“Corridor girls.” Helen snorts. “If the rest are like her, he should consider himself lucky. I’m sorry you had to leave your home behind, though,” she adds quickly. “Was it hard? Leaving?”
I don’t reply, because a lump has formed in my throat, hard and raw and threatening.
Helen nods. “Sorry. Dumb question. I’ve never been there, you know, though I’ve heard a lot about it.” She inspects her basket and picks up another strand of cedar.
I sit down beside her. “That’s going to be a good basket. Your weaving is tighter than mine.”
Helen looks up. “Oh, you weave?”
“Yes. My mother taught me.”
“Here.” She holds the basket out to me. I take it, along with a thread of blackened cedar, and work it in and out of the spokes. Helen smiles. “Madda’s going to like that you’re good with your hands.”
I’m about to ask why that would be, when someone at the far end of the street whistles. A dozen or so men emerge from the forest. They’re all wearing packs on their backs, and most have belts of ammunition hanging from their hips. Most also carry rifles. Band men.
Helen takes the basket back from me. “They were out at the boundary, at the south end of the Island,” she says as she stands. “I’ve got to go. If Madda comes here looking for me, tell her I’ve gone to back to the cottage, okay?”
“Okay,” I say, but Helen doesn’t hear my reply. She’s already jumped off the porch, rushing away in the opposite direction. The Band men don’t even notice her. A man with a vicious scar cutting across his face leads the men up to the store. He thumps his way up the steps and goes inside. The others follow, fierce and grim and dirty, though now that they’re closer, I see a couple aren’t much older than I am.
One by one they go into the store, except for the last in the line, a boy about my age. He has thick auburn hair, and hovering just behind his shoulder is a kingfisher cast in shadow. He looks at Avalon in the truck before shifting his gaze to Paul, and then to me. His eyes are the color of ash. He looks like he’s about to say something to me, but before he can, the door creaks open and a stout boy leans out. “Henry wants you in here. Now.”
The auburn-haired boy casts a half-smile in my direction, as if he’d rather stay, before ducking inside.
“Gotta go,” Avalon says, pushing her door open suddenly, forcing Paul to jump out of the way. She runs up the stairs and into the store without another word.
Paul scratches his head. “What was that all about?”
“Don’t know.” But I want to, despite myself. It’s not just Avalon’s reaction or that our father’s inside the store with all the Band men—it’s that boy, the one with the kingfisher shade. I’ve seen him before. I don’t know where, but I feel like I know him.
Paul shakes his head as I creep up the steps to press my ear against the door, in hopes of hearing something— anything. “You could just go inside, you know.” He yawns. “What are they going to do? Kick you out?”
I’m trying to find a smart reply when the door opens. I jump back as my father steps out. He gives me a funny look. “What are you doing there, Cass? Eavesdropping? You know what they say about curiosity, right?” He takes me by the shoulder and steers me back toward the truck. “In you get. You too, Paulie. We’ve got a house to go see.”
“Don’t we need our driver?” I ask as I shuffle along the hot vinyl seat.
“Nope.” My father grins as Paul climbs in beside me and slams the door shut. “The truck’s ours. And just wait until we get to the house! I know you didn’t want to leave, Cass, but trust me—things are going to be good here. You’ll see.”
I want to believe him. I want to believe him with all my heart. But good things don’t happen to people like us, and so my heart just hurts instead.
CHAPTER FIVE
Something changes as we head out of town. My father drives with one hand on the wheel, steering with careless ease. His other hand dangles out the window, tapping the door of the truck as he whistles “Alouette.”
Paul can’t help himself and starts to sing.
“Alouette, gentille Alouette,
Alouette, je te plumerai!”
Our French is more patois than pure, but it marks us as what we are: Métis. Once the children of the coureurs de bois and their Indian wives of convenience, we are now just what the name means: mixed. Half-breeds. Not red enough to be red, and not white enough to be white. We don’t have a native tongue. Our myths are a curious twist of European tales and plains folklore, and never do we dance until we become one with the spirit world. We jig instead, hopping and skipping to fiddle and spoons.
