WHEN WE PACKED TO LEAVE FOR THE VERY LAsT TIME, it didn’t feel like the end. There was too much to think about. The three of us took our last steps out the door and into the smog-glazed air of the city. I gave a nod to the round-bellied man stripping siding from the house, a warning that he and his crew of city salvage workers had better stay outside until we were good and gone. I took Asêciwan’s hand and pulled her past the men. Her little legs fluttered in double time to keep up. All down the street she kept twisting her head around to look, as if the house would still be hers as long as she held it in sight. Thorah was way ahead of us. Fear propelled her beyond our reach. I glanced back before we turned the corner. Silvery trunks of maples, all dead since last year, stood like gravestones in front of the empty houses.
Where will we bury our dead in the New World?
I wondered. The salvage crew disappeared into our house with heavy plastic bags and crowbars. Thorah was a block away, flapping her hands for us to hurry up. I started skipping, dragging Asêciwan behind me until we caught up. Thorah maintained her pace, groaning about the wobbling left wheel of her luggage. She cursed the day’s early heat and fretted that the bottles of filtered water wouldn’t last until we arrived. I made sympathetic sounds, as required. The airing of small complaints was how she mapped her world. As if enumerating the flaws in her surroundings reminded her that she was alive and that time continued to pass her by. My own misgivings about Thorah had long since given way to a kind of gratitude. The daily pattern of her moans, clicks, and sighs, were a comfort. A rhythm that bound our days together. Years ago, if someone saw us taking off down the street like this, luggage in hand, they would have assumed we were hitting the road for a weekend in Montréal, or taking a trip out west, perhaps. But flying wasn’t something that regular people could do anymore. The only ones to take off now, suitcases in hand, were taking flight—escaping Earth.
Over the past two years, information about the New World had come to us without warning in massive intermittent data dumps. News organizations and citizen scientists mined it all for scraps that might seem important or interesting to the general public. From them we learned that, on average, the weather on the New World would be two degrees colder than Earth. We heard that the ocean currents were different, even though the land masses of both planets were near mirror images of one another. Pundits and politicians used vague searching metaphors, telling us over and over again that the planets were “like identical twins. At once the same and altogether different.”
Twins share a womb, I thought. They grow from the same mother. I waited for the politicians and scientists to concede the existence of a Grand Mother of universes, but no such announcement came. Instead we learned that in the New World, a tottering penguin-like bird (but with enormous blue eyes like polished lapis) lives at the south pole. They also told us that, although many primates occupy the twin planet, no humans could be found. None of the species they had encountered showed any evidence that they possessed intelligence or self-awareness beyond that which could be expected from a crow or a dog. Crows have funerals, I remembered. Dogs will always find their way home. Still, the scientists were keen to report that the planet was without buildings, monuments, or systems of writing. No history at all. A miracle.
When the first foggy images of the New World came through the portal, Thorah and I swiped through them on our tablets, enthralled. It looked so much like Earth. We had to keep reminding ourselves that it was real. At the end of these first reports, the heads of the International Committee on Trans-Dimensional Migration announced that the first pioneers would be crossing through the portal later that year. I wondered if it was a trick; an elaborate lie set up to quell the massive revolts that had destabilized most of the world’s governments. Photos could be doctored. Experts could be bribed to say the right things, to fabricate data. But what couldn’t be faked was the stupid Christmas-morning looks that they all wore on their faces, as if they couldn’t believe that Santa brought them everything they had written down on their lists.
“I knew it,” Thorah said. Her mouth was curved down in a self-satisfied smile.
“Knew what? That travel to a parallel universe was going to be possible in our lifetimes?”
She frowned at me. “Of course not. But—humans have always been special. Through these last years it didn’t make sense that we might fail to find a solution. We’ve always been smart enough to think and build our way out of anything.”
“Or we’ve been failing as long as we can remember, and all of that ingenuity is a symptom of failure.”
Thorah rolled her eyes. “I don’t think you can call humans a failure. We built spaceships. We invented vaccines and …” She looked somewhere above my head, presumably scanning a vast imaginary landscape of possibilities. “… and spreadsheets.”
I waited a moment for more, then shrugged.
“Ugh—I hate when you get like this. You can’t deny that for our whole history we’ve been an unstoppable force, limited only by our imaginations and our determination. That’s who we are.”
“That sounds like compulsion, not success.”
Thorah upended the bottle of wine into her glass. I made an excuse and escaped to the bathroom. My insides tightened as if bracing for impact. Thorah’s words rolled and tumbled in my ears, not an echo but a growl. A crackle of static lifted the hair on my arms. I pried open the swollen wood of the window sash, but the air was just as hot, heavy, and still outside. My nose itched with the smell of unseen rain. Storm’s coming. I sat on the toilet seat and scrolled through pictures from the New World until I was sure Thorah and Asêciwan had gone to sleep.
