She knew she was now part of the oldest kind of marriage, a marriage of blood power. She wondered if what she really felt for Baptiste was only urgency to reclaim what Baptiste had taken from her. She did not feel romance for Baptiste Yellow Knife. She sensed Baptiste could change her. Near Baptiste she noticed the dim scent of roots, the heaviness of her own breasts, the weighted curve of her womb. She could smell the woman’s blood in her and it made her long to be touched by him and long to be far from him at the same time. The desire for him was overripe in her. He made her feel unclean. She knew that Baptiste wanted to lay between the heat of her legs, but many men wanted to sleep with her, to wrench themselves inside of her, to claim her somehow. With Baptiste it was more than sex, more than just simple desire. The evening before she had left home her grandmother had told her Baptiste had sold the best part of himself to own Louise. “His spell will turn on him,” she had said. “Someday, he will be bitten back.”

Louise remembered stories of love medicine. Love medicine so strong it gripped, love medicine so strong men would leave their wives and families to chase a woman, an ugly woman without teeth, a woman with warts on her breasts. She used to laugh at the idea. She used to hold her sides and cross her legs when her grandmother sat stern faced, telling her the old stories of love and desire.