With shaking hands, Nikolas tore open his pouch of sacred tobacco and cedar and offered the contents to the coals. He chanted his prayer so quietly his ears did not hear the words. He prayed, because he now knew the old tales were true. The creatures lived. Dead souls walked the brush forests of Rabbit Lake; the hunting party had invaded their homeland.
Ephraim tended the fires circling the camp while the women talked story by the big campfire. Rose was over her pouting spells. She told stories of family foibles and escapades, which made everyone laugh out loud. The laughter echoed back from the ringing, low hills. The echoes brought a sudden quiet to the gathering of women.
“I think I’d better get to bed before I laugh myself to death,” Nettie said.
“Nobody ever dies laughin’,” Auntie Rose grumbled. “Death ain’t funny at all.”
Young Nettie stopped giggling abruptly. “That was a dumb thing to say, Sister Rose.” She hurried away.
Prunie put her arm around Rose. “We all say dumb things sometimes.”
“You think I’m just a foolish old lady when I tell you what the bones show me. Huh?” Rose sniffed.
“No Auntie. I don’t think that.”
“You don’t believe what I tell you?” Rose followed a spark’s skyward flight from the fire with her eyes.
“I didn’t say that. It’s just that—”
“It’s because you’re one of these modern Indians hanging around Wekusko or Flin Flon, listening to what white people say. You believe their stories more than our old stories? Our stories kept Ojibwe people protected more than a hundred generations.”
“Auntie Rose, it’s a different time.”
“Don’t I know that? Four generations separate you and me.” The young girl touched the weathered hand of her old auntie. “But I do listen, Auntie.”
“But do you believe? What I’m gonna tell you now, about things in the bog, you gotta believe. They are real livin’ creatures out there that are waitin’ to kill someone. I had visions. They are dead things but still alive and eatin’ living flesh.”
Prunie stiffened at the thought.
She paused and formed her words carefully so as not to anger the old woman. “Auntie, those bog things that could kill our men . . . What are they?”
“Like a man, but not a man. They are all nibo, dead—for long, long time, but still alive somehow. Got hands like ours, but with claws. They are mask, ugly gi-mask, disfigured.”
“Now you’re trying to scare me with those old stories about the wendigo boogeymen of the woods,” Prunie said.
“I’m not tryin’ to scare you, child!” Rose pulled away. “I just want you to know there are dead things that walk.”
Prunie whispered, “Auntie, don’t you think if something like that did exist, we would have seen them?”
“They been seen, but those who saw them never lived to tell about them. The dead men live in the cursed bog by Rabbit Lake.”
“Well, every one of the men has a rifle. If they see any of them up there, they can shoot them and kill them.”
“There are some things that can’t be killed—by guns, anyway. It’ll take more than bullets to kill them bog creatures.”
“Why do they live in a bog?”
Rose leaned towards Prunie. “They den in the bogs like beavers and muskrats.”
“How could they do that?”
“They go down under the water and dig dens into earth banks at the edge of deep water.”
“How do they get out in the winter when the ice freezes thick on the bog?” Prunie asked. “Wouldn’t they be trapped with nothing to eat?”
“Them creatures take moose and anything else that wanders into their bog, then stores the meat up for winter. Just like a beaver does with green poplar branches.
“They got holes and tunnels dug up into the woods. They sneak out and roam around whenever they want. Don’t make no nevermind if the bog is frozen over or not.”
“I see,” Prunie said. She smiled at her eighty-eight-year-old auntie and leaned over and kissed her on both cheeks and smoothed the old woman’s straggles of coarse white hair back under her floral-printed babushka. “I love you, Auntie Rose.”
“I love you too, Prunie. I wish you would send Ephraim to talk the men into comin’ away from that bog.”
“They’d laugh at us for worrying. The men plan to get winter meat and think that’s the place to do it.” Prunie stood. “I’m going to get us each a mug of hot coffee. It’s getting chilly. Aren’t you cold, Auntie?”
The old one shook her head. “I will have a cup anyway.” Rose reached for the spruce root basket of divining bones.
She shook the basket vigorously before she dumped the bones on the blanket folded into a square.
“Waugh!” the old woman cried out. “Again it is two who will die!”
At daybreak, Martin found Nikolas curled up in a ball, next to his dog, his special hat pulled down over his ears, sleeping by the embers of the fire.
When the group woke him, he seemed to be surprised that he was still in the encampment and said, “Waugh! I am still alive!”
The men chuckled. A light dusting of snow in the earliest hours of the morning powdered Nikolas’s clothes.
Nikolas shook his head, brushing off the snow with his hands.
“This is good. Snow helps us track moose now,” Alex said. “Today I don’t hunt,” Nikolas said. “It was foolish of me to fall asleep outside. I couldn’t shoot straight today. I’d spoil your hunt. Go without me. Maybe River will help me get some ducks or geese.”
“Geese are good eatin’, too,” Martin offered.
“You get us some geese, Nikolas,” Alex said. “We stay with our plan. I go up the east side of the lake with Freddie. Martin and Peter can take the west shore.”
Freddie and Alex climbed into their canoe. The pair paddled into fog. Martin and Peter followed in the second canoe. They drew abreast of Uncle Alex’s canoe.
“We will return with meat,” Peter whispered.
“We’ll get two moose apiece,” Martin whispered just as Peter had done. Prey could hear a hunter’s plans and so they must keep their voices low. The two canoes separated and headed to opposite sides of the lake.
Nikolas sat by the fire and watched the sun dissipate the fog. The sound of geese honking low overhead brought him to his feet. River jumped up, whining and wagging his tail.
“Stragglers heading to the far end of the lake,” he told his Labrador. “They’re tired. Let’s go get us some geese, River.” The excitement of a hunt pushed the fears of the night from Nikolas’s mind. He slid the canoe into the water and River jumped in. He paddled in the direction the geese had flown. Nikolas pushed his leather hat with all its trinkets and totems firmly on his head and bent into his paddling, propelling the canoe forward.
Peter and Martin paddled the shoreline. No tracks were visible from the shore into the bush. They stopped paddling and let the canoe drift. They searched the willow thickets near a bend. Peter made a sudden hissing sound and pointed to the thick brush near a flat point of beach jutting into the water. The hunter made another sign for “listen” and cupped his hand to his ear. Martin did the same.
Both heard the sound of breaking twigs as something moved quickly away from their canoe. Martin pulled towards the thicket on the shoreline. A louder crashing followed as the something took off running at top speed through the brush.
“Moose,” whispered Martin, and beached the prow on the sand. Peter grabbed his rifle and leapt onto the shore. He made signs telling Martin to go upwind and frighten the moose back where he would be waiting. Martin understood and back-paddled. He moved the canoe forward in silence some two hundred meters up the shoreline, jumped from the beached canoe and started inland, making noise to scare the moose back towards Peter.