The Portal Keeper

Morgan is still dealing with that mix of emotions (See Excerpt), and so Eli leaves her with Emily and goes off to explore the area with his dog, Red. Although he’s never been to this part of World’s End, Eli experiences a “pull”, the sense of familiarity and belonging that he feels when on his family’s trapline. “It was blood memory. . . It felt as though he’d been born to it, . . . as though he’d come straight from the womb of mother earth.” (p. 3) After taking the time and space that she needs, Morgan notices that Eli is “weirded out” and wants to know why. He talks about The Pull, but none of the three can quite understand it. Morgan suggests that they journey to Misewa, confident that they can find the answers there. They set out on a journey for which they have enough time – one week of Misewa time, at the most - before they have to return to their hotel in Norway House.

They head west from the boulder portal, and, although it is a great day for a hike, by the time they stop to camp for the evening, Eli starts to have misgivings. Morgan convinces him that even if their visit to Misewa is a short one, if the villagers can offer answers to his questions, the quest is worth it. That night, as their meal cooks on a large flat rock, he recalls the time his soul was stolen, the story told in the series’ previous novel, The Stone Child. “The only thing he could remember of the time his soul was out of his body was visiting Morgan in her dreams . . . Images of a mountain top and being lowered down into his sister’s arms by a thread, through a hole in the sky.” (p. 19) After dinner and storytelling, Eli has the first of several significant and vivid dreams. He dreams of standing on a tall mountain, and, as a storm breaks, the eagle Kihiw flies to him, catches him in his talons and carries him to an opening in the sky, like a whirlpool with a tunnel. The eagle drops Eli through the hole and into a lake on the family trapline. Finding his way to shore, he gazes at his reflection. The Eli in the reflection is at the camp on Aski while the Eli who is dreaming is at home on the trapline. When he awakens, he puzzles over the dream, and, on the walk to Misewa, he replays it in his mind repeatedly.

The Portal Keeper is Book 4 of “The Misewa Saga”, and no journey in this series proceeds without incident. The travellers didn’t provision themselves well, and their foraging is not successful. When Red catches scent of something tasty, he leads them to a clearing where a chunk of cooked meat is hanging from a rope. It’s obviously a trap, but the ravenous dog lunges for the meat, and, when Emily grabs him, all four are swept into a concealed net, leaving them dangling in the air. They try to free themselves with Eli’s knife, but it’s a slow task. Earlier, on the trail, Morgan thought that she saw a large bird flying in the area, and rescue comes when Pip, leader of the Bird Warriors (brave fighters in the battle featured in The Great Bear) swoops down, slices through the ropes with his sword, and frees them. Time has passed, the band of Bird Warriors has been decimated, and Pip, a robin, is now accompanied only by two others, a blue jay named Pick and a bittern named Chaos, and all three bear bladed weapons.

The Warriors recognize Morgan and Eli from their past battle, but they have a somewhat unpleasant task: they must take Eli, Morgan, and Emily to a place called Ministik for “vetting” (p. 40), a euphemism for interrogation. As they march along in single file, Pip tells a story of betrayal by another bird, Tack, who conspired with Mason, the man who stole the summer birds and brought endless winter, the White Time. As the story concludes, Eli again feels The Pull, and they arrive at Ministik, a village “in the center of a large clearing . . . like an island in the middle of an ocean.” (p. 55) The inhabitants of Ministik are like those in Misewa, bipedal animals, speaking both in English and in “the good words”, Cree. They wear hides stained red and have red ochre designs on their faces. Significantly, the walls of their Council Hut are decorated with images that connect with Eli’s earlier dream. The walk ends at a lodge where the humans are prisoners, the doors guarded by the Bird Warriors.

Why are they being kept under guard? That night, a wolverine named Ashek, the Chief of Ministik, visits them and tells them that they will be held until it is determined if they are humans who have done harm to Ministik’s inhabitants. After a very nourishing dinner, they learn that animals suddenly started to disappear when they went out foraging. Sasak, a chipmunk, saw what was happening, and, as a result, the traps in which the Eli, Morgan, and Emily were caught were set for the humans who were kidnapping the Ministik villagers. Eli offers to help: “We’ve been on so many journeys here in the North Country” . . . “if the beings in Misewa are our relatives, then so are the beings here. We would always help them, and we can help you.” (Pp. 67-68) Ashek is wary, but Ace, a lynx who served them their dinner believes Eli, as does Sasak. After Ace’s confident assertion that he can convince Ashek of their good intentions, Eli falls asleep and has another dream.

