Chapter 3
For three days, Nina was forced to chew the bitter leaves twice a day. Their group stopped only to let her relieve herself
and to water the achipuma. The beasts were quieter and calmer than she had imagined them to be from the stories she’d heard.
If she had been in her right mind, she might have tried to befriend one and convince it to carry her away, promises be damned.
But all she wanted to do was sleep, and when she did, all she did was dream.
At first, she dreamed of her brother, Samaq, as he was the last time she saw him, that he was on the achipuma with her, holding
her head as it rolled from side to side. She would cry and he would brush her hair away from her face, shushing her, soothing
her, and when she woke to find he wasn’t there, it hurt more than she could describe.
Then she dreamed of Sacha, the other half of her soul, though they were an entire year apart. Their mamay said that Nina was
a miserable baby until Sacha came. Then they were inseparable, always aware of where the other was, what the other felt and
thought and needed. In her dreams, Sacha was scared and alone and Nina was running through the dark to find her, guided by
nothing but a feeling that continued to lead her astray.
At one point, the walla and kunay had a tense conversation. Nina heard words like inform the emperor and changes everything, and then the kunay departed their group in a hurry. She watched him follow the path until he was nothing but a dot in the
distance and tried to decide if any of it—their soft words, the singing wind, the laughing trees, the swirling dark—was real.
By the time they made it to the acllahuasi two days later, Nina had entirely lost her grasp on reality. They dragged her off
the achipuma and dumped her lifeless body onto the ground. It was dark, but the moon above was full and bright, casting everything
in a gray-blue hue that swallowed any semblance of familiarity. Even the air smelled different. Earthier and thicker. Wet
dirt stuck to her cheek, and she was shivering so hard her muscles ached.
A warm huff of breath rustled the hairs on her forehead. The achipuma sniffed her once, its moist nose nudging her temple,
and then it walked away, leaving her alone in the dark, surrounded by trees that stood over her like sentries.
“And what am I to do with an untrained girl?” No, not alone, she realized as a weathered face appeared above hers. “She’s
much too old to be here,” a woman said, her large eyes boring into Nina’s, wrinkled lips pressed into a thin line.
“The kunay said to bring her here.” Nina recognized that voice. She had felt it through her back more than heard it for the
last five days. “I know only what I have been told, which is nothing more than you.”
The woman pinched the bridge of her wide nose. Nina tracked the way her gray braids, suspended in the air above Nina’s face,
swung from side to side. “Yana, take her to the baths,” she ordered. “Let’s try to get her decent. And then have Qori keep
an eye on her.”
Hands slipped under her arms and dragged her through the grass, toward the stone walls she had thought were simply shadows.
Everything was painted in shades of darkness. The sky above was a bluish black. The ground below a bluish green. The walls
of the building they pulled her into a bluish gray.
Even the woman who dragged her had a bluish tint to her brown skin and black hair, until the door opened, and a shaft of orange
light changed everything.
Nina wanted to tell them that she could walk, but she couldn’t make the words come out of her mouth. They dragged her through a large stone room lit with torches in the corners, down long hallways past doors that were closed tight, deeper and deeper into the drafty and colorless building.
Until finally, they opened a door.
It was warmer on the other side of it, and brighter, even though the ceiling was lower. The air seemed to thicken and coalesce,
and she reached out a hand to touch it.
“Hold your breath,” the woman called Yana said from above.
Nina managed only a shallow inhale before another set of hands latched on to her ankles, and then she was airborne. She hit
water with a slap and quickly sank beneath the surface, her limbs as useless as boulders weighing her down.
She thought she might drown, until she realized it wasn’t very deep. A few heartbeats later, she was breaking through the
surface, sputtering and coughing and gasping for air. The water had cleared her hazy mind. An unfortunate inconvenience when
two women, without waiting for a word of protest or permission, came at her with sponges and soap. Together, they stripped
her of her dress, a pretty blue cotton that she had sewn herself, and scrubbed every inch of her.
Tangles were yanked out of her hair. Her skin burned from the force of their cleansing. Her teeth clattered even with her
jaw clenched.
By the end, Nina was on fire. Her skin, her eyes, her heart. She was incandescent with a quiet rage that overshadowed her
regret and shame. They pulled a gray robe over her head and walked her to her room in stony silence, and as she slipped into
a small, cold bed in a strange and unfamiliar place, it was that rage that kept her company and her dreams at bay.
Nina woke all at once, heart in her throat, a heavy awareness of being watched simmering in her chest. Sure enough, when she looked over, a girl in an identical robe sat on an expertly made bed, her thick hair pulled back in two tight braids that rested on each shoulder, her big, dark eyes pinned to Nina.
The room was sparsely decorated, nothing but the narrow beds and an armoire across from them.
The walls and floors were a dingy brown that bordered on gray. The wood, somehow, was also colorless. She thought about her
home, about the tapestries that hung from the walls, the plush rugs that covered the floor, the way her family would gather
around the hearth each night and eat and tell stories and be filled with warmth and love.
This was cold and foreign. A punishment for existing. The fury from the night before was gone, and Nina wondered if she would
ever feel warm again.
“I’m Qori,” the girl said, her voice just as bright as her eyes. Nina tried and failed to cover her wince. “Sorry, but it’s
time for prayers. Mamakuna Dusi will be angry if we’re late.”
If it wasn’t for the promise Nina had made to face her consequences head-on, she would have rolled back over. With a sigh,
she shifted to a sitting position, bracing herself as the room spun.
Qori stood and extended a hand. Nina begrudgingly took it. She led her out of the room and down a long hall identical to the
one Nina had been dragged through last night. “These are the girls’ rooms,” Qori explained quietly. “There are approximately
thirty acllas, though this place was designed to hold many more. We are fewer and farther between these days.”
