Sacred Ground

by Mercedes Lackey

  Well, mostly not, anyway.

  Finally, he just couldn't take it any more. He had to try something. Otherwise he could see her turning herself into a knot in no time flat.

  It was about nine; she typed a few things into her computer with the decisive clicks he'd come to associate with her finishing for the night.

  "There," she said, shoving the keyboard drawer back under the desktop. "That's as far as I'm going to get with this Calligan thing tonight-"

  "Then let's go," he said, quickly, before she could say anything about a sauna, or early bed, or catching the news.

  She blinked at him, as if she had forgotten completely that he was there. "Go?" she said, puzzled. "Go where? Why? What's open at this time of night?"

  He grinned. "You like techno," he stated. He knew he was right; he'd seen the CDs on her shelf, and he'd heard her listening to the techno-industrial alternative-rock radio program from Rogers College-or at least she had, before the college administration in their infinite wisdom shut it down.

  "So?" One eyebrow lifted.

  "So trust me." Before she could object, he came around to the side of her desk and held out his hand. She took it, dubiously. He pulled her to her feet, and led her out the door. She got into the passenger's side of his car with an expression of puzzled patience. It changed to an expression of disbelief when he headed downtown, since most of the downtown area locked up by 5:30 at night.

  Most of it.

  He took her to a rave, at a "club" that hadn't been there a month ago, and might not be next month, in a building that had been everything from a factory to an art gallery.

  They were probably the oldest people there; it was hard to tell. The lighting was not particularly conducive to taking a good look at peoples' faces. Interesting thing about techno; the heavy beat was not all that dissimilar to drum-song. He hadn't done any fancy-dancing in a long time, but when the beat caught him up and he found himself gyrating as if he were wearing his old costume, he simply let his body do what it wanted to. Jennie clapped her hands and grinned like a maniac; she recognized the moves, even if the kids there didn't. He wasn't dancing for them, anyway; he was dancing for her, parading like the buck deer before the doe, and they both knew it, and both were delighted by the sheer silliness of it.

  He drew a crowd anyway, a little circle of admirers, and when that piece ended and another began, Jennie got into the act, leaping into the circle and matching him beat for beat. He'd forgotten she used to compete in the shawl-dancing; maybe she had forgotten too, until that moment. Now it was a kind of competition between the two of them, but a competition of display, where it didn't matter who won, or even if there was a winner at all.

  The band gave up before they did. But the moment the music ended, they tossed sweat-soaked hair out of their eyes, and traded a look of agreement.

  This was enough for one night.

  It took a little time to work through the crowd to get to the door and the parking lot. David was a little surprised when he stopped under a lot-light and looked at his watch to see that it was already midnight.

  Beside him, Jennie paused to glance at her own watch. "Wow!" she said in a tone of awe. "I have more stamina than I thought!"

  "Same here," he confessed, laughing. "Think we showed those cubs a thing or two?"

  "Well, either they decided that we were too crazy to mess with, or we'll have started a new dance craze by morning," she replied. She stood under the light long enough to pull her hair back and braid it. That little frownline was gone, at least for the moment, and he felt a definite glow of satisfaction at how relaxed and happy she looked.

  "Can I show you a good time, or what?" he asked, smugly.

  "A lot better than what you used to think was a good time," she retorted. "A mug of beer, a loaf of rhetoric, and thou-"

  He started to get angry, and stopped himself just in time. Things were going well. He wouldn't gain a thing by starting an argument. Besides, she had a point.

  "I guess I've loosened up some, since then," he said mildly, and grinned when he saw the blank look on her face, the surprise that he hadn't plowed right into a fight. "You could stand to loosen up some, yourself, Jen."

  She flushed, but he realized how she could take that last comment, and went on.

  "What I mean is, you don't have fun enough. Take some time out, for godsake. See a movie! What was the last movie you saw?" He knew he had her then, when she had to think about it.

