“Exactly,” the old woman confirmed. “In the beginning, it might even be helpful to keep one hand wrapped around the pendant while you perform a telemetric reading with the other hand. Over time, it should become second nature. You will only need to think of the pendant for it to split your focus.”
“It’s worth a shot.”
“Then shall we try again?” Faye suggested calmly.
Cassie’s heart skipped several beats. “You don’t mean you want me to pick up that creepy little bird woman again, do you?”
“If you fall off a horse—”
“I don’t care about falling off a horse. I care about the one in my vision that was about to trample me!” Cassie exclaimed.
“If you’d rather wait, we can do this another time.”
Cassie remained motionless for a few moments, considering her options. She could feel Faye silently willing her to continue. Eventually, she gave in. “What the heck. I suppose I should get it over with now. It’ll be worse for me if I wait. I know I’ll have nightmares about it.”
The old woman nodded approvingly. “Very good. Close your eyes and grip the obsidian disc in your left hand for a few moments. Just concentrate all your attention on it. Tug lightly on the chain and feel its connection to your neck. Now, reach out your other hand and pick up the figurine of the bird goddess.”
***
It took six agonizing tries before Cassie finally caught her balance. The first time, she lost herself immediately and began drowning in the massacre. When she was thrown clear, she refocused her attention more intensely on the black stone disc. A second, a third, a fourth time. With every new attempt, she held onto a shred of herself a little longer before the atrocity consumed her. By the sixth try, she was able to split her awareness and watch the terrible scene unfolding as if she were watching a horror movie from the safe vantage point of the audience.
“It still leaves me feeling awful,” she commented to Faye after her final successful try.
By this time Faye had brought in a fresh pot of tea and a plate of cucumber sandwiches. She served more refreshments for both of them. “That just means you have a conscience,” the old woman observed. “No feeling person could witness the murder of an innocent without some sympathy for the unfortunate victim.”
“What happened to those people?” the girl asked. “Why were they being massacred?”
“You forget you haven’t told me the details of everything you observed.”
“Oh, that’s right!” Cassie exclaimed. She then proceeded to give Faye all the sickening particulars of the scene.
The old woman’s face drained of color. “Well, it’s done, and now we know. You’ve had your trial by fire.”
Cassie took a bite of her sandwich. Unaccountably, she was feeling better. “The upside is that it can’t get much worse, can it?”
“No, it certainly can’t. And you’ve just proven your ability to overcome difficult situations.” Faye studied the girl’s face for a few moments. “You really are a most extraordinary young woman.”
Cassie blushed. Nobody had ever called her extraordinary before. She had always been treated like somebody’s appendage or maybe just their baggage. First, she was toted around by her parents and afterward by Sybil. She’d never been anything in her own right.
“Extraordinary?” she repeated. “What makes you say that?”
Faye smiled. “Given the recent shocks you’ve experienced in your life, I can’t think of a single person of your age who would willingly relive a scene of such horror. Not once but six times. It was quite brave of you.”
The girl shrugged offhandedly. “Maybe stubborn is a better word. I hate to quit. It comes from all the moving around I did as a kid. I never got to finish anything.”
“In our line of work, tenacity is a virtue.”
“Speaking of tenacity, a while ago I asked you why all those people were massacred. I still want to know.”
“Ah, yes.” Faye stirred sugar into her tea contemplatively. “You’ve just seen an overlord invasion in all its glory.”
“‘Glory’ is a strange word to use for it,” the girl observed grimly. “‘Gory’ might be better.”
“Yet how often history books like to use ‘glory’ to describe acts of viciousness.” Faye sighed expressively. “The Vinca were among the last inhabitants of old Europe before the Kurgan invasions.”
“What do you mean by old Europe? To an American, everything in Europe seems old.”
Faye laughed softly. “Then maybe I should call them the original inhabitants of Europe. You see, what we think of as European civilization was founded on the destruction of previous cultures. Some far more sophisticated than that of the barbarians who displaced them. The Vinca were one such culture. They lived in southeastern Europe. Many of their artifacts were found near Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
“The Vinca were peaceful agriculturists. They possessed domesticated cattle and lived in villages with laid-out streets and two-story houses. Superb craftspeople. Their pottery and sculpture are more advanced than anything produced by their successors. The arrangement of graves and the magnitude of goddess statues suggest that they, too, were matristic. As you might have guessed by now, the bird goddess was their principal deity. They may even have invented the first written script. Archaeologists have found tablets dating to 5000 BCE with pictograms and symbols that recur in later matristic cultures on Crete and Cypress. The Vinca flourished between 5000 BCE and 4300 BCE, at which time they were displaced by the first wave of Kurgans.”
“Let me guess,” Cassie said archly. “The Kurgans are overlord bad guys.”
“Yes, certainly bad for the Vinca and everybody whose lands they invaded though there were reasons why their culture became as violent as it did. Over time, I expect you’ll learn a great deal about the why and wherefore of their behavior. Much more than I can tell you now. Suffice it to say that a wave of Kurgan invaders left the Russian steppes and moved westward—driving out the inhabitants and taking their lands. They imposed a war-based male-dominated society on the folk
