The winter world darkens into silver around Keskarrah’s hide lodge heaped with spruce boughs and snow in the shelter of the esker. And the sharp corners of the mudded English buildings are softening a little as the ice grows over them, their green logs cracked open by the cold now furred thick as winter animals. At noon, very briefly, the sun glowers over the white folds of the scorched hills, an orange ball dancing tripled with sundogs behind Big Stone, between the black spars of trees.Now the People have moved their lodges west with Bigfoot, nearer the new snares they have braided and set, nearer the log pounds they have piled together scraggling along the trails that Keskarrah dreamed the caribou will wear down onto the ice of Roundrock Lake, where they will sleep every night beyond their predators’ approach. Only Keskarrah’s single lodge remains on the esker near the log houses, Birdseye’s two dogs curled beside it in the snow. The giant ravens plod heavily from the English offal heap through deep air across the river, to roosts hidden among the pygmy spruce that had somehow refused to burn.“At least that bird isn’t wearing a necklace of caribou eyes,”
