Solar Storms

Angel assumes the role of caring for Dora-Rouge, carrying her from place to place and helping her eat. She grows protective, believing the old woman is so light because she belongs more to the spirit world than the living. One evening, Angel sees Agnes returning from her nightly walk to the place where the Perdition River meets Lake Grand. Wearing her old bear coat, Agnes sings to herself, and Angel retreats inside to give her privacy. When Agnes comes in, Dora-Rouge asks how she knows the song she was just singing, as it is from before Agnes’s lifetime. Agnes repeats what she’s said before: the coat taught her the song.

Dora-Rouge tells Angel that Agnes killed the bear, whose coat she now wears, at just 12 years old. The glacier bear, the last of its kind, had been captured by a man named Beauregard, who exploited the creature to make money. Agnes grew attached, visiting it daily. But years of abuse left the bear weak, even with her love. To end its suffering, Agnes snuck into its cage and tearfully slit its throat. Dora-Rouge had followed her and witnessed the dying animal reach out to touch Agnes’s arm. Together, they skinned it. When Beauregard came to collect what he saw as his, Agnes gave him the fur, confident he wouldn’t live much longer. A year later, after his death, Agnes and Dora-Rouge reclaimed the fur. It’s been Agnes’s ever since.

Angel gradually starts to feel at home in Adam’s Rib. It’s not what she expected, but she’s already learned more than she thought she would from the women around her. During the men’s weekly card game held at Agnes’s, she meets LaRue Marks Time, a man with a checkered past who puts her on edge. When he casually asks when she’s headed to Fur Island, Angel pauses—Agnes hadn’t said anything about sending her there. The comment unsettles her. She starts to wonder if she’s being kicked out.

While the men play cards and the women talk in the next room, Frenchie—a Cree neighbor known for her lack of social graces—bluntly asks Angel how her face became scarred. The question hits Angel hard. She freezes, then accidentally cuts her finger while slicing cheese. Agnes notices and brings her to the bathroom to clean the wound. There, the smell of the ointments takes Angel back to the hospital, to the surgeries meant to fix her face. Overwhelmed, she smashes the mirror with her fist and falls into Agnes’s arms in tears. It’s the first time she’s cried in ages.

While comforting her, Agnes admits she is sending Angel to live with Bush on Fur Island—but she can always return to the Rib whenever she wants. They agree to talk more later and step outside for some air. Wrapped in Agnes’s bear coat, Angel breathes in the cold night and feels something inside of her shift. After this night, she starts to see herself differently—not as a scarred woman, but as something larger, connected to the land and sky. Still, no one will tell her what happened to her face. She wants to know the truth but dreads learning it in equal measure.