Chapter 14 #2
“I need to get you out of those clothes,” I repeat, ignoring the princess’s flustered expression.
“And do something with your hair. Right now, anyone would be suspicious of you. You’re obviously from the coast and not Andean.
That’ll be enough to have someone look at you twice, and then they just need a second more to figure it all out.
Just do what you need to get your mimicry back to normal, and then we can sort out clothes. ”
“Right, you just want to see how I do it. Of course,” the princess says and nods to herself.
I feel a billion steps behind, accentuated by the physical steps she takes to walk away from me.
“I don’t care if you need to do whatever it is in private, or, or,” I don’t know how to finish my sentence because she just keeps walking, step after step, going higher up the mountainside and quickly out of my view.
I run to catch up to her and can hear her breathing heavily just from the effort of walking away from me.
She wasn’t born and bred with this mountain altitude like I was.
I grab some coca leaves from my pouch. She stops to look at my hand, refusing to look me in the eyes.
“Come on, take them and chew before you pass out.”
“I’m fine,” she says but takes some anyway.
Her look of suspicion as she smells them first and then slowly puts them in her mouth doesn’t make me angry. It makes me tired. I don’t have it in me to be offended at her distrust.
“Look, I don’t know what I said that was wrong, but I just want all of us safe.
You won’t regenerate your mimicry to raise Isla del Sol?
Fine. I’m not going to force you or anything.
” She visibly tenses. I ignore the way she looks even more suspicious after I say that.
“But we have to do something with how you look. If you don’t want to change back your hair then maybe some Feline mimicry for your face? ”
She continues to look at me, but the only difference to show she was listening is the change from suspicion to wry disbelief.
“Uh, you can mimic the Feline, right?” I ask.
She bursts into laughter.
Right. Of course, she can mimic the Feline.
Her canines are literally filed to a painful point to represent her connection with the Feline first and foremost. She doesn’t have to laugh at me like that, though.
My indignation must show on my face because she sobers up and goes back to her normal, detached self.
“Of course I can mimic the Feline,” she says. “I’ve been able to change my body since I was a toddler.” She throws out that information like it’s something any normal mimic could do, not like it’s a show of immense power. “I won’t, though.”
“What?” I ask, but she just nods like we settled something and starts walking back to the cave.
“You’re right. Anyone could recognize me, so I need your help. Then you can get yourself to Lake Titicaca however you please, and I’ll go my own way,” she says.
“What?” I repeat, but I doubt she hears me from behind her.
She doesn’t address me until we’re in front of the cave again. It feels like a flashback, the same frustrating emotions I felt yesterday right in front of this cave aimed at her.
“Give me your knife,” she orders.
And, gods be damned, I almost do it on instinct alone.
“No,” I say.
“No?”
“It’s a delightful word,” I answer.
Her cheeks redden in response. She glares at me and turns around in a huff. She kneels and starts messing with something on the ground. Before I can catch a full view of what she’s doing, I see her smash a rock into her own face.
“What the fuck,” I scream, running toward her as her face starts to swell.
She uses a sharp edge to slice a line in her eyebrow immediately after. By the time I reach her, all she’s doing is slathering mud into her hair. It becomes obvious that she’s digging around for more mud when her hands disappear in front of her.
“What in the name of our Guardians are you doing?”
“My hair. The white is distinct, but if I dirty everything up, it should camouflage a little bit.”
“Not the hair, gods, the self-mutilation! Just regenerate your mimicry–”
“I won’t,” she turns around to scream at me with full force.
I hear Mare shout my name, and I look for him in the distance and wave him off. I’ll have to explain her appearance later. The princess looks close to tears. Her teeth grind into each other. Her hands are balled up fists and, yes, they’re shaking.
“I. Won’t,” she repeats, lower but no less vicious.
“You saw the same thing I did last night? Doesn’t that change anything for you?” I don’t know how something like that wouldn’t. I don’t know anything about the princess, not really. I realize that’s why I’m asking. It’s out of genuine curiosity rather than the judgment I expected to feel.
“I don’t know,” she answers and looks shocked at her own response. She shouldn’t be. I know in my heart that it’s the truth.
“Okay,” I say. “I won’t make you do something you don’t want to do.”
It’s a repeat of what I said before, but this time it takes out all the fight in her.
Without the fire, she’s just a girl, exhausted, sick, and covered in mud.
I don’t need the Guardians to whisper to me to help her.
I want to do it because she’s hurt, even if I don’t know exactly how.
I don’t want to see her the way I saw her youngest sister.
The imagined projection makes my heart slam its fists against my chest. I wouldn’t be able to stand seeing her that way, same with Mare and Suyai.
I’m shaking just thinking about it. Now I’m the one who looks surprised at my own reaction.
“We can use pieces of our tunics to make head coverings, but covering your hair won’t be enough. We look like complete outsiders,” I say.
The princess isn’t happy, but she looks a little less defeated, as much as she can anyway with a wounded face. She trades in her devastation for analysis as she takes me in. I wonder if she wants to know what’s in my head as much as I want to know what’s in hers.
I offer up my knife without a word and watch her chop off her hair into an uneven line at her shoulders.
She looks unaffected as strands of white litter the ground, like she never cared about the status and rank her hair provided.
She hands back my knife, and the exchange settles something between us, something unspoken.
“You…” you’re beautiful hangs off my tongue but doesn’t fall.
The princess opens her mouth to say something too, but before any words escape, I hear Mare call me once again, closer this time.
It’s not just my name he’s shouting. As he bridges the gap between us, I hear his high-pitched giggle along with the thuds of his limping pace on the wet ground.
Yet, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Something about the sounds is off, like his uneven footsteps are growing nearer while his laughter peels away.
It’s only when he barrels into my arms, bad leg crumbling beneath him and shrieking my name that it all hits me. The princess notices at the same time, jumping into a defensive stance. The laughter grows and grows around us, while all Mare says is my name in panic.
It’s not Mare laughing.