The fine, warm day of Wild Rice Moon clashed with the fear the young girl felt. It was a time of special beauty in the forest, when the golden leaves of the aspen clamored for attention with the fiery orange of the maples. But Autumn Dawn saw none of it. This year, the dying out of summer meant the dying of her people.

She stepped closer to her mother. But the girl stopped as her mother drew back, almost stumbling, but trying to keep a distance between them.

"Mother, you are ill." Autumn Dawn was afraid to take another step. She couldn’t shake the numbness growing inside her. Surely, none of this was happening.

"Do not come near," her mother cried out. Fear, and the fever, caused her mother’s weak voice to waver as the woman stood, hunched over with pain, in front of the small birchbark-covered lodge.

"I will not leave you, Mother. Someone must care for you." Autumn Dawn argued, defying her mother for the first time in her thirteen years.

"You will go, Daughter," her mother answered, "and not only because I ask it of you." Mother glanced at the small boy holding Autumn Dawn’s hand.

Autumn Dawn looked at Coyote Boy. Her little brother’s eyes brimmed with tears. He may not understand all that was taking place, but he would know his Mother was sending them away.

"But Mother, if I leave . . ." she hesitated. The smoke from the smoldering bearskin intensified the numbness growing inside her-the feeling that none of this could be real. The bearskin, now smoking on the fire, was ready to burst into flame. It had once hung across the entryway into her father’s fever wigwam. When he’d grown ill, Father had insisted on living separately from them. Now he was gone. He had joined their ancestors, and Mother was burning the skin.

The smoke made Autumn Dawn feel like a thin veil existed between herself and the real world. If only she could break through that cloudy curtain, perhaps everything would again be the way it used to be-before the trader’s illness came. Father, and her best friend, White Otter, she could almost see them . . . .

Autumn Dawn Shines on Leaf shook herself and tried to speak calmly. "But Mother, there are none left here-no one to care for you."

"If you two children stay, both of you will die, too."

"Perhaps not. We have heard stories that some have lived after having the fever. We are a strong people. I could care for you until you are well. And then . . ."

The girl tried to sound confident, but her voice was shaky. "And then, if Coyote Boy and I become ill . . . you can care for us."

Surely, Autumn Dawn thought, I can do something to make everything all right again. She squeezed Coyote Boy’s little hand, and fought back the tears that wanted to come.

"Enough!" Mother rarely raised her voice. She backed away from Autumn Dawn. "I cared for your father until he journeyed to the Spirit World." Her voice softened only slightly. "I have seen what this disease can do-even to one so strong as he." She hesitated. And when she spoke again, her voice cracked with grief. "I will not have my children die so."

It was true. What some called the "trader’s illness" had wiped out almost everyone, young and old, in their wild-rice camp. This camp was a gathering of families who spent each fall together, to harvest the wild rice, before separating off into smaller lodges for the winter.

The new illness was a horrible disease. The first sign was a high fever, the same fever Autumn Dawn now saw in her mother’s eyes. Next, the victim would break out in ugly red spots that oozed a hideous yellow liquid. After that-death.

Seeing her mother’s pain tore apart the curtain of numbness that had surrounded Autumn Dawn. A sudden stab of sorrow pierced her like a hunter’s spear. She lowered her eyes and looked away from the flushed face of her mother. "I will do as you wish, Mother." Her throat closed around the words.

"Mama?" Coyote Boy cried out as he tried to move toward his mother, but Autumn Dawn held on firmly.

"No!" Mother commanded. "You must go with Autumn Dawn now, my son. You will be safe with her. Go to my sister’s family to the north. They will take care of you."

Autumn Dawn Shines on Leaf swept her little brother into her arms. Although he was only six years old, his small muscles were sturdy, strong. He tried desperately to get away. Autumn Dawn looked at her mother’s feverish face one more time. There would be no hug of goodbye like other times when the girl had gone off to visit relatives. "Mother . . ."

"Go. Go now, children. Find our relatives. Save yourselves." Her mother turned her back on them and disappeared into the fever lodge.

Autumn Dawn lifted the small boy onto her hip, turned, and ran. Coyote Boy wailed. She would run north, like Mother had said. Never mind the constant slamming into her side of the weight of her little brother’s body. Never mind that his sorrowful cries rang in her ears. She too, would have liked to cry, but there was no time for weeping. Later, maybe, when they were safe with her mother’s sister’s family.

The forest breeze mingled the scent of freshly fallen leaves with pine, but Autumn Dawn did not notice. Only the scent of smoldering bearskin remained with her. Although she avoided the downed trees and large rocks on the well-worn path leading away from the village to the north, she saw none of it.

Finally, she could run no longer. She must stop, to catch her breath. Deep in the woods, with the village now far behind, Autumn Dawn spotted a large round boulder in a clearing, with a flat spot on top. She set Coyote Boy down upon it.

"Little Brother," she said, her breath coming in short gasps, "you will have to walk on your own now. You must be a strong little warrior, even if you are only six summers old."

The small child looked up at her, tears streaking his round face. He stopped his wailing, though, and his eyes were trusting of his big sister. "I will be brave, Autumn," he said. He always called her that, Autumn Dawn Shines on Leaf being too long for his young tongue.

