Kainai First Nation
Blood Indian Reserve, No. 148
Alberta, Canada
December 1885
EVERETT WINTER STOOD AT THE EDGE OF THE BLUFF, STARING INTO the distance. Kutoyis ran up behind him; the distinct sound of powdery snow dusting beneath his feet with each step rang in Everett's ears.
"Gold Heart, I've searched for you. What brings you here?" Kutoyis asked. He was almost a head shorter than the younger Winter boy. His skin wasn't as tanned as the rest of his tribe, but it was red and rough from the cold. His musculature was obvious and steely. Ebony silk hair grew from his head, parted between his onyx eyes, and hung down past his shoulders. He wore buffalo-skin moccasins and leggings and a thin headband with feathers and beads around his scalp. His face was covered in a crimson paste that gave Kutoyis and his people their moniker, the Bloods.
"A man has to think, Kutoyis," Everett said.
"What are you thinking of, Gold Heart?" Kutoyis asked, staying a step behind Everett, who had not turned around to look at him.
"Of what the future holds," Everett answered. The men stood facing the horizon, both knowing that somewhere along that path, hidden among the hills that tapered off here at the top of the Rocky Mountains, the Hidden City stood, playfully dancing below their radar.
"What do you think they could be?" Kutoyis asked, knowing that's what his Gold Heart was thinking of.
"A threat," Everett answered, his voice tight.
"Red Eye says nothing of this! He defends them to the Red Chief. He says they are Christians and so they cannot be so bad," Kutoyis reasoned.
"The Christians are about to tear your tribe apart, Kutoyis. And yet you think they aren't capable of doing something bad?"
Kutoyis shrugged. "Red Eye and the Red Chief say it won't stick, that the missions will come and go. But however good or bad they are, they aren't magical. That much is clear. And so whatever kind of sorcery those Christians have, I think it can't hurt us."
"My father and your chief know less than they think they do," Everett spat.
Kutoyis narrowed his eyes at Everett's disrespect, and he took a bold step forward to face the man so many years—even if it didn't appear to be so—his elder. "Red Eye can see the future."
"My father can see some parts of the future. Others can see more of it, more clearly," Everett argued.
"Warrior can?" Kutoyis asked, excited. The eldest Winter brother had always been his idol.
"Patrick can't see anything. He never had that gift," Everett answered. He dropped to the snow now, sitting so close to the edge of the bluff that Kutoyis had to think hard about whether to join him. "Ginny's the one. She knows there's danger. She knows that inside that hidden place there is peril."
Kutoyis didn't argue with him; Everett seemed so sure. He let a silence pass before speaking again. "Gold Heart, do you know what happened to the sick child who came before me?"
Everett contemplated what he should say. He knew the story of how the fair-haired Sorcerer had taken the Red Chief's dying infant and never returned with her. No one knew what had happened to her after that. But what of this did Kutoyis know? "That was nearly twenty snows ago. Why are you worried about that now?"
Kutoyis shrugged, a rare vulnerability entering his face and voice. "I just wonder. We were sick, too, but here we are, growing strong. We survived."
"Be grateful for that," Everett warned. He could feel what the snow was doing to him. He could feel the tightening of his chest and throat, the unending burn in his mouth. Where was Patrick with the damn blood?
"What if she survived, too, Gold Heart?" Kutoyis asked. "What if she is like me? Like Sky?"
Everett snapped out of his thirsty trance. "Like you how?" It made Everett uneasy that Kutoyis even knew the sick Blood child had been a she. What else did he know?
"We're not like everyone else. We are more like you than we are like them," Kutoyis admitted. "You've known me my whole life. Surely you've noticed?"
"You are magical, Kutoyis. It is clear you possess some strong medicine, and for that, you are revered. Of course I've noticed."
Kutoyis urged him to understand. "It's more than that. We have many elders with powerful medicine, if not exactly like mine. But I am like you. Like Red Eye and Warrior. Like a Winter."
