Two Young Bears decided it was safe to continue. ‘Then what does it want of you?’

Hunting Wolf looked into the fire smouldering in the centre of the floor. ‘It is a paradox. I am both its enemy and the gate to its release.’ He shifted his weight towards the fire and spoke softly, almost to himself. ‘I pray that the Great Spirit grants me strength to give it nothing.’

Powderhand looked angry. ‘It is already released. Those white-faced fools.’

‘You know little of the Trickster, Powderhand. Were you thinking of your stomach or your penis when the legends were told to you round the fire? It seems you were not listening to the elder telling the tale.’

‘I listened.’

It was Singing Tree who spoke impatiently from her crouch. ‘The tales were of fun and laughter. I recall nothing of this darkness.’

It was Powderhand’s turn to snort. ‘Women’s tales. What do you know of the spirit world?’

‘And what does a mere man, a being who cannot make life, only destroy it, know of this world, never mind that of the spirits?’

In spite of her anger she looked as if she would cry. Hunting Wolf’s heart stabbed him with the memory they both fought to bury each day. There could be no place for it now. His heart and soul were bruised enough.

‘Wife.’

She was silenced. Reluctantly. Looking at his face with regret in her eyes that she had spoken of what must not be spoken, even obliquely. Her husband addressed her gravely. ‘This is not that spirit of mockery and laughter. This is of another time. Older.’

Singing Tree was chilled by the undercurrent in Hunting Wolf’s voice. She thought of those childhood tales of the Trickster, the wicked fool who was always suffering at the hands of man or nature for his evil and uncontrollable behaviour. She had laughed until she cried at the tale of the Trickster being paid back for a deceit by being rendered unable to stop defecating until he was above the trees, sitting stranded on a column of his own waste.

Perhaps Powderhand was right. That the darker tales were kept until the women were occupied with their chores and their children, the tales that would explain away the terror that was gripping them now, in the trap that winter had sprung. As if proud of her fears, the wind blasted the skin of the tipi with an arsenal of snow, shaking the poles that supported the hides like a threat.

Two Young Bears was still staring at his chief with eyes that implored an answer. He ran a tongue over his dry lips. ‘But it can be defeated?’

‘It must be defeated. I cannot run from it. There is nowhere on earth I can hide now that it has recognized its gaoler.’