Sacred Ground

by Mercedes Lackey

  Then she noticed something else. The objects were moving.

  Damn him. He's jumping the gun and getting them out of the house!

  She wanted to turn around and go right back, but she had better sense than that. A confrontation would only cost her. Her anger made her walk faster than she had before. She was halfway down the block, lost in her own plans, when she snapped to attention, alerted by the sound of someone running after her, someone wearing sneakers or other soft-soled shoes. Definitely chasing her; there was no doubt in Jennifer's mind.

  She stopped and turned, ready to defend herself if she needed to-and Gail Amberson, wearing a high-fashion jogging suit, matched pink-and-white Spandex shorts, shirt and sweatbands, nearly collided with her.

  "Excuse-" Jennifer gasped. Gail backed up a little, worry lines creasing her lovely, well-scrubbed face, and shoved a dusty cardboard box, brittle with age, at her.

  "Here," the woman said, glancing back over her shoulder furtively. Her ash-blond hair, cut in a shag style, flared a little with the nervous movement. "This is what you want. Take it, please!"

  Jennifer accepted the box reflexively, and the moment it touched her hands, she felt something very akin to an electrical shock. Whatever she was about to say was driven right out of her head. The sensation unnerved her enough that she lost the sense of what she had been thinking; lost even her previous anger.

  "But-" she stammered awkwardly, "I don't-"

  She glanced instinctively down at the package in her hands. The paper felt like dried leaves, and smelled of mildew. Now she saw that the box itself was wrapped in yellowed newspapers; the date on one page was May 15, 1902. It looked as if no one had touched this parcel for the past ninety years.

  "Ralph is having an appraiser in to look over everything grandfather left me," Gail interrupted, babbling her explanation, her brown eyes narrowed against the sun glaring down in both of them. "But he doesn't have any idea of what is in all those boxes or even how many boxes there are-he's so neat; he hates dust and dirt and you couldn't get him to handle the stuff himself for any amount of money. I had to unpack the crate myself." She laughed nervously, and looked back over her shoulder again. "He's so afraid of germs-but some friend of his told him what Indian things are going for these days and that just started him up. He's sure what we've got is worth a lot of money, and the minute that appraiser tells him anything he'll be sure it's worth twice or three times what the appraiser says. His brother's a lawyer; suing him wouldn't do anything to get what you want; anybody who's ever sued him has gotten tied up in countersuits until they gave up."

  "But-" Jennifer said again, still mentally dazzled by the throb of Power coming from the box in her hands. "Won't he know you gave me something?"

  Gail shook her head violently. "No, no, I promise! Right now, though, he doesn't have any idea this box exists. And it's what you want, I know it is," Gail continued, on a rising note of strain. "Whatever is in there has been giving me nightmares since the crate arrived."

  Her eyes widened with something very like fear as she glanced down at the box and away again. "You have to take it-just take it and go-"

  Jennifer cradled the box protectively against her chest, and the fear left Gail's eyes. "Thanks-" Jennifer managed, "Don't thank me." Gail Amberson shuddered, and now her eyes looked more haunted than frightened. Jennifer wondered what kind of dreams the box had given her. "I may never be able to watch another Western for the rest of my life."

  And with that, she wiped her hands convulsively on the legs of her running shorts, as if to rid them of something unpleasant, and jogged off down the street.

  Jennifer stared after her, watching until Gail turned a corner and vanished into the heart of the subdivision. She must have used running as an excuse to leave the house. One part of Jennifer's mind admired the woman for her quick thinking, while the rest of her vibrated on the very edge of trance just from being in contact with what was inside that innocuous cardboard container. And Gail Amberson had been absolutely correct-this was what she had come after, and there was nothing more back in that expensive paean to suburban living that she was even remotely interested in. Nothing. There was not even a whisper of Power in the Amberson house now, and Ralph could have whatever pots and beadwork, "tomahawks" and rifles that were left, with her blessing.

