“There was a canoe of men, my husband, Hat, among them. They passed by Spirit Island. Saw the dead. Saw you.” “So it was they who brought me back?” “No,” said Tallow, simply. “They saw me,” said Omakakiins, making sure, “but they didn’t save me.” Old Tallow shook her head in the dusk. Then she shook herself all over, just like one of her dogs. “Hay’! My husband, Hat, was a fearful fool. I was going to put his things out the door, anyway. When he told me that he and the other men had seen you, and gone on! Leaving you!” Old Tallow’s voice took fury. “I made him leave. ‘Don’t show me your face, ever!’ I said to him. And then I took my canoe over to that island.” The wintery trees clacked their branches, ticking and moaning. The wind picked up often, at dusk, on the island. Omakakiins could feel in her heart what it was like for that baby, for herself, all alone with the dead, with her mother, walking from those she loved as though walking stone to stone. Somehow, deep inside, she remembered. “It was spring,” she said softly. “Ziigwan.” “Owah!” said Old Tallow in surprise, peering closely at her. “You remember!” “The birds,” said Omakakiins, “I remember the birds, the songs of the birds.” “Howah!” Tallow was excited. “I had forgotten, myself. There were birds on that island, singing so prettily, so loudly! Too small to eat. The little birds with white throats, those sweet spring cries. Eya’! My girl, you remember them.” “They kept me alive,” said Omakakiins, to herself, not quite understanding her own words. “I remember their song because their song was my comfort, my lullaby. They kept me alive.”

Niiwo and Ten Snow were buried side by side.

Old Tallow then proceeded to work.

If they were all to die together, then let it be so. She would not stay outside alone and away from those she loved, no, not even if it meant her life. She followed Niiwo inside.

“Build a bark lodge outside, good and warm,” she instructed. “Nookomis will take care of the children. You stay out there, too.” And so, by the end of the day, the little family was divided.

Overnight, the fever had seized her

He died of smallpox.

From outside, the men were calling him. The big men! He clattered down the wood, jumped to his feet, and ran out the door. Being called by the men was better than a story, even a wiindigoo story, any old day.

The coat of Old Tallow was a fantastic thing, woven of various pelts, including one of lynx, one of beaver, a deer hide, and two that belonged to beloved dogs. She had pieced together old blankets, one a faded red, one brown.

“Some dreams are so powerful they are beyond our humble ability to comprehend,”

She stayed in the yard, smoking her little pipe, while they made a fire outside to roast the meat over the coals.

They wanted to see if any new families had come to live nearby. Angeline was thinking of going to the Catholic mission school, and she wanted to see if anyone was there yet, studying the signs and marks that the priest made with a soft white stick on the big black wall.

.

When a mother put charcoal on her child’s face, it was a sign that the child was ready to starve for a vision, for power. A child with a blackened face didn’t eat for days, and sometimes lived out in the woods alone until the spirits took pity on him or her and helped out with a special vision, a special visit, some information.

“If she wasn’t so young, I’d give her the charcoal.”

Niiwo is short for “fourth one” and that was what they called the baby,

Perhaps they had communicated in smells.

“I fed them some berries. I wanted to bring them home, to adopt them, have them live with me at my house as my little brothers. But now that you’re here, Grandmother, I will leave quietly. These scissors in my hands are not for killing, just for sewing. They are nothing compared to your teeth and claws.”

She realized they had thought Omakakiins was their own size.

She wished the old woman good health and called her “Auntie” because it was a sign of affection

A fragrant curl of sweet asemaa smoke stirred from the red stone bowl.

She had never had any children, and each of her three husbands had slunk off in turn during the night, never to be seen again.

Old Tallow was afraid of nothing.

Omakakiins’s mother was well known for owning a pair of scissors, and other women were always borrowing them. Omakakiins’s first job ever since she could walk was to fetch and bring home her mother’s scissors,

The air was fresh, delicious, smelling of new leaves in the woods, just-popped-out mushrooms, the pelts of young deer.