Autumn remembered the story of how she had been given her name. On the morning of her birth, the first thing her mother had seen when the lodge flap had been opened was the morning sun shining on a bright red leaf. "It was the happiest day of my life," Mother had said.

But today, the memory sent another piercing stab of sorrow through her heart. Like a drum, her heart beat hard after the long run from the village. She was exhausted.

She gathered her little brother in her arms, holding him close. As she sank down with him into the moist ferns of the forest floor, a terrible fear grew inside her. She slowly breathed in the cool, pine-scented air, but still she could not shake the fear.

What if she didn’t find her relatives? Mother had given them directions and she knew the way well. They should arrive by nightfall. She had very few supplies with her: just a small amount of rice and tobacco in her medicine bag and of course, her knife, which no Anishinaabe would be without.

If only White Otter were here. Together, she had thought they could face anything. Tall and strong, her dearest friend White Otter had been the best of the young hunters. But when the illness came to their camp, not even his strength could defeat it.

She gasped out loud. How could she live with so much loss? Then she felt her brother’s small, warm body against her own and knew the answer. I must be strong now, for the safety of my little brother. I will not think of those who have gone to the other side.

Autumn Dawn stood up. It was time to move on.

Just then, she thought she saw something out of the corner of her eye. Carefully, she scanned the woods for any sign of danger, but there was nothing.

The morning light streamed through the trees. Ahead, rising from a high point just off to the side of the trail, was a tall, dead pine. Her eyes stung with the glare as she looked up at it. Coyote Boy stood up and tugged on her leg.

An eagle perched on the very top of the dead tree. Suddenly the bird launched itself off the ancient branch. The sun glanced off its bright white head, as the huge wings flapped three times and then soared. She watched as he moved easily, dipping this way, then that, on the light wind. Over the treetop, he sped off and up into the sky, gliding on the breezes of Wild Rice Moon.

Eagle had come to her before, she recalled, when she had needed guidance-during a girlhood dream fast, when she had waited and listened for a helper to appear. Now he was back, climbing in a slow circle higher and higher. Then, he flew away in a straight line, with the slow beat of his long, powerful wings.

Autumn took a deep breath. "This is a good sign, Little Brother. I am sure of it." Eagle, she felt, was to be her protector.

The eagle, now a mere dot in the sky, was headed northwest, the way her relatives lived. Autumn Dawn took Coyote Boy’s hand, and they resumed their journey.

As they walked in the direction the eagle had taken, Autumn was thankful the day was fair and cool. For this time of the year, it was almost warm. Her spirits rose, just a little.

Not long after that, they came upon a large lake. The breeze had disappeared and the air was still. In the blue water, the trees were reflected clearly as if in a trader’s mirror. Pure, clean, life-giving Nibi.

Gichi-manidoo, Great Spirit, Autumn Dawn prayed, watch over us so these lakes continue to give life to our people, rather than witness more death.

The sun was high in the sky now and Coyote Boy was tired. She studied the area carefully. Was this the lake where she, her mother, and the other women of the summer camp had so often set their fishing nets? Yes, it was. She and her brother had traveled farther than she thought, for this was some distance from their wild-rice gathering camp which they’d left only that morning. Recognizing the lake gave her a feeling of great relief. Her aunt’s house would be near.

"We will eat soon, Little Brother." She looked down at the small boy and squeezed his hand.

He looked at her, and his tiny smile was her mother’s. For a moment she thought she would weep, but Autumn stopped herself. Focusing her thoughts, she looked around and spotted a chokecherry tree. It still bore fruit so she quickly picked some and handed them to Coyote Boy. She squinted, trying to see into the woods that surrounded her and the lake.

There was a small wigwam, not far from the lake on the shore off to her right. Perhaps it was her relatives’ lodge. This was the place she remembered they often spent time during the Wild Rice Moon.

"Come along, Little Brother, our journey may be over."

Coyote Boy smiled at her, cherry juice dripping from his puckered mouth. Autumn Dawn took his hand and smiled. In many ways, he was still a baby.

As they neared the wigwam, Autumn grew more cautious. The shelter was awfully small, and was obviously put together in haste. Surely, this couldn’t be her aunt’s lodge. A hastily built hunter’s shelter maybe?

"Stay here," she said to her brother.

Reluctantly the little boy let go of her hand and she walked slowly toward the lodge.

When she saw the door was missing, Autumn Dawn stopped. The picture of her mother burning the bearskin door of the fever wigwam that morning flashed into her mind. Perhaps her aunt had done the same? With heart beating fast, she resumed her approach to the small lodge.

Then she smelled it-the stench of illness and death. Someone had died inside this wigwam. But who?

Slowly, she took a few more steps, her stomach queasy from the odor. Careful not to touch anything, Autumn stood in the entrance to the wigwam and cautiously peered in. On the floor was her aunt’s body, insects already feasting on it. The hideous rash of the fever dotted the woman’s skin.

Autumn Dawn screamed.

[First chapter used with permission from TIME OF THE EAGLE: The Story of an Ojibwe Winter, by Stephanie Golightly Lowden (Blue Horse Books, 2004), © Stephanie Golightly Lowden. Further reproduction is prohibited without the written permission of the publisher; for more information, contact Philip Martin, Blue Horse Books, at info@bluehorsebooks.org.]