Sacred Ground

by Barbara Wood

  There were ghosts everywhere in this strange and terrifying wilderness— they lived in the loamy soil and in the menacing shadows, they lurked in the brambles and briars, they hovered overhead in the branches, watching the unprotected humans, ready to descend and possess their bodies. Marimi had never been in the woods alone, she had always been in the company of her family, with the shamans going ahead with their sacred smoke and rattles to make the way safe. But now she was naked and alone, beyond the circle, in a dark place where she heard the whispers and rustlings of ghosts and spirits as they skittered and flitted past her, teasing, taunting, threatening.

  Worse even than this, she and the boy were cut off from the stories. It was the tales told at the campfires that connected the Topaa to one another; it was the myths and histories recited at night that joined one generation to another, all the way back to the beginning of time. Marimi’s father, like all Topaa fathers, passed along the stories that he had learned at his father’s campfire, where they had been learned from earlier fathers, all the way back starting with the first story and the first father to tell that story. But Marimi and Payat had been severed from the stories and therefore from their clans and their families, never to be brought back into the embrace of the tribe. They haunted the edge of the encampment, living on juniper berries and such pine nuts as had been overlooked by the harvesters. But these were not enough, so that Marimi and the boy soon grew weak from hunger. Days and nights came and went, until they had no strength even to find berries. Marimi knew that she and Payat were now facing death, and there was no shaman they could ask to intercede with the gods on their behalf.

  * * *

  She watched the moon through the branches. It was taboo to stare at the moon, for that was the privilege of the shamans. The clan still talked about the cousin who had stared at the moon for so long that he had been punished by fits in which he foamed at the mouth and thrashed his limbs on the ground. But the moon could be generous also. When Tika’s older sister could not get pregnant, she presented a gift of rare kestrel feathers to Opaka, who went into her god-hut and beseeched the moon for the favor of a child. The sister was blessed with a boy the next spring.

  Knowing that she should avert her gaze from the celestial orb, Marimi could not. Weak and faint from hunger, her soul like a last dying ember among cold ashes, she was beyond fear and caring. As she lay in their little hollow, Payat’s bony body curled against hers as he slept too deeply, Marimi kept her eyes on the glowing circle in the sky. Her breathing slowed, her heart fluttered behind her ribs. Her thoughts came on their own as, without realizing it, she silently spoke to the moon: “The crime was mine. This boy is innocent, as is the child in my womb. Punish only me and allow them to live. If you grant this, I will do whatever you ask of me.”

  The light from the moon seemed to intensify. Marimi didn’t blink. She stared up through the branches as the lunar luminescence grew whiter, fiercer, until it covered the entire sky. Suddenly a sharp pain sliced through her head and Marimi realized in dismay that even in her ghost state she must still suffer the affliction that had plagued her since childhood. It was the moon punishing her. Marimi had had the arrogance to speak to the gods and now she would know only pain until she died. Then let it be so, Marimi thought as she delivered herself to its power and slipped into a deeper sleep than she had ever known. As her last conscious thought drifted away on waves of pain, she thought: I am dying.

  But Marimi didn’t die, and while she slept her spirit guide, the raven, appeared to her in a dream. He beckoned, and as he flew ahead, Marimi followed until she came upon a small glade in the woods where a clump of milkweed grew.

  When she awoke at dawn, barely alive but filled with a strange new compulsion, Marimi crept weakly from her bed of leaves and followed the vision in her dream. When she found the small glade where the milkweed grew, she ate ravenously of the starchy root which, though bitter, was nutritious. Then she took some back to Payat and coaxed him to eat.

  They survived on milkweed after that, and as they grew in strength, Marimi and the boy were able to fashion small traps and supplement their gruel with squirrel and rabbit meat. Marimi found sticks to make fire and soon fashioned a round shelter out of branches and leaves. She and Payat scratched out a living far from the harvest settlement, alone with the ghosts and spirits of the unfriendly forest, but Marimi was less afraid than before, because at the moment of her deepest despair, when she had felt abandoned by her people, when she knew she and the boy were one step from death, she had had a revelation: she had prayed directly to the moon without the help of a shaman, and the moon had answered.

