A child’s face peered into his swimming vision. A round boy’s face, red-cheeked and with its hat flaps tied securely under its chin. A child? A dog? The sound of water. He was lying outside in the snow, but where?

He pulled one elbow painfully back into his body, and with an effort that made him wince, lifted himself up on it. By the river. Of course that’s where he was. In the park by the river, just like he’d planned.

A bright red metal climbing-frame and three tall swings stood to his left, redundant in their winter mantle of white. The boy was standing with his hands in his pockets, his dog gone elsewhere to forage, and he watched as Calvin Bitterhand drew his legs up and attempted to stand. There was no helping hand from this little white boy. He watched with the same detachment one might observe a fish flapping on the rocks before being clubbed and bagged, a product of parents who told him that Indians shouldn’t be touched or spoken to. He’d already broken one rule but he was keenly observing the other. Calvin’s boots slipped in the ice beneath the softer white, and he fell painfully on his knee. He winced and tried again. With greater care he committed his weight to both feet and pulled himself erect. The kid spat thoughtfully.

‘You drunk or somethin’?’

Calvin ignored the child and swept the snow from his jacket. How long? How much time had passed since he’d stepped out of the sweat-lodge, dressed, and re-entered its searing heat to fulfil the final part of his prayer for this journey? It should only have been seconds. It used to be seconds. But he was struggling with a body that could barely withstand the weight of its own flesh, and he had passed out as the journey commenced. He was not chilled through, not in that way he had been when he lost his fingers, not the cold that was so intense it was like heat on the skin, so perhaps it had only been seconds. The boy should know.

‘How long I be lyin’ there?’

The boy shrugged, already bored. He didn’t care. ‘Dunno. Salty just found ya.’

Calvin looked across at Salty, who was lifting a leg to the plastic slide. Good. The boy had not seen him arrive. That would have been awkward. He looked across the river to the backs of the roofs in Silver’s main street. He could eat now. Eat and drink now that his fasting was over. Now that he was here.