  And What Was In The Box was now purring with content that it was back in something approximating appropriate hands. There was no doubt in her mind that It knew who and what she was, just as she knew what at least one of the relics in The Box was. And a good thing it was happy with her, too. The Lakotah and the Osage were near-enough "relatives"-and Jennifer had more than enough of the proper training-that the artifacts in there were evidently content to "rest" until they were back in tribal custody. Jennifer wasn't surprised that Gail Amberson had been having nightmares. Anyone with any degree of sensitivity would have, especially with That working at him.

  A derisive caw made her look up. There was a raven watching her from atop a streetlight, an old one by the dusty feathers, the wear on his beak, and the way he was tilted a little to one side, as if one of his legs was weaker than the other. When the bird saw that she had seen him, he cawed again, but did not seem inclined to move. Not that she figured he would, all things considered.

  Well if I stand around out here, there's always a chance that dear hubby Amberson is going to spot me with a box in my hands and want to know where I got it. And while a rap of "robbery" would be easy enough to beat, since she hadn't gone anywhere inside the Amberson house, she didn't think it was polite to get Gail Amberson in trouble with her spouse after she had gone out of her way to smuggle The Box out to Jennifer Talldeer.

  She ignored the heat and sprinted to the Brat. She hadn't bothered to lock the doors, not here, and not since she really hadn't thought she'd be away from the truck for that long. She carefully and reverently placed The Box on the floorboards, started the engine, and drove away as quickly as the speed limit allowed, and didn't even take the time to reach over to turn on the air conditioning until she was six blocks away.

  And although The Box was content now, that did not mean it was any less powerful. It still throbbed, pulsating through Jennifer as if she were seated in a drum circle, and it certainly was not comfortable cargo to have aboard.

  It's like sitting next to an unexploded bomb, she thought, as The Box decided to make its contents known to her in a flash of insight as clear and distinct as a Polaroid. The vision of the Lakotah shamans creating their instruments of Power, colorful and as vivid as the real world, interposed itself between her eyes and the road for an instant, and it was a good thing that she was half prepared for something like that to happen, or she might have run into a ditch.

  It's FedEx for you, my friend, she told The Box. I am not having you in my presence for one minute longer than I can help. You just might take a notion to recall the days when the Osage and your people were something less than brothers. . . .

  Fortunately, there was a Federal Express pickup booth not that far from the Ambersons' subdivision.

  With the dry, cool air from the air-conditioning vents blowing onto her face and drying the sweat, and now that she was well out of Ralph Amberson's reach, she felt a little calmer. The Box still throbbed at her, but its contents seemed to understand what she intended to do about them, and unless she was terribly mistaken they might even be closing themselves back in. It would be a real good idea to go quiescent while FedEx has you, she thought at The Box silently. The less you rouse people, the more likely you are to make it home safe.

  Thank goodness she had her address book with her; she would be able to ship this thing directly into the hands of one of her Lakotah contacts without even having to call Grandfather to read the address off the Rolodex in the office.

  The girl minding the FedEx desk didn't show any particular interest as she packed The Box by nesting it in progressively larger containers, then secured the final box with strapping tape. She did sit up and take
notice when Jennifer insured the contents for the maximum allowed amount.

  "You haven't got jewelry in there, have you?" she asked suspiciously. "That insurance doesn't cover jewelry."

  "Archeological artifacts," Jennifer said shortly; the girl pursed her lips and looked through her book, but evidently couldn't find any exclusions for "archeological artifacts." Which was precisely why Jennifer had chosen than particular description of the contents; this wasn't the first time a shipment had gone out from her under that heading.

  An "archeological artifact" wasn't something that would tempt theft, either-although by insuring the package for that much, she had red-flagged it so far as would-be thieves were concerned. The company would be keeping its electronic eyes on this little parcel.

  She didn't breathe easily until the girl took The Box into the back to join the rest of the packages leaving tonight. By ten tomorrow morning, Jay Spotted Eagle would have a little-surprise. And at that point it was his worry, not hers.

