CHAPTER ONE The boy with the tattooed face mimicked the song of a sparrow. The girl with the feathers of the red-shafted flicker, pinned to her oiled black hair, followed, her hands coiled like paws, her eyes round with terror. People stomped their feet; skin drums thundered. More children dressed as beasts stole out of the woods. The audience mimed the wind, making swishing motions with their hands. A bear-like man, in a silver brown pelt and a cedar mask, lunged from the dancing crowd. "Cu-u-u," the windmakers whistled. The beasts of the forest bobbed and reeled and the bear man responded with a shrill "Tya-ah!" The children ran toward a cedar plank house. A sharp-toothed carnivore swam on the painted house front where they stopped. Its jaws slowly opened and one by one the children disappeared. This was the dance of the Wasgo. A thrill tickled Jake Lalonde's spine and from the outskirts of the forest, he followed the moving crowd inside. A huge fire blazed in a hearth at the centre of the hall. Smoke furled from the open grate. The young performers gathered around it while the audience sat on the floor and at tables against the walls. Colourful figures swayed and gyrated and sang in high clear tones in time to the peal of drums. Each mimed their own creature—a bird, an animal, a fish. Beneath the heavy rafters danced Red Snapper, Beaver and Otter. Someone grabbed Jake's arm and led him onto the floor. Mesmerized by the pulsing rhythm, he chanted and stamped his feet. The air was heady and dim with fumes; an hallucinogen burned in the flames. Then came a shout and a short pirouette, and the girl with the red feathered finery returned him to his seat. Jake crumpled to the floor in a flush of sweat. The girl rejoined the others and in unison, they chanted. Blankets swirled, whistles blew and headdresses rocked and reeled. Out of the dance sprang the man in the silver-brown pelt and mask. Towering over the others, his red and black eye, surrounded by white, gaped. Shredded, yellow cedar bark flowed from his bobbing head. He bounced and careened, dipped and spun and leaped at the younger ones. Then he scooped up the girl, and in a cloud of smoke, vanished. Jake rose and hurried out of the door to the lobby. Coughing, he made his way further to the exit, while behind him smoke cleared from the room, and new dancers came to replace the old. He inhaled, chewed on a hangnail on his thumb. It was only eight thirty-five. "You okay?" Angeline asked from the doorway of the dance hall. Jake cleared his throat, nodding, and waved at the smoke. "That's what you get for sitting so close to the stage." She smiled. "Be patient. A dance is just a dance and spirit masks are spirit masks. You can't absorb a hundred years of Haida heritage in one night and dancing the dance of the Wasgo isn't going to make it happen any faster. You're not going to find out anything about your family history that way." Angeline was right. Two summers ago, Connie Amos had given him a photograph of a totem pole, guiding him to the Queen Charlotte Islands. It was black and white, shot some time in the late nineteenth century. On it was carved the figure of a white man, a sea captain, his great, great grandfather, Jacques Lascelles. All he knew about this picture was that it was left to him by his mother—a woman who had lived here. The Queen Charlotte Islands lay on the westernmost extreme of Canada. The six main islands formed an elongated triangle opposite the west coast of British Columbia. By 1774 European traders had discovered them. The island that interested him most was the tiny land mass of Anthony Island near the southern tip of Moresby. Named Skun'gwaii by the locals, it was there the captain had settled. "It happened again," Angeline said quietly as she followed him outside the cultural centre. "This afternoon while you were at Lyell Island." "What this time?" he asked. "A family pet." "Any acquaintance?" "The Wilkies. And you know how they are. They're talking like it's real." Jake made his way toward the forest where the air was fresh. Here the drums and chanting sounded less jarring. "They're acting as though it really exists," she insisted. Impossible. Well, maybe not. Not if you believed in what some of these people believed. "Damon says it's some kind of rogue animal," she continued. "Or better yet, two aberrant animals. It's all nonsense of course, but even those who know better are saying nothing. What do you think is going on?" "Dunno," Jake said, and lifted a branch over her head and out of their path. They walked briskly over the mat of needles and damp spongy bark. The evening was mild, pleasant for late October. The last of the light had waned and the moon washed the clearing. They were far enough away from the cultural centre for the din to have faded. He paused in front of a silver spruce, growing out of a patch of moss and ferns, and looked down at Angeline, reminded of his dream. He was researching the history of a nineteenth century French sea captain when he should be collecting samples for an archaeology project he was planning to conduct next year. All that was known of Jacques Lascelles was how he had traded with the natives of Ninstints at Skun'gwaii. He had married a highborn Haida woman. This, Angeline had told him, was the source