My own gaze fell to his hand and that’s when I noticed the goosebumps popped up along his arm. Judging by the look on his face, it was a foreign sensation for him.
“Goosebumps,” I explained, rubbing my palm back and forth along his arm to chase them away.
“It feels as if my flesh were electrified,” he let out a strange laugh. “What does it mean?”
“It happens when something tickles your skin, or when a touch feels good.”
“Touch never feels good to me,” he marveled, his face clearly showing how utterly confusing the idea was to him. “But you…” Slowly, his hand raised to my face, and he brushed a few fingers softly over my cheek. Instantly, goosebumps sprang up on the darkly tanned flesh visible below his shirt sleeve. His face went blank, as he tried to make sense of what it meant. “They’re waiting for you,” Chassan dismissed me, his face going dark again as he turned away.
“Um...yeah,” I fumbled with my words, slowly backing towards the door as I watched Chassan wrestle with what was happening to him.
This world was changing Chassan. Piece by piece, bit by bit it was making him into a different god. But why now? Surely he had crawled from his rock a thousand times before to live his alter ego, wildlife photographer life. And he’d always returned to his rock the same. Which only left one explanation.
I must be the one changing him.
Following Chapac and Tinchi through the streets to the palace we were met with respectful bows from every villager. Tomorrow Chapac would be anointed queen. Fittingly, she was already treated as one.
Through the labyrinth of palace hallways we went, the soul sisters leading the way with interlocked arms. From outside the structure it looked as if the palace were nothing special, just a few hallways of stone rooms and a great hall for feasts and general king worshipping.
As Chapac and Tinchi led me further into the darkened bowels of the palace it grew colder, and I shivered against my fleece. From the downward slant of the hallway and an unmistakably musty scent hanging in the air, I knew we descended under the palace into the mountain itself. Several guards stood as sentries at the mouth of a great tunnel we passed through, but no other servant entered this area, and I wondered if any ever had.
We wound down circular stone steps, lined with torches and doorways until Chapac stopped at a set of double carved stone doors.
Tinchi opened them and it was as if she were opening the pearly gates of heaven.
Light filtered into the room from an opening high above, so bright it could only be from the sun. Soft as angel’s wings, the yellow glow kissed every surface in the cavernous room—the hard stone walls ragged from a miner’s pick centuries ago, an ornate wooden table that could’ve been borrowed from Paititi’s great hall, a pallet of brightly woven woolen pillows where little Anyi’s raven head sat shining in the sun. She looked at me with an impish grin as if we were about to sit down to the grandest tea party of them all.
On one side, a shimmering pool glistened in the warm light, fed by the constant, soothing trickle of an underground stream. Flowers from the jungle grew in great clay pots where the sun was strongest, creating a mini cloud-forest blooming from the shadows.
Behind Anyi, on the wall opposite the doorway, a great golden disc, shaped like the sun, hung on the wall. Twice as tall as me, its commanding presence filled the entire room. It was held in place by thick ropes of pure gold, and flanked with torches that radiated warm light against its surface. Before it, an altar, carved of pure white stone, held a single white candle, flickering an oddly clear light from a sconce of gold.
It was separated from the room by a pool of rippling water, a body so deep and wide one would have to swim it if they were to cross.
I gasped, feeling as if I were witnessing something only Q’ero royalty should be allowed to see. The Incas were a rich culture, that much I knew. But this was wealth I never could have imagined. As I stared openmouthed, one thing was startlingly obvious about an altar so grand...it was intended to worship gods. The gods of the past the Q’ero still deified. Gods like Chassan—and as much as I hated to admit it—me.
Completely stunned, and lost in thought, I startled when the women took me by either arm and directed me toward Anyi, who sat smiling as broadly as ever from the pillows, totally unaffected by the beautiful altar behind her.
Chapac and Tinchi ushered me to an overstuffed purple pillow across from Anyi and then took the pillows on either side.
