KWIMU IS WIDE awake and wonders what has woken him. He’s in the wigwam, feet towards the fire, which still burns enough to warm the air. It’s the dead of night. Around him, his family sleeps, wrapped in warm furs.
He raises himself, listening. Behind and above, his shadow rears against the sloping birch-bark walls. Everything seems well. He scans the sleeping faces near to him: Sinumkw, his father. Kiunik, his mother’s brother. Beside him, the pale face of Skusji’j, the Little Weasel. Across the fire on the women’s side, his mother, grandmother, aunt and sister sleep. Even the dogs are fast asleep, noses buried in their bushy tails.
An owl calls: koo koo! Perhaps the owl woke him. He settles back on the springy fir boughs that layer the floor, draws the warm beaverskin robe up to his chin, and folds his arms behind his head, staring up to where the slanting poles of the wigwam come together high overhead, framing a patch of black sky.
Outside, the snow is thick, the cold is strong. His stomach grumbles, but he’s not truly hungry. It’s been a good winter for the People, with plenty of game. No need to kill the dogs, as they had to do in the famine three winters back. Dog is good to eat, but moose is better: besides, Kwimu likes the dogs. They are good hunting companions.
The worst of the winter is over. This is Sugar Moon, the forerunner of spring. Soon the sap will be rising in the sugar maples, and it will be time to collect it and boil it into thick, sweet syrup. Kwimu looks forward to showing Skusji’j how to pour little coils of hot syrup into the snow, where it cools into chewy candy. Then the thaw will come, the rivers will melt, and it will be time to move down to the seashore again. He glances again at Skusji’j. Hard to believe that nearly four seasons have passed since he and his father took the Little Weasel away from the deserted houses of the Jipijka’m People. The child had fought like a weasel, too, biting and scratching so fiercely they’d had to tie his hands and bundle him into the canoe all trussed up – till he realised they meant him no harm.
And he’d been quick to pick up words – a gruff greeting, a yes or a no. Still, it was months before he could tell in stumbling sentences who he was and how he came in his people’s ships from a land across the ocean, a journey of a moon or more. Everyone there has pale skin. It sounds like the Ghost World. But the Little Weasel is no ghost.
“He is my little brother,” Kwimu murmurs, and his heart is warm.
He reaches for Fox, who doesn’t stir, even when Kwimu runs his hand over the pricked ears and sharp, pointed nose. Outside, the owl has stopped calling. Perhaps it has killed. Kwimu yawns. Why can’t he sleep? He’s not even drowsy.
His mind roams back over a year of changes. He’d thought, after the Jipijka’m People had gone, that they could move down to the bay as usual. But Sinumkw hadn’t liked the idea. “How do we know if the Jipijka’m People have gone for good? What if they come back?” The rest of the men, after discussing it, agreed with him. They arranged with the Beaver Clan to share their shoreline and fishing grounds for the season. But what will happen this year? Grandmother says those dark earth houses are haunted. Angry ghosts sing songs there now, she says. It is a place of bad memories, best avoided.
Kwimu lies thinking of it: the river where they built the fish weir, the shore where he’s dug for clams and oysters, the marshlands where ducks and geese gather in hundreds, and where huge brown moose sometimes wander out of the forests to splash through the boggy pools. Is it all lost for ever? Will we never go back?
A branch cracks: a sharp, splintering, tearing sound. Kwimu starts, although branches break all the time. They snap like pipe stems, weighted with snow or split by frost.
All the same, he holds his breath. The cold intensifies, the fire pines and dwindles. Just as he has to let his breath go in a cloud of vapour, he hears it again: another crack, and then heavy, slow footsteps in the snow. Crunch. Crunch.
Beside him, Fox twists into sudden life. All through the wigwam, the family wakes, eyes flying open, breath caught. No one speaks. Even the dogs know better than to yap. Skusji’j sits up. He looks from face to face. “Muin?” he mouths to Kwimu. “Bear?”
Kwimu shakes his head. All the bears are asleep. They won’t wake, hungry and bad tempered, till late spring.
Crunch. Crunch. Something shuffles about the wigwam. Kwimu’s heart beats hard. The framework of the wigwam shudders as the thing outside jostles it, then picks at the walls, patting and fumbling. Kwimu’s little sister is panting with terror. Any moment now, the frail birch-bark walls will be trn away, exposing them to the bleak wind and icy stars, and to —
Skusji’j cries out loudly in his own language, and as Kwimu turns on him in furious anger, repeats it in the language of the People: “See! See there!” He points. Something is blocking the star-shaped opening at the top of the wigwam: something dark and glistening that rolls about showing a yellowish-white rim, fixing for a malevolent moment on each person below.
An eye as big as your hand.
Sinumkw seizes his lance. Kwimu’s mother shrieks. But Grandmother springs nimbly to her feet, shaking off her covers. She catches up two of the fir branches that line the floor, and thrusts them into the fire. They crackle and catch, and she waves them upwards, streaming sparks.
The eye vanishes. From high above, a terrible scream rings across the forest. The sound crushes them with its weight of cold anguish. They huddle, clutching each other, expecting to be trodden and trampled. But the frozen ground shudders to the impact of huge feet running away.
Before his father can forbid it, Kwimu dashes to the door of the wigwam, Skusji’j at his heels. He peels back the hide flap and scurries out into the bitter night. Around him the village is waking. Men stumble from the doorways of the nearest wigwams and call out in alarm. The treetops are dark against a sky hazy with moon-glimmer. A few hundred yards to the south-east, something crashes away through the trees, howling, brushing the very tops of the white pines.
There are enormous, pitted tracks in the snow.
Kiunik, Kwimu’s young uncle, ducks out of the wigwam and races towards the trees, yelling a war-cry, his black hair streaming loose. Some of the other young men join in, but the older ones call them roughly back: “It’s gone; let it go.”
“We’ve been lucky: you can’t fight a jenu.”
“What was it?” The Little Weasel tugs Kwimu’s arm. He looks like a ghost in the white darkness. “Kwimu, what was it?”
“Jenu,” Kwimu mutters. “Ice giant. We have seen the jenu – and lived.”