Sacred Ground

by Barbara Wood

  When she saw how beautifully the moon lit up the desert landscape at night to light their way, Marimi marveled at how the Topaa could believe her to be an angry and fearful goddess. Not only was it taboo to look upon the moon, but the people were afraid of her because of her tremendous power over menstrual blood, birth cycles, and the dark mysteries of women. Likewise did the Topaa fear the sun because it burned the skin and caused fires and droughts and was angry all the time, being placated only through the intercession of a shaman’s prayers. But Marimi and Payat learned to love the feel of the warm sun on their limbs in the mornings, and they observed how flowers turned their faces to follow the sun’s path across the sky. Marimi came to understand that what her people had feared could also be loved, and she began to regard the sun as like a father, stern but benevolent, and the moon as like a mother, gentle and loving.

  But now they were in a land where there was no water, no berries or seeds, and the only shrubs were bitter and waterless. Even small animals didn’t come out of their burrows. Marimi was carrying the boy on her back, and because her sandals had disintegrated long ago, her bare feet were cut and bleeding. They sucked on pebbles to stave off thirst. They stopped at dry streambeds, which often have water just below the surface, sinking at the lowest point on the outside of a bend in the channel as the stream dried up, and it was along these bends she dug for water. But none could be found.

  Finally, they had to stop, Marimi easing Payat to the sand and then stretching her lower back. Her baby moved restlessly, as if it, too, were thirsty, and when she looked for her raven, she could not find him.

  Had her spirit guide abandoned them in this harsh wilderness? Had she and Payat inadvertently offended a spirit somewhere along their trek, perhaps disturbing a snake’s nest or not showing enough gratitude when she sliced open the last prickly pear they came upon?

  Shading her eyes, she scanned the barren landscape, where only stunted, withered plants grew, and a dry wind whispered mournfully across the sand. In the distance she saw silver waves shimmering up from the hard-baked clay, but she had learned by now that this was not water but a trick played by desert spirits. Finally, she looked up at fierce Father Sun. It was to him she must pray, she realized, for the moon was in her sleeping house.

  But as Marimi raised her arms and sought the proper words, she was suddenly stricken with her head sickness, causing her to drop to her knees and press her hands to her eyes. As the pain swept her away, she saw a vision of a lost child, trapped among rocks. She saw it from the sky, as if through the eyes of a bird. And then Marimi saw people searching for the child, but in the wrong place, and moving farther away from him in their search.

  When the pain subsided, she said urgently to Payat, “Raven led me to a lost boy. We must find him before the vultures make a feast of his body.”

  Within the embrace of a barren, rocky watercourse, they found the boy, unconscious and dehydrated, but still alive. “Oh, you poor little boy, poor thing,” Marimi crooned as she knelt at his side. “Look, Payat, see how his foot is caught.” The child’s ankle was raw and bloody, and the rocks were scarred where he had clawed to free himself.

  Marimi sat back on her heels and listened. She lifted her nose to the air and sniffed. She closed her eyes and summoned up the vision the raven had shown her from the air. “There is a stream,” she said to Payat. And she pointed through the boulders.

  Marimi first slaked Payat’s thirst and then her own, then she brought water to the child, dripping it between his lips. She collected ground ivy from along the bank and wrapped the fresh leaves around the child’s ankle. There were fish in the stream, which Payat caught with a basket, and the three ate well that night at a campfire that burned as brightly as the full moon.

  The next day the boy, already recovering from his ordeal, said his name was Wanchem, but he didn’t know his clan or his family name, and he didn’t know in which direction he lived. As Marimi wondered how she could get him back to his people, she saw that the raven was calling again, impatiently circling in the sky. Marimi had no choice but to follow. And so, shouldering her basket and blanket, clasping her spear, and hefting Wanchem onto her hip, with Payat at her side, she set forth once again toward the setting sun.

  * * *

  Finally, they reached the western edge of the desert, where fierce mountains rose straight up, sharp and jagged. Marimi found a pass through the mountains, and after days of hardship the trio emerged on the other side to find a great lush rolling plain before them. It was green such as they had never seen, and dotted with trees as far as the eye could see, with streams and ponds, and gentle hills. When they descended into the valley, they found an ancient animal track and, knowing it would lead them to food and water, followed it. And indeed along the way they came upon trees laden with fruits and nuts, and streams running with fish and clear water. Marimi wanted to stop and say: Here is our home. But the raven kept flying ever westward, and Marimi followed, unquestioning.