BY THE TIME I WAS BORN, most governments had stopped believing in the possibility of saving the planet and moved on to serious explorations of potentially habitable nearby planets. China was placing its bet on unlocking liquid water on Mars, while the USA and Russia battled over who could travel the farthest and fastest. Canada cast its lot with Russia in a treaty that more or less guaranteed free access to what was left of Canada’s natural resources in exchange for the promise that we could piggyback on whatever solution their space program came up with. Year after year, everything around us heated up. The magnetic poles slid like melting ice cream. Most of us tried not to worry. The ones with money took vacations in hotter places or flocked north to grab selfies with the few icebergs that still bobbed in the slippery sea. It was hard to believe that this might be the end. The currents had shifted, but the waves were unchanged. The rivers and forests looked more or less the same, even as birds stopped singing and the insects stilled. Meanwhile, methane belched through the soft belly of permafrost, thickening the air like stew on the boil.
When we first met, Thorah was a blue-eyed Liberal atheist who had descended from honest-to-god real United Empire Loyalists. I was bold enough to laugh when she told me about her lineage, and she was fresh enough to have no idea why. I was a brown-eyed Two-Spirit nehiyow with a homemade haircut and marrow-deep longing for the old things that rumbled under the surface of the world. She and I met at a rally in support of the southern “drought-dodgers” and the growing student-led movement to eliminate national borders. Thorah and I marched side by side. Her cheeks flashed so white in the full September sun that I had to squint just to look at her. I soon learned that she believed in the creation of and adherence to complex systems. I was hungry for chaos. Tear it down first and ask questions later. Her instinct was to say not now, but perhaps one day. My gut only knew yes. Yes and yes and more yes. We couldn’t keep our paws off each other. Some nights we would strip down and get into it like we were building a monument to the future—loud proclamations and mounds of wet clay between our fingers. The next day we would growl and bare our teeth and buck our bodies like animikii and mishipishew, tearing each other apart. I walked around for months in a cloud of her sweet-sour tastaweyakap smell, grinning proudly. The whole thing was so stupid. And so fun. It was love. That’s how it goes. But then we got older, and Thorah got pregnant. Asêciwan came into our lives—the hardest, most perfect gift. And so things settled between us. No more stormy nights of building and destruction. Just life. Slow and hard, driving on. And all around our little family, the whole world fell apart. Piece by piece. It should have been impossible to ignore, but we ignored it anyway.
The land first became uninhabitable all around the wide equatorial hips of aski, Earth. In the north, we were hit with wave after wave of refugees from the rapidly growing deserts and work camps. For a time, the wall of bureaucracy kept out everyone but the wealthy and the truly desperate. When that failed, our government let go of its tight-lipped politeness. They began with the indirect murder of thousands via returned refugee ships and denied claims, then came out into the open with the visible murder of families torn apart at borders and the mass incarceration and enslavement of the undocumented. And then, at last, murder on the streets. At first shocking, and then commonplace. Through it all, the surface of things remained for those who wanted it. Neighbours sighed that something in all of us had slipped away. It was said that people were less generous and smiled less often, never mind everything on the news. But at least most of the shops were open. Only the commercial areas were really and truly unsafe. The internet, which piloted everything from phones and cars to personal memory enhancements, was still connected.
Through all the deterioration, whenever an alarming study was released or another species disappeared forever, our best and brightest minds assured us that an escape plan was taking shape. So far nothing was definite and no details could be released, but they told us not to worry. Something would come soon. Just wait.
And so most people did. The only ones not pinning their hopes on fleeing to some distant planet were NDNs. Our people had been rebuilding our languages and cultures for the last three generations, returning to the land as the rest of the world prepared to abandon it. About six months ago, a group had raised a rainbow flag with a warrior head on it in High Park. They claimed the territory as the Nagweyaab Anishinaabek Camp, the Rainbow Peoples’ Camp, and erected barriers all around the perimeter. No one moved to stop them. Why bother to quash an act of resistance on a planet that’s about to be abandoned? My family begged me to return home with Thorah and Asêciwan, but I dragged my feet too long. By the time I was ready, the airports had grounded all commercial flights and the highways were too dangerous. We heard about people being robbed and young girls being taken. And that’s when Thorah made her move.
“The only ones still left on Earth are,” she counted them off on her fingers, “the elderly, the sick, the undocumented, the paranoid, and the working poor.”
