“You didn’t ask me to survive.
You asked me to show you how to find the healer.”
CHAPTER ONE
With one last push and a hiss of triumph, Waabigwan gave birth to their child. Ma’iingan’s sister Miskomin scooped the baby up, cut and knotted its umbilical cord, dried its face, and as it emitted its first soft cries, began to swaddle it.
“Go.” Waabigwan’s eyes glittered in the dim light.
Ma’iingan yawned and stretched. “Fishing?” he asked his wife. “You hungry for walleye, again? Maybe lake trout? You know it isn’t the season to harvest manoomin. At least I’m awake for your strange cravings this time.”
“Go, my wolf.” Waabigwan smiled, forgiving Ma’iingan his sense of humor again. “If you want this child to be one of the People, you must defend it.”
Ma’iingan took his good German flintlock from where it leaned against the wall of the wiigiwaam. “If I’m to defend this child, I must alert the attackers, no? Good thing your brother is such a skinny, toothless pup. This baby will be a Loon baby, safe from whatever the Catfish might try.”
He pushed aside the hide hanging in the wiigiwaam’s doorway and stepped into the chill spring night. The bright fire burning at the center of the camp stole his vision for a moment, but Ma’iingan didn’t need to see to perform his duty. He’d carefully loaded and primed his German rifle when Waabigwan had gone into labor early in the afternoon; now he raised it and fired his gun at the night sky, announcing the birth of their first child.
The shrill whoop of attack in his ear caught him by surprise, and then Ma’iingan hit the ground hard. He swung his elbow at the attacker’s solar plexus but missed; the other man was already up and bounding into the door of the wiigiwaam while Ma’iingan still struggled to catch his breath.
Ma’iingan knew Waabigwan’s brother Omagakiins by his skinny ribs and the long braids bouncing down his back. The Catfish weren’t sleeping, then.
No matter.
Ma’iingan rolled to his feet, tossing his rifle against the stack of firewood beside the wiigiwaam. He settled into a crouch before the door, ready to snatch the baby from his wife’s brother when the younger man emerged.
The women’s cries from inside the wiigiwaam were full of energy, but no real distress. No one wished harm to the baby; Omagakiins was doing his sacred duty just as Ma’iingan was.
But then Miskomin’s tone of mock-fear turned to real surprise. “You can’t do that! This is Ma’iingan’s wiigiwaam!”
Eyes still adjusting to the firelight, Ma’iingan nearly missed Omagakiins. The young Catfish sprinted out from behind the wiigiwaam. With one hand, he sank a tomahawk into a birch trunk as his passed. It was Ma’iingan’s own tomahawk, made of steel and purchased from the same Dutch Ohio Company traders who had sold him the rifle. In his left hand, Omagakiins clutched a bundle against his chest.
He’d cut an exit out the back of the wiigiwaam, the clever snake.
And he had the child.
Ma’iingan sprinted after him. As he passed the wiigiwaam’s corner, an old Catfish warrior stepped forward from the darkness and threw a bowlful of water into Ma’iingan’s face. The water was cold—there was still ice on the lakes—and Ma’iingan shivered as he lowered his shoulder to knock the Catfish to the earth.
In return, the Catfish grabbed Ma’iingan’s ankle and tripped him.
Ma’iingan bounded to his feet again and raced after Omagakiins, now visible only as glints of flesh occasionally showing between the trees. The younger man was running for his own wiigiwaam.
Would this baby be a Catfish after all? And would Ma’iingan be a laughingstock for that?
Leaning forward onto the balls of his feet, Ma’iingan ran faster.
Another Catfish stepped from the trees with a bowl in his hands. Ma’iingan swerved, but not far enough, and the hurled flour struck him squarely in the bare chest, exploding upward and down in a cloud that coated him with fine white grit and also blinded him momentarily.
Ma’iingan hit a tree.
“Wiinuk!” he cursed.
Hands grabbed Ma’iingan’s shoulders. He didn’t have to see to be able to wrestle; Ma’iingan stepped into the attack, ducked, and got his shoulder under the attacker’s weight. Grabbing the other man’s knees, he straightened and tossed the Catfish back over his shoulder.
Wiping soggy flour from his eyes, Ma’iingan turned toward Omagakiins’s wiigiwaam and ran. “Father!” he yelled. Where were the warriors of his own doodem, the Loon? Where were his father, his brother, his two nephews?
