It's hard to say which nation currently has the most right to feel outrage over the ongoing state of affairs in the United States but, of all the many candidates, Canada -- our peaceful and amiable neighbor and longtime ally to the north -- probably has more reason than most to feel betrayed by the Trump administration's aggressive maneuvers, random tariffs, and insulting and dismissive remarks. Canada, which has been a good friend to the U.S. ever since that little misunderstanding in the early 1800s, has suffered a great deal of verbal and economic abuse over the past year, and its people have good cause to be angry and suspicious of actions by the American military and federal agents patrolling the borders.

Charles de Lint, an acclaimed Canadian writer of urban fantasy, has given voice to some of those feelings in a novelette titled, appropriately enough, ICE Out. Just 29 pages long, the story is set in de Lint's fictional North American city of Newford, which has played host to many of his mythic novels and short stories over the years.

In Newford, as well as a few other locations he has visited and revisited throughout his career, the fey, the supernatural and the old gods exist among us ... usually at the periphery of most people's experience, although, in recent years, the fantastic elements of Newford life have become fairly common and mainstream for its residents. (If you aren't already familiar with de Lint's work, be sure to check him out. Many of his novels and short stories have been reviewed here. Dreams Underfoot, a collection of short stories from the very start of de Lint's Newford cycle, is a great place to start.)

In summarizing ICE Out on social media, de Lint is charmingly succinct: "ICE came to Newford. Big mistake." He prefaces the story with an apt quotation from Martin Luther King Jr.: "The time is always right to do what is right."

The story focuses on a couple of cousins, ancient beings of the corvid and canid races who move in and out of our reality as easily as we might walk down a hallway. Initially unaware of the ICE incursion into their city, one of them stumbles into an ICE raid in progress, and his patience snaps when he sees an agent push a pregnant, middle-aged and zip-tied Mexican woman to the ground.

Although killing is within the power of these beings, it's not their preferred solution to the problem. "They like disappearing people," one observes. "Maybe it's time they see what it feels like when they're the ones being disappeared." Remember, the cousins can cross realities, so the suggestion is not as outlandish or impossible as it might sound.

Typically, these powerful beings don't interfere with mortal affairs. But Newford is a special place, a sanctuary for folks both human and non, so they make an exception. Just this once. ICE, they decide, has to leave their city and its people alone.

Joe CrazyDog and the other cousins aren't working alone. Juniper Wiles, heroine of the last few de Lint novels, gets involved. Jilly Coppercorn, de Lint's most perennial character, makes an appearance, along with Saskia, the crow girls Maida and Zia, and several other characters who've been featured in past stories. Here, they are working together to eliminate a threat to the common good.

Their solution to the problem isn't exactly ... peaceful. As one of the cousins explains:

Jilly says in the best stories heroes don't prevail because they're the toughest, the strongest, the meanest. They prevail because they operate from a base of protection and kindness and love. The seventh son will strike back if he's attacked, but he never provokes the fight. The swan maiden, the donkey girl. They prevail because they don't lose hope and they outsmart their opponents. And there's always help from unforeseen quarters. The spoon. The rabbit freed from a snare, the sparrow from a bag. The old woman to whom you gave the last of your bread and cheese.

It's kindness that gains you allies. It's loyalty that inspires the weakest to do their best.

It sounds good but I don't know from fairy tales. We cousins have different stories and they don't always have pretty endings.

Unfortunately, the characters in the story are well aware that, whatever they have done to resolve the ICE situation in Newford, the problem isn't going away elsewhere in America. "This same thing is happening in other cities all over the country," Jilly says. "This malignant idea is spreading everywhere, infecting communities across the continent." But people who are unfortunate enough to live outside of Newford can't look to the mythic world for a savior, Joe tells her.

We can't save everybody. ... Mostly those people have to help themselves. Do what the people at the fence here are doing. Protest, document, vote out the parasites that have put all of this in motion when the time comes. They might have to put themselves on the line. Some people, too many of them, are happy with the status quo.

Of course, real problems aren't always so easily or neatly resolved. As the mayor of Newford says, "The one thing this administration hates almost more than anything is to lose face." In response, she's told: "I think they hate immigrants and women and people of colour and anyone with an education even more."

At the end of the day, people of good heart and good spirit must recognize that no one, fey or otherwise, is going to step out of the shadows and fix these problems for us. But, for the time it takes to read 29 pages, it feels pretty good to see the good guys win. So thanks, Charles, for this interlude of hope and inspiration.

Now, it's time to figure out how to repair our country without supernatural assistance.