The Night Wanderer

The protagonist, an Anishinaabe vampire named Pierre L’Errant, watches the Northern Lights through the window of a plane. He thinks about how often, and in how many countries, he has seen them. While white people call them the aurora borealis, he knows them by the name wawa-tei. To him, the lights are a good sign. On this flight, he has the row to himself; his former neighbor, an Irish Catholic woman named Irene Donovan, asked to move seats when she became disturbed by Pierre’s dark aura. Irene had intended to relax and watch a movie on the flight to Canada but she became perturbed by Pierre’s contagious sense of emotionlessness and loneliness. Pierre is not offended by her choice, as he prefers to be alone in the company of the northern lights.

Pierre carefully crafted this trip to avoid the daylight. He planned the timing, the plane, and the cities perfectly to ensure his own survival and devised contingencies just in case. Pierre has decided to return home to Canada—a place he has not visited in centuries—after a trip to Ireland made him realize that he was eternally floating westward while still avoiding his home. Pierre is disgusted by his own monstrousness and does not want his homeland to see it, but now he looks to the sky and hopes that the northern lights are guiding him home.

Tiffany Hunter is a Anishinaabe girl who lives in the average-sized Otter Lake First Nations community in Canada. Now, she thinks about how much her feet hurt. Her shoes are too large because her grandmother took her to Walmart and refused to buy her well-fitting, fashionable Filas. Instead, Granny Ruth chose black formal shoes a size too large, even though Tiffany does not like “girlish” shoes. She loves her grandmother, but they struggle to understand each other; her Anishinaabe grandmother is much more committed to tradition than she is and does not listen to Tiffany. However, Tiffany does not complain because she is driving home with her boyfriend, Tony Banks, a white boy from her school. She has been seeing him for a month, and their relationship is not very well-defined yet. Tiffany often overthinks how she acts around him out of a desire to impress him.

She and Tony met in the library while Tiffany was trying to research carburetor settings for a Dodge Caravan in her automotive care class. Tony helped her to find the right spot in the textbook, and she noticed his persistent cough from allergies. She talked to her grandmother, who teased her about liking a boy and gave her weekah root. Tiffany instructed Tony to wear it around his neck and occasionally take a bite of it. He followed her instructions and his cough disappeared, and they soon begin to date. Tony is good at “fixed” things, like geography and dates, but he struggles to understand the winding roads through the reserve that Tiffany lives on.

Tiffany has grown up in relative isolation and has rarely traveled more than 45 minutes beyond her home. The reserve is filled with her relatives and cousins and is wild land; while some, like her Uncle Craig, live in the wilderness, most try to avoid the forest and find it unpleasant. Rumors of monsters like wendigos, possessing spirits, and demonic women are common, and stories abound about encounters with such beings, but Tiffany does not believe them.

Tony and Tiffany pass through downtown Otter Lake, where many of Tiffany’s family members live and work. Tiffany spots the church, where only her grandmother Ruth still goes. Tiffany does not attend because she does not believe she should be a hypocrite and go to church when she is unhappy with God. Tiffany thinks about her mother, Claudia, who has been gone for 14 months after leaving her husband, Keith, for a white man. This action shattered their family emotionally and financially in ways that none of them have yet figured out how to cope with. Tiffany regularly fights with her family now in ways she didn’t before. Due to Claudia’s betrayal, Keith actively dislikes Tony and has made this clear in a variety of ways, including setting up a scarecrow that resembles him and shooting it.

After Tony leaves, Tiffany finds a note from her father telling her to clear out her room and move to the basement for an undisclosed reason. Frustrated, Tiffany decides not to do anything until she learns why. Keith and Granny Ruth return from grocery shopping, and Keith immediately confronts Tiffany about her refusal to move her belongings to the basement. He tries to force her to do it without questioning him and then reveals that he has rented out the room to make money, as the family has been struggling without Claudia’s income. He insists that he told Tiffany about the plan at breakfast, which she doesn’t remember. Tiffany irritably agrees to cooperate and reads the email; she hopes that the guest, Pierre L’Errant, will not be strange.

Tiffany sits in her room and sulks, reflecting that the only positive thing in her life is her relationship with Tony. She ignores her history textbook, massages her sore feet, and reminisces about her first days with Tony, namely his use of her status card to get out of paying income tax. She recalls that on an early date, she used her status card to help him buy a birthday present for his mother, and she continued to use it as they got to know each other better, despite her friend Darla’s warning that he would use her for it. Eventually, Tony continued to buy things on every outing, making Tiffany uncomfortable. A week prior, he bought Tiffany an expensive silver bracelet at a jewelry store, but he also bought his mother a gold one, insisting that she already had the perfume he had bought her. The salesperson tried to stop Tiffany from using her status card, but Tony argued that the bracelet would be going back to the reserve; Tiffany then requested that Tony stop asking her to use the card altogether. Now, Tiffany is pleased by her recollection of how easily he agreed. She falls asleep thinking happily about him.

Pierre lands in Canada, wryly noting to himself that the land did not bear that name at all the last time he was here. Unable to rent a car due to his late arrival, he spends the night and day wandering the airport, enjoying the closed-in environment. He only draws occasional glances from people due to his strange aura. A man named Alok tries to pickpocket his wallet, but Pierre catches his wrist. Alok tries to punch him in the ribs, but two of his fingers mysteriously break. Alok is subsequently caught by security with four wallets in his jacket. After dark, Pierre, with all the right paperwork, leaves the airport in a rental car.

Tiffany moves into the basement and discovers plenty of spiders, confirming her fears. Her new “room” is a section of the basement encased with hanging strips of green carpet. To her embarrassment, she leaves the basement with spiderwebs in her hair. Tiffany leaves against her father’s wishes go to on a date with Tony, but her grandmother reminds her that she is skipping an outing with her friends to do so. She dismisses these concerns, to her grandmother’s disappointment. In the car, Tiffany thinks about how unfair her life is but cheers up when Tony says they are going to a party. Pierre’s unfamiliar Camry drives by as the couple leaves the reserve and heads to the party.

An old man named Moses is on the road leading into the reserve, chopping wood for his wife, who prefers the feeling of the fireplace over their gas heater. Moses suddenly feels watched and turns to see a car creeping near the house. He grips the axe tighter in his fear and catches a glimpse of something red in the driver’s seat. The car zooms away, and Moses, heart pounding, goes back to chopping wood.

Tiffany’s cousin, Trish, sits at a picnic table and smokes cigarettes, trying to avoid going back to her home. She sees an unfamiliar car approaching and prepares to run if necessary. The car stops in front of her, and the windows roll down, revealing only blackness inside. A rich voice tells Trish to come closer, and she feels compelled to obey. He asks where Keith Hunter’s house is, and she answers, feeling completely disconnected from herself. Trish sits back down after the car rolls away and forgets the entire interaction.