A great wind rose up from behind him and whistled through his thin coat, and the smooth river dimpled then turned white. And this was what he knew, what had always been before him, a healing within his grasp. And he saw the great light, a simple gift, that was all the light he had ever seen, from the smallest lick of the moon on a black river to the shine of long grass on a windy day.

Louise Yellow Knife RETURNING

She was groggy. A weakness had settled in her muscles, and her lips were swollen dry. Her grandmother had opened the window in her room and the breeze was cool and Louise longed to sit out on the porch. She pulled herself from the heavy blankets and sat up. It occurred to her that she had been sleeping on a bed, a real bed, and not a nest of cattails. She pushed her hands into the mattress to feel the spring of it. She sat for a while and it felt good to be sitting upright, good not to feel the cradle of the pillow pressed against her skull. She felt dazed with light. She squinted and touched her eyes. She traced the outline of her nose and her lips. She found that a scar pinched her hairline, but it was numb and tight ridged, not sore to the touch. She combed her fingers through her hair and snagged on the matted knot at the back of her neck.

Louise felt she had slept through a lifetime, a life that had changed around her. She was vaguely aware of a recent past: needle pricks, her hands cold and stinging, a bag of fluid dripping through a tube, her heart heavy then fluttering. Moments sparked: someone lifting her, someone carrying her up steps, someone resting a warm hand on her forehead. There was a ring of kerosene light sputtering in darkness so black she whimpered, wind battering the house, a window opening then shutting, a breath of snow passing over her. Through long nights she could hear the voice of a man she knew to be her great-grandfather, long dead. Night after night, while the wind swirled snow in great sheets over the house, she had heard him praying. His voice shivered in the corners of the room, then passed like light to morning when she would hear him outside, circling the house with prayer. She had heard her sister whispering in her ear, the sound of laughter. Once her mother had held her hand. Once Baptiste had placed his hand over her weak heart and bowed his head. And she knew she must have been dreaming because she knew her sister had drowned; Baptiste was dead. The room had filled with a thousand people, then emptied, and she did not know if the people who had visited her were living or dead.