Birch canoe, Naskeag pattern, low rounded bow and stern, the work of her own hands. She'd found the tree, asked it for its blessing, and stripped the bark. Piece by slow piece, she'd split fragrant cedar for ribs and flooring and inner keel, springy straight-grained spruce for the gunwales and paddles, she'd scraped pale birch sapwood smooth as silk for the thwarts. Her fingers had grown calluses on calluses sewing the bark with spruce-root bindings, sealing the seams with hot pungent spruce pitch mixed with bear grease. Quiet chants for each step, the way Naskeags had built canoes and carved paddles for centuries out of mind. Her canoe, by the clearest possible claim. Light, nimble, delicate.
She stopped and studied it and thought for a moment, before lifting it onto her shoulders for the carry. The canoe had wanted to be a little less than fourteen feet, and narrow. That was the tree that spoke to her. A one-person canoe, really, fit to her own body. She'd had plenty of boyfriends when she made it, a couple of years past virginity, but she'd built a one-person canoe.
One-woman canoe.
That spoke a bad omen for Kenny Grayeyes. He wouldn't fit in this canoe. Where would he fit in her life?
That question. Other questions. She'd come back to her Scout when she had puzzled through to some answers.
She walked through the cedars and birches and spruce, the forest duff quiet under her feet, down to a small point of land, a set of granite ledge shelves that formed a natural wharf at different water levels, whether the spring flood or the fall slack. She settled the canoe in the water, unlashed her paddles, and switched from boots to moccasins. Boots in a canoe ranked fourth on her list of the seven deadly sins.
No food. One sleeping bag, one tarp, jacket, and a change of clothing she could wash in the icy clear water of the lake. She settled her pack in the bow. If old Glooscap decided to play jokes with the weather, her family had a cache on the island, food and a tent and winter gear. Assuming a fisher or bear hadn't decided to rip through galvanized sheet steel looking for a snack.
Into her canoe, kneeling, paddle in her hand, she felt the world come alive around her. Water. She always felt most alive on water. Home of homes, heart of hearts, each dip and twist and swirl of her paddle the beating of that heart, she felt the calm settle from her forehead to the heels under her butt. Her muscles moved in meditation, a Naskeag Dervish dance. She belonged in this place, in this time.
Could she stay away from it long enough to get that sheepskin? Grandmother Walks didn't know everything. That diploma could be precious, could let her do good things for Naskeags, for First People everywhere. Find things like the Hunter and return them to their People. Track down monsters like that flint and kill them.
And without her connection to the university and her department, she'd never have had the Hunter as a weapon. Without the Hunter, would Tupash have truly died?
Out on the water, crystal-clear liquid under her, rocks and sunken logs and wavering shadows of trout down in the depths. The lake lay calm around her, a mirror to blue sky and the rim of autumn trees, crimson and gold and pale yellow and purple rounded billows, accented by the deep green exclamation points of the spruce and pine and fir, the paler green of cedar, the smoke-gilded yellow tamaracks.
She drank it in. Memories. If Grandmother Loon told her to go back, she could scratch by on memories for two or three more years. And beyond that, she could live through airline hell to see Kenny every month or so, buy him tickets to come here. Damned long way to go to get laid, but money wasn't a problem. Generations of gifts to the Haskell Witch had seen to that.
And she had to think about genes for future Haskell Witches. Kenny just might fit in there, with his ties to his own land and people and spirits. Add a dash of mountain-lion shaman to the Naskeag and Welsh stew.
The island waited. Fifteen acres, twenty acres, depending on what season you did your measurements, large enough to get out of sight of water, but never out of hearing. Enough soil for latrine pits that wouldn't taint the lake. Red squirrels and an eagle nest and a family of otters. Sometimes a deer or moose.
The Geological Survey named it Spirit Island on the map, centered in Spirit Lake, and showed a graveyard symbol to call it sacred. To Naskeags, it was just "the island," not even capitalized. The place you went when you needed some quiet to think in for a few days. Any Naskeag who saw a canoe on the shore wouldn't land.
Caroline looked across the water. The landing waited, empty. The House wasn't the only Power that arranged the world to suit itself.
A hundred yards out from shore, beyond any likely gifts from incontinent moose or beaver, she laid her paddle down across the thwarts and let her canoe glide to a stop. Ripples spread across the mirror and settled back to calm. She bent over the side and dipped up water in her hands and washed her face, her hands, her neck, and drank. Cold water, clear water, clean water, water of her home. Sky water. It tasted nothing like the streams and lakes of Arizona, nothing like the liquid that flowed from city taps.
A loon called, eerie haunting laughter and echoes, down the lake beyond the island, her spirit guide welcoming her.
Did you enjoy Dragon's Teeth? If so, read on to find out about James's spectacular Wildwood series. Also, check out an excerpt from the first book in the Stonefort series, Dragon's Eye.
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