Free Sacred Ground by Barbara Wood Page B

to hear their children’s voices, but only if they were respectful and obedient and promised to be reverent. Under such terms did the gods protect their children and provide well for them.
    Every now and then, as the years passed, Marimi would pause in her labors and look to the east, where a small yellow sun was breaking over the summits, and she would think of her mother and the clan, and she felt a special pain in her heart.
    * * *
    When Marimi’s hair was as white as the snow that had brought the bear hunter long ago and she knew she must soon make the journey west over the ocean to join her ancestors, she spent all her days in the cave, mixing paints: red, from alder bark; black, from elderberries; yellow, from buttercups; purple, from sunflowers. With these she painstakingly recorded her journey across the Great Desert in pictographs on the cave wall so that future Topaa would know the story of their tribe.
    Finally, she lay dying, surrounded by her family. Although they were now nine families from five tribes and four clans, and brothers of one group had married sisters from another, and strangers who had wandered in to marry extra daughters, ultimately, the youngest generation were all descended from Marimi. She had taught them to hunt and to gather nuts, to weave baskets and sing the songs of their ancestors, to revere Mother Moon, and to live harmoniously with the spirits that inhabited every animal, rock, and tree. She told them never to forget that they were Topaa.
    Payat was there, himself now a grandfather, and he smiled sadly as Marimi laid her hand on his head in benediction. “Remember,” she said, “there will be no outcasts in my family, there will be no living dead as you and I once were. Teach our people not to live in fear and helplessness as we once did, but in love and peace.”
    She said: “And remember to tell the children our story, about our journey from the east, about how we caused the earth to tremble when we stepped on Grandfather Tortoise’s burrow, how we found Wanchem by the magical stream, how Mother Moon protected us and lighted our way. Teach our children to remember these stories and to tell them to their children, so that Topaa in generations to come will know their beginnings.”
    Marimi then summoned her great-granddaughter, who had since infancy suffered from blinding headaches and visions, which Marimi no longer saw as an affliction but as a blessing, and she placed her hand upon the girl’s head, and said, “The gods have chosen you, my daughter. They have given you the spirit-gift. So now I give my name to you for I am to join our ancestors, and by taking my name you will become me, Marimi, clan medicine woman.”
    They buried her with great ceremony in the cave at Topaa-ngna, sending her spirit to the West with her medicine pouches, her spear thrower, her hairpins and earrings. But the sacred raven’s spirit-stone they kept, draping it around the neck of the chosen girl, now named Marimi, who would be the clan medicine woman and whose duty it would be to tend the cave of the First Mother for the rest of her life.

Chapter Three
    Your name is Walks With The Sun and you were out with a hunting party; you strayed too far and got lost, so you settled here and made this place your home.
    No, Erica, thought as she studied the photographs she had taken of the skeleton in the cave. This woman would never get lost.
    You are Seal Woman and you sailed down from the northwest in a long canoe, you and your lover running away from tribal taboos that forbade you to marry.
    Or you came from islands far to the west, long sunk back into the sea, and you were named for a goddess.
    Pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger, Erica leaned back from her worktable and stretched, rolling her head and shrugging her shoulders to get the stiffness out. She looked at the time. Where had the hours flown?
    As she reached for her cold coffee she contemplated the mess piled on the