hand and leading me toward the park.
Dozens of people mill about. Someone is playing a drum, but everyone else is talking, waiting. Tents have been erected near the road, and the aroma of food wafts toward us. “Hungry?” he asks. I nod. “Good.” Bran holds the flap to the nearest tent open for me. “Inside. Ms. Adelaide will feed us.”
“How can you be so sure?” I say, poking him.
“Just go.” He pokes me back. “You impressed her when you helped out after the earthquake. She likes you.”
Ms. Adelaide mans a cook fire out the other side of the tent. Stacks of venison ribs are arranged over a metal grate, sizzling as fat drips onto the coals. “Meat’s not ready yet, kids,” she says with a broad smile, twisting her massive body to push past a table.
“Doesn’t matter.” Bran settles himself on a crate.
“Hiding out then, are you?” Ms. Adelaide gives us a cockeyed stare and laughs.
Bran shrugs. “Nope. Got any of your doughnuts kicking around, looking for a home?”
“I knew you were after something, Bran Eagleson.” She shakes a finger at him, and then draws a large box out from under the table. “Here. One each. Just don’t tell anyone where you got them from. This is a special batch for the Elders-for after.”
Bran hands me his doughnut so he can fumble for something in his pocket. “Stay here,” he says to me as he retrieves the doughnut from my hand. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Where are you going?”
“Need to give something to someone. I’ll be right back. It’s okay if she stays with you, isn’t it, Ms. Adelaide?”
“Sure, if she doesn’t mind doing some work-and eat that doughnut before anyone sees!” she hollers, waving a basting brush at Bran’s back. She hands me the brush and a bowl of sauce. “Go on, that meat won’t cook itself.” She sits down on a crate with a groan, and mops her brow. “So, you going around with him?”
I slather the sauce on the meat, thinking of her question, then take a seat beside her. She smells of heat and blood and perspiration. “I don’t know.” Because I don’t. But if not, what is this, then? Just Bran being nice?
She waves her hand in front of her as if the answer’s obvious. “You aren’t sure, huh? Well, if you ask me, you are. He wants to, at least. What about you?” She peers at me. “What do you want?”
What do I want. I look outside. Paul is making his way through the grounds, walking with Avalon. “What I want,” I say slowly, “is for my brother to be happy.”
“Ah.” Ms. Adelaide follows my gaze. “And you think he’ll be happy with her?”
“No. I don’t.” But he looks happy, and that’s got to count for something.
“So, now I know what you want for your brother. How about you?” She laughs. “Look at me, pestering you with questions. But if I could go back to your age, there is one thing I’d do.” She fixes her gaze on me with such intensity that I can’t look away. Her shade is a bear, a great mother bear, reaching over her shoulder to touch me. “It would be to listen to my gut and follow it, no matter what. You’re a thinker, I can tell, and thinking is good, but if you don’t listen to your gut, well, you don’t got much.” She pokes me in the stomach. “You ask your gut what it thinks about Bran, and you follow its advice, and don’t let anyone, not Avalon or Bran’s fool mother tell you otherwise.” She pushes herself up, taking the bowl of sauce with her to slop more on the ribs.
“Talk to him,” Ms. Adelaide says, though she doesn’t look at me. “Going ’round and ’round in your head will get you nowhere at all. Talk to him, and then you’ll know what’s what.”
“Talk to who?” Bran steps into the tent. He’s grinning from ear to ear.
“Speak of the devil,” Ms. Adelaide says. “You look like you just swallowed a canary.”
“Nope. I just found out my mother’s gone home with one of her headaches, so tonight, I’m free!” He pulls me to my feet and spins me around in a circle. “Free!”
“Go on then, free boy. You’re going to get into trouble if you stay around my kitchen. Out!” Ms. Adelaide shoos Bran from the tent, but grabs my elbow before I can leave. “Now, girl, listen to me,” she whispers. “They’ll be bringing out whiskey later-stay with Bran and don’t let him drink any. He’s just kicked it, and for him to go back to the bottle? Tragic.” She shakes her head. “Shame we have it here at all. Probably best if you just get Bran to take you home after Madda does her thing. The men, well, things can get out of hand, and you’re new-different.” She cups my chin with her wide, firm hand and gives me a searching look. “Promise?”
“I promise,” I say, shocked at everything she’s just implied. Is that why Bran’s shade is so strange? Because of whiskey? If so, what does that mean for Helen’s own newly healed shade? Did she have the same problem, or is it something else entirely?
“Good.” She squeezes my chin. “I knew you had a good head on your shoulders. Make sure you have a little fun tonight.”
Bran waits for me a few paces away, twirling a blade of grass between his fingers. “What did Ms. Adelaide want?”
“She said that things can get out of hand sometimes, and if they do, you’re to take me home.”
He nods. “That’s true. And I will. But for now let’s go and get a seat. The drumming will start soon, and then the dancing.”
“Do you dance?”
“No.” He purses his lips. “Not until my father returns.”
“Why is that?”
“Don’t know.” He picks a pinecone up off the ground and throws it as far as he can. It bounces into the trees. “Just doesn’t seem right without him. He’s the one who taught me.”
The longhouse is already full of people when we step inside, but space is made for us near the fire. This is my first time inside the longhouse. Heat rises from the coals in invisible ribbons, making the sisiutl, the double-headed mythical serpent, painted on the far wall look alive. Already the transformation from here to the time of myth has begun, and when I look around, I see that other people feel the shift too.
The drummers have all ceased playing, save for one lone man. He’s ancient, and as the shadows of the fire ripple across his face, I can see his shade, a raccoon, hovering so close I can’t tell where it ends and the man begins. He beats a slow rhythm on his drum-
Above, through the smoke hole, the moon peers down at us: Cree, Dene, Anishinaabe, Metis, white, half- breeds, some with the names of their native tongues, some with the names given to them by the white man, some with names that I’ve never heard of before. We’re a strange stew, but we all wait together to see what the moon has to say. The Elders have been cloistered away in a sweat lodge all evening. The crowd’s on edge.
I take it that’s not a good sign.
Bran leans into me. The solidity of his shoulder, the heat of his skin, settles into me, helping me stay attached to the ground. I set my hands there, not caring that they’ll come away dirty. In my mind, great roots creep down from my body. Tonight is not a night for spirit to overwhelm me. Tonight, I wish I had kept Madda’s pouch. I have a feeling I could use its strength, whispers or not.
The cadence of the drum changes and the crowd parts. The Elders, wrapped in cloaks of woven cedar bark, stagger up to the fire. Firelight glints off the shells sewn to the capes, shells that have become eyes of the creatures painted there. The Elder’s faces are covered with red ocher and soot, giving them a nightmarish, menacing look. Madda comes last. Her eyes are vacant, and I can tell just by looking at her that only her body is in this world. She looks exactly like Paul when he goes to his place of visions. I scan the crowd, looking for him, for my father. I can’t find them, but I know they’re here, hidden in the shadows.
A woman walks before the Elders, waving a branch of burning sage in the air as another woman hands out smudge sticks to the crowd.
“What do I do with this?” I ask Bran as he hands one to me.
“Wait and see.”
“We’ve been waiting all night,” I murmur.
He smiles. “Time moves differently in the spirit world. You should know that better than me.” He shifts his