This time, Eli is inside one of the houses in Ministik, empty because its owners have disappeared. He sees a painting on the wall, and the images come to life, like a movie. It is the story of a woman who comes to Aski through a hole in the sky. Her eyes are starlike, and she settles in Ministik where she meets a human being, a man recently arrived from elsewhere. They meet, fall in love, and have a child. There is something unusual about their child’s eyes; one is normal, but the other is a star, like his mother’s. The dream is brief, “like a strobe light flash. Here, then gone.” (p. 76) Morning dawns, and, at the Council Hut, more is learned about the events of the past year and the circumstances in which the disappearances took place. Ashek frees them and asks that they journey to the south, accompanied by Sasak and Ace. It’s not the direction they had planned to take, but Eli, Morgan, and Emily are used to detours. “It’s always different,” Morgan said. “And it’s always dangerous.” (p. 84) She’s right about both.

Sasak and Ace are good company and good storytellers. When Morgan learns that Sasak knows Mahikan, she recounts how she encountered Mahikan again as she searched for Eli’s soul, stolen by a mistapew (The Stone Child). There is a mistapew (giant) in the area as well, and, when Eli asks why they take souls, Sasak tells him a surprising fact. “They don’t steal souls just to steal souls.” . . . “They aren’t evil.” (p. 93) However, they are keepers of portals and can open them with a special power that only they possess. As to why some portals have a soul and some do not, that’s unknown.

They arrive at the site where Sasak witnessed the capture of the other animals, and, once there, he describes the three humans who attacked: all adults, wearing black and holding black weapons. Threatened by guns, the animals were bound, their heads bagged with black hoods and then marched away to the Land of the Sleeping Giant. As they continue the journey, Sasak tells the story of the Sleeping Giant, and, as Eli listens, he thinks back to stories his grandfather told him about a similar trickster character, stories which are similar and yet different in some details. That night, Eli dreams of finding himself in a forest where spiderwebs hang from tree branches. Red is barking in distress, and, as Eli walks through the forest, the webs grab him and cocoon him. Immobilized, he falls and then watches as his body drops from a small hole in the sky. The webs that cocooned him unravel “from around his body, like a thread being pulled from a sweater.” (p. 111) A man and woman are waiting for him on the mountain of his previous dream, and he feels The Pull as they stretch out their arms for him. Eli now sees himself as an infant. Eli knows that the man is his father, but who is the woman who remains a shadow? As he is sung a traditional song, “Baby Eli’s eyes grew heavy, and as soon as his eyes shut, he felt The Pull suck him into his younger self, and he became the child.” (p. 113)

The dream ends abruptly when he hears Sasak shout “Run!” Danger has arrived, and the three children and their animal companions are ambushed by the kidnappers who terrorized the Ministik villagers. These men capture Ace and Sasak and then tie up the kids, leaving them otherwise unharmed. With Eli’s knife, they free themselves, but, when they return to their camp, they see evidence of ruin: the animals have been victims of violence, and drag marks on the ground make it obvious that they have been taken in the direction of the Land of the Sleeping Giant. Pulled by the presence of another portal, Eli follows the tracks, and the group arrives at the end of the forest and the form of the Sleeping Giant, a great horizontal stone mistapew, stretched out on the ground before them. They are truly at World’s End and don’t know what to do next.

They return to Ministik, tell the story to the villagers, who respect their effort even though they failed in the rescue attempt and two more of their relatives have been captured. From there, the group heads for the portal, and, along the way, Eli experiences a tingling sensation. It’s happened before, but, this time, his body starts to disappear, and a vortex forms in front him. The three of them try to make sense of his experience in which Eli says he feels as if he’s “leaving”. Morgan thinks that he’s “probably leaving where we were and going somewhere else.” (p. 146) But where? Once at the boulder, they return to earth, then to the hotel in Norway House, and that night, Eli has another dream. This time, it is the story of Star Woman, and he finds himself standing “face-to-face with a woman bathed in light. Her eyes were closed. She was so tall . . . She opened her eyes, and everything went blinding white. Her eyes were stars. Eli shielded his eyes with his forearm.” (p. 160) Who is Star Woman and why does she figure in Eli’s dream’s? The answer, for the time being, is on hold.

That morning, Katie and the three kids have been invited for breakfast at the home of Morgan’s kokum, Eleanor. Eleanor is a beautiful, strong and hard-working woman, completely accepting of Katie’s role in her granddaughter’s life and of Morgan and Emily’s relationship as “girlfriends”. At her kokum’s, Morgan visits the room which she had seen so often in her dreams, the room from which she was taken from her mother, and, with the sight of it, finds acceptance, and perhaps, peace. After breakfast, Eleanor and Morgan head down to a lake to spend time together, leaving the others behind. Emily turns on the television (only one static-plagued channel is available) and watches a story about a zoo where “some kind of new species of animal or something [has] been discovered.” (p. 176) The reception may be lousy, but it’s clear that the animal in the feature story is a lynx, wearing clothes, its face dabbed with red ocher. It’s Ace. Morgan has long feared that, if humans travelled to Aski, they would take animals back to earth for some potentially awful fate. Clearly, they must go back and do something.

