Mercedes Lackey - Sacred Ground

VIP免费

2024-12-22 0 0 737.45KB 393 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

-1-

CHAPTER 1

SHE POURED A dipperful of water over the hot rocks in the

heaterbox, and steam hissed up in sudden clouds,

saturating the dimly lit sauna with moisture. The smoke of

cedar and sweetgrass joined the steam, the humidity

making both scents so vivid she tasted them in the back of

her throat.

She sat down cross-legged on the wooden floor, boards

that had been sanded as smooth as satin underneath her

bare thighs. It didn't matter to her—or more importantly, to

Grandfather—that this sweatlodge was really a

commercially made portable sauna; that the rocks were

heated by electricity and not in a fire; that the sweetgrass

and cedar smoke were from incense bought at an esoteric

bookstore in Tulsa. Or even that the sweatlodge as a

place for meditation was more common among the

Lakotah Sioux than the Osage; Grandfather had borrowed

judiciously from other nations to remake the ways of the

Little Old Men into something that worked again. The

destination is what matters, he had told her a thousand

times, and the path you take to get there. Not whether

your ritual clothing is of tradecloth or buckskin, the water

you drink from a streamer a spring— or even the kitchen

tap. Sometimes ancient ways are not particularly wise, just

old.

-2-

She closed her eyes, sweat salty on her upper lip, and

stripped off the layers of her working self the way she had

stripped the layers of her working clothing before she had

taken her ritual bath and entered the now-sanctified

wooden box. There were layers to who she was, like an

onion, each layer both hiding the one beneath and

keeping the one beneath from reaching outward,

Jennifer Talldeer. The face that the white world saw;

ironic name for a woman a shade less than five feet in

height. Doubly ironic considering how tall Osage men and

women tended to be. Your mother's genes, was what her

father said, when she asked him why she was the runt of

the litter. That sneaky Cherokee blood. You know how

they are. With no acrimony; no one in her family believed

in refighting old battles. Her mother had just smiled.

Private Investigator, degree in criminology. Nice little

house, nice little neighborhood, nice little mortgage, in one

of the older parts of Tulsa. Nice old neighbors, who

thought it charming of her to take in her aged and "infirm"

(ha!) grandfather. That persona was the first to go,

washed away in the steam.

Next, the woman who danced at the powwows,

engaged in her little hobby of rescuing sacred objects from

profane hands; another mask, just one a little closer to the

truth, a little deeper to the bone. A woman who bore two

names, one for the earth-people and one for the sky-

-3-

anyway. Jennifer was what she did; Good Eagle was

simply an intermediary between what she did and what

she was.

Last layer; what she was.

The third Osage name, a name that was learned and

not given. Kestrel-Hunts-Alone.

Not a "normal" name for a woman.

Kestrel, pupil of a man with three names, her

grandfather. His Heavy Eyebrows name, Frank Talldeer.

His second, quite out of keeping with the Tzi-Sho, and a

name embodying contradiction, Ka-ha-ska, White Crow.

And his third—embodying even more contradiction than

the first—Ka-ha-me-o-pah, Mooncrow; crows do not fly at

night, nor are they associated with the moon, and those

birds that do fly at night are generally the enemies of

crows. The power of the Osage centered on the sun, not

the moon; a man of power should have had a sun-name,

like her father's. Contradiction piled on contradiction. . . .

Shamanic apprentice to her grandfather, her spirit-name

was taken from her spirit-animal, student as she was in

the teaching of one of the Little Old Men of the Ni-U-Ko'n-

Ska, the Children of the Middle Waters, whom the Heavy

Eyebrows and Long Knives called "Osage." By birth and

by spirit, she was gentle Tzi-Sho gens, the peacemakers,

and here lay the irony, for not only was Mooncrow

teaching her the peaceful medicine of Tzi-Sho, he was

-4-

contrary nature. He wasn't registered, either; nor were any

of his forefathers. And he wouldn't use any of the Peyote

rituals that had crept into, and indeed supplanted, most of

the Osage ways; they were like kudzu or mimosa in the

red-clay soil—not native, but once there, impossible to get

rid of. He had certainly been teaching her things no

tradition she knew of called for; he had adopted the

Lakotah sacred pipe; and he was passing to her the

medicines of virtually every Osage clan from Bear to Otter

to Eagle, things she thought were kept as clan secrets.

