To the Bright Edge of the World

by Eowyn Ivey

There is a mythical element to our childhood, it seems, that stays with us always. When we are young, we consume the world in great gulps, and it consumes us, and everything is mysterious and alive and fills us with desire and wonder, fear, and guilt. With the passing of the years, however, those memories become distant and malleable, and we shape them into the stories of who we are. We are brave, or we are cowardly. We are loving, or we are cruel.

It’s ridiculous! Pruitt said. It all amused the trapper. —So, he said,—a woman from a rib you’ll have, but not from a goose?

I wonder that any life has ever been confined to golden dances and fine stitches and silk, for it seems to me that suffering knows no class or rank, gender or age, and we each of us brave our own darkness.

Is he a friend or enemy? —Not one or the other. If a boy is hungry, he sees a rabbit, he kills it. If he isn’t hungry, maybe he chases it for fun. Or maybe he just watches it hop along the snow because it makes him happy to see the rabbit hop.

I have many other questions. Since we came to the Wolverine River, we have seen women who behave like geese. There is the baby we found in the woods. Can he explain these occurrences? —He doesn’t understand. You saw them, not him. How can he tell you again what your eyes already told you? —We are not accustomed to believing in mountain spirits or men who can fly. —He says he hears from the Indians downriver that your people catch light on paper so that you can see something that happened a long time ago or far away. You have boats that shoot fire, wooden boxes that sing. —Yes, that is all true. —He says he was a small boy when he first went over the mountains. He met the Wolverine People. He was frightened because he had heard many stories. Some of them were true. Some were not. That is always how it is with strangers.

I hope I do not stray too far into my own philosophical thoughts, but let me venture this much: one must learn the mechanics and chemistry, and then allow all that to slip into the background. It seems counter to science and rational thought, but I do not believe one can ultimately calculate perfection. It is an impression, an instinct in the moment, on which one must depend.

That cannot explain the capability, he said.—Don’t you think evil itself must exist already inside of a man for him to commit such acts? I could not give him an answer except to say that for all creation men have done such things, the strong misusing the weak. Every civilization has its own versions of cruelty.

Never are the people here allowed to forget that each of us is alive only by a small thread.

Was it only sunlight on stone, or Father’s spirit, or a reflection of my own? It seems to me now that such a moment requires a kind of trinity: you and I and the thing itself.

When asked if she was ever afraid she would drown in a river or be eaten by a bear, she laughs and waves off the question. “I have only ever been truly frightened of boredom and loneliness,” she says.