Everett squinted and shook his head. The bloodlust was beginning to consume him, making it harder to focus on what seemed like very important information from the boy. "What makes you like a Winter?" Everett asked as his teeth gritted together.
"It's been six days since last I shaved," Kutoyis announced, sliding his fingertips across glossy red-brown skin. It may have been covered in the crimson paint, but it was clearly hairless.
Everett cocked his head to the side in confusion.
"And I'm not cold anymore. Not even in the snow," Kutoyis said. Everett noticed now that Kutoyis wasn't wearing the fur and skin capes his people usually wore this time of year. Kutoyis continued, "And I ran here all the way from camp. I never stopped."
"Impossible," Everett countered. It had taken even him half an hour to reach this spot.
"You could do it," Kutoyis argued.
"That's because I'm . . ."
"You're what?" Kutoyis dared him to say it.
"Different," Everett said coolly, carefully.
"Different," Kutoyis repeated. "Exactly. And I'm different, too."
"You are not like me, Kutoyis. It is impossible. We know your mother, knew your father. They're human—both of them," Everett reasoned.
"And, yet, it is happening to me and to Sky like it happened to you, isn't it? It is as if your body froze, isn't it? Hair stopped growing, and skin stopped aging. One thing after another until you didn't even need air or sleep. It's happening to me," Kutoyis said, willing Everett to understand the earth-shattering realizations he'd had about himself.
"How do you know all this?" Everett asked.
"Warrior," Kutoyis admitted softly.
"Patrick. Of course. Well, he left out one key thing, Kutoyis, as he usually does when he romanticizes the Winter Condition. He forgot to mention the need for blood. That your world becomes consumed by hunting and killing. That everything in your life comes to be an amalgamation of these thoughts and desires."
Kutoyis was confused, and he most certainly did not think Gold Heart's need for blood was as literal as it was. "I've never seen you hunt or kill a thing. Not a buffalo. Not a man," Kutoyis said.
"That doesn't mean I don't need the blood, or that I don't thirst for it," Everett admitted. Kutoyis didn't understand, but he stayed quiet. "You know that's why they call me that, don't you? Why they named me Gold Heart? Heart too pure to kill anything, or so they believe."
"Are they wrong?" Kutoyis asked.
"Wrong enough," Everett huffed, his brow furrowed and dark. His eyes were burning red now, and he could barely talk.
Just then, Patrick broke through the trees, a terrified girl dressed in buffalo skins with long, black braids in his arms. Tears froze to her cheeks in the frigid wind.
"Finally," Everett called.
"I'm sorry, brother. I was detained by Red Eye," Patrick said. "What's he doing here?" he asked, nodding toward Kutoyis.
"I came searching for him," Kutoyis called. "Is she a Crow?"
"No questions," Patrick hissed, already uncomfortable with Kutoyis's presence.
Everett twitched, watching the girl's body writhe in Patrick's arms. "Could you . . .?"
Patrick nodded, and, quickly the Warrior ran into the distance, clenching the girl in his arms while Everett sat motionless, eyes fixed on the ground. It wasn't far enough; he could still hear her screams.
Patrick called for him to come. As Everett crossed the snow toward his brother, leaving a fearful Kutoyis behind him, the sounds had finally started to die down as the girl's life drained from her. Everett smelled the blood as he neared them. He wiped his lips on his sleeve, and a thick gold liquid coated the fabric. It shimmered in the gray daylight.
The girl's body lay limp in the snow, not a drop of blood wasted on the ground. Patrick cupped a leather pouch in his hands and several more hung from his belt. "Here," he said, pushing it toward his younger brother's mouth. Everett drank the warm blood from his brother's hands. Only Patrick would do this for him. It angered their father that Everett was now grown and still too weak to drink from the body itself. But Patrick tried to understand. He realized it might take time for Everett to get through the winters when he seemed to have such . . . heart.
When Everett had had it all, the brothers stood silently, breathing hard as they felt the relief the blood brought them. "Thank you," Everett whispered.
"It's okay," Patrick said. "It will come to you."