Carol GoldenEagle - Bone Black

Wren Strongeagle was almost killed by a train when she was little.

She hadn’t turned five years old yet when she was standing on the railroad track. Wren and her twin sister Raven used to wander down to the tracks all the time. Some days, they’d be gone for hours after having wandered off the property where her grandma lived in the valley. They visited their grandmother often and eventually came to live with her. They call her by the Cree name, Kohkum .

The girls had a routine, especially in the summer. If they weren’t riding their bikes up and down Kohkum’s long and curving driveway, they’d be splashing around on the creek bed: a shallow waterway with a slow-moving current snaking its way between the grassy, hilly coulee of the landscape. Kohkum’s house was built in the valley part of the land, beside Last Mountain Lake in Saskatchewan’ßs Qu’Appelle Valley. It’s an area protected by buttes and trees and an ever-present wind on the Saskatchewan prairie, but with a breathtaking view.

So often, as little girls will do, Wren and her sister got sidetracked and followed the creek in the direction the water ran, toward the big lake. A long lake. Kinookimaw in Cree. Back when Wren was just a girl, the rail line was still operational. Its tracks carried passengers and cargo from the city. The train wound its way along a scenic route of the Qu’Appelle Valley, right beside the water’s edge.

Kohkum had always warned the girls not to play on the tracks alone. But as children sometimes do, they’d forget what she’d said and found themselves on the tracks anyway, picking up stones that they’d throw with all their might into the lake, playing a game they’d invented to see who could throw the farthest. It was usually Raven who’d win the toss, but neither of them kept score. It was just fun to be out and playing near the water’s edge.

And the girls were never really alone. The lake itself was always busy with people enjoying a day of canoeing, fishing or just being out on the water. They were friends and neighbours of Kohkum, living in town a kilometre or so from where the little creek drained into the big lake. They knew the girls by their names, and would always shout friendly greetings when they spotted the twins playing on the shoreline. The girls would give a wave from the shoreline or the train tracks, and they’d remain there until returning to their grandmother’s house when they started to get hungry.

On the day when Wren was almost hit by a train, a good day of throwing stones and laughing and waving at lake folk in their canoes, Raven had stopped to pick handfuls of sweet saskatoon berries along the trail that wound through the trees back to Kohkum’s home in the coulee. But something sparkly on the train tracks caught Wren’s eye that afternoon, so she lollygagged, sitting right on the tracks to see where that shininess was coming from.

She didn’t even notice that the train was coming. She didn’t hear its whistle, which sounded incessantly once the conductor saw the small figure on the tracks. Wren was enthralled, doing her best to pick up each tiny rhinestone she’d spotted embedded in the dirt beside one of the rail ties, and putting the glass treasures in the small pockets of her denim cutoffs.

People on the lake had noticed. As the train’s whistle sounded in an increasingly furious manner, two people in a canoe near the shoreline yelled and screamed as loudly as they could at Wren. Still, she didn’t hear any of it. It was like she’d been caught up in some other world that was bereft of sound and moved in slow motion.

It was at this moment that Wren remembers a bright light appearing beside her. She didn’t know what it was, only recalls being thrown from the track and the oncoming train. She remembers it feeling like an electric shock, the same type you would feel if you were to foolishly put a knife in a toaster for half a second, which she’d already done in her so-far-short life. It was that little shock that brought her back to real time.

Wren remembers the sound of that train speeding past her a moment later as she sat on the dirt, now breathless, mere metres away. She finally heard the train’s whistle and engine. She gasps even today, knowing that she’d have been squished if it hadn’t been for the sudden appearance of that bright light, and the force that pushed her off the track. She remembers feeling the light checking on her once again, to make sure she was safe, before it disappeared. Then the wind carried Raven’s voice to her, and Wren ran into the bush toward the sound of her sister calling. Wren was saved. By light.

On that day there was some kind of shift between two worlds, and for a few moments in time one of them stood still. That day on the tracks Wren acquired a special gift of knowing, which is how she has since been able to tell the moods of people, or to know things about them without them sharing any information, without even saying a word.

Wren still thinks about that moment she saw the bright light. She doesn’t know if it’s a real memory. Did it really happen that way or was it just something someone read to her once from a storybook? Maybe a scene from a movie she watched? Her questioning of her memory happens each time she sees a flash of light, which is pretty much a regular occurrence—especially on these days when magic has again come into her life.

Three decades have passed since that near-accident, and she’s done so much living since. Wren suspects she might be pregnant but doesn’t know for sure. Her period is quite late, but that can sometimes be due to stress, she knows. An appointment with her doctor isn’t scheduled until next week. Wren’s never been one to believe in the accuracy of a store-bought pregnancy test, so she will be patient.

In the meantime, she also looks forward to more excitement. Her sister will be visiting tomorrow. Raven is coming home. That’s why Wren is in a big grocery store in the city, picking up some items so the girls can cook and chat and carry on as they always do when they find themselves together. They cook, they eat, they laugh—and so much more goes on in between. Magic.

Wren is reminded of the light when she sees a young girl shoplifting at the store. The youth looks to be no older than twelve, wearing an oversized, grey bunny hug. Wren saw her put some beef jerky into the big front pocket of the sweater. Her first instinct is to tell someone, but she looks at the girl closely, intuiting something. She can tell this teen isn’t stealing on a dare, or as a bad habit.

She’s doing it because she’s hungry , Wren assures herself. It’s like she is able to read the girl’s thoughts. Wren examines a soft light that seems to be following the girl: light blue and hovering over her as if to protect. At that, Wren’s instinct is to remain silent and carry on with her own business. That girl needs food , she tells herself, and I will not be the one to deny her something so basic . Wren dismisses the concern and pushes her cart to another aisle.