And the Birds Rained Down

I had already driven many kilometres of road under threatening skies, wondering whether I would find a clearing in the forest before nightfall, or at least before the storm hit. I had travelled all afternoon along spongy roads that led to labyrinths of quad trails and skidding roads, and then nothing more but clay ponds, beds of peat moss and walls of spruce, black fortresses growing ever thicker. The forest was going to close in around me without me laying me hands on Ted or Ed or Edward Boychuck, whose first name changed but whose last name remains the same, a sign that there was some truth in what I had heard about him, one of the last survivors of the Great Fires.

From And the Birds Rained Down by Jocelyne Saucier. Translated by Rhonda Mullins 2012. Published by Coach House Books.