  She left the chill of the FedEx office for the humid heat of late afternoon. She didn't even look up as a mocking caw from the roof of the office behind her greeted her exit. She knew what was there.

  The Raven called three or four times before giving up and flapping down to land on the roof of her Brat for a moment. He cocked his head to one side and stared at her with one bright black eye. She stared right back at him, refusing to drop her gaze, challenging him.

  Finally, she took another step toward the Brat, her keys out, still watching the bird. The Raven opened his sharp black beak and made a series of noises that sounded like barks, then took off. He shoved off the top of the truck and flapped his wings clumsily in the heavy, still air with that typical corvine rowing motion, dropping down to within a foot of the ground before finally getting up enough speed to fly to the wires behind the parking lot.

  She unlocked the Brat, got in, and headed straight for home. It had been a long day. . . .

  Grandfather was waiting in the living room, sitting cross-legged on the couch across from the television set, with the Nintendo joystick in his strong, age-wrinkled hands. He hit the "pause" button as soon as she entered the room and dropped her purse on the floor beside her favorite chair. He grinned, showing a strong set of white teeth, and looked up at her.

  He was a tall man, like her father and brothers, and still held himself straight as a man decades his junior. Sometimes he reminded her of Jacques Cousteau; he had that same tough resiliency, like a weathered blackjack oak-and although age had weathered him, it had not twisted him. He wore his iron-gray hair long, in a single tight braid, though forty or fifty years ago he had sported a crewcut like everyone else in his neighborhood. He had been an aircraft mechanic, first with the Army Air Corps, then the Air Force, then at the small-aircraft side of the Tulsa Airport. No one who knew the family casually would have guessed then that he was Osage. No one who knew the family intimately would have ever thought otherwise, but there had been few who knew the Talldeer intimately, and they were all to be trusted with the secret that could have instigated discrimination.

  Now he wore his heritage openly, much to the delight of the neighbors' children and grandchildren. He told them stories, taught them simple things, got involved in their ecology projects, all things their parents had no time to do. Things that their grandparents, who might be half a continent away, could not do. Half the neighborhood called him "Grandfather." And he tricked the children as well, teaching them with his tricks that the world was not a universally friendly place for a child, teaching them in ways that would not hurt them to be careful even with people they knew.

  That was not "traditional" teaching although it grew out of Osage tradition; it was teaching adapted to the modern world. The neighborhood kids learned Osage legends-but the lessons were to respect and protect nature. They learned how to defend themselves against the adults who would hurt or even kill them. They learned that Native Americans, far from being ignorant savages, had knowledge and information and a wisdom no different from their schoolteachers.

  Grandfather often pointed out the success of the sparrow hawk as an example-the sparrow hawk, who like the rabbit had moved out of the meadows and into the suburbs. That was not the original way of the Osage, who had been more apt to construct deeper and more complicated layers of ritual around the core of their traditions when those traditions failed them. Grandfather-and, she suspected, his father before him and his own grandfather-had changed that. They had begun to change, to move as quietly into the world of the Heavy Eyebrows as they once had through their beloved forests; to hide themselves under the camouflage of jeans and workshirts, of square wooden houses and neat yards. With that change, they had changed the Medicine, until it began to work well again, as it had worked when it was concerned with hunting and fishing, stealing horses and averting danger, winning brides and conquering enemies. Adapting the Medicine had worked with other tribes-but the Heavy Eyebrows were different, so different that an adaptation would not work. It had to be change, much as the Little Old Men disliked change.

  That had been what Grandfather had said, at any rate, when she had asked him.

  "Well?" he said, looking up at her, his bright black eyes shining with some secret amusement. She didn't pretend not to know what he was talking about.

  "You know very well I got it, Grandfather," she sighed. "There's no point in pretending you don't know. I might have believed that a raven cawing at me from the wires was just coincidence, but not one that landed on the roof of my truck and stared me in the face, then laughed at me."

