“Come!” The man drags her over to the creatures and their stretcher. He trills wildly, and the deer and owl look relieved. Then he says, “This is an honor and a blessing. Cisco and Luis have done well.”
Cisco and Luis, the fused corpse.
The owl creature bobs its head. “We thank you, Maras. You are kindness itself.”
The clay pot of the intertwined girls clacks across the bench. The girls writhe, and their mouths open as if they are screaming; and the pot itself seems to wail.
The man, Maras, ignores the commotion on the bench and tells the deer and owl to “bring the new girl to Nayra to feed. She’ll make a good replacement for Bachue and Cava.” Then he scoops up the clay pot, which writhes and wails more shrilly, and stuffs it into a backpack. “Back to the cave, my lovelies.” Unblinking eyes leer at at Chicya, up and down they gaze, as if assessing her value.
The deer grabs one of her arms, the owl grabs the other. She screams and tries to yank her arms free, but these two are strong, like rock, and the struggling bruises her skin. They drag her through the dirt to the roofless building.
Maras clambers up the steep stairs carved into the mountain. His backpack bobs as he hoists himself from stair to stair. Chicya feels sorry for the girls of the clay pot. The pot seemed so alive, the two girls so miserably pathetic and fated to . . . what?
As the deer and owl nudge her into the tent, an elderly woman on skinny stumps sways in the breeze. She strums a harp and warbles an old Inca tune.
What might be a girl eases Chicya onto a chair and hands her a platter of food. The stew: alpaca, cilantro, lime, and tomato; and again, the large kernels of corn. The girclass="underline" face gnarled like a tree trunk, knobs like giant warts on her neck and arms, hair long and sleek like a black waterfall, body slender like Chicya’s; and Chicya dips her eyes, and yes, the girl has two feet.
“I’m Nayra.” The girl gestures at the platter. “Go ahead. Eat.”
Chicya sips from a cup. Fermented corn juice. She sips again and tells the girl her name, then says, “Please, tell me what’s going on here. What do they want with me?”
The girl lowers her voice. “If you cook or drive a truck or fix things for Maras, he spares you.”
“From what?”
“I cook.”
“What does he spare you from, Nayra?”
Nayra quivers. The knobs on her neck shake. “Don’t ask me anything else,” she says. “Just eat.”
And so it goes as time passes. Nayra gives Chicya more food than she can eat, and it’s always the same: the corn kernels and fermented juice, the alpaca stew. Nayra refuses to supply any information. Maras checks on Chicya as she rests on her pallet, and he seems pleased. She’s too weak to do anything but eat and sleep.
Over time, she changes, and not for the better. Her face feels gnarled, and her skin hurts when she smiles. Her stomach is larger, her waist ill-defined, her toes half the size they were when she first came here. Worse, she feels drugged all the time, and it isn’t a good feeling like with the coca and lime. Rather, it dulls her brain and makes her sluggish.
She could stumble down the road that winds up the mountain to this place. She could, but every time the thought enters her head, she falls back asleep. Besides, her feet have withered and are now mere nubs, so how far would she get? And then, there’s that small problem about Maras with his gun . . .
“Did you ever think,” Nayra says one day, “that your life would end like this?”
Chicya lies on her pallet. Her arms are heavy, her legs like wood. Nayra sits beside her, stumped legs outstretched, body round now like a ball. She lost her feet weeks ago. Her skin looks jaundiced, or maybe . . . claylike.
“Why do you suddenly care about me?” asks Chicya.
“For five years, I’ve been here and Maras never made me fight. I only had to cook. Now,” she blinks back tears, “well, look at me. I’m as good as gone.”
“So you let him do this to me out of fear for yourself?”
“I never thought he’d make me fight. He’s always favored me. Of course, he had Bachue and Cava to earn money for him, and now they’re broken.”
Chicya props herself on her elbows. It’s hard to keep her head from crashing back to the pallet. She shifts to her side, keeps her left elbow on the bed, then cradles her head in her hand. This keeps her head up.
“What would happen if you stop feeding me the drugged food and drinks?”
“It’s not drugged. And the answer is, you would starve. That’s all we have.”
“Well, if it’s not drugged, then what is it?”
Nayra stretches out on the floor and stares at the cloudless sky. She doesn’t look at Chicya. “Everyone says our people died because the conquistadores brought smallpox, not because their gods were stronger than ours. You remember how the only time the Inca ever defeated the Spanish was at Ollantayambo?”
Chicya doesn’t understand. What does this have to do with anything? But she nods. “Yes.”
“And how, years later, the Manqu Inca was betrayed and attacked by those under his protection? Barely alive, he came to Wakapathtay to die in the Sacred Cave?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what do you think is so special about the cave? About this place?” Nayra asks.
“Look, just tell me. Don’t play guessing games. Maybe I can figure out a way to get us out of here.”
Nayra scoffs. “This isn’t a riddle. I thought you might know more than me. I don’t know what’s in the cave. I never go up there. I don’t cross Maras. I prefer to remain off the shelf.”
A long pause.
“Besides,” Nayra continues, “if you haven’t noticed, not many people here have feet or a body shape suitable for walking, much less climbing stairs or mountains.” Her voice trails off, and her eyes shut. She fades into the fog of the stew and the corn and the chicha.
Maras said that Chicya would make a fine replacement for the Bachue and Cava act. Nayra says that she’s turning into a freak because the Bachue and Cava pottery is broken. An image of Cisco and Luis flashes through Chicya’s mind, how they clubbed each other to death for the true believers, the Inca of the Sacred Valley.
After Nayra leaves, Chicya plucks a lime slice from a jar of alpaca stew and sucks on it. The tartness revives her, and thinking she might need sustenance, she tucks the jar into the front of her pants, then grasps the pole in the middle of the tent and forces herself to stand. She limps outside, where the forests buzz with insects, twigs crackle, streams slosh, and the alpaca chew the ichu. A buzzard whirls overhead. The elderly woman on skinny stumps is a statue by the cook tent, her harp fused to her body.
Chicya isn’t sure what’s real and what’s in her mind. But when she sees Maras hoisting himself up the stairs toward the Sacred Cave, she knows that he’s real. And this time, she’s going up there after him.
His tunic sparkles. The condor wings of his nosepiece shoot light into her eyes. His backpack bobs as he disappears into the brush at the top of the stairs.
Where will she find the strength to follow him?
On the other hand, how many times has Chicya climbed the stairs up Orq’O Wichay? If she can climb her own sacred mountain without eating for days, then she can climb this one, too.
She grasps ichu in her fists and hoists herself up to the first stair. She pauses, then hoists herself up two more stairs. A chinchilla darts from the ichu to a boulder draped in yellow flowers, scoots across the rock and disappears.