The great bear, p.1
The Great Bear, page 1
PUFFIN
an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada Young Readers, a division of Penguin Random House of Canada Limited
First published 2021
Text copyright © 2021 by David Robertson
Cover art copyright © 2021 by Natasha Donovan
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
The author would like to acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts for their support.
Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: The Great Bear / David A. Robertson.
Names: Robertson, David, 1977- author.
Series: Robertson, David, 1977- Misewa saga ; bk. 2.
Description: Series statement: Book two of the Misewa saga
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200413813 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200413856 | ISBN 9780735266131 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780735266148 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS8585.O32115 G74 2021 | DDC jC813/.6—dc23
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020951757
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca
a_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Swampy Cree Glossary and Pronunciation Guide
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Epilogue
For Emily, Cole, Anna, Lauren, and James
Detail Left
Detail Right
SWAMPY CREE GLOSSARY AND PRONUNCIATION GUIDE
SOUNDS:
É – ay
Í – ee
I – ih
A – ah
O – oh
E – eh
Ahtik ah-tick: caribou
Amisk ah-misk: beaver
Arikwachas eric-watch-ahs: squirrel
Astum ah-stum: come
Atim ah-tim: dog
Ehe eh-heh: yes
Ekosani eh-koh-sah-nih: thank you
Iskwésis ih-skway-sis: girl
Kayas k-eye-ahs: long ago
Kihiw kih-ewe: eagle
Kiskisitotaso kih-skih-sih-toh-tah-so: don’t forget about who you are
Kókom koo-kuhm: grandmother
Makésiw mah-kay-soo: fox
Mihko mih-koh: blood
Misewa miss-ah-waa: all that is
Miskinahk miss-kih-nack: turtle
Mistapew miss-ta-pay-oh: big foot (giant)
Moshom moo-shum: grandfather
Muskwa muh-skwa: bear
Nikamon nih-kah-mawn: a song
Nimama nih-mah-mah: my mother
Nipapa nih-pah-pah: my father
Niska nih-ska: goose
Nitanis nih-tan-iss: my daughter
Níwakomakanak nee-wack-oh-mah-kah-nack: my relatives
Ochek oh-check: fisher
Ochekatchakosuk oh-check-ah-chack-oh-suhk: the fisher stars
Oho oh-ho: owl
Otakosík oh-tack-oh-seek: yesterday
Pinésíwan pih-nay-see-wahn: it is thundering
Pipisché pih-pihs-chay: robin
Pisiskowak pih-sis-koh-wack: animals
Pos pohs: cat
Tahtakiw tah-ta-koo: crane
Tansi tan-sih: hello
Wapistan wah-pihs-tawn: marten
Yapéw ya-pay-ewe: bull moose
ONE
Morgan raised a crude, homemade slingshot she had made herself. She pulled back the round stone, the elastic stretching all the way to her face, and took aim at a prairie chicken. The orange-throated bird, with its striped, round body, was pecking at the ground for seeds and insects. It was completely oblivious to the presence of Morgan, Eli, and Arik, who was usually a rather loud squirrel but managed to stay quiet when on the hunt. Morgan’s hands were trembling. It made her cheek tremble, her vision shaky. She lowered the slingshot.
She whispered to Eli, “Didn’t you kill the exact same kind of bird, with this exact weapon, but when you were, like, in kindergarten?”
“I did it when I was learning,” Eli whispered in response. “Age doesn’t matter.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“If I can interject,” Arik said, also whispering. “If I couldn’t just sprint after the bird and kill it, I would totally use a slingshot.”
“I feel like kids use slingshots because they aren’t old enough to use an actual weapon,” Morgan said. “Like Bart Simpson. He uses a slingshot, doesn’t he?”
“Who’s Bart Simpson?” Arik asked.
“He’s a cartoon character on earth,” Eli explained, rolling his eyes at Morgan.
“What’s a cartoon character?”
“Heeere we go.” Morgan sat down, and the others sat with her, in the woods just south of Misewa, in the middle of summer. Eli and Morgan were wearing Misewa clothing, made for them by villagers after their first journey to the North Country. When not on Askí, they stashed them in a sack that they hung from a tiny burl on the Great Tree, which contained the portal through which they always came to the Barren Grounds. The sack held two options for each sibling—a warm outfit and a cool one—to clothe them for all seasons.
