Eddies of heat shimmer around us. We walk side by side, making small talk and carefully avoiding mention of the fight. I’m not sure why, but I can sense Bran doesn’t want to talk about it. But I do. I’m practically itching to know who the muskrat boy is. No friend of Bran’s, that’s for certain, and no friend of my brother’s, either. All the more reason to learn about him-know thine enemy, my father says. Well, I plan to.
“Warm today,” Bran says, breaking my thoughts. “You’re not used to it.” He points to a bead of sweat winding its way down my forehead.
“Not yet. The rain keeps the Corridor pretty cool most of the time.”
“We’ll go this way, then.” He steps off the road. “It’s nicer in the forest.”
We follow the narrow, twisting path through stands of fir and cottonwood. Bran sets a fast pace, and though I don’t want to admit it, I’m struggling to keep up. “Sorry,” he says as he stops to help me over a log that blocks our path. “I keep forgetting you’re not from here, that this is new to you.” He purses his lips. “It just seems like I’ve always known you, you know?”
I nod. I do know.
“Close your eyes,” he says. “Tell me what you hear.”
I do as he asks. The stiff leaves of a poplar rustle in the wind. A jay cackles in the cottonwoods, and if I concentrate hard enough I can make out a subtle hum just below the level of hearing, as if the earth is singing a song of its own. It’s… beautiful. “It’s like a hymn,” I say.
“See? You belong here.” His bangs drop in front of his eyes; I wish I could see them. “Come on. It’s not much farther.”
The trees fall behind as we climb a granite ridge worn smooth eons ago by the slow slip and slide of a glacier. The lake opens out below the ridge like a blue fan. On a whim, I wander to the edge. The wind rushes past, begging me to take flight.
Bran’s hand steadies me. “Don’t want you to fall. Your brother would kill me.”
“He probably will anyhow, once he notices we’re gone.”
“Nope. He knows to meet us at my house later.”
I try to prevent my eyebrow from arching, but it pops up anyhow.
Bran doesn’t notice. He pushes his hair out of his face before taking a seat and patting the spot beside him. “Sit. We can talk up here.”
“Only up here?” I ask, plucking some grass before settling down beside him, and begin to work. Two stalks, bent in half, for spokes, and a blade to weave with. I’ll make a sun wheel, a Brigid cross.
“Well, no, but up here, there’s no one to interrupt us.” He casts me a sidelong look. “Being an Eagleson comes with baggage. Everyone talks, no one listens.”
So, that’s it. I’m his confessor. I should have known. I’m not the type of girl someone like Bran would ever be interested in. I’m too tall. Too thin. Too intense. Still, I hope. My mother was beautiful. Paul resembles her far more than I do, but I can’t help hoping that a sliver of her beauty was passed on to me.
Bran shifts, moving close enough that the grass bent by his frame tickles my forearm. Bees, fat and laden with pollen, drift around us. A hummingbird hovers overhead before soaring off in a blur of metallic wings. I watch it as my hands weave.
Bran laughs. “Thought we were flowers, I bet.”
“Maybe you. Definitely not me.”
“If you’re not a flower, then what are you?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.” The conversation is running too close to me. Time to redirect. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what that fight was all about?”
“For someone like Cedar, there doesn’t need to be a reason.” His voice is flat with anger. “He’s always looking to pick a fight.” He yawns and stretches out onto his back, hands cradling his head. “Like he has something to prove.”
“Such as?”
“That he’s better than me because he’s full-blooded Indian. I’m only a half-breed, and some people around here think that makes me less than them. There’s talk, you know, about what happens if my father doesn’t come back, who’ll lead the Band then.”
“And someone wants to give you the job?”
“Yeah.” He picks up a spider that’s crawling on his leg and carefully sets it on a leaf. “Some days, I think I might do okay. Most days, I think I’m too young, that I’ve got too much to learn. But, the Elders, you know, I’m not sure about them, either. They always looked to my father, who looked to the people. Now they look to no one except themselves. See that spot down there? Where the river runs out of the lake?”
I nod. The water turns murky there, as if the river is leaching life from the lake.
“That’s where my dad met the bear.”
“What bear?”
“A grizzly. The only one ever found on the Island. They can swim here, you know, all the way from the mainland. Pretty long way. Tough animals. That’s how the Elders knew my father was going to be chief, they say. Grizzly sought my father out, and fought him to see if he was strong enough. I guess he was. He used to let me play with the claws when I was little. He was going to give them to me before…” His voice trails off.
I hold my breath. Before what?
Bran gazes out toward the lake. “I’m still waiting to find my bear.”
But Bran’s shade isn’t a bear. It’s a kingfisher, and a stone, and other things too, things I’ve only seen glimpses of. Should I tell him? Would he want to know what I’ve seen?
No, I decide. What good would that do? Look at Paul. How much help have I been to him? So far, no help at all. More than once, I’ve wished I understood why I see what I do, and in this moment, I wish it more than ever.
“Do you want to be chief?” I ask, because I don’t know what else to say.
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Maybe. I guess it depends if the Elders want me. Besides, Henry Crawford’s chief until my father comes back.”
If he comes back. The unspoken words hang between us until Bran says, “But, maybe one day. When I feel I’m half the man my father was. Is.” He looks down at the sun wheel in my hands. “What’s that?”
“This?” I hold it up and inspect it. “I call it a sun wheel. My mother taught me to make them. She called it a Brigid cross. It’s supposed to protect you from evil.”
Bran laughs. “Does it work?”
“I think so. Maybe. Here.” I reach out and take his hand, setting the sun-wheel in his palm and curling his fingers around it. “It’s for you.”
He stares at it for a long moment before looking back at me. “Thank you,” he says, like he really means it.
I start to say that it’s nothing, that it’s made only from grass, but I stop myself and just smile instead.
Bran sweeps his hair back and stands, offering me his hand. “Well, we should probably be getting back, I guess.”
“I guess.” Though I could stay here forever, on this hilltop, with the grass swaying in the wind, the hummingbirds, the flowers.
But I still take Bran’s hand. Our palms meet, and this time, even after he’s pulled me up from the ground, we don’t let go.
Paul sits beside the beached canoe, smiling as we approach. “I thought you two had run off together,” he says as he touches his swollen lip.
“Thought about it. Figured you’d hunt us down before long.” Bran gives Paul a friendly punch to the shoulder. Paul stands up and punches him back. They both laugh.
This is how things are meant to be, and I would stop time right now if I could. My brother is happy. I am happy.
But time doesn’t stop.
And everything changes.