The line. The boundary. He was the line the Trickster needed to cross into this world. He knew what he had done. The thing that he had called. It had opened him like a box, made that space ready to occupy. That bubble. That was where the Trickster needed to be. In his soul. It meant to possess him. And then … then the world would see what vengeance meant when the hatred of centuries found flesh.

And the hatred was eating his soul.

He stretched his soul and moved the body that was now his. It lashed out at the monster before him, flaying the black flesh of the Trickster with a ragged claw. Pus and bile flowed from the wound, but the abomination opened its slavering jaws and laughed.

He shifted his great flanks and slashed at it again. More laughter.

And then the holes in his great shining scaly head that passed for ears heard the voice. His son’s voice. The tiny figure stumbling blindly towards the two foul creatures that filled the tunnel. That voice. He could hear it the way one tasted something delicate, something exquisite.

‘Dad. Listen to the eagle! The eagle!’

A voice from a dream. Then the talons of the Trickster flexed open with a pleasurable crackling and readied themselves to slash at that young, pure flesh.

Craig McGee acted faster than he had ever acted in his life. He threw himself after the boy, and as his hand connected with the back of Billy’s jacket, the whole weight of the man came down on the boy’s tiny frame.

From the tunnel mouth, Katie Hunting Wolf let go the howl that had been frozen in her throat since she saw the things her eyes would not relay to her screaming brain.

The eagle. Listen to the eagle.

Sam shifted in his torn bubble of self, and listened.

The beating of wings. A wind of truth blowing into his mind. There was only love there in the tunnel mouth where the Trickster saw hate. He was flying. He was a bird and he could see from a great height.

It was simple. He was a shaman. He could fly with the eagle. And those who flew with the eagle could see not just the mice in the fields, but the secrets of the human heart. Billy knew. He ran with his spirit, saw what it would have him see. Now Sam must look with his bird’s eye. He was above them, and he could see their hearts.

Katie was faithful. Her soul was crying for her husband, for the doubts she had had, for the man she wanted so badly, whom she loved over all things. Craig McGee was tortured and honourable, a man with love that had no place to settle, a white shaman who denied his power, who struggled to be blind, to shut out his light. And Billy. Billy was his saviour. Billy was a Kinchuinick Indian.