Return of the Trickster by Eden Robinson (ebook voice reader TXT) 📗

“Got it, Maggie,” Mave said.

“I wish I didn’t have to leave.”

“It’s okay,” Mave said. “Go do what you need to do.”

“Is Mom getting in tonight?”

“No, her ride got roped into making Thanksgiving dinner. They’re coming in next week. She’s going to stay at the Aboriginal Patients’ Lodge.”

“God,” his mom said. “She has the worst timing. Is she okay?”

“It’s just her time to see her cardiologist.”

“We’re all going to die,” Jared said, mumbling into a throw pillow, face down on the couch. The room spun. Little pill, dusty white pill dissolving in his mouth.

“I’ll give him another Ativan,” Mave said.

“Don’t give him too much. I don’t know how it goes with booze.”

“Hmm. Well, I guess Hank won’t mind running him down again if he gets loose.”

“My shift starts soon,” Hank said.

“I’ll watch him,” Justice said.

“Sarah, honey,” Mave said. “You look done in. Why don’t you have a nap in Jared’s room?”

“Sorry,” Sarah said. “I find his room really creepy. I’d rather stay here, please.”

“You could go lie down in my room.”

“Are you sure?” Sarah said.

“Go,” Mave said.

“I appreciate this,” Maggie said.

“How much trouble can he be?” Mave said, and then they both laughed as if it was the funniest thing in the world.

“Danger,” Jared said.

“Jared,” his mom said, her tone warning him that she’d had enough.

“Go to sleep, Jelly Bean,” Mave said.

13

THE SHADOW OF DEATH

He couldn’t find his way out of the compound. Jared stood very still and listened. The silence and the dark unnerved him. He should’ve brought a flashlight. He was going to have to feel his way around. His skin crept, the hairs standing up on his arms and neck. Something rustled in the darkness, something that didn’t trigger the security lights. The rain started again, a soft hiss in the puddles, heavy plops on the tarps.

He waited.

Nothing emerged. Nothing ran at him. He felt watched, but the rustling stopped.

An outdoor security light clicked on as a fox sniffed the ground, tracing his route, watching him. It had dark-red fur and a white chest, the tips of its tail and legs shading black. Where its stomach and guts should be, the skin sagged, empty. The fox sat out of reach, its bushy tail twitching. They stared at each other.

“Are you a regular fox or one of us?” Jared said.

The fox tilted its head. I’m buried here.

A light clicked on, filling a trailer window with a golden glow. Jared crouched behind a tarp. Another light clicked on in another trailer.

A small black bear ambled down the corridor of trailers and tarps. He and the bear watched each other. Then the bear shrugged its fur onto its shoulder so Jared could see the Native man beneath, hair tightly braided to his scalp, lean face and skinny body. He wore the fur like a cape.

We’re all buried here.

Three ravens landed on the railing of a set of stairs. A seal dragged itself from a crawl space. A coyote loped up to stand beside the bear. A ram, a goat and a rabbit walked together, blocking off one of the passageways. A couple of soft, silky mink, with lustrous fur and dark eyes, twins, rolled and butted against each other as they ran to Jared. A spider as large as a tarantula dropped from one of the tarps on a silken thread. Raccoons peeked out from under a porch.

Wee’git was suddenly beside him, and the intrusion of someone else in his dream made Jared aware that he was dreaming.

We’re still alive, the fox said.

“What did my sister do to you?” Wee’git said. “What is she using Tricksters for?”

Each of the Tricksters was suddenly Jared. He turned and turned and saw his own face, his body. They all started vomiting up their organs, the stench of blood thick, the ground slick with their entrails, blobs of flesh, shiny and naked, their abdomens hollow, the skin slack. All the lights in all the trailers clicked on.

Don’t bring her back, the Tricksters told Jared. Let us die.

14

WEE’GIT

You own your thoughts, your skittering thoughts, your insecure stories. You own them down to the chemical sparks. You are weak, you’re weak, you’re made of meat. Your flesh can feed, and it does, poor as you are, lowly as you are, silent and silenced.

If my family dies, I die, the Otter Woman said, but you didn’t listen, did you?

The day you met her, you lay on your back on the wet sand, mourning your home, the crumbling longhouses grey and moss-covered behind you in the overgrowth, the eerie silence of abandonment broken by the scurry of vermin. Isn’t immortality fun? Watch everyone you love eaten by maggots. Not the homecoming you were expecting. Arguments, yes. Accusations. But not even ghosts remained. Just this empty beach of shells, sand and seaweed. The moon a giant eye unblinking in a heaven full of stars.

Her bare feet, her dress of woven cedar, her long, wet hair in waves as liquid black as the ones surging onshore, her dark eyes fixed on you. You turn your head to watch her walk towards you. Can’t say it was love at first sight. You wondered how she’d come here. You saw no other canoe than yours. When you were Jared’s age, you were lured into a longhouse from the sky by a beautiful woman such as her, a mink in human form.

“Trickster,” the Otter Woman said.

“Wee’git, if you please,” you said.

Her power and the moonlight gave her a glow. You made mistakes. Mistakes were made.

“Is this your beach, Wee’git the Trickster?” she said.

“It was a long time ago,” you said.

“We’d like to dig for cockles,” she said. “Do we have your permission?”

“Who’s we?” you said.

“You don’t need to know our names,” she said.

Your Otter Woman is dead, of course she’s dead, and she died hating you.

A raft of otters wriggled up the shore and gathered near her, behind her. They carried human skins like deflated bull kelp bulbs. They