On their way to North House, the women pass Bone Island, a place where Native Americans originally took their dead in the winters. When the white settlers came, the settlers took their pigs there. The pigs spread enough diseases to wipe out three tribes. Angel feels she can hear “the tragic crying of wind, weeping for what happened there” (196).

At North House, a German woman greets the women and the group stays there a few days, feeling “something jarring about” human activity (199). A package arrives from John Husk with Agnes’s forgotten bear coat and a letter from Tommy saying that he may travel north to meet them at the Fat-Eaters’ land. 

When the women are back in the canoe, they all feel better and more in tune with nature again. Agnes briefly heals as a result of having her coat, but then her fever redevelops. The women hurry to the Flower Islands to get what they need to heal Agnes; Angel, who dreamt of the plant, is entrusted with finding it. She navigates the way with her canoe and it takes her a long while to find the redroot plant. She follows Dora-Rouge’s instructions and digs the plants up at night, but when she returns, it’s too late; Agnes has already died. Devastated, Angel sleeps under the cover of Agnes’s bear coat and wakes up crying, thinking that she has seen Agnes and the bear walking together in a yellow sky. Dora-Rouge blames herself for Agnes’s death, which Angel later learns was part of her deal with the waters of the wild Se Nay river. 

The mudflats are vast and the remaining women cannot cross them, having no choice but “to turn back and go in another exhausting direction” (211). They are uncertain of how long it will take them to reach Two-Town, their next destination, and their food is running out. The mood is bleak: “for all we knew, the next corner we rounded would be just as unappeasable as this, just as ruined” (211). 

When they land, Angel feels doubtful about their mission: “For what had we done this? For two women to die? For me to find a mother who had only injured me in the past? For Bush’s ideas about justice, and her rage over how governments treated their earthbound people?” (212). In Two-Town, ten minutes from where the women land, the townspeople are all gathered out of sight to talk about the continued building of the dams. They meet a large man called Orensen; Bush sends for someone to collect Agnes’ body, which they had to leave in the South.

Later that afternoon, a search team returns, saying that Agnes is nowhere to be found, but that her canoe looked as though it had been chewed up. The women stay with a woman called Mrs. Lampier. Bush steals a wicker wheelchair for Dora-Rouge from a little church in town, claiming that she is only borrowing it.

The landscape of their Fat-Eater destination is “a raw and scarred place, a land that had learned to survive, even to thrive, on harshness” (224). Angel soon feels “a sympathy” with the landscape and marvels at how water ran across all the surfaces “in every way that it could” and shaped all the land and vegetation (224). The land is also “angry” and would put an end to plans for dams and bridges by “the blue, cold roaring of ice no one was able to control” (224). Natives would be happy with the damage, which reflects how water is more powerful than any colonist and more determined to have its own way. 

The human picture of the Fat-Eaters’ land is less triumphant than envisioned, as most of the people at the territory’s outermost edges had been resettled and their moods range from “despondent” to suicidal (225). The resettled people are “in pain” and so unmotivated that they sniff glue and become young parents who feed their neglected infants beer, which is the only thing that can dull the pain (226). Most of the people are simply too broken to fight the building of the dams. Dora-Rouge is devastated that her native land has become almost unrecognizable. Angel laments that “Dora-Rouge had gone home to die in a place that existed in her mind as one thing; in reality it was something altogether different” (225).

The women hear about Hannah from a few sources, which makes Angel all the more anxious to find her. One day, Angel spots Hannah, “a redheaded woman with dark skin,” next to Dora-Rouge and a man called Tulik. Angel is engulfed by “a cold stillness” (229). It is obvious from a single glance that Hannah “still resided in a dangerous world,” but nevertheless, Angel wants to see “what there was between this woman” and her (230). They go to Tulik’s house (Lynx House) for some privacy and Angel realizes that Hannah fears Angel more than the other way round. It is heartbreaking for Angel to see for herself “that there was no love inside [Hannah], nothing that could love [Angel], nothing that could ever have loved” (231). Hannah leaves and Angel is heartbroken, having come all this way.

Although Angel tries again to contact Hannah, she doesn’t see her until two weeks later, when Hannah is dying. They are evicted from Mrs. Lampier’s and make an attempt at finding a new place, so they move into Tulik’s house. Tulik is a tribal judge, an elder, and lives with his daughter, Auntie, his grandson, and their dog, Mika. Despite the lack of privacy, Angel settles and grows to become fond of Tulik, who is deeply wise and connected to the land. 

A letter from John Husk arrives for Agnes. He has not yet heard of her death, and he announces that he will arrive soon.