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was “hunt jackrabbit.” The young man who had chosen her for his mate was of the Tortoise Clan, the Dust Valley People, “pipe makers.” He had delighted Marimi with his antics at the last harvest, prancing and preening in front of her shelter, playing his flute, miming his skill at spear throwing, but not speaking to her for that was taboo. And when she had set out a basket of sweet roots, to indicate her interest, he had arranged for his father to meet with hers, and the two men had conferred with the headmen of their clans to work out the complex negotiations, to determine gifts, and whether the bride should go to the groom’s family, or the other way around. If the husband came from a family of few women, then his wife went with him. If the wife came from a family of widows and unmarried sisters, then the husband went with her. In Marimi’s case, her father was the only male among eight women. He gladly welcomed Marimi’s new husband as a son.
    Also at the harvest, the people were reminded of the boundaries of the tribal land, and the children were taught to memorize the rivers, the forests, the mountain ranges that separated Topaa land from that of neighboring tribes— Shoshone to the north, Paiute to the south, and with whom the Topaa neither traded, nor intermarried, nor waged war— and the children were made to remember that it was strictly taboo to hunt, collect seeds, or to take water from the land of another tribe.
    At each pine nut harvest the families erected shelters on their ancestral plots, where their family had been meeting and harvesting since the beginning of time. The very spot where Marimi had spread her mat and where she now wove her baby basket was the same place her mother and grandmother and grandmothers all the way back to the beginning had also spread their mats and woven baby baskets. And someday, her first born daughter would sit in this same place and weave her baskets as she watched the same dances, the same games. In this way did the yearly pine nut harvest serve as more than merely to collect winter food. Here was where the people learned the stories of their ancestors, because the way of the Topaa was bound to the past, thus ensuring that what went before was so today, and would be tomorrow until the end of time. The annual gathering taught a person where he or she stood in Creation. It showed a man or woman that he or she was part of a Great Design, that the Topaa and the land, the animals and the plants, the wind and the water were all connected and intertwined like the complex baskets the women wove.
    After the pine nut harvest, the clans would stay and winter in the mountains, and when the first green shoots came up from the ground, the enormous settlement would break up, with the families dispersing to their ancestral homes until the next harvest. Marimi and her husband, her mother and father, and six sisters would return to their land, where they hunted jackrabbits, and where Marimi’s family had lived since the time of Creation. There she would bear her first child, becoming a mother, thus raising her status in the clan so that next year when they returned to the pine forest, the people would address her with new respect and deference.
    It was upon this happy future that Marimi tried to focus her thoughts while the chill from Opaka’s enigmatic gaze crept into her flesh like a dread. Why was the shaman-woman staring at her?
    The ways of the clan shamans were mysterious and deep, and taboo for anyone to even contemplate let alone talk about, for the shamans alone possessed the power to move between the real world and that of the supernatural. Always, before the harvest began, before the first family erected its first shelter, the shamans’ god-huts were built. Everyone participated, even children and the elderly, cutting the best branches and twigs, offering the best skins and kindling so that the god-hut would welcome the gods and bring blessings to the harvest and to the