First a chalice was passed, from Tinchi to Chapac, from Anyi to me. It tasted awful, but I smiled anyway as I choked it down, deciding they weren’t trying to kill me if they were drinking it to. The entire time, Anyi’s smile never wavered, and she sat as radiant as the sun god disc smiling behind her.
I didn’t understand a word the two older women said. But, when they tied our hands together with a shimmering golden scarf, and Anyi looked at me—a look so full of unrestrained love and devotion—I knew exactly what they were doing.
It was some sort of binding ceremony that would link little Anyi and me forever in the sisterhood of Q’ero women. I wanted to stop them, to tell them it was wrong to bind the little girl to someone who wouldn’t be around to help her as a partner should. I mean, did they think I was going to stay here forever?
I frowned and looked to Anyi to shake my head and see if I could make her understand we couldn’t do this.
But, once again, when I turned to the little girl, I could tell being bound to me was the only thing she wanted in life. Her adoration was obvious, as if she had placed me on some pedestal even the tallest ladders in the world couldn’t reach. I had never felt more worthy and unworthy at the same time.
I shook my head and frowned. Anyi’s smile fell. Her tiny chin trembled. Her black eyes ceasing to dance for a brief moment, and then she sighed. She rose to her knees and leaned across the pillows, placing her warm palm on my cheek. With her other hand she touched her heart, took an impressively deep breath and then placed the hand over my heart. Almost mimicking the way I had sucked death from her body and given her life the night she almost died. My chest caved into the gaping hole created when my heart burst wide open.
How could I say no to that? I had saved this little girl’s life with my magic. Something she obviously knew. I had never promised her I was staying, never given her any indication I would. She couldn’t expect me to hang around, but if this was what she wanted, who was I to tell her no?
So, I smiled and nodded, and turned my head to place a small kiss on her tiny palm and squeezed it in my hand.
Chapac shared a tearful grin with Tinchi in a way only proud mothers can, as if overwhelmed that someone could love her little girl as much as she did.
With Tinchi performing the parts of the ritual for me that Chapac did for Anyi, we were bound in that mountain cave in the middle of Nowhere, Peru.
Hours later, dressed in a similar blue caftan-type dress I had worn at our first dinner and my hair lovingly tied in ribbons, Anyi walked me back to my hut, dressed in an identical miniature caftan, arm intwined in mine, playing our hand pipes as if we were completely deaf, or oblivious, to the horrible sound we made.
Women emerged from their huts as we passed, cheering us in tearful celebration and dancing to our cacophony of merriment. Anyi and I could hardly play we were laughing so hard at the way the women danced. Or maybe she was laughing at my weird American dancing...probably definitely laughing at my dancing.
At the hut door, I blew a little kiss, smiling and waving as Anyi turned and continued her little dance back to the palace. My grin stretched from ear to ear as I walked into the hut admiring the hand carved pipe Anyi had insisted I keep.
Chassan was in the extra room, beginning to develop some pictures he had taken. I assumed Professor Abrams and crew were helping Rhea in the hospital, curing the Incas instead of searching for their lost gold.
I blew a few notes on my pipe as I entered the room. Chassan turned, sharing my smile for all of a nanosecond before h
is eyes bulged larger than the long lens in his hand and all color drained from his face.
“What?” My smile fell from my lips and I stumbled backward, not knowing what I had done to get such a reaction from him.
He stood silently watching me, his eyes running up and down the blue caftan. I gasped and my heart fell out of my chest. The caftan! The woman on the wall!
“Chassan, I’m sorry. Anyi insisted I wear it. I’ll...I’ll go change.” I stuttered and began to flee the room. But, he grabbed my arm and pulled me back, his eyes raking over my hair and then flashing dark ochre with rage.
“Why are you wearing this dress?” He hissed.
“Anyi gave it to me. Chapac and Tinchi just did some kind of bonding ceremony for us.” I didn’t know how I was able to form words and actually speak them. It felt as if my heart was trying to hide behind my spine, I was so terrified by the look in his eyes.