“And NDNs,” I said.
“That’s what I said. The poor and the paranoid.”
“Ha-ha,” I said flatly.
She pushed her tongue against the inside of her cheek. “Earth is the past, Em. The New World is the future.”
“What about Asêciwan?” I asked.
“She’s a kid. She’ll do what she’s told.”
She waited for me to agree. I looked down at the floor. Thorah took a breath, winding up for a speech she had clearly been preparing to give. “The daily news blasts have made it clear: with cities shutting down power grids all over the world and global warming far past the point of no return, to stay on Earth is to die.” Thorah crossed her arms. “Travel to the New World is the only way for any of us to survive. You know I’m right.”
I didn’t look up. It was futile to search for the words to object to something so fundamental.
She took my silence as agreement. “The New World is a blank page.” Thorah smiled, “we can make our story there, anything we want.”
We booked our tickets through the portal the next morning. That afternoon, Thorah had the radio on. We were sorting through everything in the house, deciding what was precious enough to carry with us to the New World. Milk, glass candy dishes, bone-handled knives, and pilled handknit sweaters. Thorah said that if we cradled each item in our hands one last time, we could focus on releasing the object’s energy from us. As if we were tethered to the earth by our soup spoons and embroidered pillows, and that somehow without them we would float up like hot air balloons, unencumbered by their memories. I lifted my great-grandfather’s beaded gauntlets and held them to my nose, drinking in the scent of smoked hide and sweat like a mouthful of strong tea. It warmed me with the memory of his big nose and barking laughter.
The day before we left, a voice came on the radio with an official update from the New World provisional government. The once-frequent data dumps had recently dried up and been replaced by advertisements showcasing the bounty of the New World. Glittering settlements that shot up overnight in New Miami, emerald oceans teeming with fish that leapt into fishermen’s boats, mountain streams littered with nuggets of gold, fields exploding with new kinds of flora, apples that taste like strawberries, deer as tame as dogs! And, most importantly, no history. No history except that which the people brought with them. But that day, after the ads, came a bulletin:
The United Governments of the New World were rocked yesterday by an audio communication from an underwater species that bears a striking physical resemblance to Earth’s extinct manatees. New World pioneers have begun referring to them as the Mermaids. Our United Governments have not yet revealed the content of the message, but they assure us that it contains a single non-threatening phrase repeated on a loop. Citizen academics from disciplines as far-ranging as musicology, cryptography, theology, and engineering are claiming to have decoded the Mermaids’ message, have released various translations. The first interpretation was published as, “Your circle is not round.” A rival group of scientists claim that the phrase translates more accurately as “All beings require more than one tide.” The latest and perhaps most cryptic interpretation states, “Even desert animals live underwater.”
The radio went back to advertising New World condos. I dropped into a chair, dizzy, as if the ground beneath me had become the sea. Your circle is not round.
The Mermaids’ message called to my blood, tugging me backward through nimosôm’s stories, flashes of history like shards of glass pushing out through old scars. My vision blurred. Screams rushed toward me like wind, getting louder and closer until they cut through me, everywhere at once. Screams of anger; cries rising from unmarked graves, from bones under schoolyards, from drummers stripped of songs, from praying mouths stuffed with dirt. I saw flashes of hollow eyes and tiny ribs. Saw nehiyowak, their blisters bubbling under their skins. Saw scalps shaved. Saw names on stacks of paper, fences of paper, gates and cliffs of paper. Dark hair chopped at the neck; round bellies cut open and made barren. Children yanked up into the sky and never seen again.
“EM?” THORAH WAS GIVING ME A WEIRD LOOK from across the room.
I put my hand out for the velvet shoulder of a chair. “It’s not empty,” I said. “The planet was never empty.” My face crumpled with involuntary anger. “How could we be so stupid?” I imagined the underwater whispers of the new people echoing, How could we be so stupid? How could we be so stupid, how could we be so stupid?
Thorah pushed a coppery wisp of hair away with the palm of her hand. “Well …” she said, “we knew there were other animals.” A Christmas decoration that Asêciwan made out of Styrofoam and mini marshmallows dangled, hideous and perfect, from her fingers.
“They have language, Thor.”
“Yes, and?”
“Don’t be obtuse. They’re people. Not like us, but still. Some kind of people.”
I imagined myself the way she saw me: the wide planes of my cheeks and the corners of my eyes gone slack, offering nothing, not even a challenge. “A face like a concrete wall,” Thorah liked to say. “Better a wall than an open door,” I once shot back.
