Calvin was becoming aware of his physical presence again, and the ecstatic state of being free of his flesh was disappearing, like the tingling return of sensation to a numb limb. A rivulet of sweat ran down his nose as he struggled in a panic to liberate himself from his body again. But it was over. The pleasure of that ethereal state left him, and his whole being grieved for it. His eyes opened and Calvin knew the spirit was gone from the lodge.

He slumped forward, exhausted. His hair, stringy and soaked with sweat, hung down over his face like slender thongs, and he watched the moisture drip from the ends in beads of cloudy water and he sat bent and dejected.

The truth.

How could he make the boy know the truth, when Calvin Bitterhand was barely sure of it himself? So many truths. So many.

Eden had spoken of truth the night before he died. Before he was murdered. Did the old man know what was going to befall him? It didn’t take a shaman to know.

Anyone with eyes to see could have seen the drunken, insane fury with which Moses Hunting Wolf had looked at his father that night and seen that the devil was in him. He, Eden’s pupil and closest companion, should have known.

Calvin fed Eden every evening, coming to his cabin around six to fix some dinner for the walnut-skinned man. For an elder whose very being was driven by retaining the tradition of his people, he sure was a man for junk food. Pemmican may have sustained his forefathers, but Eden liked a burger and no mistake.

It was no burden, serving Eden like that. Calvin stood and cooked up the burgers over the bottled gas stove by the window, while the old man sat in that big winged armchair beside the sink. He loved that chair. Got it as a gift from Dean Morning Star for saving his baby son and Eden had grinned from ear to ear when they unloaded it off the pick-up and carried it up the steps. It was just a cheap plastic thing, made to look like leather, and the arms were worn through where your hands rested. But Eden had seen some film where an English minister nearly lost his wife to an angel, on account of not giving her enough of what a man ought to give a woman, and the English minister with the thin moustache had sat in a big chair just exactly the same. Eden was real proud he had a chair like the one in the film. Specially as the minister turned out the good guy and got the woman back after he decided to give his wife a good time instead of building a church. He would just sit in the chair all day, greeting the visitors that came with a nod as they let themselves in the screen door.