of his dream, and if he hadn't had dreams like this before, he might've agreed with her—but no—the visions were more like memories, and had something to do with the photograph—which had something to do with his mother. A warning jogged his brain. You're born alone, and you die alone. In a fit of frustrated rage, a lonely youth he had once roomed with in a foster home for boys had dissuaded him from trying to find her. "I think you've been working too hard trying to figure out who this man was," Angeline said. "He was an explorer, a trader, who married for business reasons. Lots of traders and natives did that because it was beneficial for both sides. He's invading your subconscious." Jake shook his head. "There's so little documentation on him." "Well, he wasn't anyone important." "Then why would his image be immortalized on a cedar pole? The memory had nothing to do with the captain. That slob her father wants her to marry isn't him. That dream had to do with a beautiful Indian woman." "They always do. . ." Her voice trailed off and she sounded bitter. "So . . . she was beautiful, was she?" Not as beautiful as you. He took her hand, locking her fingers in his. "Did you get much work done today?" he asked, deliberately changing the subject. "I had a good look around. I drove around to some of the sites and took a few samples with a trowel, but can I borrow your auger next week?" She mimed a thrusting motion with her hands. Jake chuckled and she recognized the sexual innuendo and smirked. "You're incorrigible," she said. "So I am," he agreed. He grinned and let his hand slip from hers to her waist. She prevented him from going any further by shoving her fingers down to hook his thumb away from her zipper. "We should go back." Probably, he thought, but instead he planted a strategic kiss behind her ear. Her hands flattened against his chest. Her head tipped back, and a wave of dark hair fell away from her face. He let his hands slide down her throat to the opening of her collar. Wind brushed his hair, it was warm, but she shivered. He moved his face from her nape, gazing down and unbuttoned her shirt. "What about you?" she asked, softly fingering his sleeve. "Aren't you going to get out of this?" Jake shook his head and lowered his lips to her throat. She moved against him, making things stir in his heart and his groin simultaneously. He caressed her, kissed her, and she sucked in a lungful of air and whispered, "Hurry." *** Someone had seen the Wasgo. Because of this, the village had performed the dances early this year. The ritual was meant to honour the beast and to reaffirm the traditional beliefs. Henry Moon understood the power of local lore. It gave people something to speculate on when there was no other explanation for nature's calamities. He rose from the floor, where he had been watching the dancers, and hauled his wife of thirty-four years up by her arm to her feet. He sighed as Leona crinkled her brow. She frowned often these days and Henry blamed himself. Ever since the arrival of the archaeologists he had been acting strange. "Let's hope these dances do the trick," she said colourlessly. Henry had his doubts. Leona didn't believe in anything anymore, and that too was his fault. Leona smiled gently. "I wish that trusting in the old ways was all it would take." It wouldn't, Henry thought, because he knew something that his wife didn't. The thing killing the local wildlife was not a Seawolf. "Shall we get something to eat?" Leona suggested. Salmon, smoked eulachons, clams, mussels, and other seafood were laid out on the tables, but Henry wasn't hungry. He brought a fist to his mouth and recoiled from the sight of his own hand. A pink worm-like stump grew from the knuckle of his right index finger. It had never healed properly and every time he saw it, he was reminded of his own inadequacy. He shoved the mutilated hand into his pocket to hide it and raised his head. He was looking for someone, someone he must avoid, someone who had no idea what he looked like. "I'm just going to get a breath of air," he told his wife, and made his way through the noisy crowd to the door, looking back briefly to scan the room. By the fire, an old woman watched him. Leona's mother. He went into the lobby. In this space a few displays were set up in small glass cases. They were exhibits of Native crafts, archaeology and local history. There were photographs and miniature models of the Hudson's Bay fleet: the Beaver, the Grand Corbeau, and the Sea Wolf. There was a write-up about a nineteenth century French sea captain who used to trade with the Haidas. Henry walked past the exhibits and out the door until he stood on the stoop overlooking the forest surrounding the reserve. A gust of wind swamped him. He shivered. It was warm out here. It was unusually warm, causing the hairs to creep up his neck. The scientists said it had something to do with global warming, but it was like the spirits of the weather knew that something was different this year and they refused to conform with what was known and expected. His boss had sniggered when he'd let his apprehension slip out. Winter would come, the foreman had said. As surely as the forests shrank every year, winter would come. Henry removed his oilskin jacket, and left it on a wooden chair