“Bonding ceremony?” He released my arm and sat down on a stool as if his legs were incapable of holding him up. I nodded dumbly, rubbing my hand over where he had held me.
“What’s so wrong with that?” I asked, suddenly very confused by his abrupt change in mood.
He hissed through his teeth, either in disgust or anger. I couldn’t tell.
“Did you stop to think about why they would agree to bond young Anyi, the king’s daughter, to someone who will soon be gone?” His voice was as empty as his eyes, staring at me in a way that made me feel too exposed despite the gown that covered me head to toe.
“Of course, I did. I tried to stop them but Anyi was so insistent.” My gaze fell to the pipe in my hands and I dropped to a stool beside Chassan. “Besides, they know I’m not staying here,” I added, feeling a little guilty about the situation.
Chassan said nothing, continuing to stare at me with his trademark dark glare. It made me so uncomfortable I continued to ramble to fill the painful silence.
“I mean, it makes zero sense that they would bind her to me. Now she’ll have to grow up without a partner in life. Unless….can Q’ero women bond twice in life. Like if one of them dies or leaves?” I shrugged in a distracted way, thinking aloud, hoping to lighten his mood.
Slowly, he shook his head back and forth, still not saying a word, but holding my gaze with darkly intense eyes, like he was waiting for something.
“Well, then that’s just stupid. When I leave little Anyi it’ll be just like I died. I’m not coming back, and if she died I’d be….” My mind froze in place.
If Anyi died, I’d be back in America. Living my normal life far away from this place, her death not leaving a poor Q’ero sister with a lifetime of mourning.
Most little girls her age had already bonded. I’d seen them in the streets playing together. But not Anyi. She hadn’t been allowed to bond with another Q’ero as if she were being saved for some other purpose.
Blood turned to ice in my veins as the image of the altar I’d stumbled upon in the woods seared its way to the front of my brain. Followed by the vision I’d had of little Anyi as I stood before it.
“Chassan, they wouldn’t sacrifice the king’s daughter, would they?” I laughed almost uncontrollably as I spoke. Hearing the words out loud made them sound even more preposterous. No way. That was old and barbaric. Kids couldn’t be sacrificed these days.
I tried to convince myself. Until I remembered what Rhea had said about the little ice mummies recently found on a mountain top. They had been royal children, a boy and a girl, fed coca leaves and then left as human popsicles to appease the gods.
The pipe began to tremble in my hand and I dropped it to the straw-covered dirt floor, wringing both hands at my chest as I tried to think of some other reason for the little girl being allowed to irrevocably bind herself to me.
I came up with nothing and it felt as if the air had sucked out of my lungs and hot coals had taken their place. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. All I could see was beautiful little Anyi, her lips blue and frozen as she lay on a bed of ice on a faraway mountain top.
The stone walls closed in on me. This couldn’t happen. Not to Anyi, not to me. I would steal her away in the night. I would take her with me. They would not get to hurt her.
Tears flowed like wild mountain streams down my cheeks and I tucked my head between my knees to try to stop the gut wrenching sobs that were racking my body.
“Faye?” Chassan put a hand on my back. I knew if I looked at him I would have my answer. But I couldn’t look at him. Not yet.
“NO!” I sobbed.
He sighed and sat back on his stool, tapping his foot nervously on the ground while he waited for me to gain some composure.
“They’re going to kill her, aren’t they?” I asked as I rocked back and forth, hugging my waist as tightly as I could.
He only nodded.
“Why?”
“Q’ero believe that by offering one life, many will be spared. It’s an old practice, but this recent illness has no doubt scared her father back to the old ways.”
“That makes zero sense,” I whined in a high pitched voice, wiping the back of my hand over slick cheeks.
“Faye, Anyi was born to give her life for her father’s reign. A son is born to rule. A daughter is born to sacrifice,” he said softly, hands dragging through his spiky golden hair and then clasping the back of his neck.