The truck rumbles past house after dilapidated house. “We’re looking for a big rock with a petroglyph carved into it,” my father says.
Paul spots it first. “There!” he says as we whiz by the granite boulder jutting out from the forest.
A cloud of dust surrounds us as my father slams on the brakes, throws the truck into reverse, and parks by a driveway running downhill into the trees. “You two wait here for a minute,” he says between coughs. “I’m going to check things out.” He hops out and marches off.
I slide out to stare at the rock. The petroglyph is a raven, carved deep into the granite, with outspread wings and an open beak reaching toward a circle that I think must be the moon. With my eyes closed, I set my hand on the raven and trace its ridges with my fingertips. Memory threatens to wash over me. Ravens, always ravens. They follow me everywhere, laughing at the girl who has no shade, no spirit animal, taunting me, whispering that if I follow, they can show me where my soul is hidden.
Paul’s raven is the lone exception. He has never spoken to me, but to Paul? Yes, I think my brother has heard the trickster’s lies.
Paul pulls my hand away from the granite. “Not now. Not with Dad around.”
He’s right, but it would be so easy just to slip away, surrounded by the thick, dark forest of fir. I open my eyes. Beyond the trees, the lake is a sheet of quicksilver, so bright it blinds me. Surely I would be safe here. Surely I could cross and find my way back.
But a breeze ruffles the hair at the base of my neck, reminding me that I’m only a moment away from spirit taking hold of me and using me as it chooses, so I hold tight to my brother’s hand until the raven releases its grasp on me.
It’s not long before my father returns and we pile into the truck again. Neither Paul nor I mention the raven.
The truck lumbers down the steep driveway, and when the house comes into view, I wince. It’s in shambles. Glass is missing from several of the upstairs windows and the roof is blanketed with a thick coat of fir needles. Who knows what lurks underneath? Paul eyes it, knowing that my father will have him up there tomorrow to see what needs to be repaired.
Paul jumps out once the truck groans to a halt, and pushes open the door to the woodshed. A raccoon darts past him, skittering away into the bush. Paul laughs, but then the acrid scent left behind by the raccoon wafts out. This is my home, it says. Trespassers will not be tolerated.
Paul’s laughter fades. My family doesn’t take omens lightly.
My father draws a deep breath, then nudges me. “Go see what we’re dealing with inside, Cass,” he says. “Paul and I will start unloading.”
A path runs around one side of the house, leading to a door that’s stuck fast, its hinges rusted shut long ago. I find another path, but it leads down the steeply sloping hill toward the lake, where a boathouse sits in the shadows, its dock extending out like a crabbed finger.
Next I try the sundeck that runs across the front of the house, hoping to find a window ajar, but instead I end up standing at the railing, staring down at the water. Sometimes the beauty of the earth is so profound, it steals my breath away. In the Corridor, there’s not much of the natural world left amid the concrete and the asphalt and the steel, but here? Here I almost feel like I belong, high above the firs and the bracken and the salal.
“What’s the matter?” my father as
ks as he sets a box down next to the door.
“The door’s rusted shut.” Which is true, but the real problem is that I can’t seem to take my eyes off the silvered lake. Reluctantly, I turn away.
“Only one way to fix that.” He shoves his shoulder into the door, cursing when the door doesn’t move. After a bit of discussion, Paul attacks the door with an ax. Doors are replaceable, but broken shoulders aren’t easily mended, no matter how much my mother taught me about healing.
I go back to the truck while Paul hacks away. A spark of light passes through my field of vision as I pick my way up the path, forcing me to shake my head. Please, let it just be a speck of dust, I think, but no, it’s there, just in the corner of my eye. “Stop it,” I murmur. “Just stop it. I’m not going, and that’s that.”
The spark sits there a moment longer, and then vanishes. I slide a box from the truck and return to the house, blinking, hoping that the spark is truly gone. Paul is pulling pieces of the door from its hinges, but stops what he’s doing to peer at me. “You okay?” he says.