Thorah sighed and locked her gaze on mine, as if daring me to waver, but she was the one who could never face the truth for longer than it took to put on a smile. She cleared her throat and turned away, feigning interest in a pile of books. “I don’t know, maybe we’ll draft treaties with them,” she said, “real treaties. That’s possible, isn’t it?” I let my silence roll around the room. Thorah chewed at the inside of her cheek, irritated. “I don’t know, Em. There has to be a way for all of us to move forward together. What else can we do, but try?”
We could dig in. We could stay, I wanted to say. Instead, I gestured to the room around us, our home of twenty years, spilling over with evidence of the life we built together. The same home that housed her family’s Christmases and birthdays.
Thorah rolled her eyes and tossed the books aside. “If we stay, we die. Asêciwan, our daughter, dies. With current levels of contamination, life expectancy for her generation is fifty at best.”
“We don’t know if that’s true. But we know that those governments aren’t going to let anything or anyone prevent them from carving up that land.”
Thorah took a moment to read my face, then gave me a pitying smile. “How can you give up on peace before there has even been any conflict?” She reached for me as she crossed the room and drew me into her. She held the back of my head with one hand, pressing my face into the nape of her neck. She always smelled of raw onions and coconut sunblock, no matter the season. “This trip, from one universe to another,” Thorah said, “is the greatest adventure in human history. I want us to do it together, as a family. Don’t you?”
I willed myself to stay in her arms. “Haven’t you wondered why they’re so determined to get more of us over there?”
“Not really. Building something takes work. The government needs people to work the land, to make something new. I know it won’t be easy, but we’ll make the most of it.” She gave my arm a painful squeeze. “Why can’t you give yourself permission to dream, Em? It could be amazing.”
I shook my head. “This isn’t theoretical, Thorah. It’s not a dream.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. It’s no more real for you than it is for me.”
My hands swept the air, as if fanning out a deck of cards. “Only a white girl could step into a completely unknown universe with the blind faith that everything was going to work out.”
Tears stood in Thorah’s eyes, ready to let loose. “Being an Indian doesn’t give you any special insight here, Em.”
But it did. I could see her better than she could see me, better than she could see herself. Even as young activists, she had to be chair of every committee, leader of every picket line—the loudest voice in the room. She wouldn’t say she was better, just “better equipped.”
“Ekosi. I can’t go,” I said. “I won’t.”
Thorah wiped the tears away with a brittle laugh. “Fine. Be stoic. Stay and die. Asêciwan and I will go without you.” There was an edge of hope in it, as if leaving the door open for me to rush in with an apology.
When her eyes met mine, the look between us was a crackling thing. It split open and exposed the frayed ends of a decade of swallowed arguments. Like in the old commercials when they turned on a black light in a gleaming kitchen and revealed swarms of glowing bacteria on the countertops. We always knew what was there between us, hiding in plain sight, but it’s different when the lights come on.
“Can we stay?” Asêciwan asked. She was standing in the doorway, chin thrust out like a fighter at a weigh-in, trying to look taller. No matter how close I watched, I was never able to spot the changes as they happened in her. By the time I noticed it was always too late. And here she was, eight years old. Brand new again.
I smiled. “Hey, buddy.”
Asêciwan’s bright eyes darted between us. She managed to keep her tumult of feelings sealed up, almost-but-not-quite out of sight. “I want to stay here,” she said flatly.
“Oh, honey, I wish we could,” Thorah half-whispered. Asêciwan and I exchanged a conspiratorial look. It was clear she had heard everything. I felt a rush of both embarrassment and pleasure at shutting her mom out of our unspoken understanding. It had always been that way with Asêciwan and me. She had grown in Thorah’s body but the egg that made her came from mine. We were tied by blood and spirit and iskwewak fire.
“How are you doing on packing?” Thorah asked Asêciwan. “Can you give us two minutes and then I’ll come check on your room?” Asêciwan inched down the hall in tiny backward steps, making it clear that she was resisting as much as possible while still following orders.
“Asêciwan, go!”
When her door clicked shut, Thorah said, “We’re leaving tomorrow, with or without you.”
“You’re using her as a pawn.” I said. “It’s not fair. You heard her. She wants to stay too.”
When Thorah stood up, her knees popped as if making a point. “I’m trying to save our lives.”
I made my bed on the couch with a flannel sheet and my day clothes wadded into a ball. It was impossible to picture what it would mean to stay, to live alone, to abandon Asêciwan. We had already declared our departure to the authorities and surrendered the house for reclamation. Come tomorrow afternoon, the place would be scavenged for materials and stripped, with everything useful shipped to the New World. I lay awake, scrolling through pages of information about the underwater people on the New World, returning again and again to the phrases: “Your circle is not round. All beings require more than one tide. Even desert animals live underwater.” That night I dreamed of drowning and woke gasping on the couch. I closed my eyes until sleep pulled me out like a tide, only to wake minutes later, parched and choking.
