Fleur

“Fleur” starts and ends on Lake Turcot. At the beginning of the story, Fleur drowns twice, and her fellow Chippewa believe she derives some power from surviving those drownings, as death by water is “the death a Chippewa cannot survive” (177). At the end of the story, Fleur is living a quiet life, “down on Lake Turcot with her boat” (189). Of particular import to the Chippewa in the story is Fleur’s relationship with Misshepeshu, “the water man, the monster”; he is described as a “thing of dry foam, a thing of death by drowning” (177). Some fear Fleur because Misshepeshu seems determined to claim her, and some believe she has married him by the end of the story, and that he may be the father of Fleur’s child with “green eyes and skin the color of an old penny”—language similar to an early description of Misshepeshu in the story (189). Water often serves as a metaphor for cleansing and purity, but in “Fleur,” waters suggest threats and danger to outsiders. For Fleur herself, the water is a place of rebirth—she drowns and gets reborn with powers. When she ends up close to the lake again, her life is “quiet” again.