  Grandfather shook his head, mockingly. "Damn," he replied. "I must be slipping. I shouldn't have tipped my hand that way."

  "So why were you following me?" she asked, kicking off her shoes, and reveling in the feeling of soft, well-varnished and blessedly cool wood under her bare soles. She walked around the living room, picking up the little bits of popcorn and empty cups that told her he'd had the kids inside today, probably during the afternoon. He seldom let them into the house in the morning, teaching them instead the Osage games his father had taught him, and running the fat of too much television watching off them. But even he agreed that when the temperature climbed above ninety, there was no point in courting heatstroke. These were kids raised in air conditioning, born to parents with health insurance, not tough little Osage brats who never saw a doctor and ran around mostly naked in the Oklahoma heat. Toughening took time and required the parents' cooperation and participation-perhaps when the children were older, he might teach them the way of the Warrior, if not Warrior's Medicine. Grandfather agreed; the seed was planted and he took the long view of any of the gentle Tzi-Sho gens. Let the seed sprout and mature in its own time; these children would at the very least be a little less credulous, a little less inclined to let others run things for them, a little less prone to give up and go with the system, a little more likely to fight for themselves and their world. And of course, they would not be content to accept the stereotype of the "lazy, drunken, ignorant Indian." For him, that was quite enough.

  "Why were you so afraid of what you recovered?" Grandfather countered-and before she could dodge out of his way, those strong brown fingers had slipped off the joystick and she yelped as he pinched her rear. "And when are you going to start being nice to me?" he continued, with a meaningful leer. "A pretty girl like you should know an old man like me needs-"

  Oh, so he's in that mood. Should have guessed that a strong dose of Respectable Elder was going to bring out the Old Reprobate as soon as I got home.

  "An old man like you needs a good whack upside the head!" she countered, skittering past him before those fingers could pinch the other cheek. "Don't you know you're supposed to be senile by now? You're supposed to be drooling and in diapers so I can keep you in your bed and you wouldn't be able to get into any more trouble!"

  He chuckled, and shook his head at her.

  She finished her cleanup, and dropped the popcorn bits in the paper bag she kept for
bird scraps. The grackles would love the popcorn. "How's the garden doing? How many kids did you bilk out of their allowances today?"

  "Their hand-eye coordination is improving," he told her serenely, "they're starting to tie me. When they start to beat me, I'll start them on target shooting. I made five bows that should be cured up and ready about now."

  She straightened abruptly. "So that's why you wanted me to get you that Nintendo!"

  "Is it?" His eyes practically disappeared in a nest of wrinkles as he smiled. "The garden is doing well. The corn will be ready to pick in a day or two."

  She gave up, and collapsed into her chair.

  He restarted his game, and only then said casually, "Oh, I almost forgot. Someone from Romulus Insurance called."

  She sat straight up in her chair and stared at him. He continued, as calmly as if he hadn't "almost forgotten" a potential client-and an important one.

  "The man said they want you to investigate some trouble at a construction site. I think he mentioned a mall."

  Make that a real client. And an insurance agency! Insurance agency cases often meant lots of time, and time was money. She launched herself out of the chair and sprinted down the hall to her office.

  There was the pad beside the phone, with what was presumably the Romulus phone number noted on it, in Grandfather's handwriting. And a name, Mark Sleighbow, presumably the man who'd called.

  If they found someone else-if I've lost this one-

  She wasn't sure what she'd do. Maybe it was time to get a phone service. Grandfather occasionally "forgot"- accidentally on purpose-when he thought that a job "wasn't right for her."

  I'd prefer to make that determination for myself. Particularly when the mortgage payment is due. And right now, with that background-check job over, she needed another piece of steady work. Anything for an insurance company was bound to be steady. ...

  She dialed the number quickly, and waited while the phone rang, glancing at the clock on her desk and hoping Mark Sleighbow hadn't gone home for the day. It wasn't quite five-where is this area code, anyway? If it was just in this time zone, or even west-