As expected, it was absolutely vile. With no honey in it to cover the taste. Grandfather had never believed in disguising bitterness, either in Medicine or in truth.

Which is why we are so much alike. And probably why we get on each others’ nerves.

Lights out, she did not exactly fall asleep, but the kind of trance she achieved was much deeper than the kind she had in the sweatlodge. This time, instead of looking for an answer within herself, she took form as an owl rather than a kestrel. She needed the senses of a night-flyer; she was going to be looking at a world only a little removed from the “real.” In this shape, she soared into a sky that was an analog of the real sky over Oklahoma. The buildings of Tulsa loomed beneath her, and she kited on the thermals rising from hot asphalt.

Where should I look next? That was the question she needed answered. She framed her problems carefully in her mind. First, where should she go for clues? Not the site—she already knew she would have to make a careful examination there. But where else should she look? Somewhere out there was evidence—and it might not be in obvious places.

Brothers, sisters, show me the places that are not obvious. I have a shattered jar, and only a few of the pieces. Show me the places where some of the pieces might be.

Although in the real world it was still night, dawn-red crept into the eastern sky. Without thinking, she shifted from owl to kestrel, for now she was completely in the Spirit World, and now she did not need the special night-vision of an owl. She widened the circle of her hunt. Below her the landscape blurred and shifted. Her prayer had been heard.

Movement below her caught her eye, a pair of redtail hawks crying out over a despoiled nest.

In this world, there were always deeper meanings to things that seemed obvious. There was a deeper meaning to this than a hawk pair who had lost their nest to some interfering human.

And the redtail was, above all other birds, the sacred bird to the Osage. It was the redtail whose skin went into the sacred Wah-hopeh shrine, the redtail whose tail feathers were as red as the sun at dawn and sunset, and the redtail who told the Osage when it was to be war, or peace.

So—she folded her wings, and dropped lower.

The hawks faded; the nest became a shrine. One of the sacred Wah-Hopeh shrines of woven grass that housed the hawk that guided her people. The shrine had been broken into and the pieces scattered.

She kited closer. The broken shrine became landscape; roads and hills that she recognized; a house and several barns. A place up near Rose; a burial ground that was on private property.