  They continued along the track through glades and open fields, past marshes and great ponds of a black substance that bubbled on the surface and stung the nose with its stench. Westward the trio continued, encountering a few people along the way who were friendly but who spoke a language unknown to Marimi. These people lived in small round shelters and shared their food with the travelers. Marimi stopped occasionally to look at a sick child or a sick elder, and to share the healing herbs she carried.

  And then the air began to change and it was unlike any she and Payat had inhaled. It was fresh and cold and smelled of salt. And when Marimi saw the green mountains in the distance, she was filled with a sense of coming to an ending. Soon, she assured Payat and Wanchem, Raven would stop for his final rest.

  * * *

  As they drew near to the foothills of the green mountains, dark clouds gathered in the sky. A wind arose, buffeting Raven and impeding his progress. Around and around he circled in the sky, while Marimi hugged the two boys to her, drawing her rabbit fur blanket around them. When the storm broke, they huddled beneath the shelter of a great oak tree and watched in fear as streams overflowed and gushed down gullies and ravines, threatening to sweep the three frightened humans away. They watched in horror as cliffs broke apart and gave way, sliding down in great muddy avalanches. The wind roared and the storm thrashed the sturdy oak. Marimi lost sight of 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 babies, another pair of twin girls.

  As the children grew and soon faced adulthood, Marimi started to worry about taboos and family ties. The rules weren’t hers but had been decreed by the gods at the beginning of time: that brother should not marry sister, nor first cousin on mother’s side marry first cousin on mother’s side. If these rules were broken, a tribe could sicken and die. But Marimi knew that first cousin on mother’s side could marry first cousin on father’s side, so what the family needed was new blood. She went into the cave for counsel and the raven told her to find a husband in a neighboring tribe and bring him back.

  Taking her spear and a basket of acorns, Marimi traveled eastward to a village she had passed through seasons ago. There she offered shell-beads, which were highly valued, and promised the new husband plentiful acorns and fishing. But he must accept Topaa ways, she said, and become one of them. His family agreed that this was a good thing, to have ties with a coastal tribe, who were rich in otter skins and whale meat. The chosen husband was Deer Clan, People Who Live On Trembling Ground, “dwellers in the marsh.” Now he joined “people who eat acorns.”

  When Marimi’s first daughters entered womanhood, they married Payat and Wanchem. One of the hunter’s daughters also married Payat, because Marimi had made him chief of their small tribe, and the chief could have more than one wife. The second hunter’s daughter found a husband in a traveler from the east, who had come in search of otter skins and had decided to stay. Marimi’s husband from the Deer Clan gave her three sons and four daughters, who in time married and increased the tribe.

  As the seasons came and went, Marimi taught her daughters and granddaughters how to weave baskets, how to chant and sing so that the basket was given life and therefore a spirit. She taught the young ones the rules and taboos of the Topaa: that when grasshoppers and crickets were scarce, they were not to be eaten; at the acorn harvest, the acorns were not to be harvested to depletion but some were to be left to ensure a bountiful harvest next time; a husband did not sleep with his wife during the five days of her moon; the hunter bringing back meat did not eat of it, but ate of another hunter’s meat. Because without rules and without knowing the taboos, she said, a person didn’t know how to conduct his or her life. The Topaa knew from nature that there were rules: cat never mated with dog, deer did not eat flesh, the owl hunted only at night. Just as animals lived by rules, so must the Topaa.

  One autumn a blight struck the oak trees and the acorns dropped to the ground like ash and small game vanished from the land, so that not even a squirrel could be roasted on the fire. The family began to starve and Marimi remembered how she had once prayed to the moon for help. She prayed again now, respectfully, promising gratitude in return. And a miracle occurred: the next night fish washed up on shore living and flopping, and Marimi had everyone run with baskets up and down the beach, collecting the living fish, which when dried provided enough food until the spring, when berries and seeds appeared in plenty. In gratitude, the next time the fish ran ashore, Marimi had her children throw a certain number back, telling them that what we take from the gods, we give back to the gods.

  Marimi taught her family the importance of telling stories, how the stories must be handed down so that the clan would know its history and the ancestors would be remembered. And so every night at the campfire, she told them how the world was created, how the Topaa were created, she told them stories of the gods, and the fables that taught lessons. She told them how they must pray respectfully to Father Sun and Mother Moon, that the Topaa were the children of the gods and that they needed no shaman to speak on their behalf. Like all parents, the sun and the moon liked 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 long
er 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?