IT WAS STILL DARK when I checked through the items in my survival bag. I put coffee and eggs on as the first flash of sun cracked over the rooftops. A knock came from the front door. I used the doorsteel to open it, just wide enough for conversation. A round-bellied man stood with a crew of salvage workers.
“Morning. We got a lot to get to today, so we want to start outside early. That okay?” The salvage crews weren’t supposed to arrive until the afternoon and I knew Thorah would be irritated that they were here. A friend told me that unscrupulous salvage unit bosses would pay city data workers for access to information on which houses were scheduled to be evacuated. The practice had led to crews poaching other crews’ jobs. Bitter rivalries developed and there had been increasing reports of violence and salvage-gang murders. I nodded to the men that they could begin work, then closed the door.
Thorah didn’t speak directly to me, but communicated through Asêciwan. The house shuddered and shook with the crew’s activity outside. “Ask Mama if she has everything I told her to pack for the trip, or if I need to put some things in my bag,” Thorah said.
Asêciwan looked questioningly at me. “Yes. No need to ask.” I said. “I have everything from the list.”
“Oh, good. I wasn’t sure if Mama was still coming with us, so I had to ask.”
“Yes. Of course I’m coming.” I tried to level a look at Thorah but she was already out of the room.
Asêciwan spooned cereal into her mouth, keeping a wary eye on me.
THE STATION HAD THE YAWNING OPULENCE of its former days as a hub for trains of all kinds. For two hundred years, this spot connected the city to a network of rail arteries that cut every which way across the turtle’s back, hauling lumber and produce, soldiers and grain, children and businessmen. Now that the trains had stopped and the station had been made over as one of two Canadian-controlled portals into the New World, the wide atrium was hushed.
On this day, the flow of people was orderly and calm. It was nothing like the hysteria of the first few weeks when the portal opened, where throngs pushed their way through the doors in an attempt to be the first to settle the New World. Journalists at the time had compared it, with enthusiasm, to a gold rush.
We arrived at the front of the line. A flashing red light indicated that we should approach the corner wicket. “Passports?” the woman asked. Thorah silently passed them under the glass barrier that separated the teller from us. “You didn’t leave yourselves much time. Boarding begins in a few minutes.”
“Kids. You know how it is,” I ventured. Asêciwan raised an eyebrow.
The woman entered our names into her system. “Do you understand that once I check you in and confirm your passage as booked, you will not be allowed to rebook passage? This is a one-time one-way ticket.”
“Yes, we understand.” Immigration had taken this measure after too many people got cold feet and abandoned their seat in the portal’s shuttle at the last moment. After the government lost hundreds of millions to half-full shuttles, they declared that each citizen would only be allowed one confirmed ticket.
“Please sign the declaration at the bottom of your receipt.” The woman handed Thorah a sheet of instructions. “When you reach the New World, look for the family desk. It will be immediately to the right when you leave customs. It has a bright yellow awning marked with an arrivals sign.”
The waiting area was a dingy grey box lined with linoleum tile. A single bench sat to one side as an afterthought. Signs on the walls asked that seats be given up for the elderly and disabled. Pregnant women were barred from entering the portal until their children were born. No one knew why. Looking around, I estimated that there were about four hundred of us waiting. Most stood with their regulation-sized bags, watching the wall-mounted screens deliver entertaining bits of information about the New World. Did you know that residents of the New World experience a 40 percent reduction in asthma and respiratory illnesses, due to the improvement in air quality? Did you know that New Mount Everest is almost five hundred metres higher than Earth’s Mount Everest?
A voice came over the loudspeaker. “Good morning, passengers. We will now begin preboarding for those who require special assistance, including those with very young children. If you require assistance, please approach the shuttle gate.”
“That’s us.” Thorah started moving to the front.
I looked down to take Asêciwan’s hand, but she was gone. “Asêciwan?” I scanned the crowd of shuffling bodies for her purple T-shirt.
Thorah turned around and looked back for us. It took a moment for her to register Asêciwan’s absence. “Where did she go?”
“I don’t know.”
The room was chaos. She could be anywhere. At one end of the room, opposite the portal gates, was a set of bathroom doors. “Stay here. I’ll go look for her,” I said, and pushed my way toward the bathrooms.
