by Peter Unwin
Holding to the tin with both hands, she rocked it vigorously until the ashes fell, pocking the surface of the great water in front of her, dissolving in milky streamers that lingered before sinking swift as gravel and leaving a dusty stain that broke up on the surface. The tin was empty, there was no more heft to it, only a few particles of Paul’s dust wedged into the corners. Suddenly the grains that flecked the rocks around her skittered in the wind and chased one another across the stones. For an unbearable moment a pinch of grit blew into her eyes. Paul was in her eyes and beneath her fingernails. She’d inhaled some of him, she was still inhaling him, his thigh, she thought wildly, his powerful thigh entering into her lungs. The last traces of her husband dissolved in the moisture of her throat, breaking up there like salt.
“Paul,” she spoke. “I am not starving. Not in that way. My heart is good. My heart is not weak. I refuse to boil my water. I have taken off my mask. Please, for God’s sake, look after our people.”
She tossed the canister into the water and saw it angle downward, flashing, before throwing the lid in after it.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My great appreciation also to the people at Cormorant Books, and to Marc Côté in particular, for his enduring and passionate commitment to this novel.
We acknowledge the sacred land on which Cormorant Books operates. It has been a site of human activity for 15,000 years. This land is the territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. The territory was the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and Confederacy of the Ojibway and allied nations to peaceably share and steward the resources around the Great Lakes. Today, the meeting place of Toronto is still home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island. We are grateful to have the opportunity to work in the community, on this territory.