As Omagakiins reached his own wiigiwaam, women beside the fire cheered. Omagakiins raised the little bundle over his head—
and old Animkii barreled out of the wiigiwaam door.
Animkii was Ma’iingan’s father and he was nearing sixty years old, but age hadn’t slowed him a bit. He crashed into the much younger Catfish and sent him staggering backward until his calves struck a small boulder and Omagakiins sat down suddenly on the earth.
“The baby!” Ma’iingan shouted.
Animkii waved an empty blanket. “That’s no baby, Moosh Koosh! You’ve been tricked!”
Two Catfish men stepped from the trees, hitting Animkii simultaneously with flour and water. Omagakiins fell back to the earth, laughing hysterically.
There were too many Catfish in the tribe. Maybe I should have married a Marten instead.
But then he thought of Waabigwan’s open smile and her gentle hands and he turned to race back toward his own wiigiwaam.
Miskomin emerged from the wiigiwaam door as he reached it. “The baby?” Ma’iingan asked.
“Another Catfish came into the wiigiwaam as Omagakiins left it. He took the baby and ran that way.” Miskomin pointed.
Clever Catfish. “Cheaters,” he said. “Have you seen Waagosh? Giniw?”
She shook her head. “Ma’iingan…”
Was something wrong? “Waabigwan is well, no?”
“Heya,” she agreed, “Waabigwan is well.”
“Then I must get this baby, if it is to be a Loon.”
Miskomin nodded quickly and retreated into the wiigiwaam. Something made her uncomfortable; after he rescued his child, Ma’iingan would find out what it was.
Ma’iingan ran in the direction indicated by Miskomin, and almost ran into his brother Waagosh. Waagosh was older by nearly ten years, and heavier. A wool blanket over his shoulder flapped behind him as he charged ponderously toward Ma’iingan. In his arms he cradled a bundle. His long black hair was white with flour.
“That’s the baby, no?” Ma’iingan held his arms forward as he ran to meet his brother.
Battle whoops sounded in the trees.
Waagosh puffed. “I was hiding in the trees and I saw this Catfish run by with your son.”
“Son?” Ma’iingan wanted to say something, but all he could do was grin stupidly.
“Henh, son. The swaddling is loose.”
Water splashed Waagosh in the face, and Ma’iingan heard his son’s clear cry again. The Catfish who had thrown the water stepped forward to grab the baby.
Ma’iingan stuck his leg between the attacker’s feet and pushed him. The Catfish fell to the ground yelping.
“Take the baby,” Waagosh grunted.
Ma’iingan needed no further encouragement. He grabbed the child from its uncle and turned left, racing in toward the camp’s large fire. He filled his lungs with air, preparing to shout the victorious chant that would announce his son as one of the People and a Loon.
Two Catfish ran toward him, between Ma’iingan and the fire. Each held a wooden bowl, and Ma’iingan braced himself to get wet or powdered again, or both. The child would get wet too, but he would be mostly sheltered by Ma’iingan’s body, and the shocks of cold water and flour now would prepare the boy to be a warrior later.
But then Giniw was there. Ma’iingan’s nephew burst from behind him and charged the Catfish. Lowering his head and raising his arms, and boy struck both bowls at the same moment. Two fountains of water rose and fell, splashing the Catfish and Giniw as they all tumbled together in a tangle of adolescent knees and elbows in the dirt.
Ma’iingan rushed past. He reached the fire and raised his son over his head, whooping and howling like his namesake the wolf. Animkii joined him, bellowing like the thunder for which he was named, and Ma’iingan joyfully passed his son to the baby’s grandfather.
“This boy,” Animkii roared, “is a Loon!”
Giniw joined them, shoving himself under Ma’iingan’s arm for a hug of approval. Ma’iingan gave the boy the embrace and tousled his hair as well. Giniw was a good shot with bow and rifle, and with the kind of courage he had shown tonight, he would be a productive hunter. Should the Free Horse People cross the river to attack, or should the Germans of Chicago call on their allies among the Anishinaabe to go to war, he would be a mighty warrior, as well.
Omagakiins threw himself onto Ma’iingan’s back and laughed as the people of the Catfish doodem joined the dance. “My sister has a brave husband,” the young Catfish said.
“My wife has a clever brother,” Ma’iingan shot back. “The Catfish are a mighty people.”
“We’re no Loons,” Omagakiins said, pointed up and north at the celestial Loon, hidden by the fire’s light. “Keeping all the People pointed in the right direction.”