That would be like him; the man who cheerfully used an

electric sauna for a sweatlodge, who prepared sacred

tobacco in a fruit-dryer bought at an ex-hippie's yard sale,

who purchased his cornmeal for ceremonies at the big

chain grocery—

Who taught a woman Warrior's Medicine.

Kestrel realized where her thoughts were leading her,

and resolutely brought her concentration back where it

belonged. This Seeking was not about Mooncrow, but

about herself. About her progress, or rather, lack of

progress.

There was something holding her back, and she did not

know what it was. Mooncrow would not tell her, saying

only that if there really was something holding up her

progress, she already knew what it was; typical contrary

reasoning. She wondered where he'd gotten that particular

-5-

his choice, not hers. It was her duty, her privilege, to learn.

If she were failing somewhere, it was up to her to find out

where and why, and correct it. Only then would she earn

her medicine-pipe.

She let her temper cool, poured another dipperful of

water on the rocks, saw that the cedar still burned, and

started over, determined that Mooncrow and his contrary

ways would not distract her again. He was "just doing

that," like the buffalo, who did what they pleased, when

and , where they pleased, and if it seemed out-of-season,

who would dare to stop them? Steam wreathed her, heat

and semidarkness held her, and this time she slipped

away from herself to fly among the other worlds, among

the other Peoples of Water, Earth, and Sky.

It was in the Sky she found herself, a sky blue and

cloudless to the east, dark and cloudy to the west, with

Grandfather Sun on her back and wings, and the heat of

thermals off the prairie below bearing her up. She flew

above the meeting of forest and prairie, with the oaks and

redbud, cottonwood and willow stretching into the east,

and an endless sea of tallgrass to the west.

If she had worn human shape, there would have been

the hot, dry scent of grasses carried by the thermal she

rode, but raptors have no sense of smell, and all that

came to her through her nares was the heavy, drowsy

heat.

-6-

however, she chose to perch and wait—she would never

find those wise counselors. And it wasn't a good idea to

tempt other, smaller mysteries into action against her by

being lazy.

So she flew, low over tallgrass prairie, until movement

below sent her up to hover as only kestrel, of all the

falcons, could.

Rabbit looked up at her from the shadows at the base of

the grass, his nose twitching with amusement. "Come

down, little sister," he offered. "Come and tell me what you

seek, out of your world and in mine."

She stooped and landed beside him, claws closing on

grass stems as if they were a mouse. "An answer," she

said, folding her wings with a careful flip to align the

feathers properly, for a raptor's life depends on her

feathers. "What is it that keeps me unworthy to become a

pipebearer? Where have I failed?"

"I am not the one to ask," said Rabbit. His pink nose

quivered as he tested the air, constantly, and his gray-

brown coat blended perfectly with the dead grass of last

year. "You know what my counsel is; silence and care,

and always vigilance. I do not think that will help you

much. But perhaps our cousin in the grasses there can

answer you."

He pointed with his quivering pink nose at a spiderweb

strung between three tall grass stems and the

-7-

and flies buzzed tantalizingly near. "You must know that I

am going to counsel patience," she said, "for that is my

way. All things come to my web, eventually, and break

their necks therein."

Kestrel bobbed her head, though she did not feel

particularly patient. "That is true," she replied. "But it is

more than lack of patience—I must be unready, somehow.

There is something I have not done properly."

"If you feel that strongly, then you are unready," Spider

replied, agreeing with her. "I see that you do have great

patience—except, perhaps, with your Grandfather. But he

is a capricious Little Old Man, and difficult, and his tricks

do not make you laugh as they did when you were a child.

I think perhaps I cannot see what it is that makes you

unready. Why not ask one with sharper eyes than mine?"

She wondered for a moment if there was a hidden

message in that little speech about her Grandfather, but if

there was, she couldn't see it. Spider pointed to the blue

sky above with one of her forelegs, and Kestrel's sharp

eyes spotted the tiny dot that could only be Prairie Falcon

soaring high in a thermal. Her feathers slicked down to her

body in reflex, for the prairie falcon of the plains of the

outer world would quite happily make a meal of a kestrel.

