Catherine Knutsson - Shadows Cast by Stars

“Who’s that?” I say, pointing at the one I don’t know.

“Oh. Just some kid,” my father says, taking the photograph from Paul’s hand and setting it back in the violin case. “I can’t even remember his name.”

As my father snaps the case shut, Paul and I share a look. My father is a terrible liar. He knows who that young man is, and I know Paul is thinking the same thing I am: Why won’t he tell us?

But soon the mysterious young man in the photograph is forgotten as we take up mop and broom and bucket again. We have so much work to do. Cleaning the house is just the start. Our only source of water is the lake. There’s no outhouse. We have no beds, or any furniture for that matter, and no wood for the fireplace. There’s no garden to grow our own food, and nothing to feed the chickens with. What little joy we had while we danced to the tune of my father’s violin has vanished, replaced by the truth of our predicament. In the Corridor, we had enough wood for two winters stored up at all times. Our garden had been planted. The apple tree had already bloomed and would, with luck, produce some fruit, for I’d fertilized it by hand myself.

Here? We are not just starting over. We are starting from scratch.

I set the mop down again and stare at my hands, where blisters are already rising. Is this what this place holds for me? Am I all that I’ll ever be?

“Dad,” I ask as he passes by, “is there a school here?”

“Oh.” He pauses. “Don’t know. Probably nothing formal, but we’ll figure something out for you and Paul, okay?”

“Okay,” I say, even though I have a sinking feeling in my gut. No school means no university, and no university means… that my only future is here, working my bones into the earth, all to live the Old Way. And what then? Will I be married off to some Band man? Am I destined to tend the homestead? Keep the hearth warm? Wait and see if my warrior returns from war? The treaty lands are full of women like that, most broken at the hands of their Band husbands. Those men have seen things in battle, the Elders say by way of an excuse. Bad things. Terrible things.

This is why my mother never wanted to live here. She never wanted this future for me, and I don’t want it either.

Later, when I’ve taken out my frustrations on the floor, my father comes and slips the mop from my hand. “That’s enough for tonight, Cass. Why don’t you go get washed up?”

“Okay,” I say, turning to head outside, but pausing and turning back. “I almost forgot-I know I’ve got work to do, but Bran invited me to his house tomorrow. Is it okay if I go?”

Paul bounds down the stairs. “He invited me, too,” he says as he stops to pick up the bucket of dirty water at my feet, and then continues on outside.

“Oh,” I say before I can stop myself. It’s good that he asked Paul too, so why do I feel so disappointed?

My father doesn’t notice. “Sure! Might as well start making friends because we’re going to be here for a while.” He reaches out to ruffle my hair. “Go on. Get cleaned up. I’ll dig a sleeping bag out for you, okay?”

“Thanks, Dad.” I lean in to kiss his cheek, and then head out into the night.

Outside, the waning moon spreads silver wings over the forest. When I was little, my mother told me the story of the princess of the stars, who sat on the edge of the heavens, listening to the cry of a wolf. When the princess reached out to catch the wolf’s song, she fell to earth and was captured by a demon, who took her to the bottom of a great lake. I never learned if she escaped. Is she out there, that princess, trapped beneath the still, black water? This lake looks like the sort of place a demon might lurk.

Stop dreaming up nonsense , I tell myself as I pick my way down the hill.

On the opposite shore, a fire burns bright and bloody. The sound of throbbing drums races across the lake. Band business, no doubt. Whose fate are they deciding tonight?

I crouch and plunge my arms into the water. The wound site where Madda removed the chip aches, and as I stare at the black spidery stitches, the impulse to cut them from my skin overwhelms me. It’s too soon, I know, so I leave them alone, but they’re such a strong reminder of what was once there. How could I have let anyone plant a chip under my skin?

Gravel crunches on the hill. I don’t have to look to know it’s Paul. He squats down beside me and holds his arm out next to mine. His stitches are already gone. Even in the flickering light of his candle, I can see the edges of the incision have separated, exposing pink flesh beneath the dry, crusted blood.

“You shouldn’t have taken them out,” I say. “That’s going to be an ugly scar.”

Paul pulls his sleeve down to cover the wound. “I know,” he says almost triumphantly, then wanders away.

• • •

Something wakes me. I sit up, straining to listen to the silence around me, but there’s nothing to hear. Still, something is amiss.

I rise and dress, and slip downstairs. It’s early. Night hangs heavily over the forest. Down by the boathouse, a fire burns. A solitary figure stands beside it.

Paul.

I pull on my shoes and go outside to join him.

He crouches by the fire, feeding slivers of cedar bark to the flames. He doesn’t look at me.

“You’re up early,” I say.

He shrugs. “Couldn’t sleep.”

He must have had another vision, but with the memory of last time still fresh in my mind, I just poke the fire with a twig instead, stirring up sparks. “Hungry?”

“Nope.” He stands, unfurling his long, thin arms, stretching toward the sky. He’s barefoot.

“Where are your shoes?” I ask.

“In the house. Got to toughen myself up if I want to run with the Band.”

“By going barefoot?”

“They’ll never hear me coming.” He drifts away, and he’s right. As he leaves, he doesn’t make a sound.

I sit by the fire, watching the sun rise, wondering if Paul will return. He compares himself to me, Paul does. He beats himself up that he can’t weather his visions like I can, even though, by comparison, mine aren’t nearly as bad. His, though-his are terrible, but if I could, I would trade in a heartbeat.

I just wish we understood why. Why have we been given these gifts that we don’t know how to use? I think of the shades that I see, following people around, and wonder, why do I see them? There must be a reason, but what that reason is, I don’t know. And Paul-why does he dream of the future? Is it so he can change it? If that’s the case, the future would be wise to send Paul visions that make sense, because every time, it’s not until afterward, when it’s too late, that we understand.

Not long after the sun has risen above the trees and turned the lake to gold, my father comes down to join me at the fire, bringing along a bowl and some flour and a little oil for bannock. We wrap dough around willow branches and stick it over the coals, and though it’s nothing more than a flour paste, something about cooking it over open flame turns it into the best-tasting treat I can imagine.

“Should I call Paul?” I ask as I pull the bannock from the fire.

My father stares up toward the house, which still sits in darkness. “Leave him be,” he says. “He’ll come back when he’s hungry enough.”

But he doesn’t-not after we’ve cleaned up, not after my father goes back to hammering the old house back together, not after I turn the chickens out to scratch and begin to mark off the corners of a garden plot. I can hear him, though, the thump of the pickax in the soil as Paul digs the pit for the outhouse, swearing up a storm as he does battle with the rocks and the roots.

Finally, around noon, he reappears, covered in red, iron-rich soil. I’m back in the kitchen, mopping the floors again.