Florence stood up. “I brought you more water,” she said. Florence brushed a leaf out of her hair. Louise had an urge to grab her sister’s hand tightly and hold on but she did not. Louise smiled at Florence and stood up to watch her walk down the path. “Stay down,” Florence said, looking back. And Louise sat back down and tried to figure out what she was wishing for. She had run out of wishes.

The night cold settled around her, a cold that seeped through the blankets and ached at the small of her back. Her spine felt brittle. She could feel the tender bruises on her knees, the drawing of the deep cut on her arm. She wondered if Charlie had been right. She pictured herself on a long sterile bed, wrapped in white gauze. She looked at the rough blanket beneath her. She thought of Baptiste pissing around her. There was a weak rumble in her stomach. She had lost her hunger. Her arms felt weary and useless but she had to prepare for the night. She got up and gathered the leafy branches her grandmother had taught her to use. She folded her blanket lengthwise and covered the top with sage and the branches. She buried herself beneath the sweet boughs and then pressed her head down into the covers and soon she fell asleep, a sleep that forgave the wind, the moaning tree trunks, and the crying coyotes, a sleep that called her. The moon was too thin to offer light and the night closed around her.

A breeze shook the branches and they clicked above her. The bum smell of bear gripped her. She heard rustling, familiar and close, a snorting sound growing distant. The smell retreated. She lifted her head and remembered Baptiste, how he had peed a circle around her, and then the thought of him passed. She was not thinking about Baptiste Yellow Knife. There was only the smell of dampness settling. She closed her eyes and saw again the silver gleam of spiderwebs, miraculous, the cotton cocoon of moths blown up from a thousand branches, floating above her like light.