and they would not allow me to find happiness. Dayita had said I would not find happiness here but that I would find what I was looking for. What I was looking for was not forgiveness, despite what the elders wanted.

“This plague was brought on by both of you,” Saldei had scolded me and Dayita when the illness had first begun to spread, “there will be no forgiveness for what you did before the last winter.”

Migyama, the woman I was supposed to marry, had been one of the first to become sick. Saldei and Laoska both agreed that the ancestors were punishing the tribe for my defiance.

“The shaman woman was never to wed,” Laoska told me, “She has no father. This means her purpose is to appease the spirits and your relationship with her has prevented this.”...

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