For that matter, if she let fear overcome her, Prairie

Falcon of the inner world would happily make a meal of

Kestrel.

-8-

enough.

And she still didn't know why.

Kestrel became Good Eagle Woman; Good Eagle

Woman assumed the mask of Jennifer. She opened her

eyes and stood carefully, feeling for the switch that turned

the heater-box off, then finding the door latch and pushing

it open, releasing the steam into the air-conditioned cool of

the hall. There were old bathrobes hanging beside the

sauna; she wrapped herself in one and headed for the

shower.

As the hot water sheeted down her body, she tried to let

it clear her spirit of depression. It didn't succeed, not

entirely.

She should have been ready by now; she should have

been good enough. She had mastered skills just as

difficult in a shorter time frame—to save money, she'd

gotten her four-year degree in three years, while

continuing to study the shamanic traditions. Not good

enough; that hung in her chest, a weight on her soul and

heart, pulling her to the ground when she wanted to fly. It

was time—it was more than time. She had spent years in

this apprenticeship; she should have been ready by now.

She should have been good enough.

How long had she been doing this, anyway?

Since I was just a kid, she thought, trying to remember

the very first time her grandfather had singled her out for

-9-

watching the birds at the feeder, when the little rabbit had

crept cautiously up to help himself to some of the stale

bread her mother put out for the crows and grackles. He

couldn't have been more than two months old; no longer

dependent on his mother, but scarcely half the size of a

grown rabbit. He never stopped watching all around while

he nibbled; never stopped swiveling his ears in every

direction, alert for danger. His fur looked very soft, softer

than her cat's, and her fingers itched to stroke him. But

she knew that if she moved, he would be off in a moment.

She nodded, not speaking. Granpa wouldn't frighten the

rabbit no matter what he did or said, she knew that, but

she also knew she would. It was just a fact, like the green

grass. Granpa could walk right up to a wild deer and touch

it. She wouldn't be able to get within a mile of one. "No,

not just this rabbit—" Granpa persisted, "Rabbit. " She had

not puzzled at the statement, as virtually any adult and

most children would have. She heard what he meant, not

what he said, and looked deeper—

That was when the half-grown cottontail became

Rabbit, grew to adult-human size and more, sat up, and

looked at her.

"Hello, little sister," he said politely. "Thank your mother

for her bread, but ask her if she would put some of the

kitchen greens out here for us as well, would you? Carrot-

ends taste just fine to us, and bug-chewed cabbage

-10-

brought by humans, Dog and Cat. And humans hunted

him too—she'd eaten rabbit often, herself.

But he survived by being quiet, by skill at hiding and

running, and by being very, very fruitful. He sired many

offspring, so that one out of every ten might live to sire or

give birth.

And he did well by being something of an opportunist.

Now that the land had been covered with houses with neat

backyards, there were alleys full of weeds to eat and hide

in, and sometimes the kitchen rubbish to eat as well.

There were spaces between fences and under houses or

garages to make into warrens. Dogs and cats could be

dodged by escaping into another yard, or under a porch.

And of the hawks and falcons, only kestrels hunted among

the houses at all regularly. Rabbit had adapted to the

world created by the Heavy Eyebrows, and now prospered

where creatures that had not adapted were not

prospering.

Just like us, she thought with astonishment. Just like

Mommy and Daddy and Granpa—

Because they lived in a house in the suburbs of Clare-

more, because Daddy didn't get tribal oil money, he had a

job as a welder, and that was the same for Mommy and

Granpa, too. There was nothing to show that they were

Osage and Cherokee except their name. They lived just

like their neighbors, went to church every Sunday at First

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

-1-CHAPTER1SHEPOUREDAdipperfulofwateroverthehotrocksintheheaterbox,andsteamhissedupinsuddenclouds,saturatingthedimlylitsaunawithmoisture.Thesmokeofcedarandsweetgrassjoinedthesteam,thehumiditymakingbothscentssovividshetastedtheminthebackofherthroat.Shesatdowncross-leggedonthewoodenfloor,boardsthathad...

展开>> 收起<<

Mercedes Lackey - Sacred Ground.pdf

共393页,预览79页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Mercedes Lackey - Sacred Ground

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: