Blue moon - By Lori Handeland Page 0,14

merely smiled. For some reason he found me amusing. Like a pet or a child, maybe an imbecile.

"Faith is for fools who don't know their own mind," I snapped.

As a kid I'd spent countless hours praying for my daddy to come home. He hadn't. I'd spent equal time praying to be like everyone else. I wasn't. So I'd given up praying long ago.

"I'd rather be a fool," he said quietly, "than believe in nothing at all."

I did believe in something - facts - but I found no reason to tell him that. Living in the middle of woo-woo land had taught me quite quickly that arguing with someone who believed the unbelievable was like smacking your head against a brick wall. Maybe someday you'd move the brick, but you were more likely to be dead first. 1 changed the subject.

"Any idea who might belong to that totem?"

He turned away and I frowned. Up until now he'd looked me in the eye when he spoke to me. Why the sudden change? Unless he couldn't lie to my face.

"Professor? You said you might know."

"I'm familiar with a few of the wolf clan in the area."

"How's that?"

"Because I'm one, too."

"It's a fraternity or something?"

"No."

He faced me again, and any amusement I might have seen once was gone. Had I offended him? I wasn't sure how, but then, I rarely understood how I'd pissed someone off. Queen of the social gaffe? Me?

"In Ojibwe tradition each person belongs to a clan, the descent of which comes through the father.

Legend has it that we are the ancestors of the animal our clan is named for. So even if you were of the Lac du Flambeau band and I was Grand Portage, which I am, if we were wolf clan, we were blood. We couldn't marry."

"Double damn," I said dryly.

His lips quirked. Maybe I hadn't offended him after all.

"In other words, your people believed that wolf clan members descended from the wolves - "

"And bear clan from the bear, crane from the crane. Exactly."

"Interesting." And weird.

"It's a legend. Not too many of us keep up with to-temic clan lore these days."

"Except for you."

He shrugged. "It's my job, even if I didn't believe we should keep the old ways alive."

"Do you know who might belong to this totem?"

"Maybe."

He picked up the tiny black herald, rolled the stone between his fingers. The thought of him using those fingers on me in much the same way made me forget for an instant what I was doing here.

"This isn't a common wolf clan totem," he continued, and I yanked my mind from fantasy to reality. "I'd like to keep this to study some more. I've never seen one like it."

"What's so different?"

"The wolf is... odd, and there are markings that disturb me. Something is not quite right."

Disturb? Odd? Not right?

"What are you getting at?"

"Ever heard of a manitou?"

"What?" His quick change in topic left me floundering to catch up. "You mean a spirit?"

"Kind of. Manitou means ' mystery,'' godlike,'' essence.'An all-encompassing spirit. Legend has it that Kitchi-Manitou, the great mystery, created all."

The great mystery. Despite my skepticism of all things woo-woo, I liked that. The great mystery was a good phrase for God and everything in that realm.

"Everyone has manitoulike attributes," Cadotte went on. "We each have our special talent. Yours must be sarcasm."

"Ha-ha."

He quirked a brow. "Or maybe something hidden, which I'll uncover later."

"Don't count on it, Slick. What's your special attribute?"

"Besides my great big - " I caught my breath. "Brain?"

The air hissed out through my teeth, making a derisive sound. "Yeah, besides that."

"Maybe you'll give me a chance to show you my special talent sometime."

"I repeat, don't count on it."

He smiled. "Getting back to my story. Most of the manitous are helpful. They're guardians over us poor humans."

"And the ones that aren't helpful?"

"Two. Both are man-hunting manitous. Weendigos, or the Great Cannibals, and the Matchi-auwishuk."

"Translation?"

His smile faded. "The Evil Ones."

Even though I believed none of this, the hair on my forearms tingled.

"I don't like the sound of either one," I admitted. "But what do they have to do with our totem?"

"The markings on this wolf remind me of certain drawings I've studied of Matchi-auwishuk."

"What does that mean?"

"I'm not sure."

"Swell." Silence fell between us.

"Why are you so interested in this?" he asked.

Good question. The totem could be anyone's, dropped at the scene of the accident for any number of reasons. It might not have anything to do with Miss Larson at all.

But I found it