He remembered when he first came to the Kickaha rez. When asked his clan, he’d say Red Dog, after his mother’s, a clan of gangly rez dogs, but they’d hear Crow. He had the blood of both, only the elders—the aunts and old Jack Whiteduck, who’d been the new young shaman back then—focused on the Crow and likened it to the tribe’s guardian spirits. Except when they said crow, they meant corbae, because crow in the old Kickaha language translated into any kind of blackbird or jay: crow, raven, rook, blue jay, grackle. All the corbae cousins. The guardian spirits of the Kickaha.

That was the way of the world. People met you and they either looked for how you were similar to them, and welcomed you into their circle, or focused on how you were different, so that all you could be was a stranger at best, an enemy at worst.

Trouble was, if you didn’t have a clear enough idea about your own identity, you could become what the people around you decided you were.

Good man, bad man.

Crazy man, brave man, thief.

Living man, dead one.

Right now, he was lying on that plain where the buffalo had gathered. Head probably bleeding from the blow he’d taken from Minisino’s club. Not breathing.

They were going to say he was dead.

If enough of them believed it, it could come true.

Or at least stay true.

But it didn’t have to be that way.

Because that was the part of this holding ground that wasn’t talked about as much. Sure, spirits stayed here for a time before they either moved on, or returned to haunt what they’d left behind. But it was a place of more possibilities than the next turn on the wheel or the ghost road.

Supposedly, you could also find your way back into your own body. Have a second chance on your old wheel. All you had to do was get back.

It should be a piece of cake, for an old crow dog with his talents.

Trouble was, Joe didn’t have the first idea where to go.

Every direction looked, sounded, smelled the same.

Every direction led back to water and the canoe that would take him on.

“What do you say, spirits?” he asked the mist. “Is there one of you out there willing to lend me a hand in this? Or have you decided that this part of my story’s well and truly done?”

There was no reply, but he hadn’t really expected one.

It looked like this was something you were supposed to figure out on your own.

Grey