Niska hides in the woods outside of Moose Factory for days waiting for Elijah Whiskeyjack (her nephew, Xavier’s, best friend and the “closest thing” Niska has to a relative), to return home from World War I. Elijah and Xavier enlisted in the war together, and while Niska received word that Xavier was killed in battle, Elijah will be returning on the train today. Niska comes to Moose Factory to take Elijah home to the bush. As Cree Indians, Niska raised Xavier, and often Elijah too, in “the old way,” away from Moose Factory and the wemistikoshiw (European people). Niska is not used to seeing so many wemistikoshiw in one place, and as she walks down the street, they point and stare at the “Indian animal straight out of the bush.”
When the train arrives in Moose Factory, Elijah is not onboard. Instead, Niska’s nephew, Xavier, steps off the train. He has been badly injured in the war, and his left leg has been amputated. As Xavier see Niska, he falls to the ground. “I was told you were dead, Auntie,” he says. Niska had sent Xavier a letter during the war, but she had to dictate her words through Joseph Netmaker, a local Cree man, and Joseph’s poor English mistakenly claimed that Niska had died. Niska is relieved; the nephew she thought was dead is alive and has home from the war, and she quickly shows him to her waiting canoe. The bush is a three-day journey down the river, then they will be home.
Niska can see that Xavier isn’t well. Fever and “something far worse” are “consuming” him, and Niska fears he has come home only to die. Xavier suffers from intense pain, both physical and emotional, and he frequently injects himself with morphine. He is helplessly addicted to the wemistikoshiw medicine, and soon he will run out. Xavier closes his eyes and lets the morphine take him back to the French trenches, where German bullets and bombs whiz by his head. He is back in his dugout with Elijah— “Where is Elijah now?” Xavier wonders—and Sergeant McCaan. Sean Patrick, a fellow Canadian soldier and sniper, is at his post, and his spotter, Grey Eyes, stands nearby. Xavier can tell that Grey Eyes has taken some of the wemisikoshiw’s morphine, and his eyes look “glassy” and distant. Suddenly, Sean Patrick is hit in the throat by a and there is blood and chaos everywhere.
Niska’s father often told her stories when she was sick or scared as a child, so Niska turns to storytelling to save Xavier. She begins to tell him the stories of their ancestors, and of Niska’s father long before Xavier was born. Niska’s father was the clan’s hookimaw (spiritual leader) and had come from “a long line of windigo killers.” When Niska was just a girl, Micah, a young hunter, took his family into the bush to survive during a harsh winter. Game was scarce and the people hungry, and Micah decided to take his chances in the bush. Game was scarce everywhere, however, and Micah and his family continued to stave. Micah’s wife saw the tracks of the windigo outside their lodge, and the day that Micah froze to death trying to catch fish, the windigo visited Micah’s wife and threatened to eat her baby if she didn’t feed the child. To save her baby, Micha’s wife turned to cannibalism, effectively “going windigo” by succumbing to the evil spirit. When she returned to camp with Micah’s flesh in her pack, Niska’s father was forced to kill her and her baby to ensure the spirit of the windigo did not infect the entire clan. The wemistikoshiw did not understand Niska’s father’s reason for killing Micah’s wife and her baby, and they came to arrest him for murder. He died alone in a cell in Moose Factory’s wemistikoshiw jail.
As Niska tells Xavier stories, he takes more morphine and lets himself “drift back to the comfort of old friends.” He is back in the trenches of the war, and Corporal Thompson is teaching him and Elijah “the art of the sniper.” As hunters who live off the land, Elijah and Xavier excel at sniping, and they easily blend into their surroundings and sneak undetected through no man’s land. In the dark, Elijah and Xavier are like “owls or wolves,” and Lieutenant Breech says it is because their “Indian blood” is “closer to that of an animal than of a man.” The racist assumptions of Lieutenant Breech affect Elijah and Xavier for most of their time in the war. He is unnecessarily hard on them and doesn’t believe the kills they report from the field. Xavier is further alienated because he doesn’t speak English as well as Elijah, and when it is clear that Elijah is better suited for killing and war than Xavier, they begin to drift apart.
On the second day of their three-day journey home, Niska stops to make camp. She encourages Xavier to eat but he refuses. He is slowly dying, and Niska can do little to help, so she continues to “feed him with [her] story.” She tells Xavier of a winter long ago, when he was just a boy, when a local “awawatuk from the turtle clan” came to Niska and told her that a member of their clan had gone into the woods several weeks ago and had come back with a pack full of human flesh. The man had gone windigo, the awawatuk said, “and threatened to destroy” them all. Niska and Xavier go to the awawatuk’s camp, and Niska kills the windigo, just like her father did before her. Niska is “the second to last in a long line of windigo killers,” but “there is one more,” she tells Xavier.
Back in the trenches, Elijah continues to excel as a sniper, and his number of confirmed kills rises. Elijah is consumed by war and killing, and he is slowly going mad. He has even begun scalping his enemies, a trick he learns from the French soldiers, and Xavier is convinced that Elijah is going windigo. After Grey Eyes reports Elijah’s morphine addition and scalping practices to Lieutenant Breech, Elijah kills both Grey Eyes and Breech to avoid a court-martial. A violent bombardment consumes their unit, and Elijah and Xavier are trapped near the German trenches. As Xavier scopes out the enemy, Elijah turns on Xavier and tries to strangle him, the war and the windigo finally driving him to complete madness. Xavier knows what he must do. He is a windigo killer, just like Niska, and he is forced to kill his best friend.
Near the end of Niska and Xavier’s trip home, Xavier’s morphine supply runs dry, and he begins to withdraw. He shakes uncontrollably and is in horrific pain—it seems as if he will certainly die. Niska begins to construct a matatosowin, and when the rocks are hot, she drags Xavier into this sweat lodge. Niska calls on Gitchi Manitou and purifies Xavier with steam and prayer. By the third round in the matatosowin, Xavier accepts both responsibility and forgiveness for his role in Elijah’s death, and his fever begins to subside. By the time Niska and Xavier crawl out of the matatosowin for the last time, Xavier is “calm.” A lynx looks on with “her yellow eyes” as Niska settles next to Xavier in front of the fire. “By tomorrow,” Niska thinks, “we’ll be home.”