“You know how Eli draws stuff?” Morgan began.
“Yes, of course.” Arik nodded. “That’s how you travel here.”
“Right, okay.” They were getting somewhere. “So, on earth, people can make drawings seem alive. Like, they move and stuff. They become animated.”
“Sooo…some people can make drawings walk around on earth? Like, if the drawings on the Council Hut jumped off the walls and started dancing around?” Arik asked. “Wizards!”
“No!” Then Morgan clapped a hand over her mouth and glanced over at the prairie chicken to see if it was still there. It was pecking away. “No,” she corrected herself, whispering once more. “They don’t…” She rubbed her face out of frustration. “They don’t come alive. They just…move around on a screen. A screen that’s kind of like, I don’t know, glass paper.” Morgan had tried to think of a way to explain it without complicating the matter. She wasn’t certain she’d succeeded. “And they’re in made-up stories. They’re fake.”
After a moment of thought, Arik shrugged. “That sounds dumb.”
“Some of them are dumb,” Eli said. “But anyway, slingshots aren’t just for kids.”
“Yeah, well…” Morgan got up on her knees and turned towards the prairie chicken again. She raised the slingshot and took aim. “Let’s just call it learning and pretend that we never had this conversation. I’m cool with using a slingshot.”
She took a deep, calming breath, trying her best to ward off shaky hands, shaky cheeks, and shaky vision. She would never hit the bird like that. She had the leather pocket pinched firmly between her thumb and index finger, ready to let the stone fly towards the target.
Morgan heard a huff behind her.
“It’s not like I haven’t shown you a million things since you’ve been living in Misewa,” Arik grumbled, loudly enough for Morgan to hear.
The volume of her grumbling, like the huff, seemed deliberate. The slingshot was lowered once more. Morgan craned her neck around to see Arik still sitting, leaning against a tree, her arms crossed, looking away from Morgan.
“Arik,” Morgan said. “Come on.”
“I believe, if I’m not mistaken, I walked you through the making of a certain slingshot.”
Morgan crouched in front of Arik, put her hand under the animal being’s furry chin, and made Arik look at her.
“I’m sorry, okay?” Morgan said. “Next time we come, I’ll bring an iPad and show you some cartoons.”
“Really?” Arik perked up.
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“They just sit there and stare at these iPad things?” Arik said.
Morgan raised her slingshot and took aim. “They’ll literally play a game like this and never do something like this actually. I was like that too, up until two weeks ago.” She corrected herself then, and did what she’d come to call Misewa Math, calculating that one hour of earth time equaled one week of time on Askí. “Well, two weeks earth time. It’s been, like, a little over two years that we’ve spent here.”
“That’s so confusing,” Arik said.
“Yeah, I know.”
“I wasn’t staring at a screen,” Eli said. “I always did stuff like this.”
“Yes, Eli, I know.” Morgan sighed. “But I was kind of busy playing musical foster homes.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“Well, I think these iPads sound pretty silly,” Arik said.
“I mean…” But Morgan let her thought trail off. There’d be time to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of technology over dinner.
She took another breath. She had never killed anything before, and she was sure that was the cause of her shakiness. She told herself that it was just as Eli had said many times: hunting was the way of life for many Indigenous people, and the way of life for beings in Misewa. The villagers were still gathering strength, still recovering from the countless years they’d spent in the White Time. If they didn’t catch four-legged and two-legged things, they would go hungry. And they’d been hungry for too long. So Morgan took one more deep breath, let it out slowly, and released the stone, straight and true.
TWO
Misewa held a feast that night to honor Morgan’s accomplishment of killing the prairie chicken. The entire village gathered in front of the Council Hut, sitting on the grass around a blanket upon which the food was spread out. There were berries, bannock (better than any bannock Morgan had tasted on earth), fish, venison, hare, and, of course, the prairie chicken, of which each villager received a small portion.
On Morgan and Eli’s first visit to Misewa, the prairie chicken would have been an important catch, a meal that would have satisfied everyone in the small village, even in very modest portions. There was so little food in that time of famine.
The animal beings had enough to eat now, and eat they did, but just enough and never more. They would never fall into the sort of greed they had observed in Mason, the man who had stolen the summer birds. They ate only their fill, and kept stores of food for the White Time.
