As the sun set on the third day of their journey—and their fifth day on Askí, by Morgan’s tally—they reached the summit. Although there was good reason to feel afraid that they’d made it, it was impossible not to appreciate the accomplishment. They came upon a flat area with a perfectly untouched layer of snow where there rested another grove, and at the center of those pine trees stood one tree above all others. A giant sequoia. The tree looked as tall as a mountain itself, the peak of it thrusting into the sky as though you could climb its trunk all the way up to the heavens.
“It’s a good place to eat dinner and rest,” Ochek said as they walked through the trees.
They found that the pines had given the sequoia space enough to allow their hut to be erected near its base.
“I bet you can see the entire world from up here,” Morgan said, and to test her theory, she kept walking until she came to the other side of the grove, then farther, to the edge of the summit.
She looked out over the land they were headed to, and was soon joined by Eli. They saw, only a few miles away, an end to the White Time. It looked like a lake of greens and browns coming up against a beach of white sand. Morgan reached her hands towards it, as if she could gather in the warmth right there. So did Eli.
“You were right, Arik!” he called out.
Not long after, Arik and Ochek emerged from the grove. Once Ochek saw the Green Time, he buried his face in his paws and began to cry.
Even Arik was quiet at first, looking over the land. “I knew they were right,” she whispered.
“Knew who were right?” Morgan asked. “Who would’ve told you about this and not have done something about it themselves?”
“Oh, that’s neither here nor there,” Arik said quickly.
“It is if it means we never had to—”
“None of your concern,” she interrupted. “They had their reasons. The point is, we’ve found it.”
Ochek stared at the land below. It was such a beautiful thing to see him like that that both Morgan and Eli started to watch only him. They looked away only when Ochek appeared to gather himself.
He said in the most level voice he could manage, “Let’s eat, then sleep. Tomorrow, we’ll find the man.”
“I can see his place right from here.” Arik pointed directly west, where, against the horizon, the sun was falling out of view.
There was a line across the land where the white turned to greens and browns, where the frozen lake broke off and its sky-blue waters rushed into a forest so rich that you couldn’t see the ground if you tried. Beyond the forest, there was a smaller river that fed into an enormous lake in the shape of a perfect circle. In the middle of the lake, on a small island, was a house. Even from where they were, at the top of the mountain, they could see light shining out from within the cabin like miniature sunbeams.
“There are your summer birds,” Arik said.
Ochek assessed the space between here and there and said confidently, “By this time tomorrow, we’ll have set them free.”
“Not so tasty now, am I?” she asked.
“You were right, dear Arik,” he said. “You were right.”
The four stood at the edge of the mountaintop until they had to pry themselves away from the view to finish setting up camp. A feeling of excitement came over them, as they thought this might be the last time they’d set up camp in the freezing cold. There was real hope now, as sure as the sun would rise in the morning, and not one of them mentioned why they’d been so scared earlier in the day.
Not one of them spoke of the wolf at all.
They ate supper quietly and quickly and packed up everything they could before turning in for the night so they could leave promptly in the morning. It was only when they were lying down, encircling the fire, that they talked—precisely when they planned to be sleeping. They were all too excited.
“My father was still alive back then,” Ochek said. “Before the man left with the summer birds.”
“How many people were in Misewa?” Morgan asked.
“There were children, parents, Elders…”
“I’m sorry,” Eli said.
“My father was going to take me out on the land.” Ochek poked at the fire with no real purpose. “We went to bed early so that we could get up and leave before the others woke. My father told me that if I caught anything, we’d have a feast. I was excited. I knew I was going to catch something.” Ochek let go of his stick and watched as it erupted into a small flame and then collapsed into the fire. “It was a perfect day, right in the middle of the Green Time. The White Time had passed and wouldn’t be back until two seasons had gone by.”
Ochek lay on his back and looked up through the small opening at the top of the hut. You could see one star through the opening, and the smoke escaping through it. Morgan and Eli and Arik stayed still and silent, waiting for him to continue.
“When I woke up that morning, it didn’t feel right. It was dark, when the sun should’ve been rising. Nobody had set a fire because the weather had been warm, and it was cold in the lodge. And the wind. The wind was violent outside, whistling in through the cracks in the wood. I…” Ochek’s voice began to break, and he started again only when he’d righted it. “I opened the door, went outside, and it was the White Time. The green, the earth, the waters—washed away in a flood of snow and ice. Soon after, we learned that the man had gone with the summer birds and Tahtakiw.”
“And the rest is history,” Arik said.