  "Uh. Beauty and the Beast?" she said. I "See what I mean!" he responded triumphantly. "You haven't even gone out for a walk, or rented a horse, or anything unless it had something to do with your work! Right?"

  She shuffled her feet a little in the gravel of the parking lot. "I guess so. . . ."

  "You need more fun in your life," he said, decisively. "If you get bleeding ulcers and wind up in the hospital, who's gonna put Calligan away? Who's gonna make sure he doesn't sell our people up the river? Who's gonna keep Mooncrow from living on pizza and ice cream?"

  "All right, all right!" she conceded, throwing up her hands. "I surrender! If you want to be the designated maker-of-fun, go right ahead! Just remember, the work has to be done first, before we have fun."

  He executed a fancy-dance step, right there in the lot, and amazingly, didn't fall on his face or turn an ankle in all that gravel. She chuckled.

  He took that as a good omen.

  Toni Calligan put her forehead down on the kitchen table, and fought tears. She was beginning to think she ought to pack the kids up for the summer and take them someplace safe.

  Like maybe a maximum-security prison! There certainly didn't seem to be any safety around here!

  No one, not any of the repairmen she'd called, had been able to figure just what had gone wrong with the dryer. One of them had even accused her of sabotaging it herself! He'd said it looked as if someone had just gotten in there and cut the insulation off of everything in sight. . . .

  She succeeded in persuading Rod to buy a new dryer-after making certain he didn't hear that particular story. But that had only been the start of her problems.

  A few days later, a fire started in the garage; fortunately, a neighbor saw it and put it out before it did any damage, He really saw it start, too; he'd been taking a break from mowing and told Toni he thought he'd seen a dog or something run into their garage. He described it perfectly; a grayish-yellow dog with pointed ears and a bushy tail, about the size of a spitz. Since he knew they didn't have a dog, and since there was a rabies scare going on, he'd gone in after it, armed with a stick, only to see the back corner of the garage go up-"like a torch," he'd said. "I couldn't believe it. One minute, everything's fine; the next, the wall's on fire!"

  Funny thing, there was no dog, either, and it couldn't have gotten past him.

  Rod had been livid about that. He'd been certain she'd let the kids play with matches, or that she'd stored greasy rags there, or something. And it didn't matter that the only things in that corner were the garden tools; it had to be her fault.

  Then she'd come out into the backyard yesterday just in time to see Jill in her sandbox, about to pick up a scorpion! Thank God she'd come out when she did! No one could believe it, not even when they saw the crushed insect for themselves; there hadn't been scorpions around ever, for as long as this subdivision had been here.

  She certainly set off a round of exterminators, though. Every house in the neighborhood had exterminators poking under it; theirs included.

  And now, today-

  Oh God.

  Ryan came in crying not a half hour ago, bruised and scraped, claiming something had pushed him into the street, in front of a car-

  And right behind him came a strange woman with a face as white as Toni's had turned, corroborating the child.

  "He was just standing there, like a good boy, waiting for me to go by," she babbled, "just standing there, all alone. I thought, just as I got to the corner, that it was a good thing he was such a good little boy. Then, sudde
nly there was a man standing next to him, then the poor tyke went flying into the street, right in front of me, exactly like that man had shoved him from behind! Then the man was gone, and I hit the brakes-"

  Ryan had only saved himself by rolling, then going flat, so that the car actually passed over him without hitting him, The driver had nearly had a heart attack before he crawled out from under her car. She had brought him home herself, quickly, at that point.

  Toni was so close to hysteria herself by then that she actually felt calm.

  She assured the poor woman that everything was all right, that no, there was no need to leave her name and address, that things would be fine. She was dead certain that Rod would have been on the phone to his lawyer-but she wasn't Rod, and Rod wasn't going to hear about this, not if she could help it.

  He'd probably find a way to blame her as well as that poor woman, anyway.

  After she'd somehow said the right things to the stranger, and had sent her off to her car babbling gratitude, she bathed and bandaged Ryan's scrapes and put him to bed with cartoons and a bowl of ice cream. Then she sat herself down at the kitchen table and shook.

