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beneath the loose section of heavy canvas and found a deep pit waiting, one so dark his flashlight would not penetrate it. He scratched his head and knelt down, then swung his legs over the precipice until they dangled into the dark expanse. Slowly, he pushed himself farther until gravity took hold. It was then he realized there was no ground beneath the canvas. He fell, plummeting into nothing, and feared he would never stop. When he finally hit bottom, the ground was softer than grass, and turning on his flashlight he saw he had dropped no more than six feet into the earth; yet the trench stretched out as far as his flashlight beam carried, farther than it had appeared on the surface. The wind howled through the torn tarp above.
    The Six Nations had been excavating something, and it seemed to be more than a single thing judging by the size of the hole. Harvey felt claustrophobic pressure from above and shone the light to determine how much headroom he really had. It was close, but there was enough space to stand. What struck him, though, was that the frame holding the canvas aloft was made of long branches standing in a row down into the darkness, bent together and tied at the top to make a series of small arches. Bizarrely, they appeared dead black under his light. He touched one and his hand came away wet and sticky with an oil-like reddish substance, though it smelled more metallic than that. Perhaps it was the air he smelled, air like that before a storm, charged with electricity. Or maybe the winds had changed, and the hydro station fire had penetrated further into the Douglas Creek land. He wiped his fingers on one of the Tim Hortons napkins he’d stashed in his pocket, then shone his Maglite along the ground. He could see the remnants in the dirt of some structure that had been buried there before, the frame of what looked like a small building. The protesters must have been trying to unearth it. What was so important, he wondered. Was it some archaeological discovery? Something of their ancestors there that they didn’t want claimed by the province? It looked like a sort of dwelling, but the geometry of the place was all wrong; the angles seemed too obtuse to bear without being driven mad. He still couldn’t tell where the door must have been—there was no evidence of the building ever having one, not unless it was carved in the hide of the tent above.
    There was something else, something other than the lack of doors or windows in a place that was clearly once home to too many. In the dirt at his feet, small objects screamed like tiny shiny gems. They caught his eye, and he bent down to pick one up. They looked like teeth, sharp canine teeth of a large predator, and mixed in with them were long black claws, curved and thick. They were spread across the dirt floor, and Harvey was confident they hadn’t been unearthed but instead left there recently, as though part of some strange ceremony. That would explain the foulness in the air—rituals and customs performed, tying the natives to the earth and its creatures. Maybe the protesters were trying to ward off Henco and the destruction it might bring, or instead punish it for what it had already done. Henco deserved it. Deserved punishment for its actions, deserved it as much as he did when Harvey saw his daughter’s face staring at him, her eyes dark and soulless and unforgiving. The guilt overwhelmed him, made him angry, and everything around him shook. Dirt trickled down the walls of the hole, and somewhere closer than possible he heard himself panting like an animal. When he managed to calm himself, he found his fist clenched, and opening it saw that the sharp tooth had bitten through his skin. He threw it to the ground and rubbed the wound on his pant leg, then raised the flashlight high.
    Farther into the remains of the excavated building, he was surprised by what the Six Nations had unearthed—a series of wooden structures like tables, or possibly bunks. He