“No.” Ochek sat up looking determined, his eyes burning with intensity. “It will be history after tomorrow. The Elders will paint it on the walls, and we’ll tell stories about it to our children, and our children’s children.”
“Say what you will about Captain Serious over here,” Arik said, “but he can sure give a speech, right?”
“And you can sure kill a mood.” Morgan chuckled.
“I remember hunting with my moshom,” Eli said, and everybody was just as quiet for him as they had been for Ochek. “I was too young to carry a rifle, so he gave me a slingshot. We were hunting for moose, but he told me to use the slingshot if I saw something small enough. Moshom had a moose caller made out of birch, and he sounded just like one, but the moose weren’t coming. We looked for them the whole day, and when it was night, we started back home. That’s when I saw a prairie chicken just crossing the path in front of us. I pulled out my slingshot…” At this point, Eli ghosted the act of using his slingshot. He pulled the sling back, closed one eye to aim, then let go. “And I hit it. It was just a little thing, but my moshom was so proud. We carried it back to the house and he invited all our relatives over and we had a feast. He cut up that bird in the tiniest pieces so everybody could have some.”
Morgan reached over and wiped Eli’s tear away. She kept her thumb against his cheek. “You’re a good kid.”
“I miss him,” he said.
“I know.” What she said next surprised her, as though she hadn’t even said it. “I miss her too.”
As soon as Morgan had said those four words—at once the most simple and profound words she’d spoken in her life—she wondered if she really did miss her mother. She hated her, didn’t she? Her mother had let her go, hadn’t she? But Morgan had dreamed something different. This was what Morgan thought about as she lay on her side, facing the fire. She thought of her mother, of Eli’s moshom, of family, while her eyelids became heavy. This was Morgan’s last thought before she fell asleep.
Kiskisitotaso. Kiskisitotaso. Kiskisitotaso.
“Kiskisitotaso,” her mother whispered, as clearly as though she was lying beside Morgan, her lips against her daughter’s ear. “Kiskisitotaso.”
There was a knock on the door. There were footsteps. Her mother was backing away from the bedroom door, knocking over the lamp. It was black. The deepest night.
“Noooooo!” somebody screamed.
It wasn’t her mother.
When her mother had screamed that night, she’d said it in Cree. Mwach. No. The word hadn’t come from Morgan’s mouth either, as she watched the scene unfold before her.
“Noooooo!” The scream came again.
It wasn’t from the nightmare at all. It wasn’t Morgan remembering. It was Eli. Clear. Terrified. Had he been dreaming as well? Had he been having a nightmare? Morgan catapulted into a sitting position in time to see Eli being dragged out of the hut by the wolf, his eyes burning bright yellow.
He had his jaws around Eli’s ankle.
“Morgan, help!” he cried.
Eli dug his fingers into the hide that the hut was made of, but was unable to stop himself from being dragged away. Morgan lunged towards him. Her fingertips brushed against his, but she was too late. In a moment, Eli was gone. Dragged into the black. You would never have known he was there if his screams hadn’t pierced through the silence of the night. If the wolf’s eyes weren’t still visible in the otherwise endless darkness.
Morgan knelt at the entrance to the hut, too shocked to move.
“Morgan!” Eli’s screams were farther away by the second.
Morgan looked back and saw that Ochek and Arik were waking up now, startled and confused. She wanted to wait for them to get up and save Eli. For them to go out into the dark, not her. She could hear the woman taking her, as a toddler, out of the pitch-black room. Her footsteps. Her own screams. Her mother’s screams. Mwach. The man telling her mother to calm down or else he’d handcuff her to the doorknob. Mwach. She wasn’t in a dream. She was here, now, and Eli was getting taken.
Eli was screaming.
She had been scared of the black for too long.
Morgan reached for a piece of half-burning wood, ran out of the hut, and into the night. She kept running in the direction of Eli’s desperate cries for help, and the wolf’s growling. Was it already too late? Was he already being eaten? Her torch offered no more than a glow, like a dying flashlight. Trees came at her suddenly from the black. She dodged them and kept running, trying not to slow down.
Then she was out of the grove.
“Morgan!”
Eli’s voice was hoarse from screaming. He sounded tired and weak.
“I’m coming!” Morgan called back.
She rushed towards the sound of his voice until she could see the wolf standing over Eli, his front paws pinning the boy’s shoulders down, his hind paws pressing down against Eli’s shins. Morgan saw the wolf’s drool land on Eli’s cheek. Eli’s head was turned away from the beast, and he was looking directly at Morgan with terror. She could see his chest heaving up and down, his skin pale and sweaty.
