“He was on the record at Sir John A. MacDonald.”

“Was?” Miig pulled the word out slow, like something sharp.

“Was.” Carole sighed, looking around. “Is there a place we can sit? Some water, perhaps?”

“We don’t have time.” Jean was uncharacteristically rude. His boy’s fate was carried in this man, and he needed it to spill out.

“Of course we have time,” Bullet responded. “This way. Maybe just Jean for now.” She looked around at the hopeful and terrified faces that had already gathered and paused on one. “And Miigwans.”

The four of them walked into the cave and made their way to Jean’s space, kept private by only a thin bedsheet tacked to an overhang. Carole and Jean sat on the cot, Bullet handed over her thermos, and Miig stood by the door to make sure they weren’t interrupted.

Carole drank deeply, then handed the container back. “Thank you.”

“Is he not on the records anymore? Has he been moved?”

“If he had been moved, he’d still be in the system. There would just be a note in the location column and details about transportation.” Carole hadn’t yet been able to look the man in his eyes. “But there is just nothing, like he was never there.”

“What does that mean? What could it mean?” Miig felt his legs go numb.

The older man sighed again. He was full of pause and thought. Then he shifted on the cot and finally faced Jean. “It could only mean one of two things.”

Miig’s knees folded before the words even hit the air, and he crouched close to the damp ground.

“The first is that he’s been converted to work for the schools. They go ‘dark,’ so to speak—they’re taken off the official records, and their information is held internally in the Special Recruitment Office. Or…”

“Or what?” Jean asked.

“Or he’s deceased.”

All the blood in Jean’s face drained out, and the cane he’d been clutching clattered to the floor. Bullet hung her head. Miig cradled his face in his palms.

“But there’s no saying which one it is for now,” Carole offered, rushing the words as if applying balm to a burn.

“Yes, there is.” It was Miig who answered. “There’s no way French converted. So we know…oh dear god, we know.”

When Miigwans came out of the cave, he saw the rest of his small family gathered near the entrance, waiting for him, waiting for word of French. Miig held himself together until he saw them. That’s when he broke. Isaac stepped forward and gathered him up in his arms, whispering Cree into his ear—the only thing soft in this hard moment, in this rigid world full of monsters and the dead kids in their wake. He led him outside into the light, the family following close behind them.

They made their way, a solemn procession behind a weeping man, to the clutch of their tents. Isaac put Miig in a folding lawn chair, and the group naturally slid around him in a circle with too many open spots. Isaac crouched beside him, arm encircling his contracted width, rubbing his shoulder.