  If this kind of thing kept up, she was going to need a prescription for Valium. . . .

  As soon as she stopped shaking, she was suddenly seized with the need to see that the kids were all right. She checked on Jill-she was still playing safely in the sandbox (checked, double-checked, and refilled with clean sand, and the exterminator had been all over the house and yard this morning), Rod Junior was at a Little League practice, and those were supervised. Ryan was asleep.

  She went back to the kitchen, slumped in her favorite chair, and stared at the wall for a while.

  That was when some of what the stranger had said-and she had dismissed-came back to her.

  Ryan had been standing alone at the corner, and in this neighborhood, there was nothing to hide behind at the corners, nothing to make it hard for a driver to see the kids. Yet-Ryan and the stranger agreed, that one moment he had been alone, but the next second, someone had jumped up behind him and pushed him out into the street.

  Then, inexplicably, the attacker had vanished.

  Now, the woman was hysterical, and Ryan was too. And in the few seconds it took for the woman to slam on her brakes and run to the front of her car, it was perfectly possible for a child, a bully who had gone too far, to run for the cover of one of the backyards.

  Except that both Ryan and the woman agreed that it hadn't been a child. And this adult would have found it very difficult to hide in a normal suburban neighborhood like theirs.

  For according to both the stranger-who had no reason to make up such a wild story, and Ryan-who had never lied, this adult had not been the kind of person you saw on the street.

  In fact, he had been an Indian. In beads, mohawk, blanket, and leather pants. Everything but war-paint.

  The next day, David talked Jennie into giving him some of the paperwork to do so that they could take in a movie. The day after, he dragged her off to Bell's Amusement Park. The day after that, he varied the routine by kidnapping her for a picnic at lunch.

  It all paid off handsomely. That worry-line was becoming fainter, and she had less of a pinched look about her. And there still was no talk of him moving out of the spare room.

  In the meantime, he split his time between doing that "legwork" ,for her-which included, to his surprise and pleasure, being granted some of the surveillance she had been doing-and reading the books and private notebooks that "mysteriously" turned up in his room. Some of them surprised him; stuff he would have thought was far too much along the lines of what you'd find in a so-called "occult bookstore" for Mooncrow to have any respect for. But then he remembered that business about learning things from unlikely sources, and read what had been left him without comment.

  When he wasn't away from the house on one errand or another, he watched Mooncrow teaching the neighborhood kids without them ever realizing that they were learning anything. They just thought he told neat stories, and knew how to do excellent things. He'd even weaned them from Nintendo to real archery practice, and they liked it. Sometimes, David even helped the old man, when he could.

  This morning, since Jennie didn't have anything for him to do, Mooncrow had asked him to help with the lessons, and he'd been pleased to discover that he hadn't lost his knack for the sport. He and Mooncrow were watching the kids practice their archery with a critical eye when the old man suddenly cleared his throat in a way that usually preceded a lesson. David gave him a glance out of the corner of his eye. Surely he couldn't intend to say anything about Medicine in front of these kids!

  But when the words finally came, they were not exactly what he'd expected.

  "You and Kestrel have been getting along a lot better," Mooncrow remarked, with such an expression of absolute innocence that David immediately suspected some deeper purpose in the comment.

  "It didn't hurt to apologize for some things I said when we broke up-and some more I said later," he replied, very carefully. "I was out of line, both times, assuming things I had no business assuming. She overreacted, but-I can't blame her, and I'd have done the same if our positions had been reversed."

  "Hmm. Kestrel has a hasty temper, like her spirit-animal. If you touch her nesting pole, she will scold you even before she sees whether or not you intended to climb it." Mooncrow's full attention seemed to be on the kids lined up across the yard with their handmade bows, but David knew better.

  However, that was the best way he'd ever heard of describing Jennie's tendency to shoot first and sort things out later.

