sister or a brother, but they refused. So the boy was given a knife and told to kill his mother. He was twelve years old. The men would hold her. He should cut her neck. The boy began to weep, but he was told that he must do it anyway. His name was Nanapush. The men urged him to kill his mother, tried to buck up his courage. But he got angry. He stuck the knife into one of the men who was holding his mother. But the man had on a skin coat and the wound wasn’t very deep.
Ah, said his mother, you are a good son. You will not kill me. You’re the only one I will not eat! Then she struggled so powerfully that she broke away from all of the men. But they wrestled her down.
He knew, Nanapush, that she had just threatened to eat those men because she was being tormented. She was a good mother to her children and had taught them how to live. Now the men brought her back tied in cords. Her husband bound her to a tree and left her there to freeze or starve. She screamed and fought the straps, but then grew quiet. They thought she must be getting weak so they left her alone that night. But the chinook wind came through and the air turned mild. She ate the snow. There must have been some good in the snow, because with her strong fingers she undid the knots and untied the cords. She began to walk away. Her son crawled from the tent and decided to go with her, but they were followed and overtaken when they reached the lake. Again, the men tied her up.
Now Mirage enlarged the very hole Akii had fished, where the ice was thinner. The men decided to put her down into the water, all of them, so no one had to take the blame. They strengthened those bindings and this time they attached a rock to her feet. Then they stuffed her down the hole into the freezing water. When she did not come up, they walked away, except her son, who wouldn’t go with them. He sat on the ice there and sang her death song. As his father passed him, the boy asked for his gun and said that he would shoot his mother if she came out.
Maybe at that moment his father wasn’t thinking straight, because he gave his gun to Nanapush.
Once the men were out of sight, Akii crashed her head from the hole. She had managed to kick free of the rock, and breathed the air that sits just beneath the surface of the ice. Nanapush helped her out of the water and put his blanket on her. Then they went into the woods and walked until they were too weak to walk anymore. The mother had her flint and striker in a pocket next to her skin. They made a fire and a shelter. Akii told her son that while she was underwater the fish spoke to her and said he felt sorry for her, and that she should have a hunting song. She sang this song to her son. It was a buffalo song. Why a buffalo song? Because the fish missed the buffalo. When the buffalo came to the lakes and rivers on hot summer days, they shed their tasty fat ticks for the fish to eat, and their dung drew other insects that the fish liked too. They wished the buffalo would come back. They asked me where the buffalo had gone, said Akii. I couldn’t tell them. The boy learned the song, but said he wondered if it was useless. Nobody had seen a buffalo for years.
The two slept that night. They slept and slept. When they woke, they were so weak that they thought it would be easier to die. But Nanapush had some wire for a snare. He crawled out and set that snare a few feet away from their little shelter.
If a rabbit is snared, it will tell me where the animals are, said Akii.
They went to sleep again. When they woke, there was a rabbit struggling in the snare. The mother crept to the rabbit and listened to what it said. Then she crept back to her son with the rabbit.
The rabbit gave itself to you, she said. You must eat it and throw every single one of its bones out into the snow, so it