Morgan didn’t hesitate. She sprinted towards Eli and the wolf until she was right up to them, and swung at the wolf with her torch. The fire connected with the wolf’s side. He yelped and fell off Eli. Eli quickly scampered behind her, clutching her hips.
“You okay?” she asked while keeping her eyes on the wolf.
Eli’s grip tightened around Morgan in response.
The wolf rose to his hind legs, standing like a human. “Remember. You asked for this to happen.”
“Leave us alone!” Morgan demanded.
“Let me have the boy and I’ll let you all turn around and go back to Misewa,” he said.
“Mwach!” Morgan screamed.
She threw the torch at the wolf. The wood hit the animal’s face. He yelped again and held his front paws over the wound.
“Run!” Morgan shouted to Eli.
They both ran away from the wolf, through the trees, and back towards the hut. They could hear the wolf give chase. When they ran into the clearing where their hut and the sequoia were, Ochek and Arik were there. Ochek had a torch in one paw and the hatchet in the other. Arik had both paws wrapped firmly around her makeshift Bo staff.
“Get in the hut!” Ochek said to the kids.
Morgan and Eli ran past the animal beings but stopped outside of the hut and turned around in time to see the wolf leap into the clearing from behind the trees. He looked like a black cloud, a storm bearing down on them. A storm with two lightning bolts for eyes. Ochek took a mighty swing at the wolf as he came down on them, and Arik screamed as the wolf landed on top of Ochek. They slammed against the ground and started rolling around, fighting and gnashing and growling. The wolf opened his considerable jaws, baring his teeth, and lunged towards Ochek’s throat, but Arik stuck the end of her Bo staff into the wolf’s mouth.
The wolf reached out and grabbed the staff from Arik. It was the distraction Ochek needed. He took another swing with his hatchet, and the blade landed between the wolf’s shoulder and throat. A mist of blood splashed against the white snow. The wolf yelped once more, then fell in a heap. The animal tried to get to his feet, but failed. Tried to go onto all fours, but collapsed onto his belly. He started to pull himself away, out of the clearing and into the woods, leaving a trail of blood behind. Ochek calmly walked after the wolf. When he came to the beast, he raised the hatchet into the air and readied a killing strike.
“No!” Eli ran over to Ochek. He jumped up, grabbed Ochek’s arm, and pulled it down.
“What are you doing, boy? He tried to kill you!” Ochek said.
“And now you’re about to kill him!”
“So that he doesn’t return and kill us all!” Ochek said. “This is not like before!”
“He can’t even walk!” Morgan stepped between Ochek and the wolf and was soon followed by Eli. “It’s not like he can do anything to hurt us now.”
“Move,” Ochek demanded.
“Mwach,” Eli said.
Morgan could see that Eli was shaking, but he stayed in place, staunch in his protection of the animal.
“Please, Ochek,” the wolf croaked while crawling away from them, slow and pathetic. His breathing was labored, and blood started to pool around his body, staining the perfect white with deep red. He looked at Ochek with pale-yellow eyes, a suggestion of what they used to be.
Ochek pushed through Morgan and Eli, then stood over the wolf, hatchet raised in the air once more.
The wolf drew his paws over his face, a sad and futile gesture.
Ochek paused.
“Please,” Eli said.
Morgan looked away from the two animal beings, not willing to watch.
“Forgive me,” the wolf whispered.
Ochek tilted his head, then lowered the hatchet. He went down on one knee and rested his elbow against it. The hatchet dropped to the ground with a thud.
“What did you say?”
“Forgive me,” the wolf said, like a weak and distant wind.
Morgan walked over to Ochek and the wolf. In Ochek’s eyes she saw a look of familiarity, as though this had all happened before. Soon, all three of the travelers were watching Ochek. The hunter’s eyes were searching, darting back and forth, before settling on the wolf.
The wounded predator lowered his paws, rested them at his sides.
“Do it, then,” the wolf said.
“No.”
The wolf turned away to stare into the black of night. He breathed heavily once. Twice. “Why?”
Ochek picked up the hatchet and slid it under his belt. He sighed. “Where’s the sport in killing something so wretched?”
“Coward,” the wolf said.
“What’s taking a boy from a hut in the middle of the night, you jerk?” Morgan said. “You’re the coward!”
“I would’ve let the rest of you go,” the wolf said. “I call that mercy.”
“You know nothing of mercy.” Ochek slipped his paws underneath the wolf’s great body and lifted him to his feet.