“That’s just stubbornness.” Ma’iingan grinned. “If you don’t know how to turn, it’s very important to convince everyone else you’re walking in the right direction.”
The dancing and singing had become general. The baby boy had passed from Loon hands into Catfish and Marten hands and back again, but it didn’t matter now. The boy was a Loon.
As, really, he had to be. As everyone had known he would be from the beginning.
And he was one of the Anishinaabe, the People.
Ma’iingan embraced Waagosh as his brother lumbered to the fire, grimacing. “I believe I’ve sprained an ankle,” the older brother said.
“Henh.” Ma’iingan nodded solemnly. “If only you had two.”
Waagosh grunted his acknowledgement of the joke. “Where is this nephew of mine? I want a closer look at the evidence before I’ll admit you’re really a man.”
“You’ll have to take the baby from his grandfather. He seems to think the boy is his.” Ma’iingan pointed—Animkii turned around and around the fire, refusing to hand the child over until finally Ma’iingan’s mother Niibin planted both feet squarely in front of him and scowled.
Shaken like a fruit tree in the autumn, Animkii dislodged the boy into the arms of his grandmother.
“Well done, little brother.” Waagosh clapped a hand on Ma’iingan’s shoulder.
“Henh.” The racing of his heart, the adrenalin in his veins, the sweat and flour and cold water on his flesh, and the cool prickle of the night air together made Ma’iingan tremble. “Thank you for fighting to keep the boy in the doodem.”
“My doodem is Loon.” Waagosh chuckled. “My brother’s son’s doodem must also be Loon.” He squeezed Ma’iingan’s shoulder one more time and advanced toward the fire.
Ma’iingan found himself standing with Miskomin. She held her hands folded in front of her and she looked at the earth.
“Thank you, sister,” he said. “The men of our doodem have fought for my son this night, and you have fought for my wife.”
Miskomin said nothing.
“How is Waabigwan?” Ma’iingan asked. Again, something was not quite right. A small shadow of uncertainty crept into his pride- and joy-filled heart.
“She is well,” Miskomin said. “As is your…son.”
“Son?” Ma’iingan looked over his shoulder at the crowd surging about the fire, passing his firstborn child from hand to hand. “You mean…?”
Miskomin shook her head no.
Ma’iingan spoke slowly. “You mean…I have…?”
“I mean your second son.”
Standing in the darkness outside the circle of the fire, Ma’iingan suddenly felt fear.
* * *
“The wiigiwaam is ready,” Ma’iingan said.
“You’re making too much of this, Animoosh.” His father shook his head. Ma’iingan was the People’s word for wolf, and it was the name given to Ma’iingan by old Zhiishiigwe, who was a member of the Midewiwin as well as a respected namer. Animkii was also in the Midewiwin, but Zhiishiigwe’s dreams had power.
Animoosh was the People’s word for dog, and it was what most people called Ma’iingan most of the time.
“Waabigwan has put fresh boughs in the wiigiwaam. It’s clean. We’ve collected summer fruits and berries. I’ve slaughtered a deer.”
“You brought the second boy out to the fire,” Animkii said. “We danced with him, too. I felt joy in my heart for him, too. He is also my grandson. He is a Loon.”
“Is he?” Ma’iingan looked closely at his father. “And tell me what you felt this summer as you met with the Midewiwin to play your drums and fill yourselves with spirit power. Surely, you thought of your little grandson then. What did you feel in your heart when you thought of him? What do you feel when you think of him now? Is he truly one of the Anishinaabe?”
Animkii looked away.
Ma’iingan nodded sadly. “Henh, you also feel it. Something is wrong. And the younger boy is sickly. He doesn’t eat, he doesn’t grow. Perhaps he can’t eat the People’s food because he isn’t one of the People.”
“The boy is my grandson!” Animkii snapped.
“Yes, and he’s my son. And Waabigwan’s. And so Zhiishiigwe has put asemaa in both the children’s hands and has promised to dream for them. And today we will feast, with our two sons, and their grandparents of the Loon doodem, and their aunt Miskomin and their uncles Waagosh and Omagakiins, and our sons will learn what names have been dreamed for them. And perhaps the feeling you and I both have that something is wrong will be healed. And perhaps my younger son will be able to eat.”
“Henh,” Animkii agreed, hooking both thumbs into the leather cord holding up his breechcloth. “May it be so.”