by the door. He took the few steps down to the ground and looked up at the ominous house front. It was a broad flat board of cedar, peaked at the roof, and squared at the sides where it met the outer edges of the building. Painted on its surface, in red, white and black, were the sharp ovoids and curvilinear shapes of the Seawolf. He went deep into the forest. Susie, his boss's wife was here—he had seen her with Sgua-ay. Though well into middle age now, she was still as slim and comely as she was at sixteen. Henry was surprised MacPherson had come. He was Susie's husband, and Susie was Haida, but MacPherson was nothing but a big, red-faced Scot, the foreman of Cambium Woods. Henry heard a sound, a rustle, and stopped. His mutilated hand worried the bead holding a pendant of eagle feathers around his neck. Light opened out over the spiky treetops, and poured down as a passing cloud broke, releasing the full moon. Two figures materialized in the glade, a man and a woman standing against the trunk of an ancient spruce tree, its silver needles metallic in the dusk. The woman's elegant neck rose from shapely shoulders, her slender arms reaching out, her entire body illuminated by moonlight, pale and opalescent like the rich insides of an oyster shell. At first Henry thought she was some spirit of the forest or the sea. Heron perhaps or Swan. But she was real. Very real. Because the man standing before her was real too. Unlike her, he was still clothed in a light shirt and dark pants, but his waistband was loose because his zipper was undone. As he bent over her and kissed her, she raised her arms and he gathered her into his. In that moment as the man engulfed the woman, Henry recognized them. Angeline Lisbon, he knew by sight. A mere wisp of a girl, he had thought before. But not now. Now he saw what the plaid shirt and the heavy blue jeans hid. He was disgusted by his fascination with these two archaeologists playing doe and stag in the woods. It was none of his business; but they reminded him of another time, a time when he was young, and had taken a woman as fresh, as pretty as this girl. He had mated with her, made love to her, as passionately as those two filling the night with their silent gasps. He had thrilled to unbridled passion, the kind that came with a price, a price he hadn't known existed until that one and only time— "Now that's fucking." Henry jumped at the unexpected voice that came from behind him. He was embarrassed, but at the same time annoyed to be caught spying on Jake Lalonde. "Shit, MacPherson," he whispered harshly, hoping the darkness blocked his flush. "You nearly scared the crap out of me. Let's get away from here before they see us." "If they didn't want us to see them, then what the hell are they doing fucking in the open like that?" Night settled fully and their long shadows danced in the dark. That wasn't fucking, Henry thought. Those two were in love. *** An old man held out a Styrofoam cup of coffee toward him. Jake took the drink, glanced down at the steaming liquid, then back at the old man. "I'm looking for Henry Moon," Jake said. "Can you tell me if he's here?" "I saw him around here earlier. I'm Jimmy Sky. Sgua-ay in Haida." Jake shook the old man's hand and turned around to look for Angeline. She came up behind him with Damon Spencer in tow. Damon tipped his head to Jimmy Sky, brightening the room with his grin. "I see you've met my old buddy Jake Lalonde, Sgua-ay. This beauty—and I seriously don't know what she sees in him—is Angeline." He punched Jake in the arm, and folded Jake's and Angeline's hands together. "So how long've you two been in town anyway? Must be at least two weeks. I've hardly seen either of you. And I'd certainly like to see more of you," Damon said, raising Angeline's free hand to his lips. She slapped him playfully on the arm. "You've been too busy. We invited you over for dinner twice, but you were working late both times." "Well, I'll have to remedy that." Both Jake and Jimmy Sky smiled. Everyone in town loved Damon. He had lived among them for over two years. He was employed by Cambium Woods Ltd. to survey archaeological sites and to tag culturally modified trees, and he and Jake were old school chums. "Mind if I steal Angeline for awhile?" Damon asked. "We have some business to discuss." Damon winked and Jake smiled, watching him lead her away to introduce her to the other members of his crew. There were two women—both with names beginning with S, Selina and Shaun, or something like that—and the third member of the crew was a Native boy, Jon Wilkie. "There are many who would like to meet you," Jimmy Sky said when the two were gone. "Especially Flora Sewell. She has been involved in the current hearings to determine the ultimate plans for Gwaii Haanas. She is hoping you will wish to participate." With good reason, Jake thought, but he refused to get involved even though it would seem hypocritical for a university professor (especially someone part Haida) to have no interest in the preservation of Native lands. The southern part of Moresby Island and its adjacent land masses from Tanu to St. James Island had been set aside as a heritage park called Gwaii Haanas. It was being kept in trust by the government until land claims could be settled, and now the forestry