate? Was it my curled fingers or ravens claws that tore at the dead mens flesh?".

Yet another said he felt a sharp pain pecking at his head as a ravens beak pecks upon a dead mans skull.

But the man whose idea it had been to trap the ravens chided them all.

"Better a haunted man than a ghost", he said, "Better a guilty heart than one that is unbeating. A living soul must take precedence over a rotting corpse can't you see that? And we would have murdered our own living souls if we had not done what we have done".