The driver climbed out, waving at the women as they walked out to meet him. “Mariah’s got a whole different kind of science. “She sure fixed me up.”Ĭlara laughed and squeezed the young woman’s hand. “Mariah’s a doctor too.” Clara nodded, looking at Kendra. Call me Indian till they get it right in the Indian Act.” First Indian doctor in Canada.”Ĭlara rolled her eyes. They opened their eyes, relaxed, an air of peace beautifying the simple cabin. They prayed in silence as Mariah prepared an offering for the ancients. As she prayed in her soft Cree, Clara leaned over and took Kendra’s hand. The women entered the cabin to find Mariah preparing her smudge bowl.Ĭlara and Kendra sat with Mariah as she lit her smudge, a special combination of many different medicines.

Kendra was as close as she came to having a child, the daughter of her closest and oldest friend. “Lot of memories out there.” Clara reached out and hugged the young woman. Kendra stood in the doorway, looking this way and that, smiling, when her eyes fell on Clara. It was just after noon when she got back to the cabin. She walked, oblivious to time, only turning back when the sun was high and the birch leaves shimmered all around her. She made her way toward the beginning of the trail she and Mariah had often walked to set snares, a faint tinkling rising on the breeze from the grove around the lodge. She thought she saw her dog, now long dead, a ghostly image running ahead of her as he had done then. She looked east and saw the beginnings of the many trails she and Mariah had walked so many years ago. She turned and headed toward the cabin door, a silvery glimmer distracting her. She looked down the hill and watched Mariah’s helpers readying the sweat lodge. Clara stood behind Mariah’s cabin, the late summer warmth rising from the soil.

Five little indians a novel