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What had been comforting now seemed restrictive.
    A memory fragment from Magic Boy rose in Ukiah’s mind.
    He stood on the cliff edge, overlooking the Umatilla River, the wind coming off the prairie roaring in his ears, stinging his eyes nearly as much as the burning tears. He raised his arms up, wondering, What if all I need is faith? Maybe if I leapt now, would I turn into something more than just a little boy?
    He leaned against the wind, closing his eyes, trying to summon the courage to believe.
    â€œMagic Boy,” his mother, Kicking Deer, said behind him. “What are you doing?”
    He didn’t turn to face her, see how old she had grown while he stayed the same. All his younger half brothers were men now, with wives and children of their own. Only he stayed the same. “I’m thinking about flying.”
    â€œYou have no wings, Magic Boy.”
    â€œPerhaps while my feet are firmly on the ground, I need no wings. Maybe I need to be in the air to have wings.”
    â€œDon’t be foolish. You’re too old for it.”
    â€œTell that to the old men of the tribe! Tell them I am too old to still be considered a child. Tell them that the baby at your breast when I went out the last time for my manhood rite had a son of his own today.”
    â€œMy son,” Kicking Deer said softly. “Every full moon I take a string out and measure you as you sleep. Years I have measured you from the top of your head to the back of your heels, and always you are the same. There is no gray in your hair and no lines on your face. Like the stone Coyote gave me to swallow, you are unchanging.”
    â€œSo I am unchanging! They made Five Crows a man yesterday. He has only seen eleven summers to my thirty, and tomorrow he might die if a bear struck him or a snake bit him. Am I, who is unchanging, any less a man than Five Crows, who might die without changing? He is shorter, and slower, and weaker than I, but they made him a man.”
    Years of injustices fueled his anger, and he raged on bitterly. “And you know why? If I were a man, I would overshadow them even as I am. I am faster and stronger than all of them. So they keep me a child and order me about whenever they can.”
    â€œAiieee. My son. It is the spirits that keep you a child.”
    â€œI am sick of being a child. I am sick of babies swaggering about the dance grounds, thinking they can tell me what to do because . . .”
    â€œBecause the spirits chose a different path for you. A longer path. Five Crows’s journey is already half over, and yours has barely begun. Do not be angry because you do not see the same things along the path that he does; you are bound for different places.”
    He sighed, turning away from the cliff. “Why is it that you are always so much wiser than me? You are not really that much older than I am.”
    She tweaked his nose. “Because I’m always running to stay ahead of you.”
    Magic Boy hadn’t flung himself from that cliff face that day. Ironically, if he had, he would have aged. But his mother had been right, he had taken a long, twisting path before seeing his totem animal and becoming a man. A small niggling part of Ukiah pointed out that he still lived as a child in his mothers’ house, but he had, for the most part, all that Magic Boy desired: a position in society as an adult, a woman, and a child.
    Kittanning lay in his crib bed, a mobile of Mickey Mouse dancing over his head, dreaming of the day’s anxiety.
    Although Kittanning started as a stolen blood mouse, and had been all of three days old when Ukiah finally won him back, Ukiah hadn’t been able to take Kittanning back. Not in the physical sense—no, Ukiah probably could have forcedthe merger. But Kittanning was now a human infant. Whereas Ukiah’s mice felt like lost pieces of the greater whole, always joyful at the prospect of returning, Kittanning had a sense of self,