If he could be so easily frightened by an illusion, he would also easily be goaded into doing what the Trickster needed him to do. And Calvin knew that the goading had already begun. Calvin had called to Sam from the air, trying to remind him of what he had been taught, but he was silent without his body, and his shouted words were as slight as ice crystals hanging in the morning air. But the Trickster had heard them all right.

The shaman had felt its black, sightless sense turn towards the Eagle spirit and Calvin, putting out tendrils to feel them, and he had soared away quickly to the safety of the high peaks. So foolish. He should have remained a silent watcher. It knew now, even if Sam did not, that he was coming.

Another stone, and Calvin was starting to feel the cold, his sweat having evaporated, and the snow now getting a grip on his freezing naked flesh. No rest. There was no time. He dropped the rock on the heating pile, and laid more wood on the flames.

He stopped and looked at the flames, enjoying their heat on his legs, and before he could beat it back, he remembered his folly.

It was the firelight. How could anyone who had seen the boy’s perfect skin lit by the glow of the fire not have wanted to touch it? He screwed his eyes shut tightly, as if that would keep back the pain of memory, but it was there. Back again to haunt him, to torture him.

They had been in the woods for hours that day, he and Sam, collecting fungus and roots. Sam’s laugh was merry when he was with Calvin in those days. He hung on his words as if they were precious gifts, and Calvin was careful to make sure they were words that merited such attention.

‘Here. This one boy!’

Calvin had called him over to a shrub with bright red berries. He plucked at a maple-shaped leaf without tearing it off the branch. ‘This here be Devil’s-Club, and it be used for so much stuff I lost count.’

Sam nodded, taking it in and fingering the leaf as though its touch would help him understand its powers.

‘The Crow Indians rub these here berries in their scalps to chase off lice. Say it makes the hair shiny too.’ He looked at Sam. ‘Not that you need that, huh?’

Sam looked embarrassed and tugged at his leaf again. Calvin turned back to the chest-high shrub and continued his lecture.

‘Me, I takes the root and mixes it with tobacco and it smokes away a powerful headache.’

His young pupil made a half-twisted smile that was bitter rather than mischievous.

‘Best pick some for Moses then. Randall told me he been in the bar since yesterday.’