Inside, three teens huddled around a mirror, checking their looks. I crept low to get a look at the feet of the people in the stalls. They were all too big, and none had gold shoes. The voice on the loudspeaker came again. “We will now begin boarding for Elite class passengers only. General ticket holders are asked to stand behind the yellow line.”
I dashed out of the bathroom and back into the crowd. The room was squeezed with tight-chested travellers pressing toward the gates. The shuttle itself was hidden by the long hallway that led beyond the gate. I shoved my way through the crush of bodies, ignoring the grunts and curses rising up around me.
Thorah was near the front, hands clenched around the handle of her suitcase. “Did you find her?”
I shook my head. “She’s not here. I think she might have left the departures area.”
Thorah gave a frantic glance at the line of people passing through the shuttle gates. “Shit.”
“I’ll check the main hall if you can talk to security.” Thorah grimaced, her eyes on the swarm of bodies moving through the doors.
“I …” She pulled Asêciwan’s passport out of the waist pouch that she always wore when travelling, and pressed it into my hand. “I’ll save a place for us,” she said.
“You’re getting on?”
Thorah’s eyes darted to the gate. “I don’t want to go alone, but someone has to make sure they don’t leave without you two.”
“What if I can’t get her in time?”
“You will.”
She was lying. Every muscle in her body was clenched.
“Don’t do this to us.” I grabbed her sleeve and started pulling her away from the gates.
Thorah yanked herself sleeve away, recoiling as if she was being attacked by an animal. “I’ll be here holding our spot. They won’t leave. I’ll make sure they don’t.” Her face was pinched. The tendons in her neck strained against her freckled skin as she clutched her bag to her chest.
“Thorah. They won’t listen to you!”
She turned and let herself be swept toward the gate.
I moved against the tide of travellers, calling Asêciwan’s name. I checked the bathroom two more times while the room emptied through the portal gates. With only minutes until the shuttle was scheduled to depart, I left the secure area, whirling into the station’s expanse. In the lull between departures, the concourse was deserted, but for a tiny figure in purple waiting under the archway of the main doors.
I was out of breath when I reached her. Asêciwan looked up at me, her face giving up its stoicism with a little twitch beside her mouth. “What took you so long?” she asked.
“We have to go back. The shuttle is about to launch.”
“No.”
I glanced back to the station. “If we go to the desk, maybe we can get a message to Mommy that we might not make it.”
She shook her head. Her steady brown eyes held mine, waiting for me to understand. I leaned in and listened to her with my body, willing her to say what I could not. Our breath rose and fell together like the drawing of tides. And then she blinked and turned away. The connection was cut.
Asêciwan took quick little steps down the carved granite stairway. She did not look back to see if I was behind her. I watched her go, thinking of Thorah strapped into her seat alone. A moment later, I let my feet carry me away from the station.
We walked to a platform that had been built as a viewing area for the shuttles to the New World. There was almost nothing to see when the shuttles left, but the few of us staying behind were still moved to gather. I held out my phone for Asêciwan to see the clock, and we counted down the seconds until takeoff. Her neck was taut and sweaty under my palm. At last, an old-time train whistle blew, and then a flash came from just behind the station. That was all. After a minute or two, the clusters of observers broke off and floated away.
“Can we go ask the lady if Mum really went through?” Asêciwan asked.
“Of course.”
I TRIED TO APPEAR CASUAL when I asked the woman behind the glass whether or not Thorah had left on the shuttle.
“We only give that information out to family.”
“She’s my wife.”
The woman squints at the screen, absentmindedly pushing her cuticles down with a fingernail. “Okay … I can tell you that—yes, she did depart.”
There was a bare flicker of pain around Asêciwan’s eyes and then nothing. No tears. A wall.
I turned to Asêciwan. “She must have thought we were going to make it on the shuttle.”
“No. She wanted to go,” Asêciwan said. “She was afraid.” I reached down for her hand, but Asêciwan was already striding purposefully toward the rectangle of light at the entrance of the station.
I had almost caught up to her when a voice behind me called, “Ma’am? Ma’am? You left your passports.” I paused, then jogged back to the counter for the documents.
After the darkness of the station, the street was painfully bright. Heat ricocheted from the sun-blasted concrete. I put a hand up to shade my eyes, searching the empty roadway.
“Asêciwan?!” She was either gone or hiding. I tried to think where she would go. Her world, which once included the entire city and the faraway homes of our cousins, had been carved down to only a few short blocks. Now, there was only one place where she would run.
I retraced the steps we had taken earlier, feeling the soles of my shoes soften on the hot asphalt. The city was eerie without the everyday hum of people and traffic. The strange quiet seemed to amplify each small sound. The dry flap of a pigeon in a doorway, the clatter of an aluminum can rolling in a swirl of dust, a shout from somewhere up ahead.