But there were simply too many mouths in Misewa now for one prairie chicken to feed. It was no longer just Chief and Council—Muskwa, the bear; Oho, the owl; and Miskinahk, the turtle—and the small population of villagers: a caribou, two foxes, a beaver, a bison, a muskrat, and two moose. Over the last six and a half years in the North Country, or two full weeks on earth (counting all the hours on earth Morgan and Eli were not on Askí, because time didn’t stop for the animal beings when the children weren’t there), the village had grown. Other beings had settled there, and where there used to be seven longhouses, there were now fourteen.
It was a jovial feast. The animal beings were genuinely happy for Morgan, who, along with Eli, had become a fixture in Misewa. Just as Muskwa had promised on their departure, after they had helped to save the village, the siblings were always welcome. When they returned to earth following their first visit, Morgan and Eli had come back the very next night, and they’d stayed for eight weeks on Askí. They’d returned every night, even on weekends, and stayed eight weeks each time. Tonight was the last night of their eighth week, and a fitting night for a feast. After eating, Morgan and Eli would return to earth through the Great Tree, and the beings in Misewa would see them again in about four months.
Morgan felt proud. It had taken her all this time to draw up the courage to hunt. She’d never been sure that she could take another living thing’s life, but, over time, she had come to understand how important it was to the animal beings in Misewa, and to Indigenous people on earth, to hunt, trap, and fish for their subsistence. And if she were going to learn everything about traditional living, she needed to live a fully traditional life. That included hunting.
The circular field of bright, lush grass in front of the Council Hut was as full as the bellies of the villagers, and yet the celebration felt somehow empty. To the villagers, to Eli, and to Morgan. Because while six years had passed since the return of the Green Time, while there was Chief and Council, while the villagers gathered, both new and old…one was missing, and always would be.
Ochek.
The fire was large, and bright as a city streetlight; plumes of smoke billowed into the air, making it difficult to see the evening sky. And sitting with Eli and all the Misewa villagers, Morgan felt suddenly alone. She took deep breaths, trying to calm the sensation in her chest. Eli and Arik were busy picking food off each other’s plates, Arik taking Eli’s berries and bannock, and Eli taking Arik’s meat. “I’m really more of a nut person anyway,” she’d said. Every being seemed busy with another being, or their plates, and so Morgan slipped away from the food, the fire, the villagers, her brother, and the clearing. She needed to see Ochek…or the next best thing, his constellation in the sky.
As she walked away, she could hear her friend Emily’s voice in her head. You’re seriously ghosting a feast in your honor?
Back on earth, it had been incredibly hard for Morgan not to talk to anyone about this new world. She wasn’t about to tell her foster parents, but Morgan wanted to tell somebody. The only person she could think of was Emily, because Emily was her only friend. But if she ever told Emily, then she’d have to bring Emily to Askí. And who knew if Emily would tell anybody else? Next thing you knew, another person like Mason could come through the portal and ruin everything all over again. Keeping the secret was the hardest part of the last two weeks.
That, and missing Ochek.
Morgan wasn’t sure if walking out into the darkness so that she could see the stars clearly would make the pain of losing Ochek any less intense. Staring up into the sky at Ochekatchakosuk, as Ochek had been renamed after dying, felt like staring at a photograph of somebody after you lost them. The kind of torture that only loss could bring. But Morgan didn’t think she could stop, even if she wanted to. When she got far enough away from Misewa that the lights from the village couldn’t reach her, she lay on her back, cradled her head in her hands, her fingers interlaced, and gazed at the constellation.
“Hey,” she said. She spoke in a whisper at first, unsure that she was talking to anybody. But as she talked—more hopeful, as the moments passed, that she was—her words became more confident. “Are you really there?”
Yes, Iskwésis.
“Oh, now that we’re in a long-distance friendship, you’re back to calling me ‘Girl,’ are you?”
You haven’t changed one bit, Morgan.
“Yeah,” she said, “but you’re a lot shinier than I remember. And you might’ve gained some weight. You’re a little, like, boxy.”
Must be all the stardust.
“You haven’t lost your sense of humor, I guess.”
I guess not.
The ground shook at Morgan’s side like a tiny earthquake. She turned her head to find Muskwa had sat down, but they exchanged no greeting. They stayed like that, the bear sitting and Morgan lying down, for some time, quietly studying the same constellation.
After a bit, Morgan asked, “Do you think that’s actually him?”
“I do,” Muskwa said. “I think it’s his spirit.”
