Read Sacred Ground for Free Online

people through their shamans’ vision quests. The world being the uncertain and terrifying place that it was, bountiful harvests could never be predicted nor counted upon, and so it was imperative that before the first cone was dislodged from the first tree, the shamans went into the god-huts and journeyed in their trance states to communicate with the supernatural powers, to receive instructions and prophecies and sometimes new laws.
    This was why Marimi was suddenly afraid on this night of celebration. Opaka had the power of the gods, and Marimi was certain there was malevolence in her gaze. Why? Marimi could not recall what she might have done to incur the elder’s wrath. If the source of the rancor were another tribe member, Marimi would go to her clan shaman and beseech her to ask the gods for protection from that person. But in this case it was the shaman herself who was casting an evil eye upon Marimi!
    And then suddenly she was remembering Tika, and Marimi was filled with a blinding panic.
    Tika had been Marimi’s mother’s sister’s first daughter, and ever since they were little she and Marimi had been like sisters. They had undergone the sacred puberty rites together, and when Tika and twelve other girls had run in the initiates’ race, and Marimi had won, reaching the shaman’s hut before the others, Tika had been the only one to cheer. It was Tika, at the last harvest, who had carried secret messages back and forth between Marimi and the young hunter, since it was taboo for them to speak while marriage negotiations were in progress. And it was Tika who had given Marimi and her new husband the gift of a basket so magnificent in design that it was the talk of the whole clan.
    And then misfortune befell Tika. She had fallen in love with a boy Opaka intended for her sister’s granddaughter. If it had been any other boy she had lain with, Tika would not have been made outcast, Marimi was certain. But when the two were found together in an uncle’s grass shelter, the medicine men and women sat in counsel and smoked their wisdom pipes and decreed that the girl should be outcast, although not the boy, since they decided it was the girl who had seduced him into breaking tribal law. As the tribe didn’t execute any of its members for even the severest crime, because they feared retribution from the ghost, the guilty were condemned to a living death. Their name, possessions and food were taken from them and they were cast out of the protective circle. Once declared outcast, a person could never be brought back in. No one was to speak to or look at the outcast, nor to give food or water or shelter. The family members cut off their hair and mourned as if their loved one had truly died. When Tika became one of the Nameless Ones Marimi’s heart wept for her. She recalled seeing her friend at the edge of the pine trees, hovering like a lost soul. Marimi wanted to go out to Tika, to cross the protective circle and take food and warm blankets. But that would have made Marimi an outcast, too.
    Because they were already “dead,” outcasts did not live long. It was not just the difficulty in obtaining food, or exposure to the elements, it was because the spirit inside them died when they were pronounced outcast. With the will to live gone, death was not far behind. After a few days, Tika was no longer glimpsed at the edge of the camp.
    “Mother,” Marimi said quietly now to the woman who sat cross-legged at her side, singing as she wove an intricate basket. The singing gave life, and therefore a spirit, to the basket. The song also enabled the fingers to spin a myth or a magical tale into the pattern. Marimi’s mother, using a pattern of diamond shapes, was imbuing her basket with the story of how the stars were created long ago. “Mother,” Marimi said a little louder. “Opaka is watching me.”
    “I know, daughter! Take care. Avert your eyes.”
    Marimi’s gaze flickered nervously about the noisy settlement,