The two men stood at the edge of the lake, colored orange and gold by the rays of the setting sun on its other side. Having emerged from their sweat and bathed in the lake, they had then dressed in their best leggings, and both had feathers plaited into their bear-greased hair. Animkii wore a necklace of shells and the ring through his nose, the one he had taken off a Zhaaganaashii war leader from Penn’s people when he’d been a young man, and worn since on ceremonial and special occasions. He hadn’t worn it the night of the twins’ birth because a prudent man never goes to a wrestling match wearing jewelry that might be torn from his flesh. Ma’iingan wore a beaded armband he’d been given by Waabigwan’s father. That old Catfish warrior and his wife had died two years earlier, but Ma’iingan would represent their presence at the naming with the band.
“Come, let’s go,” he said to his father.
They arrived only moments before the namer. “Boozhoo,” Ma’iingan said to the dreamer. The word was a greeting the People had borrowed from the French, but it was more respectful than a relaxed aniin.
“Boozhoo, Ma’iingan.” Zhiishiigwe had been a tall man once, but in age he was stooped. The medicine man was a full generation older than Animkii, had been an old man when he’d clutched the infant Ma’iingan to his chest and told Animkii and Niibin that he had dreamed that their son was a wolf. Zhiishiigwe’s nose jutted like a hawk’s beak, but his smile still hinted at the smooth danger of the rattlesnake he’d been named after. He, too, was dressed in finery, including a blue Acadian naval officer’s coat. Before Zhiishiigwe had begun to dream, he had killed many Frenchmen and Zhaaganaashii.
Ma’iingan didn’t remember the day of his own naming—he had been a small child, not old enough yet to stand—but he had been told by his parents how it had gone, and he had seen the naming of his nephew Giniw; old Zhiishiigwe had dreamed that that child was an eagle, and not just any eagle, but a glorious golden eagle—a giniw.
Later, Ma’iingan had fasted in the wilderness for his vision, and received another name. But that was a name not to share.
“Come in, sit down,” Ma’iingan said. He pulled aside the skin door-hanging and then followed after the dreamer and his father.
Waabigwan and Niibin sat opposite the small fire of embers within the wiigiwaam. Each sat on her right foot and each held one of the twins. Miskomin sat beside them on her right foot, and Waagosh and Omagakiins sat cross-legged.
“Please sit down,” Ma’iingan said again. Animkii shushed him. Then both men sat, while Zhiishiigwe remained standing.
“Pass me the older child,” Zhiishiigwe said. The infant was wrapped in a soft white rabbit-skin blanket, and though awake, made the journey around the fire and into the dreamer’s arms calmly. Zhiishiigwe held the baby tightly to his chest and looked upward. “I have dreamed of the forest.”
Animkii nodded sagely.
Ma’iingan smiled reassuringly at his wife. Waabigwan smiled back, a brief flash.
“The forest was here before the People arrived, and the forest will always be here. The forest gives us life; its birch trees build our wiigiwaams and our canoes, its creatures fill our bellies, its colors brighten our vision. In the forest, the wolf hunts, and the flower grows, but who is king of the forest?”
Ma’iingan meant wolf and waabigwan meant flower; Zhiishiigwe was connecting the name of Ma’iingan’s son to Ma’iingan’s own name, and the name of his wife.
“You’d better not say the king of the forest is the frog,” Ma’iingan joked. Frog was Omagakiins in the language of the People.
Omagakiins snorted and Niibin glared at her son. Zhiishiigwe chuckled. “Well are you named Ma’iingan,” he said. “The wolf is quick of wit, always the hunter. No, the frog is small, and sleeps too much to be king.”
“The buck,” Animkii said. “Ayaabe is king of the forest.”
Zhiishiigwe nodded. “Just so. He’s fast, he leads his family, he roams great distances, and in battle even the wolf must fear his antlers. And so I dreamed I ran with a herd of deer in the forest, and where we fed, and where we rutted, and where we did battle, were decided by this child, the buck.”
“Ayaabe.” Ma’iingan nodded. It was a good name.
“Ayaabe.” Animkii handed Ma’iingan a smoking pipe.
Ma’iingan held the pipe in his hands and looked across the wiigiwaam to his wife. Waabigwan smiled and nodded; the boy would be Ayaabe.
Ma’iingan took a deep draw from the pipe. The sacred sweetness of the asemaa herb filled his lungs, and he handed the pipe back to his father. “The boy’s name is Ayaabe,” he said.
“Ayaabe,” the others said as they smoked.
“The child will be Ayaabe,” Zhiishiigwe said as everyone had taken a turn at the pipe. He passed the child back to his Catfish uncle, who returned the baby to Niibin.
The wiigiwaam was large, but the fire and the pipe smoke and the bodies were beginning to make it feel close. Ma’iingan focused on keeping his breathing regular as he waited for the dreamer to proceed.
“Pass me the other,” Zhiishiigwe said.
The other? Not the other child or the other baby, just the other? Ma’iingan held his tongue with effort. If this baby, too, could get a name from the Midewiwin dreamer, then the world would feel right again. The baby would be Loon and Anishinaabe, and not a stranger or a monster.
And maybe the child would eat. His face was pinched and fearful as Ma’iingan passed him around the circle.
The dreamer took this second bundle of white rabbit skins in his arms and looked deeply into the child’s face. From where he sat, Ma’iingan couldn’t tell whether the child’s eyes were opened, but if not, the Midewiwin was staring a hole in the baby’s forehead.
Then Zhiishiigwe clutched this child to his chest as he had done with the first, and Ma’iingan saw tears on the namer’s cheeks.
He forced himself to breathe.
“I’ve fasted many days for this child,” Zhiishiigwe said, his voice a reedy wail. “I’ve offered many pipes of asemaa to the earth and to the four winds. I have begged for a vision.”
And then he said nothing.
Nothing.
“What are we to call this child?” Animkii asked. It was a gentle prompt, but Ma’iingan heard a note of desperation and surprise in it.
“It doesn’t matter,” Zhiishiigwe said. “You may call him what you wish. It is I who have dreamed nothing. It is I who have failed.”
“Your failure does not matter!” Waagosh sprang to his feet. “This is my nephew! He is of me, and of my people! If Zhiishiigwe’s dreams have failed him, then I will be namer to the child. I have dreamed, and in my dream I sat among the Midewiwin in their secret lodge and heard their secret talk and I laughed. I laughed in my dream, and this boy laughed with me. He is laughing still, though we cannot hear it. I name this child Giimoodaapi.”
Giimoodaapi; he laughs in secret.
It was a strange name. Was it a bad one? Or was it a queer name, such as a hero might receive, a name that would send the boy on a quest into the dangerous world?
“It doesn’t matter,” Omagakiins repeated, but he looked into the fire.
It did matter. The world still felt wrong.
The boy didn’t have a name. He wasn’t Anishinaabe, he wasn’t a Loon, he had no name.
“We will call him Giimoodaapi,” Ma’iingan said. “At least for now.”
“It’s a good name.” Animkii nodded fiercely across the fire at his son Waagosh.
“It’s a name,” Ma’iingan said. He nodded at Waagosh, a weary thanks.
“When he is older, he’ll seek his own vision,” Zhiishiigwe said. “Perhaps he’ll receive his name then.”
He passed the nameless baby back.
No one handed around the pipe.
Niibin burst into tears, squeezing the infant Ayaabe to her chest. Waabigwan took her other baby and then stared at Ma’iingan, and her eyes reflected his own heart back at him. You’re my wolf, they said. The wolf mates for life, the wolf is loyal, the wolf is a creature of family. You’re my wolf and this is your cub.
Fix this.
They ate squash and wild rice, deer and bear, and an abundance of berries.
It all tasted of ashes.
* * *
“The Midewiwin have met for the year,” Animkii said. “I’ve been filled with power.” He touched Ma’iingan lightly on the shoulder. “I give you my blessing.”
And yet the world still felt wrong. Neither of them said it, but Ma’iingan knew his father must feel the same. If his father felt the world had been healed, wouldn’t he tell his son?
“Very good,” Ma’iingan said. “I’m counting on my family to protect both my sons while I’m gone. The younger may already be laughing secretly, but the buck is in no condition yet to lead his people to water.”
“Giimoodaapi should have been your name, Animoosh.”
“Henh,” Ma’iingan agreed. “Except I’ve never been able to keep my laughs secret, have I?”
“Where will you go?” Animkii looked to the forested hills on the other side of the lake.
“Where I went when I was a young man in search of my vision,” Ma’iingan said. “The only place where one can go.”
“Where you’re led,” Animkii said.
“Where I’m led.”
“And you’ll seek a vision?”
“Zhiishiigwe couldn’t help. The Midewiwin have given you power, but haven’t helped my son.”
“You could wait. The boy can seek his own name when he’s older. He’s eating a little now.”
“But not much.” Ma’iingan sighed. “The boy was born outside the People. You know it as well as I do. He isn’t Anishinaabe, not a Loon. It isn’t a name he needs, though I hoped the dreamer could help him. He needs to be part of his people, to eat and grow strong.”
“They’ll say that you are a juggler.”
“They can say what they like. They can call me a wizard, call me Zhaaganaashii, call me mad. It doesn’t matter. My son will have to seek a vision for himself before he can become a man. Now I will seek a vision for me—and for him.”
“May Gichi-Manidoo be with you.”
Ma’iingan nodded. “May the great spirit be with you, too, my father. May Gichi-Manidoo be with my son.”
They said nothing more, and Ma’iingan walked into the forest. He had eaten nothing for two days.
* * *
He left his rifle and his steel tomahawk both in the wiigiwaam. He took a stone knife—a long obsidian flake with a leather grip bound around one end—a bow and arrows, the clothing he wore, and nothing else, and as he had done as a young man, he struck out into the woods, feeling his path.
He left the tomahawk and rifle behind because they were too new. He could not choose to go to the spirits, he could only invite them to come to him, and he worried that they would find the German rifle and the steel axe too strange and would stay away.
Alone and so lightly armed, he would be an easy target for a Sioux raider or an angry bear, so he walked quietly. His moccasins made that easy. He poured into his heart thoughts of the great divine force that filled the universe, Gichi-Manidoo, and before he noticed any ache in his long leg muscles, Ma’iingan was miles away from camp.
He knew the trade routes used by his tribe to deal with other tribes, with the Germans, with the French Acadians, and with the Dutch Ohio Company men, and he stayed away from them.
When night fell, he continued walking. He kept his eye on the Loon, fixed in the northern sky. As he had done those long years earlier, he followed his doodem into the wilderness. Ojiig, the Fisher, circled slowly about the Loon as Ma’iingan walked, and Mooz, the moose, rose behind his back. Noondeshin Bemaadizid, the man emerging from a good sweat, marched west across the sky, and as he touched the horizon and began to disappear, Ma’iingan stopped at a small torrent.
This is the right place. Tomorrow I’ll build a sweat lodge in this place.
He lay on the ground in a small clearing and looked up at the open sky. Biboonikeonini, the Wintermaker, was just beginning to appear in the east when Ma’iingan closed his eyes and fell asleep.
In the morning, he found the spot for his sweat lodge; six birch saplings grew together nearly in a circle. He trimmed the saplings with his knife, bent them inward and wove their tops together.
He was weak from three days with no food. He rested often, drinking from a cool spring and feeling the weakness in his hands and arms. The fatigue was good; that meant that his own spirit was detaching itself from his body. Too strong an attachment to the flesh and the spirits wouldn’t come. He needed, if anything, to feel weaker.
Ma’iingan cut withies from other trees and wove them into six saplings to make a small hut, totally enclosed but for a small entrance, and only big enough to accommodate one sitting person.
While the sun was high, he started a fire outside the sweat lodge. He built the fire around a stone that was large, yet small enough for him to heft, and he tended to the fire as he worked, adding wood and slowly heating the stone.
He thought about his sons, Giimoodaapi but also Ayaabe. What life would they lead as boys, as men? Would they one day hear the story of their father who had gone fasting into the wilderness, seeking a vision on their behalf?
And how would that story end?
He cut strips of bark from a birch tree and stitched the bark with thinner strips into a rough bowl. With pine sap he sealed the stitches, until he had a serviceable bowl that would hold water and not leak.
He ached from the work, which wasn’t good—it reminded him more than he would like of his body. But he felt nearly faint, and light, and ready. He took a last drink from the spring.
Putting his hands inside his moccasins to protect them, he grabbed the hot stone from the center of the fire and placed it in the sweat lodge. The sun was again going down—he had spent all day building his lodge. Now he laid his blanket over the entrance like a door, tucking the blanket’s corners into the lodge’s weave of branches. He stripped to his breechcloth and stooped to enter, bringing the bowl full of cold water with him.
He moved carefully, not wishing to burn himself on the hot stone. When he was seated cross-legged with the bowl by his side, he reached out with a cupped hand and let water drip where the hot stone should be.
He was rewarded with a sudden hiss and the feeling of steam on his face.
