Now, in the night, she felt Maria’s hand on her shoulder. “We cannot control what life delivers to us. It does no good to worry.”
“How do I tell them?”
“You will find a way,” Maria said.
Annie hoped she was right. Together they returned to bed.
CHAPTER 6
Henry Meloux had lived in his cabin on Crow Point for nearly a century. It was rustic by any standard. His water was hand-pumped. His cabin was heated in winter with an old potbellied stove. He did his bodily business in an outhouse.
There was another, newer cabin only steps away from Meloux’s. It had been built to house a woman named Leah Duhling, a Lac Courte Oreilles Anishinaabe elder who, several years earlier, had come to live on Crow Point to help care for the old man. Leah had passed away peacefully almost two years earlier. Now the cabin was occupied by a man who called himself Prophet. Although Meloux was past his century mark, he still walked a good deal in his beloved wilderness, still dipped his ancient body in the cold water of Iron Lake when it wasn’t frozen over, and still never turned away anyone who made the trek to Crow Point seeking his advice or help.
On this morning, it was Daniel, Jenny, and Waaboo who came. They’d left the house early and had driven the graveled county road northeast to the place where a double-trunk birch marked the beginning of the two-mile path that led to Crow Point. Waaboo danced ahead of them. The moment they left the cover of the trees and entered the clearing on the point where the cabins stood, the little boy broke into a run. When Daniel and Jenny reached Meloux’s cabin, Waaboo was already seated beside the old man on the wooden bench outside the front door.
The ancient Mide smiled at them and tousled the hair on the little boy’s head. “Nigigwaadizi,” he said. It meant “acts like an otter” and was the spirit name the old man had given the boy in the naming ceremony.
“Look!” Waaboo said, opening his palm toward his parents. A dozen wild blueberries were nestled there. Waaboo popped the berries into his mouth.
“Prophet and I picked them yesterday,” Meloux said.
“We tried to pick some,” Waaboo told him through blue-stained lips.
“So I heard,” the old man said and eyed Daniel.
Prophet stepped from the newer cabin, where white smoke poured out of the stove pipe jutting from the roof. He was in his midthirties, tall and lean. There was something about him that was like a wolf, watchful and powerful. And dangerous if threatened. But he held a broad smile on his lips that morning, and he called out, “I’m making blueberry pancakes if anyone is interested.”
“Me!” Waaboo jumped up from the bench, then hesitated a moment, glancing at his mother.
“Go on,” Jenny said. “But don’t be greedy.”
Meloux sat in full morning sunlight, his long hair aglow as if it were a flow of white fire. Beneath a multitude of wrinkles, his face was a landscape of calm. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his irises dark almond. He regarded the two people who stood before him.
“Sit,” he finally said.
Jenny seated herself on one side of Meloux, Daniel on the other.
“I have been told that the boy found more than blueberries yesterday,” Meloux said.
Daniel wasn’t surprised that Meloux knew about the incident. The rez telegraph.
“He found a lost soul,” Daniel said.
“Tell me about that.”
Daniel described how he’d seen Waaboo kneeling on the ground and talking as if to someone who stood before him.
“He said she was lost and sad and that she was Ojibwe.”
“Crystal Two Knives?” the old man asked.
“I showed him a photo of Crystal,” Daniel said. “It wasn’t her.”
“There’s something else,” Jenny said. “This woman spirit told him there was another lost soul.”
“The missing white girl?”
“He didn’t know,” Daniel said.
“What else did he say?”
“Not much. But he told us he wasn’t afraid.”
The old man thought awhile, then said, “What is it that you need?”
“Would you talk to him, help him see if there’s more to his vision?” Daniel said. “If it wasn’t Crystal Two Knives he saw in the blueberry patch, then who was it? And who is this other lost soul?”
Meloux considered the request and gave a single nod. “I will spend the morning with him. We will pick blueberries and we will talk.”
“Chi miigwech,” Jenny said. She stood up and Daniel stood with her.
“One thing,” the old man said before they turned to leave.
“Yes?” Jenny said.
“When you return, bring your sister.”
Daniel dropped Jenny off at the house on Gooseberry Lane, then headed to work.