industry and all its partners were insisting on reopening logging on certain of these islands. Development was a key issue, livelihoods were at stake, but so was the future of the forests. Out of the corner of his eye, Jake glimpsed Damon teasing Angeline. It amazed him the kinds of things he was able to get away with. If any other man had put his hands all over her as Damon was doing now, she would've sent him a look to freeze the dead. He should go over there and rescue her, but if that brilliant smile meant anything, she probably didn't want to be rescued; so he may as well get Jimmy Sky to introduce him to Henry Moon, but no one remotely resembling the man's description was here. Jake put a hand to his back pocket and pulled out a plastic laminated photograph and unrolled it. "I wonder, would this picture mean anything to you?" he asked Jimmy Sky. It was a picture of a totem pole and beneath the hooked talons of a thunderbird was the figure of a white man dressed in sailor's britches. The old man perused it. Without answering, he nodded toward the exit and Jake followed him out of the room. In the lobby, Jake almost crashed into a slender Native woman where he did a double take because he was instantly reminded of his dream. Her eyes sprang wide as though she recognized him too, but before he could speak to her she hurried past. "Daughter-of-my-sister," Jimmy Sky called out. She stopped, came to him and bowed her head. "Sgua-ay," she answered respectfully, and like him, spoke in Haida. "What is it Uncle? My husband is waiting for me." "Have you met Jake Lalonde?" Jake thought the old man was being unnecessarily deliberate about this introduction, but he extended a hand and apologized for nearly bowling her over. "I am Susie MacPherson. I believe I have met your wife." She motioned into the meeting hall at Angeline. He and Angeline weren't married, but Jake didn't say so. Susie noticed his hesitation and her colour deepened slightly. Then the old man asked after her children, falling once more into Haida. Jake's knowledge of the language was rudimentary. He knew the odd word, some commonly used phrases, but when the dialogue went beyond everyday talk he was lost. Out of politeness he pretended absolute ignorance, but he did catch something about Skidegate Inlet and a reference to stlaas hlrudu, meaning sea creature. Susie's eyes darted anxiously, and she said, distinctly in English, "No Uncle, I do not know if he plans to go." She dipped her head, bid a swift goodbye to Jake, and hastened through the doorway into the crowd. "She's very nice," Jake said. "Yahk'ii." Jimmy lowered his voice until it almost sounded like he was talking to himself. A wine purple birthmark shaped like a raven's head beneath his left earlobe twitched as he spoke. "Unfortunately, she does not speak her mind." Outside the cedar plank house, the air was mild and it was almost twelve o'clock. Jake strolled alongside the old man down the gravel drive. A few pickup trucks and old cars were parked at the side of the road. The way was narrow, unpaved, and led through the wood to the highway. They continued a few more paces, and Jake wondered if the old man was altogether there. They had only just met, and here he was, having left the love of his life with Damon, traipsing through the dark to God knows where. Jake glanced at Jimmy Sky. The moon was high and light filtered down through the shivering trees. They walked swiftly, then came to an abrupt halt.  CHAPTER TWO A mosquito hummed in Jake's ear, made several attempts to bite, but Jake slapped it off, annoyed, and it whined away into the dark. Where Jimmy Sky pointed, a white raven, about the size of a chicken, lay on the ground splayed open. It was the seventh corpse discovered in two weeks. Some kids had stumbled on a dead beaver, then a young marten. A deer, a dog, a river otter, then a halibut had washed up on the beach—a halibut, with its head smashed in but with none of its flesh devoured. Jake stifled a shiver and straightened from where he crouched over the bloody corpse. There were few predators here, no wolves, no wolverines, no big cats; not a cougar, a lynx, or a mountain lion; only raccoons and bears. And this was the result of neither. The old man raised his head, his face masked in shadow, and peered through the spiky trees toward the ocean. "The time for migrating has passed, yet something waits," he said. Jake had heard about the giant sea mammal that should have left the inlet by now with its herd. A marine creature couldn't crawl onto the land and into the forests, so something else must be doing the killings—a big dog perhaps. But one of the victims had been a big dog, a pet, a Labrador retriever mix belonging to the Wilkie family, the son of whom worked for Damon. So why had Jimmy Sky brought him here? he wondered. What did the deaths of these animals have to do with him? The Raven was the family crest of Jimmy Sky's family. It was the crest of a quarter of the inhabitants of Skidegate. It was also Susan Tom's family crest, and therefore, his. But this was not a moment for idle chatter or speculation. The raven must be shown the honour it was due and sent to the land of the souls. Jake did not speak his thoughts aloud, but the old man did. "Come to my house tomorrow. I may be able