  * * *

  One night the affliction came upon Marimi again as she slept, sending pains through her skull as if ghosts with spears attacked her. And in her agony she heard her guide, the raven, instruct her to follow Opaka. Marimi was frightened at first, but as she was compelled to do what her spirit guide told her to do, she suddenly realized she had nothing to fear. She was a ghost and ghosts could go anywhere they wanted to. Therefore, she was free to spy on Opaka as she went about her daily work.

  Marimi stood in the dappled sunlight, in full view of Opaka, as the old woman harvested raspberries. The whole tribe knew that medicine men and women used the berries and leaves of the raspberry in the manufacture of astringents, stimulants, and tonics, and in teas and syrups for curing diarrhea and dysentery, canker sores and sore throat. While anyone could gather raspberries, what the people did not know was the proper way to harvest the plant, the propitious times, the correct prayers to recite during harvesting, for without these the plant was powerless.

  Marimi brazenly observed how Opaka approached a plant before harvesting it, the words of respect she spoke, the sacred signs she drew in the air with her beads and feathers. And when Opaka discarded a plant after drawing it from the ground, Marimi saw that its root was broken, which meant it had lost its spiritual power. As Opaka did most of her harvesting at night, Marimi made note of the moon’s phase, the position of the stars, the thickness of the dew upon the leaves.

  Marimi also listened as Opaka instructed her sister’s granddaughter in the ways of herbs and medicines, showing the girl how to age alder bark first before boiling, as the green bark will cause vomiting and stomach pain, and how to allow the decoction to stand for three days until the yellow color had turned black. When administered during the full moon, Opaka told her sister’s granddaughter, alder tea strengthened the stomach and stimulated appetite. The berries also made an excellent vermifuge for children.

  Sometimes when Opaka left her shelter, which stood apart and secluded from the rest of the camp, Marimi would go inside to see what the medicine woman was doing with the plants she gathered. In this way did Marimi learn the secret of the inner bark of slippery elm, which Marimi had seen Opaka harvest and set out to dry. Next to the bark, on a buckskin, were a mortar and stone with some of the bark already ground to a fine powder. Drying on a string were slippery elm suppositories which Marimi knew were used vaginally for female troubles, and rectally for bowel difficulties.

  Through the long winter, as her baby grew beneath her heart, everything Marimi observed and heard she committed to memory. The terrors of the forest were forever around her, threatening, lurking, keeping her alert to malicious ghosts as she sought to protect herself and Payat from being possessed by an evil spirit. But Marimi felt an inner strength growing within her, and a sureness of purpose and knowledge. The moon had saved her for a reason, and so she kept her bargain with the moon. Whenever Marimi came upon a pond that was littered with leaves so that the moon’s reflection could not be seen, Marimi scooped the leaves from the surface, allowing the moon to shine proud and beautiful on the water. And when she came across night-blooming flowers in the woods, such as evening primrose, she would clear branches overhead so that the moon would have an unobstructed view of the beautiful blossoms opening up to her.

  Thus did they survive, the sturdy girl and the trusting boy as they haunt
ed the edge of the encampment but never daring to cross into the circle. Marimi didn’t wonder about the future because the Topaa never did. There was today and times past, but tomorrow was a vague and puzzling concept, since tomorrows always turned into todays. She wished she could consult a shaman about what to do when spring came— were she and Payat to remain in the woods, or were they to seek summer homes near their families? What did the living dead do? And how did they learn to be ghosts? When Marimi and Payat had been cast out, there was no one on the other side to teach them. Marimi and the boy should have died, but Marimi had prayed to the moon and the moon had shown them the way to survive. Had they broken yet more tribal taboos by not dying?

  Marimi was too young to ponder for long the complex questions that plagued her. And so she set them aside, instead facing each new dawn with the basic task of survival for another day, and leaving the mysteries of life and death to the shamans.

