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igneous rock, so deep below the surface that the mine shafts themselves were always warm even in the winter—this seemed miraculous to Emo and was one of the things he remembered most clearly afterwards. The idea that all that stupendous effort could simply be abandoned seemed preposterous whenever any of them paused to consider it.
    And so when they were told to return their work clothes, that they could go on living in the houses for now, but they should make some arrangements to move on in the near future, this all came asan astonishment. As strange as the idea of crawling into the depths of the earth to chip out rocks for the Kablunauks to put on boats and take away was, the idea of stopping this now, and putting back on their hunting furs and taking their families back onto the land, seemed even more laughable. After they were told to go home, Emo walked away from the mine site down to the sea edge, where his dogs were tied up on the ice. He looked up at the sky and at his own neglected dogs and finally at the canvas clothes he was wearing. And then he walked home to make the same bewildered explanation to Winnie that all the men were making to their wives that night.

    On the Oiseau River, just north of The Pas, the sun shines through the poplar stands oblique and glowing orange on spring afternoons. The bond that had grown up between Victoria and Alexander eventually moved them to walk out there, without ever much discussing why. It was Victoria’s sixth year in the south, and her sixteenth in the world. They sat down on one of the granite rock faces that lined the river, and the sunshine was almost hot on their faces even though patches of snow still shone through the stands of tamarack and black spruce. The slow-to-dissipate winter cold radiated up and off the rocks and the soil, and the heat fell down upon them from the sky. Their feet were wet from crossing the river and so they untied their shoelaces and lined their shoes and socks together alongside them, warming in the sun, their pale glistening feet freed after a winter’s confinement.
    She had stretched her hands behind her as she tossed back her hair, her long neck arching, and when her fingers had touched his, against the rock, she did not pull them away. They sat like that, eyes shut, sunning themselves like tortoises, until she felt his lips sliding along the side of her neck. Then his teeth ran along her collarbone and she bit her own lip, her fingers curling into the granite extrusion. His warm breath flowed over her shoulder and neck and thesoft spot at their juncture. Though it was only his lips that touched her, she raised her hips against nothing but the weight of her own clothes, so frustratingly light and unresisting. Her hands gave way to her elbows, and her neck bent back so far her scalp touched stone. He lifted her glasses from her face.
    Alexander was strong, in the manner of certain boys raised without fathers, who adopted that position early and intuitively. He cut wood for the stove every morning before going to school while his mother made breakfast—this had been his responsibility since he was eight. Even when it was very cold he did not complain. In school, however, he was not inspired. He talked of getting a job with the Hudson’s Bay Company and working in the network of stores that supplied two hundred towns in the boreal forest and the Arctic with food and hardware. He imagined himself alone a lot, travelling in the bush and fending for himself. It was the first time Victoria had encountered the romanticized idea of self-sufficiency. Her father, the most self-sufficient man she knew, would never have sought isolation, loneliness. She watched Alexander that afternoon, as he ran his fingers over her abdomen, and thought to herself that this was a dangerous idea.
    She saw clearly the prospects he would face, approaching the Hudson’s Bay Company for work. The Bay Boys, above and below the treeline, were English. Her foreknowledge