Trickster Drift

The second installment in Eden Robinson's Trickster trilogy, Trickster Drift follows Jared Martin, a nearly eighteen-year-old Haisla/Heiltsuk young man approaching his first anniversary of sobriety, as he leaves Kitimat, British Columbia, for Vancouver to retake prerequisites at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) for a medical sonography program. Jared is the son of Maggie Martin, a volatile but fiercely protective witch, and Wee'git, a shape-shifting Trickster figure from Indigenous mythology. Despite this supernatural parentage, Jared wants nothing more than a normal life free of magic.

Before leaving, Jared visits Maggie for a tense farewell dinner. She mocks his sobriety, objects to his plan to stay with her unreliable ex, Death Threat, and reveals she has contacted her estranged sister, Mavis Moody, to offer Jared a place to stay instead. This represents an enormous sacrifice: Mave once tried to gain custody of infant Jared, causing a permanent rift between the sisters. That night, Maggie discovers Jared has been corresponding with Granny Nita, his maternal grandmother, who has been writing about her legal battle for compensation for abuse she experienced at a residential school, a government institution where Indigenous children were forcibly sent. Furious, Maggie forces a psychic connection with Jared, letting him feel her raw betrayal and her capacity to curse him.

Jared hitchhikes to Terrace, stopping to visit his adoptive father, Phil Martin, who is on disability. During the Greyhound ride, he reflects on his breakup with Sarah Jaks, his first girlfriend, whose combined magical abilities with his produced dangerous supernatural events, including a trip to a spirit world that attracted hostile, shape-shifting river otters. He also thinks about Nana Sophia, Phil's mother, who loved Jared as her grandson until she discovered he was not her blood relative.

At a Vancouver hostel, Jared wakes to find David Thompson, Maggie's former boyfriend who tortured Jared as a child by slowly breaking his ribs, standing over him in the dark. David insists their restraining order has expired. Jared photographs David and posts the images to Facebook, then cycles through AA meetings to manage his panic. Death Threat arrives and reveals the promised job is a traveling drug operation; when Jared declines, Death punches him and drives off, leaving Jared without housing.

Curious about his father's family, Jared visits Georgina Smith, who claims to be Wee'git's sister, at her compound in Ladner, south of Vancouver. During a barbecue, Georgina's young grandson Cedar peels off his human skin to reveal a wolf pup. Jared flees in terror, his memories of the otter attack flooding back. In a shared dream, Georgina hints that Jared's abilities are greater than he realizes.

Two reunions shift Jared's circumstances. Sophia Martin appears at the hostel, offering legal help against David. Jared also reconciles with Maggie via text; she warns him to stay with Mave until the David situation resolves. Sophia later couriers Jared a notarized copy of his old restraining order and her powder-blue Vespa scooter.

Out of housing options, Jared texts Mave, who arrives with metallic birthday balloons, one for each year she missed. Her apartment in East Vancouver is buried under books. A previous tenant painted the walls with elaborate murals depicting supernatural creatures from Tanis stories, including Man-Eating Birds; Jared's bedroom features floating disembodied heads in painted fog and a dolphin city across the floor. Jared meets Justice Moody, Mave's adopted daughter, a trans woman who fixes cars, and Hank, Mave's protective cousin who works security. Mave offers the room rent-free.

Jared discovers that a man in a green bathrobe watching TV is not a roommate but a ghost named Dent. They strike a deal: Dent tutors Jared in physics and biology in exchange for the TV staying on the science fiction channel. David, meanwhile, escalates his stalking, sending photos of Jared walking to his overnight doughnut-frying job and eventually striking him with a truck door. The ghost Shu, a centuries-old protector of Jared's cousin Olive's family whom Jared initially mistook for a child in a zombie costume, warns him in time to soften the blow. During an out-of-body experience, Jared encounters a pale creature living in the apartment wall; Olive's daughter Eliza, who can see spirits, and Shu help guide his spirit back into his body.

Sarah resurfaces in Vancouver without her usual swarm of fireflies, mysterious supernatural beings that normally accompany her; a man posing as a medicine man ate most of them. As Jared lies beside her, faint fireflies appear above the bed, seemingly revived by the painted heads in the wall. They attempt to speak through Jared, begging for help returning to their home dimension, but he refuses. He gives Sarah money to fly north to visit her dying grandmother, Mrs. Jaks.

That night, Mrs. Jaks's spirit visits Jared, filling him with overwhelming love. All grief and fear drain away, but so do his other emotions. In this numbness, Jared builds a Molotov cocktail and firebombs David's car. When Neeka, a sea otter woman who has recently inserted herself into Jared's life, touches him, the emotional wall shatters and he collapses with grief. Weeks earlier, Neeka had grabbed Jared off the street, tasted his blood, and explained that Wee'git stole her people's skins, trapping them in human bodies. She sees Jared as her closest link to the Trickster and warns that the magic in his apartment is transforming him.

David's stalking culminates when he ambushes Jared in an alley, strikes him with a pipe, and forces vodka down his throat, breaking Jared's year of sobriety. David douses him in alcohol and lights a match. In a moment of survival instinct, Jared sheds his human form and transforms into a large bird with blue-black feathers. He takes flight over Vancouver, then crashes through Mave's balcony door, naked, his injuries healed. He picks up a new white chip at a meeting, acknowledging Day One and the possibility he may never return to normal.

Meanwhile, Shu curses Olive's abusive ex-husband Aiden, depleting herself so severely that she sinks into the painted dolphin city on Jared's floor, which turns out to be a pocket universe. Dent follows, and both become trapped. Desperate, Jared calls Georgina, remembering her promise to help. She arrives and drops her human disguise: She unhinges her jaw, inhales every spirit, and devours the murals' magical energy, stripping the walls bare. She drags Jared into the dolphin world and begins slaughtering its inhabitants, declaring a new hunting ground for her coy wolf pack, a family of hybrid shape-shifters, and ordering wolves to capture Sarah, Mave, Maggie, and Jared's cousins.

To protect everyone, Jared merges with the fireflies, dissolving into golden threads. They carry him to their barren, airless homeworld, and through their connection, Georgina and all the coy wolves are transported too. The wolves suffocate. Georgina, partly mortal, survives and begins killing Jared, resurrecting him, and eating him alive in a cycle of punishment. Floating as a ghost tethered to his consumed body, Jared sings Nickelback's "Someday" to provoke her until she releases him in fury. A single firefly dissolves him into threads and carries him home.

Jared materializes naked on the floor of his childhood basement in Kitimat, in the house his mother has sold. Georgina remains alive in the barren dimension, vowing to return. Paralyzed by fear of what he has become, a being who can transform into a raven, dissolve into light, and heal his own injuries, Jared lies on the cold floor, unable to move or speak. The story continues in the final volume of the trilogy.