to tell you something more about your totem pole." *** In the morning, Jake drove his Bronco to Jimmy Sky's house. As he wound through the woods, Angeline beside him, he wondered about the bird they had buried last night. The day they arrived in Skidegate strange things began to happen. Wildlife was killed, mutilated, and left to rot on roads and ditches and pathways, even on the beach. There were no plausible explanations for the corpses. They were not being killed for meat, and if they were being slaughtered for sport, it was a poor sportsman indeed who would leave his prey bloodied and mangled in the open for children to find. People were whispering. Most of the residents in Skidegate were rational decent folk, but there were one or two eccentrics, one or two who liked to stir up trouble. The situation reminded him of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, how a radio broadcast of the novel had convinced listeners that Martians were attacking Earth. It brought to mind a news story he once read when he was a kid, suggesting that spaghetti grew on trees. In both instances people believed because some person of authority—namely the radio and the newspaper—had said so. The Haida believed in monsters and in dreams because their mythology made them real. The children were easy to sway, though what adults really thought, Jake wasn't sure. Nobody gave straight answers at the best of times and the Haida were notorious for this, but as an archaeologist, he knew mythical creatures, spirits and beings played important roles in the history of the people. They were forebears, guardians and sometimes formidable foes. Their actions and behaviours defined native social life, ideology and ritual. The village was abuzz, though not without some skepticism, about the Wasgo. The old folks especially liked to speculate on death, on what happened to a person's soul, whether it lingered nearby, threatening the living—or transformed itself into an alternate manifestation of nature. Native religion accepted a world inhabited by immortals where certain men could go, but more important to the average person were the earthly spirits of Sky, Sea, Forest and Mountain. Some of the spirits offered power to earthly men, others took animal shape, and yet others appeared as monsters. The Seawolf was one of these. And after hundreds, maybe thousands of years, Elders still told how the Wasgo made people disappear. But the Seawolf was not the domain of the Haida alone. Throughout history, ships were christened Sea Wolf, books used the name as a title. Out of curiosity, Jake had looked the term up in the dictionary last night. A Sea Wolf was any of several large ferocious sea fishes, it had said. A sea elephant, sea lion etc. Or a pirate. He had then searched for the adjunct, ‘monster'. According to Webster, a sea monster was any huge marine animal, any occurrence out of the ordinary course of nature supposed to indicate the will of the gods. Jake parked and rapped on the door of Jimmy Sky's house. It instantly opened and they were invited into the living room. At the sofa, where a large tortoise-shell cat curled against a cushion, Angeline sat down while Jake remained standing. "Did you happen to notice the displays in the lobby at the Big House last night?" the old man asked. Jake shook his head. "Maybe you should look at it sometime." Jake agreed, then pulled out his photograph of the totem pole. The old man took it from him, creasing his brow and pursing his lips. Jake walked to the fireplace and rested an elbow on the mantle. Jake's mother had left this picture with him when she'd abandoned him to a chain of foster parents when he was a baby. It was the only clue he had. The crest figure of the white man, the sailor known as Jacques Lascelles had lived around a hundred and sixty years ago. He tapped impatiently on the smooth stained wood of the mantle, his mind distracted. People were evading his questions. Every time he brought out the picture, they clammed up, and now the old man's hands were shaking. "Are those yours?" Angeline asked, pointing to some copper and silver ornaments on the mantle beside Jake's arm. Jake drew his arm away and saw a gleaming anklet in a clear plastic box. "I made that for Tilley," the old man said. Jimmy Sky was a master engraver of Native jewelry. Tilley, his wife, had passed away thirty-five years ago without leaving him any children. He had never remarried and called her Golden Mouse and her favourite piece was this anklet engraved with the Raven. "Do you recognize that pole?" Jake asked, turning the subject back to the photograph. "You said last night that you could tell me something about it if I came over today. Do you know anything about Susan Tom?" "Juicy Grass!" At Jimmy Sky's voice, the cat paused in mid tackle, grappling Angeline's arm. "Stop, that's enough. Now go away." "It's all right," Angeline said, returning the cat's clawed cuff with a gentle cuff of her own. "This sweater's old, and she's such a playful thing. Why do you call her Juicy Grass by the way?" Then she smiled. "Oh, don't tell me she eats the stuff?" The old man smiled too. "That is only too true. For some reason, ever since she was a kitten, she liked to snack on the tall blades that grow near the edge of the forest." Jake interrupted