Red Earth White Earth. Will Weaver

and bread and blueberries and cranberries and more. “Eat,” the Windigoo said to the little boy. “If you eat, I won’t hurt you and you can stay here with me and grow big and I will be your friend.”

      But the little boy was as clever as he was brave. He knew the giant’s plan. And the little boy had a plan of his own.

      The Windigoo and the boy began to eat. They ate and ate. Once when the Windigoo’s big eyes looked down to his bowl, the little boy felt for his own buckskin pouch. He moved the pouch so that it hung in front of him but under his shirt.

      They kept eating. But the boy began to drop food into the buckskin pouch instead of into his mouth. The giant ordered more food. He began to stare at the little boy who could eat so much. But the little boy’s fingers were faster than the Windigoo’s eyes. He kept dropping his food into his pouch.

      From the juice of the berries and the juice of the meat, the buckskin pouch began to stretch as all leather stretches when it is wet. In this way the little boy kept eating.

      Soon the Windigoo thought, My! This little boy eats more than anyone I’ve ever seen, even more than other Windigoos.

      Finally the Windigoo could eat not another leg of a partridge or even a berry.

      “Have you had enough?” the Windigoo asked the little boy.

      “Not yet,” answered the little boy. He kept eating until his shirt puffed out in front as round as a goose before winter.

      The Windigoo decided to kill the little boy. He could hang him from the rafters of his hut and then eat the boy tomorrow when he was hungry again.

      But then the little boy said, “I can do something no Windigoo can. Watch this.” With that he took out his skinning knife, pulled up his shirt, and slit open the buckskin pouch.

      Now the Windigoo was angry and jealous. He took out his own knife and did the same thing to his own great belly. From the Windigoo’s belly tumbled all the hunters of the village, who set upon the Windigoo and killed him.

      When the Windigoo was dead, the hunters carried the little boy back to the village on their shoulders. They sang:

      Windigoo gii-nibo, Windigoo gii-nibo.

      The cannibal is dead, the cannibal is dead.

      Mangademo, mangademo.

      The trail is wide, the trail is wide.

      Sometimes after a story Zhingwaak left them alone in the fish house while he walked up the lake to get more firewood or to look for animal tracks along the shore. Then Guy or Tom or Mary Ann got to sit in Zhingwaak’s chair.

      One February afternoon it was Tom’s turn. As Zhingwaak’s footsteps crunched away from the fish house, Tom tied the spear’s cord around his ankle but leaned the spear against the wall. Since they had never yet seen a fish in Zhingwaak’s hole, they played games with the decoy fish. Guy found another line and let a second decoy circle down into the water. He and Mary Ann played chase with the two decoys. The little wooden fish, one white and red, the other yellow, darted back and forth across the hole.

      “Never catch me,” Mary Ann called.

      “Just wait,” Guy said.

      Soon their lines tangled. Still laughing, Guy and Mary Ann kept pulling on the lines. The little fish, like fighting kites, wound themselves closer and closer together.

      As Guy opened his mouth to say “Tag . . .” there was a green swirl in the hole and both decoys disappeared. Guy pulled on his line but it was stuck on something.

      “Holy shit,” Tom breathed.

      Then Guy saw the fish. It was Nimishoomis. His broad, dark back lay below them in the center of the hole like a great old log with yellow-black eyes. He filled the length of the hole and his tail was out of sight beneath the ice. His eyes looked all directions at the same time. His gills, as wide as Guy’s grandfather’s hands, swelled and sank, swelled and sank as he breathed the water. The two decoy lines disappeared inside his closed jaws.

      “Spear—the spear!” Guy whispered.

      Tom fumbled for the spear, then stood up. Slowly, as Zhingwaak had shown him, Tom lowered the spear until its barbs silently broke the surface of the water. The water trembled around the iron tines.

      “Throw!” Guy said.

      With both hands, Tom drove down the spear. In the same moment Nimishoomis heard the splash above him and swirled his tail. The spear did not strike behind his head and break his spine as Tom had aimed, but struck him far back, drove deep into the fleshy muscle of his tail. Harpooned, Nimishoomis fled. In the water of the hole the spear’s cord hissed away. Hissed away from Tom’s ankle. Tom had time only to open his mouth when he was jerked off balance and into the hole. Guy lunged for him but missed. Tom was in the water, then gone.

      Mary Ann screamed.

      Guy, too, was half in the burning cold water. He held on to the wood side of the fish house. “Zhingwaak—run for Zhingwaak!” he shouted. Mary Ann plunged through the door and was gone. Guy screamed Tom’s name, then filled his lungs with air and pushed himself below the ice.

      In the water, roiled by the pike’s thrashing, Guy could see only a few feet in any direction. The cold cut through him. He swam a few feet straight ahead, then looked again. Nothing. He turned back to the hole but his head hit only ice. He tried to remember how many times he had kicked his legs. Four, five. He swam forward with his back against the gray ice. Suddenly he surfaced in the fish house. He gasped for breath, then pushed himself underwater again.

      This time he swam south ten kicks. Nothing. Only green. He began to scream Tom’s name but stopped himself from opening his mouth.

      He found his way back to the air hole. This time he swam east. From the cold he could go only eight kicks. Far away above him on the ice he heard a faint thudding like a distant thunderstorm. He lost count of his kicks. Red stars popped in his eyes before he reached air again. He hung, gasping, on to the wooden legs of Zhingwaak’s chair. Outside he could hear Mary Ann’s voice screaming.

      There was one direction left. North. Guy swallowed air and went under again. He swam six, then eight, then ten kicks north. He was just about to turn back when he saw something. He swam on. It was Tom. He was floating sideways against the ice, his legs and arms dangling, drifting. The spear’s cord hung limply from his leg. The pike had torn free. The spear lay in the moss.

      Guy pulled himself forward, half swimming, half clawing his way along the ice to Tom. He grabbed the cord and began to tow Tom back. But he had forgotten about the spear, whose barbs lay caught in the moss and weeds.

      By now the last of Guy’s air was leaking from his mouth and nose in a spray of bubbles. With a last lunge, he tore the cord from around Tom’s ankle and pulled him forward.

      But it was too late. He began to breathe water. He was a fish. He felt the cold rush of water in his lungs, saw red roses begin to bloom and burst in the sky above him. A tree fell from the red sky. He grabbed its trunk and held on as everything darkened. Night. Then the moon. A huge full moon to which he was sailing.

      Hard hands pulled him upward. The tree was a ladder. The moon was a door. The door was air. Air was open. Open house, the fish house door. White earth, blue sky.

      When Guy came to, he was alone in the fish house. A large, dead limb stuck up from the water. The tree. Mary Ann. She had put the dead limb in the hole.

      Through the open door he saw Zhingwaak and Mary Ann standing on their heads on the ice outside. Tom was holding them upright. Guy blinked. Then he saw that Zhingwaak was holding up Tom by his ankles and Mary Ann was clapping on Tom’s back. Tom was the one upside down. Tom puked once onto the ice, then again, a long gush of water. Then Zhingwaak called something and jerked his head toward Guy and the fish house.

      “I’m okay,” Guy said as Mary Ann gave him her coat. His teeth rattled. He began to shake all over.

      Zhingwaak carried Tom into the house. Tom