The way she said we made Nina’s skin crawl. All the pains her family had taken to ensure Nina and her sisters didn’t end up a piece in a greedy
emperor’s game, and there she was, another girl to be shaped and bartered. She wondered what devastation she had left in her
wake.
Qori continued. “We spend most of our days creating the garments that the emperor’s men wear. The process is quite tedious but soothing in its familiarity. We are also preparing the chicha for Inti Raymi.”
Inti Raymi was a festival held to celebrate Inti, the sun god, and a bountiful harvest. It was days of feasting and dancing
and offerings made to Pachamama, and it was Nina’s favorite time of year. She wondered if her family would continue their
traditions without her, like they had after losing Samaq. Would they mourn and beg the gods for her return, or would they
accept the loss as something entirely out of their hands?
“Most of the acllas will be chosen for service this year,” Qori said, interrupting her lamenting. “It’s a very exciting time
for us. I’m hoping to stay here and continue training under Mamakuna Dusi. She was once an aclla here, and now she presides
over all of us.” She grinned. “But I wouldn’t mind visiting another acllahuasi for a time. Where would you like to go?”
Home was Nina’s first thought. Already, she was paying close attention to the layout, memorizing each turn they took and door
they passed, just in case the opportunity to escape ever presented itself.
Perhaps the kunay would forget all about her, a nobody from a far-off ayllu. Perhaps they had taken her by mistake, and once
they learned of Samaq’s dutiful service, they would escort her home.
Nina wanted to believe that her mamay was working to untangle the misunderstanding at that very moment. That her tayta, deep
in his heartbreak at finding Nina gone, had demanded answers and a solution.
It was unlikely, she knew, but still she hoped.
“Is this the front door?” Nina paused in a mostly empty room and pointed to a large slab of wood. There was no handle, and
no windows beside it to give her a peek of what lay beyond. Torches in each corner provided the barest hint of light that
did nothing to alleviate the desolation that filled the space. Like a place one might lay the dead to rest.
“Yes,” Qori said. She placed a cold hand on Nina’s arm, eyes earnest in the pale light. “But there’s never any reason to go near it. We don’t leave the acllahuasi until we are chosen.”
The word sounded strange from her lips. Like an omen instead of the honor she knew Qori thought it was. Nina looked at the
door again, the urge to touch it so strong she felt her feet shift toward it.
“There are creatures beyond those doors, Nina,” Qori murmured. “They will devour your body and spirit. We are kept in here
for our safety. Do not think to test the patience of Mamakuna Dusi, for you will find yourself filled with regret.”
I already am, Nina wanted to say. The threat of hungry creatures didn’t scare her. Limac was bordered by a large sea on one side and a
dense forest on the other, both filled with creatures that, unless bothered, mostly kept to themselves. But Nina was familiar
with the outside world, with life away from the acllahuasi. Though she had lived in Limac her whole life, she knew the taste
of freedom and the truth of myths made up to coax children into behaving.
The only dangerous creatures she had come across were the men who had put her here.
Without another word, Qori turned and continued past the front door and through a doorway, into a large room lit with more
candles than Nina could count. A number of girls turned in silence to stare at her, but Nina was too distracted to absorb
the weight of their attention.
At the front of the room was an altar, where statues of several gods sat. Viracocha, the creator god, in the center. Inti,
the sun god, to the right. Killa, the moon goddess, on the left. There was Cocha, the goddess of the sea; and Illapu, the
god of rain; and Ekeko, the god of fortune.
“And Pachamama?” Nina asked quietly, her eyes still searching for the god her own people served.
Qori only shook her head in answer and extended a cup to Nina. “This is our daily tea. We drink, and then we pray.”
Nina brought it closer and peered into the steaming liquid. At the bottom, she saw the blackened leaves she had been given
by the emperor’s men. The back of her mouth tingled with the memory.
A cold hand covered hers on the cup. Qori’s eyes bore into her earnestly. “You have to drink it, Nina. There is no choice. It brings us closer to the gods, which allows us to complete our duties with faith.”
Nina was familiar with duty. It was her responsibility to her siblings that landed her there, but none of it had required
faith. If anything, the lack of it would ease the transition. Holding on to hope would only serve to disappoint, and what she wanted
was to forget. To be forgotten, left alone. More than that, she wanted to return home and see her family again.
The leaves had tasted awful, nothing like the ones from home, but they had dulled the passage of time and the pain of distance.
They had given her a kind of reprieve that she hadn’t anticipated, and a part of her craved it once again. Nina would obey,
but she would do it for her own reasons.
Instead of sipping the tea, she gulped it down in one fell swoop. It burned her throat and made her eyes water, and then,
moments later, she felt less of everything.
Less hot, less angry, less aware of who she was and what she wanted and why she was there.
Qori smiled and led Nina to the front of the room, where several girls shifted to allow them space. Some were as young as
Lali, their small faces cast in firelight. The oldest looked younger than Nina’s seven and ten, eyes wide and innocent and
watching her with uncertainty. She reminded Nina of Sacha, but when Nina smiled, the girl turned away.
There were no sacrifices being made in the small altar room.
No drinks poured or dead animals laid at the base of the dais.
Nina wasn’t sure what she was meant to do as she sat cross-legged on the cold stone floor, and she felt a distant twinge of alarm with the uncertainty.
But it was only a fleeting feeling. A slight break in the fog that had settled over her mind.
In the next moment, she was captivated by the dancing flames of each candle, delightfully filled with a yawning emptiness that wiped away all her worries.