  "She's got a lot on her mind," David replied, feeling as if he ought to defend her. "People who have bad tempers and know it can usually keep their temper under control, unless they're already handling too much. ... I guess we both know she's a workaholic, and this Calligan thing is really getting to her. There's something going on there, a lot more than shows on the surface, but we can't seem to get past the surface. Yet. But I can't blame her for being a little short on temper, you know?"

  "True." Mooncrow sighed. "I wanted to thank you. For getting her to enjoy herself a little more, and work a little less. It makes her less difficult to live with."

  David had to chuckle at that. "I'm not saying a word," he replied. "Anything I say is only too likely to get me in trouble!"

  He brushed some imaginary dirt off the legs of his jeans, and waited for Mooncrow's reply. There would be one. The old man wasn't finished yet; he sensed it in the way Mooncrow kept watching him without seeming to watch him.

  "I don't think it would hurt if you two were more than friends," Mooncrow said at last. "I don't think it would hurt if you backtracked in some ways to when you were younger." He looked slyly at David out of the corner of his eye. "I can't say I'd mind if you didn't need that spare room for anything but storing your things."

  David blinked, and licked his lips. Well, that was certainly an unexpected development! He felt rather stunned. "I can't say that I'd be unhappy about things coming around that way." He paused for a moment. "Just how would you suggest I go about doing that?"

  But Mooncrow only shrugged. "I'm an old man," he replied. "Things are not the same as they were when I courted her grandmother. Jennie is a warrior in her own right; her grandmother was a simpler woman with simpler needs. I have no suggestions. If I say anything to her, she is likely to throw you out; she is just as contrary at times as she accuses me of being. So it is all in your hands, young Spotted Horse."

  Thanks a lot, he thought wryly, but not with a feeling of being offended. He liked Mooncrow; more than that, he trusted the old man, far more than he had trusted Mooncrow when he had been a child. Then, the old man had just been Jennie's grandfather who told good stories. Now he was a Teacher, a Medicine Person. ...

  Hmm. I wonder if he was suggesting that as Jennie's grandfather, or as Mooncrow, Kestrel's Teacher? It would make a difference. . . .

  He could even be suggesting it as both.


  He would have been a lot more surprised at the oblique suggestion that he heat the situation up, if he hadn't already gotten the same "hints" from another of Jennie's relatives. Although he had never thought he'd hear Mooncrow suggesting he should share Jennie's bed! The other "hints" had been a lot more pedestrian. . . .

  "If I didn't know better, Little Old Man," he said lightly, "I'd suspect you of being a shoka from Jennie's father."

  "Oh?" Mooncrow replied, far too casually. "Why is that?"

  David made a face. "Because I happened to 'run into him' three times in the last week-probably because he heard on the grapevine that I'm in your spare room. He dropped a few bricks-I'm sure he thinks they were hints."

  Mooncrow chuckled at that. "My son was never known for subtlety," he told David. "Some day I must tell you how he proposed to Jennie's mother. But what were these unsubtle hints about?"

  "Nothing much-just that it seems that the entire family would really approve if Jennie and I patched things back up again." He shook his head, ruefully. "If these were the old days, I have the horrible feeling that instead of me riding out to capture a bride, I'd be the one hog-tied and bent over Jennie's saddlebow, gift-wrapped by her loving family!"

  And at that, Mooncrow broke into loud and hearty laughter, much to David's embarrassment, and the surprise of all the kids, who turned to see what on earth could be so funny.

  David blushed a little, but felt impelled to tell Mooncrow all of it, however embarrassing it had been.

  "He said that Jennie's mom and brothers always did like me, and that everybody wishes things would go back the way they were between us when we first started college." He sighed. "Back before we had that big fight, and I threw that stupid Huey Long quote at her, anyway. I guess she told her father about that. ..."

  "Only recently," Mooncrow said serenely. "She told me about it later, after she had brought home the Hell's Angel-"

  "What?" David yelped, taken completely by surprise.