The house was quiet, and so when the ashy fire poker that leaned on the wall next to the woodstove slipped to the floor the noise scared me. I picked it up and set it on top of the woodstove. I wanted to tell Paige about the pugwagee, that JP and Tyson saw one, but I’d have to wait. I wouldn’t tell Mom about it, because I knew she’d be disappointed. “You leave them alone,” she’d say. “I don’t want no little-people spirits following you home, stealing stuff and causing trouble. We got enough trouble in this house already. They’re dangerous. And they’re not called pugwagees—they’re mikumwaso to us.”

. . .

Pugwagees were children when they were cursed. A woman was out collecting sweetgrass in her swamp. She had lived under the shadows her entire life. Each morning she left the hollowed-out tree that was her house and covered her body with fresh pickings of dark green moss and small ferns that she squashed together with muck from the murky water and then tied around her body with twine from young trees. When she finished dressing, she spent all day searching for sweetgrass and stopped only when the last bit of her clothing had slipped out from under the twine.

The only animals to know better than to stare at her throughout her day were crows, but many thought she controlled them, because they remained quiet, black dots perched up high in the cedar trees. Crows were never quiet, which was why they were created: the Creator got sick of them cawing and cawing, telling secrets in his head, and so he spoke their name into the world.

Unlike the crows, pugwagees were not spoken into the world: they were born in it, a product of the first people, who were made from ash. Nobody, it was said, watched the children.

One day, when the sun barely penetrated the thick swamp, the swamp woman woke and dressed in fresh clothing. She placed her deer-hide medicine bag on the ground and marched around the swamp, pulling up the grass that grew so she could let it dry. When she could pick no more she returned to her bag, fists full of damp sweetgrass. She picked up her bag. It was light and empty. Nobody had ever stolen from her. Infuriated, she stomped back to her hollowed-out tree to think.

In the morning, dressed in swamp regalia, she informed the crows of what had happened. They puffed out their black chests with each caw and she told them to be quiet and listen. She pointed to her bag on the ground and then to her eyes, saying, Watch this.