where the smoke of five hundred campfires rose to the sky. Her summer home was in the high desert, where the common vegetation was sagebrush, but these mountains were forested with pine and juniper, and this leafy haunt of ghosts would otherwise have terrified Marimi if she and her people were not within the protection of the circle. At night, as families lay on their fur blankets listening in fear to the sounds of ghosts moaning in the trees, they hoped that the shamans’ talismans that had been set out around the perimeter of the settlement were strong enough to keep the spirits out. This was why no one begrudged payment to the shaman, because a powerful shaman meant that the clan was safe and that the gods watched over them. Everyone remembered the terrible fate of the Owl Clan, whose shaman had accidentally fallen to his death from a steep precipice, leaving thirty-six families without someone to represent them in the spirit world and to speak to the gods on their behalf. Before one cycle of the moon, every man, woman, and child had sickened and died so that Owl Clan no longer was.
With her feeling of dread growing, Marimi forced herself to concentrate on her baby basket. But now her fingers worked stiffly and without grace as she realized in dismay that the magic she had sensed this night was not necessarily good magic…
* * *
As Opaka kept her eyes on Marimi across the circle of dancers, she recalled a time when she herself had been that pleasing to look upon. Sitting on her rich buffalo hide, surrounded by gifts of food, beads, and feathers brought by people seeking favors and blessings from the gods, Opaka thought bitterly that Marimi’s round face, laughing eyes, sensuous mouth, and hair like a shining black waterfall— which had caught the attention of more than just the young hunter who had married her— had once been Opaka’s features, before age and too many soul-journeys out of her body had worn her down. Now Opaka was bent, white-haired, and nearly toothless.
But this was not why she hated the girl.
The poison that flowed in Opaka’s aged veins had sprung up six winters ago, during the Season of No Pine Nuts, when the families had arrived at the forest to find the pinecones already fallen and rotting on the ground. When they realized the gods had made the season come too soon so now the people would starve, a great wailing arose, and the shamans had retreated into the god-huts to burn fires of sacred mesquite and to fast and swallow jimsonweed and chant and sing and pray for visions from the gods that would show the people where pine nuts were. But the gods had not answered the shamans’ prayers and so it appeared that a dreadful famine was upon the Topaa.
And then Marimi’s mother had come to Opaka with the most extraordinary tale.
Her daughter, then nine summers old, had fallen victim to a terrible affliction that filled her head with pain and blinded her eyes and deafened her ears. The mother had bathed the child’s head in cool water and kept her in the shade of the trees, and when the sickness passed Marimi told her mother about a pine forest on the other side of the river. It was only a dream, her mother said, brought on by hunger and the strange head sickness. And she cautioned her daughter to keep silent about her vision, for it was up to Opaka to tell the clan where to find food. But Marimi persisted in her vision of a woodland of pine trees, in a land beyond the Topaa boundaries where no other people dwelled and no ancestors had lived, so it would not be taboo to journey there and to harvest the abundant pine nuts.
And so when the shamans emerged from their hut and said that there would be no pine nuts this season and that there would be no rabbit hunt since no one had seen rabbits in the forest, that the woodland was barren because the gods had turned their backs on the people, Marimi’s mother had thought she should seek Opaka’s counsel regarding her daughter’s vision. The
With her feeling of dread growing, Marimi forced herself to concentrate on her baby basket. But now her fingers worked stiffly and without grace as she realized in dismay that the magic she had sensed this night was not necessarily good magic…
* * *
As Opaka kept her eyes on Marimi across the circle of dancers, she recalled a time when she herself had been that pleasing to look upon. Sitting on her rich buffalo hide, surrounded by gifts of food, beads, and feathers brought by people seeking favors and blessings from the gods, Opaka thought bitterly that Marimi’s round face, laughing eyes, sensuous mouth, and hair like a shining black waterfall— which had caught the attention of more than just the young hunter who had married her— had once been Opaka’s features, before age and too many soul-journeys out of her body had worn her down. Now Opaka was bent, white-haired, and nearly toothless.
But this was not why she hated the girl.
The poison that flowed in Opaka’s aged veins had sprung up six winters ago, during the Season of No Pine Nuts, when the families had arrived at the forest to find the pinecones already fallen and rotting on the ground. When they realized the gods had made the season come too soon so now the people would starve, a great wailing arose, and the shamans had retreated into the god-huts to burn fires of sacred mesquite and to fast and swallow jimsonweed and chant and sing and pray for visions from the gods that would show the people where pine nuts were. But the gods had not answered the shamans’ prayers and so it appeared that a dreadful famine was upon the Topaa.
And then Marimi’s mother had come to Opaka with the most extraordinary tale.
Her daughter, then nine summers old, had fallen victim to a terrible affliction that filled her head with pain and blinded her eyes and deafened her ears. The mother had bathed the child’s head in cool water and kept her in the shade of the trees, and when the sickness passed Marimi told her mother about a pine forest on the other side of the river. It was only a dream, her mother said, brought on by hunger and the strange head sickness. And she cautioned her daughter to keep silent about her vision, for it was up to Opaka to tell the clan where to find food. But Marimi persisted in her vision of a woodland of pine trees, in a land beyond the Topaa boundaries where no other people dwelled and no ancestors had lived, so it would not be taboo to journey there and to harvest the abundant pine nuts.
And so when the shamans emerged from their hut and said that there would be no pine nuts this season and that there would be no rabbit hunt since no one had seen rabbits in the forest, that the woodland was barren because the gods had turned their backs on the people, Marimi’s mother had thought she should seek Opaka’s counsel regarding her daughter’s vision. The