With a huge effort, he uncrossed his legs and stood. Every muscle and bone in his body protested, and he left the sweat-lodge with difficulty to tend the fire and replace the stones. Outside it was light. Had he been amongst the spirits all night, or was this the same day? The fire would not tell him. He had placed four slabs of cut turf over it to keep the fire smouldering in secret for days and now he knelt and shifted the snow-covered turf, and there indeed were the glowing embers he had left. He bent and blew on them, watching the red glow increase and sparkle with life, then reached into the pile of sticks by the fire and threw on a handful of twigs. An orange flame danced about them, and he fed it with more wood.

Now for the stones. He took off his buckskin loincloth, standing naked in the snow, and walked back into the sweat-lodge. With the cloth, he lifted the first of the warm stones, prayed over it and carried it to the fire, careful to walk clockwise, with the sun. Twenty-five times he would have to do it. Alone.

Sam was the one who used to reheat the stones, allowing Calvin to remain in the lodge, his concentration unbroken and his sweat still running. Calvin thought of the boy’s eager and earnest face as he prayed and heated the stones, and his heart ached for him. Sam moved like a young deer, and oh, those shining eyes and that determined pink mouth. Calvin could have watched his young apprentice forever. And then he thought of the face he had seen from his flight with the Eagle. Sam, the adult, standing on that ski hill, staring up at an empty chairlift. Calvin knew the spirit was there. Its filth and its blackness were swirling around the wires and pylons of that contraption. But Calvin could not see what Sam saw. That came from inside Sam’s head only, and it must have been something that filled him with dread. His face was contorted with pain and shame and fear. What a different face. It looked so old compared to the smooth-skinned beauty that he had been.

Why had Eden not been the one chosen to deal with this? Eden would have laughed in the Trickster’s face. Calvin was sure of it. Because Eden knew what it could and could not do. It was not knowing that made the man weak, made it possible for the Trickster to crawl inside its keeper, take his human strength and use it elsewhere for something that was most certainly not an illusion.

He placed another stone on the fire and retraced his steps for the next, gulping at the memory of Sam on the hill.