Bugz tossed the tomahawk to the lake floor and made another. Years earlier, she’d created Mishi-pizhiw and many of her other allies the same way. Manufacturing weapons didn’t make her heart sing the same way it did when she breathed life into those creatures—that work brought the Anishinaabe worldview back from the dead, after all—but it did pay the bills. After an hour, she gathered a few dozen of the giant axes in a net and swam back to the surface.

CHAPTER 13

A sleek black SUV kicked up a cloud of red dust down an old dirt road, its ocher tones made deeper by the warm sunlight of the beautiful summer day. A thin brick-colored film gathered across the vehicle’s surface.

The air conditioner hummed gently as Feng rode with his aunt in silence. The colorful scenery blew by outside, muted by tinted windows. Farmers’ fields, still green, gave way to more indigenous terrain: bush, creeks, swamps. After a two-hour-plus drive from the airport, they neared the Rez. Feng furrowed his brow at his phone.

“You know you’re kind of like the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” Liumei cracked a smile as she interrupted the silence.

“What?” Feng remained focused on the pane of glass in his hand.

“Well, he got in some trouble and his fam got scared and sent him to live with his auntie in a town called Bel-Air…”

Feng betrayed absolutely no hint of recognition. He suspected his automatic translator was lagging again. He felt annoyed his aunt spoke to him in English.

“That’s the theme song to a show. Will Smith rapped it.”

Nothing.

“Will Smith? Heard of him?”

“The president? Yeah, I heard of him.” Feng finally looked up from the screen. “I thought people only knew him from memes.”

His aunt laughed.

Feng chuckled and held his phone up to the moonroof. He stared at the “user location not found” error message on the screen and scrunched his forehead up in bewilderment. “Where are you taking me?”

“I told you. The Rez is called Biiwaabik,” his aunt said. “It means ‘metal’ in the local language, because of the iron in the soil. Pretty smart, don’t you think?”

Feng nodded through a forced smile and swiped at his glowing phone.

“Hey, put that thing down and talk to me for a bit.”

“Okay.” Feng tapped his leg on the floor of the vehicle.

“I know it’s a pretty big change for you to come here…”

Feng’s face settled into a faint scowl.

“But I told Uncle I’d take care of you. And besides, I think you’ll like it here. The land is beautiful, and…”—Feng could see his aunt searching for a way to land the second half of her sentence diplomatically—“…it’ll give you a chance to think things over.”

“What did you hear?”

“Just that there was some…trouble.”