“Asêciwan?!” I called again, but there was no answer. I reminded myself that it didn’t mean anything. She knew enough to stay quiet and keep herself small in order to avoid danger. We both knew that as it got later in the day, there would be more people on the street, looking for who knows what.
Up ahead, a small group of men were peeking in the windows of cars in an abandoned lot. They had appeared as if summoned by my thoughts. I ducked into the alley and circled around, giving the men a wide berth. I had heard that there were roving gangs who scavenged anything of value to add to the stockpiles in their compounds. A pop of breaking glass and cheers echoed behind me. I walked faster. Private homes were still off-limits to the scavengers, but most commercial areas were a free-for-all. There had been rumours of women and children being stolen and sold, but it wasn’t clear whether that was real or a story spread by the New World Government to try to encourage migration. Both seemed both likely, but in either case, it was always wise to avoid groups of men.
By the time I arrived home, an enormous metal container half-full of cracked gutters and scrap had been left squatting in front of the house. Without siding or windows, our home was no longer itself. It was diminished and strange, like a bird plucked of its feathers or a wolf without teeth. I found Asêciwan in the garden out back, hiding from the workers. They could be heard banging around inside, their laughter muffled as they yanked up floorboards and hammered the hinges from doors.
She crouched behind the Nanking cherry, pulling at the strangling vines that twisted into our yard from underneath the fence. I kneeled beside her and set to work tugging at the weeds. Her shoulders shook with tears. I put my hand between her shoulder blades as I had always done.
“Stop.”
I pulled my hand back. Asêciwan yanked at a vine, pulling its ropy branching tendrils away from the fence, then following the length of it toward the house.
“We can’t stay here, honey.”
She spun around. “Why did you make me do that?” Her face was red, wet with sweat and tears.
“Do what?”
“You pretended you were gonna follow her. Even though you knew you couldn’t.”
“I was. I was going to follow her.”
“No, you weren’t! You left it to me! You made me choose so you didn’t have to.” She ripped at the vine, pulling up clods of dirt and orange calendula with it. “I hate you. I hate both of you.” Asêciwan chucked the debris over the fence and curled up like a beetle, hugging her knees. A single sob broke free from her body before she could clamp down on it.
I stood there useless, feeling for the first time that she might not want me to comfort her. Knowing that I had hurt her in a way that could not be undone.
“Hey!”
I turned my head. The round-bellied man was standing at the back door, watching us. “You can’t be out here anymore.”
“It’s our house. Back off.” I spat.
He leaned against the doorjamb. “It’s not. It’s city property now. You’ll have to find someplace else.”
I rose to my feet and stalked toward him, claws out. His eyes flicked over me, assessing the potential for damage. “Get back in that house before I tear you a new one, mêwicisk!”
The man backed inside and slammed the door. “I’ll give you one minute!” he called.
I crossed the grass to the back corner of the yard, where Asêciwan was curled up in the bare patch of dirt she had torn up. I reached down and held out my hand for her to take.
“Come. It’s time to go.”
Asêciwan slapped my hand away and stood up on her own. She brushed at the stains on her leggings, keeping her eyes fixed somewhere far beyond me.
The voices of the men rose up inside as they argued about what to do. Dark shadows crossed by the windows. They would be out here soon.
“Please, Asêciwan.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and put her hands over her ears, as if by blocking out the world she could somehow make it different.
I heard the door click open behind me. Heavy feet dragged over the wooden boards of the porch. Asêciwan stayed rooted there, her face squeezed tight and quivering. There was a rustle of dry grass behind me. No more time. I lifted Asêciwan in my arms and swung around, rushing past the hard-eyed men. I squeezed through the narrow gap between our brick wall and that of our neighbours.
I burst out onto the sidewalk and sprinted down the street. Asêciwan was wailing now and pounding my back with her fists in a way that she hadn’t done since she was four years old. Her heels flopped against my thighs. I ran down the middle of the heat-rippled pavement, not daring to look back until we were blocks away and Asêciwan had gone quiet and limp.
Parliament Street was dead, except for a corner store that had been open every day for twenty years straight. I set Asêciwan down stiffly on the pavement. She stood silently with her eyes down. I walked north, keeping an eye out for movement on the horizon. I could hear her trudging behind me. I stretched my arm for her to take my hand as we walked, but she left it to hang, an awkward invitation. After a few long moments, I let it drop.
