Free Kikwaakew by Joseph Boyden

L ISTEN TO ME, NEPHEW. Hear me.
    Xavier snowshoes, his breath white puffs. His eyelashes hang heavy with ice crystals, so that the stretch of frozen creek ahead glitters and the single line of the spruce up the bank becomes many. Pulling off one mitt, he presses his fingers to each eye to melt the ice. This world can be beautiful. But it has never been easy. He’ll go another hour, him, and then start a small fire and boil water for his tea balosse , stir in sugar and lard and some flour. That will keep him going the rest of the afternoon. It’s kept him going for years. For now, he trudges along, occasionally cutting up the bank to where he’s set a wire snare or built a cubby set, hoping for something. A fresh rabbit for dinner tonight would be good. He’s tired of boiled beaver.
    He’ll walk the eight or so miles up this creek today, checking his traps as he goes. Tonight he will shelter at one of his temporary camps before crossing through the bush to his other creek and snowshoeing back to his main winter askihkan by tomorrow night. Moving is better than sitting, even if the chance of snaring a single hare in this brutal cold is slim.
    Sitting by the fire in his camp had gotten to be too much for Xavier. He’d sleep too long, till he felt the laze slip over his real leg, or until he was jolted awake by the dreamt crack of a Mauser or the whine of a big shell coming down into his trench. Now there’s another war over the sea that has no glimmer of ending, one just as brutal in its own way as the first, this one being fought against the same enemy as before. Does no one learn?
    He would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that he’s as excited as a child to be out on the lines. The winter had started off in the best possible fashion. With the first snows, he had come across fisher tracks not a day’s walk from his home. The animal has become so rare that one pelt is worth more than a whole winter’s catch of marten. One fisher pelt will make his year and allow him to buy his twins their own trapping gear and get them on their way. They’re at the age where they’re ready.
    He tried everything the first weeks of winter to lure that fisher into one of his traps, using the choicest fish or moose guts tucked deep into the little spruce house of one of his cubby sets. He was extra careful to cover any signs of the leg trap at its entrance, the jaws spring loaded and ready to snap at the slightest pressure. A fisher can smell even frozen meat from a long way away. The secret is to tempt it enough to enter the cubby, only a couple feet high and a few feet deep. To get to the meal near the back, the animal will have to step into the false den and, with luck, onto the flat plate of the trigger. The leghold will then snap shut, doing the work it was meant to.
    This is an especially wary fisher, though. Xavier had studied its tracks those first weeks of winter, circling the different cubby sets and trying to find another way to get at the meat. It’s too smart to go the obvious way. And now the tracks have disappeared entirely. He’s worried it has decided to move on.
    These few weeks have been hard, even though he’s used to being alone. His Auntie Niska came to visit but then took her sled team back north. Promising she’d return soon, she told him she needed to use the shake tent and offer some prayers. Something’s coming, Niska had said just before she decided to leave. She’s not sure what it is, but it doesn’t feel right. Two nights before she left, Xavier woke up to her shivering in a fit. All he could do was place a rag between her teeth and make sure she didn’t hurt her head. When Niska came out of it, she was weak as a baby. It’s been a long time since one of her seizures. Xavier, he’d hoped they were gone for good.
    There’s been no snow for a week, just bright sun above and the frigid temperatures of late January that come with it. So cold that even the marten don’t want to venture out