“Yeah.” I force myself to look at him. “Just not feeling quite right.”
“I know.” He looks around. “It’s almost like this place isn’t fully here. I feel it too.”
We both shiver, and then laugh just as our father approaches. “What are you two up to?” he says, grinning. “Must be nice, standing around while I do all the work around here. Come on, back at it.”
I’m still laughing as I make my way back to the truck, but for some reason I glance over my shoulder. Paul’s still standing there, motionless, staring at the shadows in the trees. My laughter dies.
By the time I return, the last of the door has been cleared away. My father’s inside, already sizing up a broken window. “Put that down over there,” he says, nodding at the box in my arms, “and then take a look upstairs. There’s a bedroom up there with a good view of the lake.”
“How do you know that?” I ask.
My father rubs his forehead with the back of his hand. “I’ve been here before, back when I was about your age.” He motions to the stairs. “Go on. You’d better go claim that bedroom before your brother does.”
Paul would never claim a room for himself, but still, I go upstairs, knowing that my father hasn’t told me the whole truth of this place.
Pinecones and skeletal leaves cover the floor, but my father was right. In this room, I am high above the lake, closer to the sky than the earth. My old bedroom only had a view of the apple tree, but this? This is a view that sings to my soul, and instantly I feel guilty, as if I have betrayed our old house and our life there. That apple tree is where my mother rests. Am I ready to exchange her for the view of this lake so quickly?
No, I decide as I throw open the window and let the wind rush in. Not just yet, though I can’t help wondering what my mother would think of all this. She worked so hard to make sure we had a home at the Corridor. She didn’t want me here. She wanted me in a place where I would have a future that didn’t involve marrying a warrior and bearing him babies, a future that didn’t condemn me to working my fingers to the bone and aging far before my time. That’s what she told me, at least, but then, she didn’t live to see what happened with the searches. Would she still have made the same choice if she knew what we know now?
On the far shore, several cottages nestle into the trees. Just beyond them, a plume of smoke rises from the forest, a smudge of gray against the expanse of green. The house creaks around me, its bones shifting in the afternoon sun, as on the lake, a single canoe breaks the watery mirror in two. It’s heading this way.
“We’ve got company,” I call out the window to where Paul has taken over the job of unloading boxes from the truck.
My father rounds the corner of the house and peers up at me. “Company?”
“There’s someone in a canoe down there.”
“Hmm.” He scratches his head and frowns. “Well, you might as well go down and see what they want.”
I don’t like the look of that frown, but I try not to think about it as I make my way out of the house and down the hill, out onto the dock, where I stop short. The canoe is tied to it, bobbing in the gentle rhythm of the waves as the boy from the store, the one with the auburn hair, lifts a cage holding three fretful chickens. His kingfisher shade flutters at his shoulder, and now that I’m closer to it I can see that some of the feathers are new, as if they’re just growing in over recently healed wounds.
“Oh, hi,” he says when he notices me standing there. He sets the cage down, wipes his hands on his shorts, then holds one out to me. “Heard you were moving in and came to see if I could help.”
I open my mouth, shut it, and open it again like a landed salmon. His kingfisher has begun to change shape, sending a wave of unsteadiness swooping over me. I close my eyes to fight it off.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.” I open my eyes to face the images hovering over the boy’s shoulder, one morphing into the next: the kingfisher, swirls of mist, a green stone, a strange dark shadow. I have never met anyone with more than a single totem before.
“Well,” he says, nodding at the chickens. “Madda sent these. Where do you want me to put them?”
“I don’t know,” I say, while I grasp for anything that will bind me to reality.
“Okay,” he says. He’s trying hard not to laugh at me, I think. “How about the boathouse? I’ll move them there, for a price.”
“A price?”
“Your name. Tell me your name.”
Finally, something I can answer. “Cassandra. Cassandra Mercredi.”