  And then came the day when she learned of her true power. After weeks of being haunted by Marimi, Opaka had grown increasingly wary and nervous, emerging cautiously from her shelter, or entering the forest with trepidation, looking this way and that for the girl. Her old hands began to shake, her temper grew short, her distress increased daily. She must not acknowledge the creature and yet the creature was forever shadowing her, straining her aged nerves. At last, unable to take it any longer, Opaka startled Marimi one day at the creek by suddenly whirling around and crying out, rattling her sacred sticks and chanting in a language unknown to Marimi.

  Marimi stood her ground, tall and proud, her swollen belly evidence of her vital life force and the strong will that had kept her from dying. The old woman fell silent and their eyes met. Even the forest grew quiet, as if the spirits and ghosts, the birds and small animals were aware that a monumental turning point had been reached. Finally, Opaka averted her eyes, turned away from the ghost-girl who had refused to die, and disappeared through the trees.

  * * *

  Finally came a dawn when the blinding sunlight pierced Marimi’s eyes like a knife, sharp and swift. She lay immobilized, enveloped in agony, but through the pain came a vision— her spirit guide, the raven, sitting on a branch, blinking his cunning black eye at her. And this time she heard him whisper, “Follow me.”

  Marimi gathered up the herbs and plants she had collected during her sojourn in the land of the dead, and the rabbit skin pouches she had made and filled with seeds and leaves and roots. She took Payat’s hand, and said, “We are leaving this place.” Filled with a strange new resolve and no longer afraid of the tribe’s laws and taboos, she went to her family shelter, where everyone was still asleep, and helped herself to her possessions, which her mother had not yet buried. Marimi squatted next to her sleeping mother and, alarmed at how old and wasted she had become from her long period of mourning, bent close and whispered, “Mourn for me no longer. I am going to follow my raven. My destiny lies no more with this family. I can never come back, Mother, but I will carry you in my heart. And whenever you see a raven, stop and listen to what he says, for he might be the one carrying a message from me. The message will be this: I am safe. I am content. I have found my destiny.”

  She left, wearing her best clothes: a long buckskin skirt and a rabbit skin cape around her shoulders, grass sandals on her feet. Rolled on her back was her sleeping mat which she had woven herself from cattails, a rabbit skin blanket, and the cradle board she had woven for the child to be born in the spring. She carried a basket for gathering seeds, a spear and a spear thrower, fire-starting tools, and pouches containing medicinal herbs. In this way did she come to understand why the raven had instructed her to follow Opaka and learn the medicine woman’s teachings. It had been to prepare Marimi for her great journey.

  The Topaa might wander far and wide in their eternal search for food, but there were limits and all were taught at an early age that “the land over there” belonged to the ancestors of another tribe and so it was forbidden for Topaa to walk there. But Marimi sensed, as she and Payat followed the raven who flew before them, that they were going to be led, for the first time in the history of her people, into forbidden territory.

  They walked all day, and when they reached the westernmost boundary of Topaa territory, Marimi approached the escarpment with fear and caution because this was a new land, where no Topaa had ever walked, with unfamiliar rocks and plants and, therefore, unfamiliar spirits. She looked out at the desert valley stretching away to the horizon. She didn’t know the rules here, the taboos. She knew that she must be cautious with every step for she might accidentally offend one of the spirits. As she was about to take the first step on the incline down the escarpment, she said, “Spirits of this place, we mean you no harm, we mean you no disrespect. We come with peace in our hearts.” Firmly grasping the boy’s hand, Marimi lifted her right foot and set it resolutely upon the forbidden soil.

  Payat began to cry. He tugged Marimi’s hand and pointed back to where they had come from, crying for his mother.

  But Marimi took him by the shoulders and, looking deeply into his young eyes, said, “We cannot go back, little one. We can never go back. I am your mother now. I am your mother.”

  Sniffing back his tears, Payat delivered his small hand into Marimi’s, and said, “Where are we going?”

  And she pointed toward the sun, a giant red ball in the western sky, her guide, the raven, outlined sharply against it.

  * * *

  Payat noticed the vultures first, circling overhead.