this diversion by clearing his throat. Jimmy Sky turned back. "Susan Tom is the wife of the logger, Thomas MacPherson." Jake sank onto an armchair. He had always thought his mother was dead. "She has four children. Lucy, Joshua, Benjamin and Sammy." "When did she marry?" Jake asked. "Thirty-two years ago." "I want to talk to her. I need to know if she's also my mother." The old man drew in a harsh breath. Jake wondered if he had been too blunt. "I do not think Susan knows anything about this totem pole," Jimmy Sky said. "But there is someone in town who does. He, I think you should speak to." *** "I have to go to the logging camp," Jake told Angeline when they were outside. "What do you want to do? You don't have to come with me." "Will Henry Moon be there? He and Leona don't live there, do they?" "No, but I might run into MacPherson or his wife. Sometimes they spend Sundays at Mosquito Lake visiting with the loggers' families." "But you promised you wouldn't talk to Susan until after you'd talked to Henry Moon." "And what if she's my mother, Angeline? Don't I have a right to know? Why is everyone protecting her? I want to know why the hell she abandoned me." Angeline touched his hand. "You don't have to yell," she said. "I'm on your side." *** Angeline watched Jake's Bronco turn the corner before she walked over the gravel drive to Damon Spencer's house. Damon was home with his crew of three. She could see them in the window, Selina and Jon Wilkie hunched over Shaun who was entering data on a computer. At the Seawolf ritual last night, Damon had offered her a job. She needed the money to complete her graduate studies. Her affluent father in Toronto had refused to help her because he was sceptical of her future as an archaeologist. She had already defended her position to him a thousand times and they still disagreed. So they had come to the mutual conclusion that it was best if she accomplished this goal herself. She had enough savings to pay her tuition, but she needed to feed and clothe herself, and she needed to pay the rent. But that wasn't all. Jake wanted her to move in with him when they returned to Seattle. Was that viable? Maybe if her research had taken her somewhere other than the Northwest Coast it might be. As it was, living together would solve one problem only to create another. She would never be independent. People would always think of her as a kind of appendage to Jake. She would always belong to him, and nothing she did would be recognized as her own. They worked in the same discipline, in the same region of the world, and people teased them about being together all the time. Though she insisted she was in the Queen Charlotte Islands completing her Master's thesis while Jake laid the groundwork for a major research grant, her peers assumed she was merely his helpmate. No one took her seriously. Colleagues at the University of Washington thought she was playing archaeologist until something better came up like marriage. Even Damon thought she was just dabbling—which may be why he had offered her the job to help record culturally modified trees. Angeline slumped down on the top step. A man was a woman's greatest impediment if you wanted to have a career. Love was a trap—a beautiful, comfortable, safe trap—and this whole situation was ironic. The academic world thought Jake was on the threshold of redefining human history. Though his research generated controversy, there were those who deemed him a genius. She did not dispute his genius. But the reason he was really here was much more pedestrian. He was searching for his mother. The woman, Susan Tom. And he was getting obsessive. Lately, it was affecting his thinking, and his sleep. The totem pole picture was haunting him, and instead of sending his pilot project into full motion to win that grant, he was conducting almost no research at all. *** Jimmy Sky nudged Juicy Grass off the mantle and lifted the clear plastic box she was nosing, and palmed it in his hand. He raised the lid and removed the anklet and studied his craftsmanship. Tilley had worn it most of the time when she was alive. She was like the other Golden Mouse from whom he had taken the nickname. She was the one Jacques Lascelles had married, and through that union had come the Moon family, the Amos family, and the Sky family. He was surprised Jake Lalonde knew so little. He would be wise to check out their little exhibit at the Big House and to speak to Henry Moon. He wouldn't mind speaking to Henry himself. And to Susan. It was strange how the years passed and the mistakes they made and the choices they picked and the people they loved never really went away. One was linked to one's kin in so many ways. A smile, a look, a certain manner of doing things or speaking or a particular phrase or meaning brought everything back. Everyone kept secrets. Even those two young people so obviously devoted to each other had secrets. Marriage, he thought, was really a very complicated thing. How Susan could have married that rogue Thomas MacPherson, he would never know. MacPherson had caused a rift in Sgua-ay's family. He hardly saw Susan now, except in public, and he rarely saw her children. Well, today that would change. If Jake Lalonde persisted in his inquiries, then he must speak to Susan first.