the shore? And what of her sister, Three Winds? She’d been weak with illness at the end of the fall ricing. She sees her sister’s party as they paddled away, grew small, then rounded the point, out of sight. If their hunts have been fruitless, too. . . . She stops her mind from weaving the thoughts. At Sugarbush she’ll hear all the news. She won’t weave a web for herself from which she will be unable to escape. No. She pictures Three Winds tending a fire, roasting an enormous moose flank, which crackles and drips. Bullhead swallows. Her stomach knots.
Tonight, over the fire, she’ll tell a Nana’b’oozoo story. One where despite his spirit powers, his human side lands him in a bundle of trouble. A romping tale of summer mischief, which will make everyone laugh out loud. And if the spirits allow, it will come with such vividness they’ll hear the sweet birdsong, smell pine pitch and frogs. But now it is she who stares into the air while Grey Rabbit works steadily on the hat.
“Look,” shouts Little Cedar.
Grey Rabbit is on her feet, Bullhead behind her in the snow.
“What is it?” Grey Rabbit calls, but Little Cedar only jumps and gestures, nodding toward the big water.
There’s something large and white on the horizon, much larger than the patches of light around it. It’s not blinking, but shining steadily.
Grey Rabbit’s dream comes flooding back. The child’s wavering face, its awful blue lips. Dead. She’s sure. The child was dead. She grabs hold of Little Cedar’s clothes.
The strange light lingers on the horizon, and the great horned serpent swims through her thoughts. He could have easily held her underwater, helpless to reach the floating child. She tugs Little Cedar closer. “Did it speak to you? Do you hear anything?”
Little Cedar shakes his head, and sidles up flush against her leg.
Grey Rabbit searches the horizon, then the open water near shore. She turns to Bullhead, her eyes dark with fear.
“A big sheet of ice, shining in the sun,” says Bullhead, nodding as if in agreement with herself. She has seen something similar before. She gives Little Cedar’s hat a playful pat. “Why don’t you come back to the fire with us, Little No Eyes,” she says, using his pet name, given for the way his eyes close when he laughs. “There’s plenty of work you can help with. Come. Don’t forget your bow.”
Little Cedar puts his hand in the snow, where the arced shape had cut its way down. He pulls out his bow and aims toward Gichigami.
“It’s gone,” he squeals, and they turn back to the water where the horizon, once again, is an unbroken line.
“Come, both of you. It’s cold here,” says Bullhead.
Little Cedar protests, but only in word. He walks between them, a seed to their shell. Grey Rabbit keeps a tight hand on his shoulder and a wary eye turned toward the shining big water.
1902
The white-maned waves rise and fall, cascading toward shore in carousel lines. Rumbling spray and muffled thunder. Knuckled legs churning and watery hooves, kicking up whorls of sand. Every edge rough washed. Every sharpness worked smooth. Rock. Wood. Bone. Glass. Frothing necks riding blue water breach and then sink back again, plunging headlong into roundness.
A cove of smooth grey stones, soft and flat and sun warmed against her cheek. They press into her ribs in hard sickles. Ear to rock, she can hear their hoofbeats, can feel the vibration in her bones. Warmed hair, frigid spray from the lake, cool wind, and the gulls flying stiff winged.
They cascade toward shore in carousel lines.
Cool on her arm. Cold. Her arm’s cold. Berit draws it under the quilts and holds it between her legs. No more wild wind, no hoof-driven waves. She rises to her elbow and stretches. The air smells of ash. The fire has dwindled. Out the window is a wide, pale winter morning. With Gunnar at the lumber camp, the fire is solely her duty. Again, she has slept past stoking time. She throws the quilt over her head, warm in her dark cocoon.
Another week and he should be back. She slaps the quilt down and jumps to the floor, icy on the soles of her feet. The coals are still hot so the new logs flare. She adjusts the flue and is back in bed, pulling the warm covers around her. The crackling wood is a friendly presence, a certain kind of company.
Her sketchbook lies on the chair where she left it. If she’d propped it up when she fed the stove, she’d be able to see it from the bed. She’s working on a sketch of bears, trying to do it from memory. The new wood whistles and pops. Drawing is the one thing that saves her, it has since she was a girl. She’d have come unhinged without it, eleven years old and bedridden for months.
She’d been cobbing for rock on the dump heap near the mine, drawn by the hope of finding missed copper. And though a feeling in her stomach had warned her, she ignored it and kept on climbing. The rest still remains a blur—the sliding and twisting, the ripping pain. There were two round clouds in the sky as she lay there, and the sound . . . bam . . . bam . . . bam . . . rhythmic and forever, of the stamp mill on the hill.
She filled the first sketchbook she was given, front to back, both sides of each page, and the cardboard cover as well. She drew pictures of everything around her: a wilting daisy in a tin cup on the bed stand; her leg, twice broken, propped on a folded quilt; the dark pine woods of the Keweenaw out the window.
If Gunnar could see her lolling like this. But the salt beef is in the lake and it’s time to haul it out. He would have his say about her cooking it when there’s still a bit of moose hanging in the cool-shed. She recalls the animal’s wary brown eye as she’d stood at the door, the bull in her sights, waiting for it to move from the garden, not wanting to drop it in her potatoes. It was her last, biggest, and easiest kill of the fall. Gunnar will squawk, but she’s saving the last of the moose for his return. In three leaping bounds Berit reaches her clothes, which she’d left to warm by the stove. She dresses quickly, last, her black skirt, which tents the warmth around her legs.
The snow is dropping straight, no wind, as she walks down the path with her buckets and auger. There are fox tracks on the lake that weren’t there the day before. They skirt the shoreline, cross over her rope, and climb the rocks just short of the point. The snowfall creates a leaden hush, and now and then floating slabs of ice clack together in the water. The skin of ice on the hole shatters with a swift poke. The weighty meat twirls at the end of the rope as she pulls it from the cold water.
Now the snow’s coming down in big fleecy clumps, and she’s shifting the weight of her load as she walks up the path, thinking about when she wants to start the beef boiling now that it won’t be too salty to eat, and then whether to have it ready for dinner or supper. It doesn’t seem to matter much when Gunner’s away. The ripped net in the fish house still needs mending, but there’s something about horses on the edge of her mind, and she lifts her eyes as if in search of them through the cottony curtain of falling snow where a man is standing, and fear combs up the back of her neck, and her feet slide out, and the buckets fall.
John Runninghorse stands over her with a startled expression, his head cocked, his black hair catching snow, holding dead snowshoe rabbits that dangle along the length of his leg. “For the love of God,” Berit blurts out. He lays down his stringer and offers her a hand, but she’s already scrambling to her feet, flustered and brushing snow from her coat. “Gunnar’s not here,” she says breathlessly.
He nods and moves past her on the path, gathering her empty buckets as he goes. What in heaven’s name is he doing at her place, showing up at this time of year? Berit’s heart slows to a dull knock, and she circles her wrist, which is going to be sore.
The snared rabbits lay stretched at her feet, fat clumps of snow gathering in their white fur. Fresh. She can tell as she lifts them, still pliable and swinging as she continues up the hill.
Again, she is startled when she sees the large snowshoes leaning against the cabin. It’s rare to see anything that she doesn’t know by heart, or that she didn’t set in place with her own two