Relief colors my voice, and he laughs again—but not in a cruel way. More as if he understands. “Mercredi …” He rolls the word on his tongue. “Mercredi, like Wednesday? You’re French?”
“No. Anishinaabe. Métis.”
“Ah. Half-breed. Me too. My dad’s full-blood, but my mom’s white.” He shrugs. “Well, welcome to the Island. I’m Bran. Of the Band, I guess. Lead the way, Cassandra Mercredi.” He hoists the cage up and nods toward the boathouse.
I set off, Bran following behind me. Bran. It’s an unusual name, even by native standards, but I’ve heard it often enough when the Band men stop to give my father news of the Island. Is this the missing leader’s son? Only one way to find out. “Bran, as in Eagleson?”
“Yep,” he says. “That’s me.” The disappointment in his voice isn’t hard to miss. But why? Because I know who he is? And who his father is? Probably. It’s hard having a ghost follow you wherever you go. I know. My family has ghosts of its own.
The boathouse isn’t the best place to set the chickens loose, but they flutter up into the rafters, happy to be free of the cage. Bran doesn’t speak as we step back outside and make our way up to the house. I can feel him watching me as I climb. What is he thinking? Why doesn’t he say something? Why do I want him to say something?
Paul greets us as we round the corner of the house. Quick introductions are made with my father, then I duck inside to unpack our belongings because I know what happens next: Band talk.
Their voices drift through an open window as I carry a box of clothing upstairs. I pause, and look down to see Paul, my father, and Bran sitting on the tailgate, sharing a canteen of water.
“And so they’re building more outposts to the south?” my father asks.
Bran holds a hunting knife by its blade, only to flip it into the air, grabbing it by the hilt just before it can embed itself into his thigh. “Yep. They’ve had some strange reports coming out of the Mohawk and Pueblo reserves, so they figure it’s time to strengthen the south, though that’s part of my father’s plan anyhow. Make ourselves strong, so we’re not dependent on the boundary, just in case. The reports have just moved up the pace, is all.”
I step back. I don’t like the look in Paul’s eyes, the desperation to prove himself to Bran, to show that he’s a warrior too, that he’s strong, that he can fight. Suddenly it strikes me that all of this has been
too easy. We’ve only just arrived, and already we have a house and a truck and chickens. But at what price? My father? My brother? Is that what the Band will charge us for this new existence far away from the Corridor and the danger of searchers?
I don’t know, but I don’t want to be here anymore. I wish there was someplace else to go, a place where I wouldn’t have to worry about my brother turning hard and bitter.
Except there is no other place. It’s here, or nowhere.
But that doesn’t mean I’ll sit here and listen to them.
I’m halfway down the hill when Bran catches up with me. “Hey,” he says, giving me a curious look. “What are you running away from?”
I stop in my tracks. “Why do you think I’m running from anything?”
“Whoa.” He holds his hands up. “It was just a joke. But seriously, are you running?”
I look out over the lake. Am I? “I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe.”
“Hmm. Well, don’t go too far. I haven’t had a chance to get to know you yet.” He peers at me. “My mother would like to meet you too. She asked if you would visit her tomorrow.” He bites his lip. “Would you?”
I manage to nod. I don’t want to like him. He’s part of the Band. But I can’t help it. I do like him, and I want him to like me, too. Me, who has never cared what anyone thought about her, who has never given a guy the time of day, and here I am, nodding. I can’t seem to stop myself.
“Good.” He smiles. “I’ll come get you after lunch, okay?”
I shouldn’t go tomorrow. We’ve only just arrived. There are still so many things to do. I have to help my father. I can’t go with Bran.
But I don’t say a word. He assumes my silence is assent, and by the time I find my voice, the only thing that remains of Bran are the ripples of his canoe.
CHAPTER SIX
We work by candlelight. I mop the floor while Paul brings buckets of water up from the lake. My father prowls the house, opening cupboards, taking stock. He’s in the crawlspace right now, crowing about something he’s discovered.
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