In order to return to Ministik, Eli, Emily and Morgan have to tell Katie the secret of the portal. Katie finds the whole concept completely improbable, believing it to be an outcome of their past trauma, and that imagining is a coping mechanism. Eleanor believes them, but Katie is adamant that she needs some sort of proof of the truth of their story. Suddenly, Emily remembers that the moccasins Morgan is wearing are Jenny’s. Mother and daughter switched footwear during their visit in the previous novel because Morgan’s mocs had a hole in them. Jenny had left Morgan’s moccasins at Eleanor’s, and, when Eleanor retrieves them, Katie relents. Eli now knows that he can create a portal and does so, right in front of the television in Eleanor’s living room. The whole world of Aski appears before them, and so do Arik and Mahikan. The children step into Aski and are back in Misewa. “They were home again.” (p. 200)

Months have passed since their last visit, and, as a result, many of their animal friends have aged greatly, especially Muskwa, the Great Bear. They are welcomed by the Misewa villagers, and, in the evening, Morgan tells of all that has happened since their last visit. Arik is very interested in Eli’s ability because other than giants, the mistapewak, no other beings can open a portal. His power to open a portal by will alone marks him as special. The only other being known to have that ability is Star Woman.

The next day, the group are given the Chief and Council’s blessing to have Mahikan and Ark accompany them to Ministik. It’s a hard journey, and, in the morning of their arrival in World’s End, Eli tells Mahikan of his recurrent dream of Star Woman. Eli wants to know what happened to the man she was with and to their child. Nothing is known for certain about any of them. But the man who was with Star Woman was from earth and “left as soon as Star Woman did, heartbroken . . . They left so quickly that it was as if the man had opened his own portal.” (p. 225) Neither was seen again. As for their child, no one knows what happened to him, either. All that is known is that he is half human and “half from the stars.”

When they reach Ministik, they see the village in flames, and many of the animals are captive while others have been killed by the same human marauders as before. As in the previous novels of the “Misewa Saga”, fierce battle ensues, and, this time, it seems as if the brave party of humans, Bird Warriors, Arik, and Mahikan is outnumbered and out weaponed. But the three kidnappers meet the fate they deserve, and, as the story ends, Mahikan vows that “the time will come to seek revenge.” (p. 238) he time must also come to save the animals that have been stolen and taken to the zoos. After burying the dead, Emily, Morgan, and Eli go to the ruins of the Council House and look at the last of it containing the stories of the village’s history. Even though the images burn, there are living beings who know the stories and will pass them down. Morgan is focused on one of the pictures, the story of Star Woman, the man she loved and their child. At that moment, Morgan tells Eli that “you are the story,” (p. 243) a living being who will pass down the stories they have viewed and that he has dreamed. Eli now realizes that he is half human and half from the stars because Star Woman was his mother.

Previous novels of “The Misewa Saga” could be read as individual works, but not this one. In The Portal Keeper, Robertson references events and characters from the past novels, but without readers having read the other three books, a great deal would be missed. This really is Eli’s story, a story of someone wrestling with a new-found power and all the questions that it brings to him as the child of Star Woman. In contrast, Morgan has met her mom and, by her own admission, now has a sense of closure. Although the physicality of Emily and Morgan’s relationship is still in the handholding, cuddling, and kissing stage, there’s no doubt that it’s love and not just friendship. When Morgan introduces Emily to her kokum as her “girlfriend”, both Katie (Morgan’s stepmom) and Eleanor are both “okay” with the announcement. Eleanor, Morgan’s kokum, is understanding, quietly wise, and open to possibility. Unlike the first three novels of the series, there’s little time travel in The Portal Keeper. This book takes place almost entirely in the North Country, except for the brief return to Norway House before the end of the novel. The landscape of this story is also different, and I found myself frequently checking the map at the front of the book just to have a better sense of where the quest was taking them.

Robertson honours traditional Indigenous culture, weaving it seamlessly into the narrative, but he also continues to connect to current popular culture. There are plenty of references to the “Star Wars” movies, as well as to Shrek (another story with anthropomorphic animals) and the time-travel movie, Back to the Future. Some male readers might be put off by Morgan and Emily’s romantic banter, but the fights with the animal kidnappers are epic and more than make up for the “mushy” stuff (which really isn’t too mushy). As in the previous Misewa books, a Glossary of Swampy Cree offers both pronunciation and meanings of “the good words” spoken in that language. Once a series gains momentum, it’s hard to stop, and readers of the first three Misewa novels will be intrigued by Eli’s parentage. And, at the end of The Portal Keeper, they’ll want to know what happened to those kidnapped animals as well.