Grandfather often pointed out the success of the sparrow hawk as an example—the sparrow hawk, who like the rabbit had moved out of the meadows and into the suburbs. That was not the original way of the Osage, who had been more apt to construct deeper and more complicated layers of ritual around the core of their traditions when those traditions failed them. Grandfather—and, she suspected, his father before him and his own grandfather—had changed that. They had begun to change, to move as quietly into the world of the Heavy Eyebrows as they once had through their beloved forests; to hide themselves under the camouflage of jeans and workshirts, of square wooden houses and neat yards. With that change, they had changed the Medicine, until it began to work well again, as it had worked when it was concerned with hunting and fishing, stealing horses and averting danger, winning brides and conquering enemies. Adapting the Medicine had worked with other tribes—but the Heavy Eyebrows were different, so different that an adaptation would not work. It had to be change, much as the Little Old Men disliked change.

That had been what Grandfather had said, at any rate, when she had asked him.

“Well?” he said, looking up at her, his bright black eyes shining with some secret amusement. She didn’t pretend not to know what he was talking about.

“You know very well I got it, Grandfather,” she sighed. “There’s no point in pretending you don’t know. I might have believed that a raven cawing at me from the wires was just coincidence, but not one that landed on the roof of my truck and stared me in the face, then laughed at me.”

Grandfather shook his head, mockingly. “Damn,” he replied. “I must be slipping. I shouldn’t have tipped my hand that way.”