Free Sacred Ground by Barbara Wood

her raven and she wondered in terror if she and the boys had broken a taboo and were now being punished.
    And then her birth pains struck.
    Leaving the boys beneath the tree, she plunged into the downpour to search for shelter. Blinded by rain, she groped and stumbled over rocks and brush, searching the rocky base of the mountains for somewhere dry and out of the storm.
    Finally, through the torrent, she glimpsed the black bird-shape, gliding sleekly into the wind and rain, drawing her toward a towering jumble of rocks. Here Raven perched, shaking his feathers and blinking at her in silent communication. Marimi explored around the rocks, slipping and sliding on the sodden ground, and found that the boulders hid the entrance to a ravine. Going farther into the small canyon, she blinked and saw the entrance to a cave, where she and the boys could be warm and dry and protected from the storm. Later, after her baby was born and her strength returned, Marimi would go back to the boulders and carve two petroglyphs into the rock: the symbol of her raven, in gratitude for having guided them here, and the symbol of the moon, for having answered her prayers.
    * * *
    Marimi was not surprised when she gave birth to twin girls. She came from a long line of women who gave birth only to daughters. When Marimi’s strength returned, the raven flew to the top of the ridge, with Marimi and her babies, Wanchem and Payat following. There they climbed to the crest and stood transfixed for a long time.
    They had arrived at the edge of the world, for before them stretched the largest expanse of water Marimi had ever seen. There was the land of the dead, she thought, the place to where the Topaa went after they died. It was breathtaking in its majesty.
    The raven had come to rest in an oak tree. He had something in his beak. He dropped it, before flying off forever. Marimi picked it up, a strange, beautiful stone, perfectly round and, smooth, blue-black like a raven’s feather. When she curled her fingers around it she felt the power of the raven-spirit in it.
    She looked again out at the body of pale blue water and saw, closer in on the distant shore, tall thin columns of smoke from cookfires. She said to the two boys and to the babies in her arms, “We will not meet those people, for they will have customs and taboos and laws that are different from ours. We were outcast and now we will be our own people. This is our home now. We will call this the Place of the People,” she said, putting together the words in her language: Topaa , meaning “the people,” and ngna , meaning “the place of.”
    * * *
    They stopped living in the cave at Topaa-ngna and moved to the marshy plain just inland from the ocean, not far from the foothills. They built round shelters and hunted small game and went once a year into the mountains to harvest acorns. Marimi visited the cave whenever she sought counsel from her raven and from the moon. She would feel the spirit gift come upon her and she would blindly make her way up the little canyon, her head filled with pain, and she would sit in the darkness of the cave while the visions came upon her. In this way were the laws of her new family given to her.
    Marimi understood the vital importance of a person knowing his clan and his second family and first family. Because if a person didn’t know these, he might commit taboo without knowing it. So she tried to construct Wanchem’s lineage. Because the raven led her to him, she decided he was of the Raven Clan. His second family were People Who Live With The Cactus. And his first family was Marimi’s new one: “people who eat acorns.”
    The little family flourished and grew. In their fourth winter in the mountains snow fell, covering every branch and creek. A bear hunter, having lost his way, sought shelter in Marimi’s cave, where she found him. He stayed with the family until spring and then continued on his way. In the summer, Marimi brought forth the hunter’s