He poured more water, and breathed deeply.
I am here. I am open.
He sat, closed his eyes—pointless in the total darkness, anyway—and breathed.
Sweat ran down his forehead, his chest and his arms. With the sweat, he felt pain and poison leave his body. His aches disappeared as he relaxed into the cross-legged sitting position in which he’d spent so many hours.
He thought of his sons sitting beside him, and his father. What should I do?
How do I bring my son Giimoodaapi within the doodem? How do I help him become one of the People?
And then suddenly, he knew he was not alone.
Ma’iingan opened his eyes. Sitting across from him was a man he had seen once before, in his youth. The man had ears like a wolf, and wings, and his clothing was made of stars.
“Waawoono,” the man said. “You’ve returned.”
The inside of the sweat lodge was not as Ma’iingan had built it. The saplings had thickened and grown farther apart, and the boughs woven between the saplings now bore white fruit that glimmered faintly, lighting the interior of the lodge. The lodge was bigger than it had been, too; though Ma’iingan had built it barely large enough to fit a single man, and placed the heated stone nearly against the lodge wall, the stone now sat in the center and opposite Ma’iingan, legs crossed, sat the same spirit Ma’iingan had met in his youth, the spirit that had named him Waawoono. Ma’iingan’s manidoo.
For all that the sweat lodge was changed and alien, that didn’t mean that it was less real than it had been before. If anything, it was more real. The leaves on the boughs were more crisp to Ma’iingan’s sight, he could smell the sweet and tart juices of the glowing fruit right through its skin, he could smell the wolflike musk of his spirit visitor. He was in the realm of spirits, now. He had been brought here by his spirit-namer.
He was in the real world.
Waawoono meant he howls in the language of the People. It was a good name, and it fit neatly with old Zhiishiigwe’s dreams of Ma’iingan the wolf, running free along the great rivers, running wild in the forest, wandering far but always coming home. The wolf, he howls.
Ma’iingan had told his new name to his parents, and he had told it to Waabigwan the day they had married. She had never had a vision—every young man of the People must seek a vision, but young women had the choice—and had no vision-name to share with him. Someday, Ma’iingan had always planned to tell the name Waawoono to his sons.
Could he share it if they had not had their own visions?
Could he share it with Giimoodaapi at all?
“I need guidance,” he said to his spirit-namer.
“You know how to be a man,” the spirit said. “That’s all I have to show you.”
Ma’iingan’s heart fell. Had he come in vain?
But no, spirits didn’t always speak the complete truth. They could even deliberately deceive.
“Why did you bring me here, then?” he asked. “If you can’t help me, why speak with me at all?”
“Maybe I’m bored,” the spirit said. “Maybe I’ve come only out of respect for the People with whom I am connected. Maybe I’ve come merely because you and I are friends.”
“We are not friends,” Ma’iingan said, “though we are bound together. And if you value that connection, I beg you to help me. Show me how to fix what is wrong with my son.”
“Giimoodaapi.”
“He was born late, and so I didn’t capture him for my doodem as I should have. I didn’t fight the Catfish for his spirit, so he’s a person without a doodem. He’s neither Loon nor Catfish. And if he has no doodem, he is not Anishinaabe. He can’t eat Anishinaabe food, he won’t drink from the breast of his mother, and he starves. Help me help him. Show me in vision what I must do to heal him.”
“There is a healer,” the spirit said slowly. “He is far from you, and is laid low by illness himself. If you raise him up, he can heal your son and make Giimoodaapi one of the People.”
“Show me the way to this healer.”
“What will you give me?”
“I’ll give you everything I have.”
“A wiigiwaam, a rifle, a bow? What will I do with these things?”
“I’ll send my sons to you to be named,” Ma’iingan said. What could this spirit want? What did any spirit want?
“When your sons become men, they will wander into the forest. There I will find them if I wish, whether you want it or not.”
Ma’iingan hesitated, silent.
“You have nothing to give me. And you have nothing I want. Why should I do this thing?” The spirit smiled, and his teeth looked sharp and wolflike.
“I offer you no gift,” Ma’iingan said. “Instead, I make a threat.”
The spirit’s wings snapped once, as if in surprise. Glitters of light like tiny falling stars shot from his wings as they did so. “What?”
“If you do not help me, I will give you back the name Waawoono. I’ll cease to be the howling one, I’ll tell everyone I meet of my visions of you.”
