“I didnt tell her anything. She asked me if she should marry that little prick, and I said her fathers name.

“That was all?

“Yep.

Bill sat up and looked at him. “Maybe you should have tried a little harder.

He stood up, dumping her without ceremony or apology to the selfsame floor he had been giving serious thought to wrestling her to. “How many times do I have to explain it, Bill? How many times do you have to see it? They come to me for all the answers. They think the voices will speak through me and take them by their goddamn little hands and lead them through the goddamn wilderness. It doesnt work like that, even if they do listen, which they most of the time dont.

She picked herself up to wrap her arms around him from behind. “I know.

He anchored her arms against his belly with his own. “They talk at me, all the time they talk at me. They tell me whats going to happen, they tell me flat out. I used to try to tell people what they were saying, but nobody wanted to hear. Nobody does now.

“A prophet has no honor in his own country, she said softly into that firm, erect back.

“Shit, he said. “I cant remember when I didnt hear them. This man will abuse you if you marry him, this boy will leave the village forever if you let him leave once, this girl will die drunk beside the road in winter, this man will fall off his boat and drown next summer. At first I thought everyone heard them. When I was ten my Auntie Christine took me to a shaman in New Stoyahuk to ask him to drive the evil spirits from my brain. He told her he could do nothing, that the spirits chose through whom to speak and nothing we could say or do would change that. When I was thirteen she sent me to the Alaska Psychiatric Institute. They said I was delusional but functional and sent me home. Thats when I started drinking. When I was seventeen, I got Auntie Christine to sign me into the Air Force. I got posted to the Far East, where I learned to do form. First thing that helped.

Shed heard bits and pieces of the story, but never before the story from beginning to end. “I stayed there, traveled all over the world, looking for answers in some of the goddamnedest places. Cassandra was cursed with telling the truth and never being believed. I remember the first time I heard that story, I was happy. I wasnt alone, at least not in myth.