  “Why doesn’t Raven lead us to water?” he asked, his lips parched and cracked.

  “I don’t know,” Marimi said, puffing with the exertion of having to carry the boy on her back. He was too weak to walk. “Maybe he’s looking.”

  “Those birds want to eat us,” Payat said, meaning the vultures.

  “They are just curious. We are strangers in their land. They mean us no harm.” It was only a small lie, enough to comfort the boy.

  Marimi and Payat had traveled far, for many days and nights, along stark jagged cliffs and through deep canyons, across fields of boulders and vast areas of flat sand where they saw cacti taller than a man, always following the raven, who flew westward, ever westward.

  At each nightfall the raven would come to a rest— on a rock or a cactus or a tree— and Marimi and the boy would make camp, to awaken the next morning to follow the raven again in his flight toward the west. Where was Raven leading them? Were they to join another people? Marimi was worried because her child was going to be born soon and it was unthinkable that it should be born without a shaman in attendance to ask the gods for blessings. How would her baby receive protection and beneficence from the gods with no shaman there to speak on its behalf?

  During their long trek Marimi and Payat had survived on beans from the mesquite, wild plum, dates, and cactus buds. When hunting was good, they had feasted on a stew of rabbit, wild onions, and pistachio nuts. For water, when they could not find a stream or a spring, they sucked on the thick stems of prickly pear, which were full of water.

  Wherever they walked, they showed etiquette toward the land. All things were treated with respect and ritual. Taking any part of a tree, killing an animal, using a spring, or entering a cave was prefaced by ceremony, however simple, in the form of a request or an acknowledgment. “Spirit in this spring,” Marimi would say. “I ask pardon for taking your water. May we together complete the circle of life that was given to us by the Creator of All.” She also fashioned snares with bait, and as she and the boy hid behind rocks, she kissed the back of her hand to make a sucking sound, which attracted birds. And when they caught small game thusly, she apologized to the animal and asked that his ghost not take revenge on them.

  Once, when the ground roared and trembled so mightily that she and Payat were thrown off their feet, Marimi shook with terror until she retraced their steps and discovered the cause of the earthquake. She had inadvertently crushed a tortoise burrow. She begged forgiveness of Grandfather Torto
ise and cleared the opening to the reptile’s home.

  She never forgot her debt to the moon. When she and Payat had a meal, they never ate the whole of it but always left some behind, an offering to the goddess who had saved them.

  Occasionally they had come upon evidence of people having recently occupied a site— blackened stones, animal bones, shells from nuts. But sometimes the evidence was from long ago, when they would come upon petroglyphs that looked as if they had been carved in the rock back at the beginning of time. Marimi sensed the ghosts of those ancient people all about them as she and Payat crossed the foreign landscape, over the hot sand, in and out of the shade of massive date palms. She wondered what the ghosts thought of these strange intruders trekking over their ancestral land, and she always asked their pardon and assured them she and Payat meant no disrespect.

  The moon had died and renewed herself five times since the night Marimi prayed to her, and in that time Marimi had watched the moon and marveled at her power. Only the moon could die and be reborn in an endless cycle of death and birth, and only the moon cast light during the night when it was needed, whereas the sun shone his light during the day when it wasn’t needed. And when she walked in the moonlight, despite the burdens she carried on her back and inside her body, Marimi found her stride widening, she felt moon power flowing in her veins. With each step, her strength grew.

  And while she journeyed ever westward across the endless expanse, she let her thoughts fly to the stars, to linger there and then to return with new knowledge. Marimi knew something her people had never known: that an individual could pray directly to the gods without the intervention of a shaman. She had also learned that the world was not necessarily a malevolent place, as the Topaa believed. There were spirits everywhere to be sure, but they were not all evil. There were those who could be friendly and could be called upon for help and guidance, such as birds that circled the sky at sunset, indicating a water hole below. Whereas the shamans of the Topaa taught their people that only fear ensured survival, Marimi learned during her long sojourn among the silent boulders and cacti, the slinking coyotes and tiptoeing tortoises, that mutual respect and trust also ensured survival.