She told Otter Boy what had happened and that was not easy to do. Otter Boy sat listening, blinking his black eyes. Then he nodded as if to say, now I know, now you have told me, and went about his business of playing with the spools Madame Corbusier had given him. That was almost the hardest part to bear, she told herself, that Espan’s own son did not remember his father, his hawk face or eagle eyes, his light step on the path, how he sat sagely with his pipe by the fire or strode out in ceremonial dress, his ruffled shirt with silver brooches falling to his knees and his best moccasins stitched in many colors and decorated with shells.

That was what she had lived for, the day when she and Otter Boy could return to their protector, their provider of meat and bringer of joy and booty. How could she go back now? The green vines that had bound her to him were broken. The path to his village had grown shut. If ever she went, others would look out of their door to pity her. Otter Boy would run among the cabins looking for his father but never would he find him. When she woke in the early morning, Espan’s bed beside her would be empty and cold. She belonged to him no more. She and Otter Boy were alone. Above them the sky had cracked. The rock under their feet had broken. On them wild geese had shaken icy drops from their legs and wings. The morning star had been shot down by arrows. Wherever they went now the fountains would be dried up, the caverns of darkness opened, and the breath in their faces the stale air of yesterday.

Simone tried to wipe the cruel look from Stone Girl’s face. She told her the happy story of the time the Chippeways ate the ground hog, who was their own relative since the Indian race had once, like the ground hog, come out of the ground. There were other happy stories, and when they failed, she got down to more solid matters.

“You know, Claire, you are not alone. You still have your sister.”

“Sister. I am glad but a sister is not the same. She can’t be a father to Otter Boy or give him a baby brother.”

“Sister. You yourself can make eyes at one of those bearded voyageurs and soon Otter Boy will have a father.”

“Sister. I don’t think Little Mouse would like such a hairy face to kiss.”

“Madame Corbusier says a kiss without a mustache and beard is like soup without salt and pepper,” Simone reminded.

But Stone Girl could not laugh, not even in secret when Madame Corbusier had the gout and looked so comical sitting with her foot on a pink cushion and everybody had to watch out not to touch the cushion or even walk except on tiptoe over the brick floor. Neither did she think it funny when the Madame called for water to mix with the Plantscheman doctor’s powders, not asking if it was water scooped upstream or down, for every Indian knows that the former will come up on a sick person like vomit and that the latter will go the other way.