“I won’t let them kill her, Chassan.” My face felt unusually stiff as I stared into his caramel and molasses swirled eyes with determination flaring bright in mine. A cold breeze chilled the rivers of snot and tears on my face, and I knew I would give my own life before they could have hers. Chassan said nothing as I stomped to the room I shared with Rhea and the native woman.
I ripped the blue dress from my body, this time folding it neatly away in my backpack before pulling on my usual outfit of jeans, a button down and hiking boots.
I didn’t say another word to Chassan as I left him with his camera equipment in the hut and stalked out to a far field. The workers were all busy preparing for the king’s coronation the next day, which left me alone in the fields with my thoughts, which were all of little Anyi.
I had worked my brain into so many aching knots I feared it would never come unraveled enough to show me what to do. How could I save little Anyi? Chassan would never help me steal her away. He refused to disrupt the Q’ero’s life by imposing his own morals on them. That was if he had morals where death was concerned.
No, there would have to be another way. If I could persuade her to leave with me, we could sneak away in the night. She was always perfectly willing and capable of keeping my secrets. If I could carry her on my back, I could run fast enough that they would never be able to catch us.
But what would I do then? Take her back to St. Anne’s with me like I had birthed an eight year old over Christmas break? Giving her to my parents wasn’t an option either. They were about as excited as snakes to be parents. If I could get her to Rose and Phin, they would take her without question. I knew they would.
But there was the even bigger problem. I was positive Q’ero didn’t have passports. There wasn’t a border in the world that would let Anyi pass without one, which made taking her with me suddenly seem impossible.
In one swift intentional motion I plopped to my rear, landing in the tall grass and stabbing my heel into the earth in frustration. I rested my elbows over my knees and let out an exacerbated sigh to the sky.
“Why is this so difficult? Why isn’t there an answer?” I half yelled through clenched teeth to quiet my voice.
“Answers are everywhere if you know where to find them.” A deep, dramatic voice floated into the air and I startled. Almost expecting to see Inti himself when I turned around.
It was Luke, leaning heavily on the staff he spent his evenings carving, his long white hair lifted by the breeze and trailing behind him.
“You...you talk?” I wrinkled my nose at him. How had he snuck up on me? Why hadn’t I sensed him coming like I did others now? His
shoulder bounced in an amused chuckle.
“There is much more to be learned from listening than there is from speaking, Faye.” His voice was such an odd accent, but not one that I could easily place. It certainly didn’t belong in this country, but it didn’t belong in America either.
“I don’t think any amount of listening would solve my problems,” I shook my head in a helpless way and turned my focus back to the sky.
“You mean little Anyi?”
“How’d you know?” I jerked my head back to him.
“It’s the way of life in these mountains.” His shoulders shrugged as he kept both hands firmly on his staff, looking as if he were Moses parting the Red Sea.
“I can’t save her, can I?” I plucked a blade of grass and began tearing it to shreds in my fingers, disgusted by the thought.
“Her fate is left to the gods now. They will decide if she lives or if she dies.”
“How will they do it?”
“Oh, it’s peaceful by sacrificial standards. The Q’ero believe that a rule begun in blood will end in blood. In order to keep blood off the king’s hands, they burn their offerings so the smoke rises up to Inti.”
“Inti? Pft! Like he’s going to do anything.” I threw the shredded grass to the ground. “Wait...they’ll burn her?” I turned back to him. I had assumed she would be frozen like the little mummies Rhea spoke of. I’d never considered she’d be burned like the king.
“They’ll give her coca leaves first. Those will knock her out. She won’t feel a thing,” Luke answered, assuming I was worried about little Anyi’s pain.
I leapt to my feet and practically kissed the old man.
“You say only the gods can change Anyi’s fate?” I tilted my head as I looked at Luke, noticing his cold steel eyes burning bright under shaggy white brows. He nodded. “Even long forgotten gods?” I clarified, chills racing over my body as I thought about what I was asking.
Son of Sun (Forgotten Gods (Book 2)) Page 20
