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sound, trampled by men in big rubber boots. Nora thinks the heat feels good on her face, thinks that it’s strange for her to think that. Her mind is buzzing, it’s radio static. She rises, but Willard pulls her back to sitting.
    “They got me out the window with a ladder, but I said I wasn’t going unless they took the box, too.” Rose fingers the pearly buttons of the accordion, then reaches over and gives Nora’s hand a squeeze.
    Nora can’t take her eyes from the flames and the black cloud of smoke rolling over the rooftops.
    “Hey.”
    Jimmy D. stands before her in full gear, sweat beaded on his face. “We’ve got another truck on the way. But these old wooden buildings . . . well, we’re doing what we can.”
    “I hope so,” she manages, “if you ever want another free beer.”
    A smile passes over Jimmy D.’s face, then fades to an expression that makes Nora feel sick, and she lowers her gaze to his boots.
    She can’t grasp what’s actually happening. She feels like she’s not really there, but somewhere deep inside herself, a place that’s round, and smooth, and mouthless.
    “My piano’s up there. My piano’s burning,” says Rose.

1622
     
    The river splits around a black rock with a white cap of snow before sliding back under the ice and over the little waterfall. Bullhead squats to rest for a moment near the small stretch of open water. There are two bubbling lines streaming out from the rock in a pattern the shape of flying geese.
    Walking up from the big water has tired her. She had hacked a hole in the ice at a place that felt right, but there, as in her usual spots, the net had come up dripping and empty. Fish. Her mouth waters. Trout. Salmon. Whitefish. Herring. Cooking on sticks near a crackling fire. She would turn them slowly until they were done just right.
    For two days they’ve eaten soup cooked from pieces of hide, lichen, and the stringy inner layers of bark. Night Cloud snared a rabbit, but it was small and shared mostly with Little Cedar. How proud Bullhead was of Standing Bird as he sat solemnly with his broth, the smell of cooked rabbit thick in the air, cramping her own stomach over and over with a desire more insistent than any passion she’d known.
    A wind moves through the pines and they toss and creak, dropping small bits of snow to the ground. Little Cedar grows vulnerable. She has seen it many times before, the slowed response to what usually excites, and the dullness that settles over the eyes, like a snake as it begins to molt. She made a decoction of dried ox-eye root to give strength to the boy’s limbs, but its effect was mild. If only she’d had the root newly pulled, not dried. She could’ve chewed it and spit the softened bits directly onto his arms and legs.
    The rock and water make a gurgling music, and the faint light plays in the streaming bubbles. Bullhead can hear Grey Rabbit working in the woods, her bone rasping against the high rock wall as she scrapes lichen to add to the soup. How quickly the soup leaves her stomach feeling empty, without even pumpkin blossom left for thickening.
    Bullhead takes in a long weary breath. The air smells of old snow and open water. Across the river a chickadee sits perched on an icy limb. Its feathers are puffed around its body, causing its head to look small. Even the little birds make their own way, not nearly so weak as her kind, who are born without feathers, warm fur, or thick hide. She pulls off her rabbitskin mitt, looks at her fingers, the mean scar on her thumb. Yes, the Anishinaabeg were given the power to dream. And yet they are so fragile, so dependent, that they must take the very skins of other animals and wear them over their own to stay warm.
    The chickadee sits puffed on its limb. The river water is dark, but also light in the places where it carries the color of the clouds. Bullhead follows the movement of the water. It slides in smooth sheets, circles and bends, wrinkling in lines that shrink and