We trekked silently through the hollowed-out city under the relentless midday sun. We were now without our luggage, without anything beyond each other. It occurred to me that in a year or two the streets would look completely different as plants and animals began to reclaim it. We were sleepwalking through a twilight time, after the unchecked human explosion, and before whatever came next. We zigzagged through the residential streets of Cabbagetown and up through Yorkville and the Annex, avoiding the ransacked storefronts of Bloor Street and those who scavenged there. Twice we encountered other wary stragglers. Each time, we kept to ourselves and they did the same. Throughout the long walk west, Asêciwan followed several paces behind. Her small whimpers and sniffles came like gusts of wind. I resisted the urge to hold her. It was odd that she hadn’t asked where we were going—it had been more than a year since we ventured west of Spadina. I guessed she was too proud or too exhausted to care. She kept an even pace behind me, unwilling to either come closer or to be left alone.
Coming from the east, it was the flags that first rose up to announce that we had made it to High Park. Hot red and yellow Mohawk warrior flags flapped alongside rainbows and homemade banners with messages like THIS IS INDIAN LAND! AND UNITED NDN NATIONS! UNITED NDN SEXUALITIES! UNITED NDN GENDERS! Hundreds of them all flew high above a massive wall that surrounded a fortress of reclaimed materials. The wall itself was alive with flashing mirrors. Shards protruded like knives from the outside, making the barrier glitter in the afternoon sun. It was a thing of beauty and terror, designed so that anyone who tried to scale the wall sliced them selves open or drew the attention of the night watch with the sound of breaking glass. A hand-painted sign above the entrance announced our arrival at NAGWEYAAB ANISHINAABEK CAMP: RAINBOW PEOPLES’ CAMP. A HOME FOR INDIGENOUS 2SLGBTTQI PEOPLE AND FAMILIES. I snuck a glance behind me. Asêciwan’s face was inscrutable.
When we were within shouting distance, a small panel slid open and a voice called out:
“Aanii! Piish enjebayin?”
We stopped. They were Nish. I tried to remember something in anishinaabemowin, but my memory was suddenly gone.
There were whispers behind the fence, then a second voice tried,
“Tansi! Awina kiya?”
The question filled me up. They spoke nehiyawewin. Our people were there and they wanted to know us. Asêciwan looked at me skeptically, then widened her eyes as if to say, answer them, Mama!
I knelt down beside Asêciwan and gathered her clenched fists between my palms. Her eyes flicked nervously toward the wall. I took a breath. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t fight to keep us all here together.”
Asêciwan’s gaze snapped back to mine. At once, I could feel her listening. My words settled between us like a sheet. She clutched my hands harder.
“I miss her so much already,” Asêciwan said.
I nodded, blinking. “Me too.” She wrinkled her nose at me, showing me that she saw the tears building behind my eyes. Neither of us would allow ourselves to cry.
There was movement behind the wall. “Tansi! Awina kiya? Who are you?” The voice called out again. Asêciwan’s eyes pleaded with me to respond. I kissed her on the forehead and pulled her close to me.
I directed my voice toward the faceless wall. “Em Callihoo nisihkason, egwa …” I looked at Asêciwan.
She lifted her head, but stayed close to my chest, a layer of sweat between our bodies. “Asêciwan Callihoo nisihkason!” she called out. “Em Callihoo nikawi egwa Thorah Anderson nikawi. Amiskwaciy wâskahikan ochi niya. Tkaronto mêkwâc niwîkin.” Asêciwan thrust out her chin proudly and glanced at me for approval. I nodded back, drunk on the sound of nehiyawewin on my daughter’s tongue.
The person on the other side of the door was quiet. “Um, I’m still learning my language. What did you say? You’re here with your mom?”
“She said her name is Asêciwan Callihoo. She said her mother is Em Callihoo and her other mother is Thorah Anderson. We’re originally from Edmonton, but we live in Toronto. Pihtikwe ci?”
After a moment, a small door swung open. For the first time since that morning, Asêciwan and I walked side by side. Mother and daughter, two parallel planets.
AND THAT’S HOW THE ÂCIMOWIN, the story, was passed to me by my nôhkom. She lived back in the time before the reports came that life on the New World had fallen apart, before our protectors dismantled the portal so that it couldn’t be engineered to bring the chaos from the New World back home to us. That was in a time before the plants and animals took back the city with their muscular roots and hungry young. It was before the High Law was signed by our matriarchs, shared responsibilities between the people and all our relations: the ones that walk on four legs, the ones that swim, the ones that soar in the air, the ones with leaves and branches, our grandfathers the mountains and our grandmothers the waters. Of course, the cycles of war and peace, love and heartbreak, hunger and feasting roll on, but with the understanding that we must always strive for balance. Above all, our circle must be round.