The spirit’s brow furrowed. “Is this truly the best you can do?”
“I’m flesh and bone, spirit. Do not doubt my resolve.” Ma’iingan felt lightheaded, but he pushed forward. If he angered the spirit too much, the spirit might kill him and he would disappear forever from the world he knew. Or he might drive Ma’iingan mad, and Ma’iingan might return to his wife gibbering and senseless, a permanent burden.
On the other hand, he didn’t know how else to help his son. And the spirit had said there was a healer. “I’ll creep up to the long lodge when the Midewiwin are meeting,” Ma’iingan continued, “and shout your name through the cracks along with obscenities! I’ll name every dog I own Waawoono, and I’ll beat them all. I’ll write the name Waawoono on birchbark paper and I’ll use that paper to wipe my backside, and then truly will I howl—”
“Enough!” Ma’iingan’s manidoo rose to its full height, eyes flashing. Ma’iingan could now see that the spirit had wolf’s paws to match its ears, rather than feet like a person. “You would do these deeds? You would tread on things the People hold so sacred?”
Ma’iingan shrugged. “I have nothing else. Show me another way, spirit, and I’ll take it.”
And then the spirit laughed. Its laughter was the sound of running waters, a thousand brooks bubbling downhill together at the same time and shaking the land as they went.
Ma’iingan prepared himself for his own destruction.
“Come.” The spirit reached down for Ma’iingan’s hand. “Come and see.”
Even as Ma’iingan was still reaching out to take the offered hand, he and the spirit rose together. The land beneath them was the land he knew, only it wasn’t. Spirits swam in the rivers and walked among the trees. Further north—not as much further north as Ma’iingan would have liked—the ice cannibal wiindigoo stalked the hills. As he and the spirit held hands and rose higher still, he saw his own tribe’s camp, only rather than people, the camp was inhabited by calling loons, wiggling catfish, and martens creeping in the underbrush.
In the sky above them, Ma’iingan saw not the shapes of the Wintermaker and the Moose, but the great giant himself, and the mighty snorting beast.
“Will I survive this, spirit?” Ma’iingan asked.
“You didn’t ask me to survive,” his manidoo reminded him. “You asked me to show you how to find the healer.”
Fear struck at Ma’iingan, but he forced it down. The spirit was right. He hadn’t asked to survive. And if he didn’t live through the night, but his son joined the People, he could accept that.
The spirit took Ma’iingan on a journey at lightning speed along the paths of the air. They raced down smaller tributaries through Anishinaabe lands to the Great River, the Michi-Zibii. At a fork far from Anishinaabe lands, where a river nearly as large flowed into the Great River, the spirit turned east. Up the new river, over mountains, down further rivers and onto a shelf of dark earth, thickly cultivated. Were they still in the Turtle Kingdom, this far from Ma’iingan’s home? He thought so. A farm, around a boxy Zhaaganaashii palace and a cluster of smaller buildings; at the edge of the farm, a small outbuilding.
The spirit took them through the log walls of the outbuilding and into its cellar, where the two of them stood on a dirt floor.
There lay a young man. No older than Ma’iingan had been when he’d first met this spirit, and received the name Waawoono. Zhaaganaashii, by his narrow, pale face. Narrow plank beds lined the wall and a low fire burned at one end of the room. Each bed held at least one young man and several held more than one, all breathing deeply under wool coverings.
The boy slept, but poorly, tossing and turning on the bed, crying out occasionally and slapping his hand to his ear.
“This is the healer?” Ma’iingan asked.
“Yes.”
Abruptly the young man sat up. He pawed at his ear again, and he looked directly at Ma’iingan. His face was pale and his hair dark, like one of the silver-cursed Moundbuilders. “The healer?” the boy asked in Zhaaganaashii. It wasn’t the Pennslander accent Ma’iingan knew, or Appalachee.
And then the outbuilding was gone.
The spirit was gone.
Ma’iingan found himself in steamy darkness. He lurched forward reflexively, burning his hand on the hot stone.
Cursing, he found the entrance to the sweat lodge and stumbled out into cold air and the blue light just beginning to shade into green that announced a coming dawn. He fell to his knees and found that he was shaking. The strength of his limbs was completely drained, and for a time he knelt immobile.
When he could bring himself to move, he tore his blanket down from the sweat lodge and curled up beside the last embers of his fire. He needed whatever rest he could get.
As soon as he was able to travel, he had a long journey to make.