Chapter Twenty-Six
Moving between realms felt similar to being underneath the earth in the himaya caves. Eerie and cold, like being embraced by frigid waters that both preserved and killed. Solana lost her breath. When she opened her eyes, they were no longer in the middle of Sonqo.
The ceiling above her was a dingy gray riddled with cracks and missing stone. Water dripped somewhere nearby, each droplet landing with a soft tap tap tap. The room was large and mostly empty except for a table with six chairs pressed against it, the wood bleached of color like everything else.
Behind the table was a step up onto an empty dais, and beyond that a set of floor-to-ceiling windows trimmed in crumbling molding.
She saw a flash of the same windows in a different time—a different realm.
Familiar, but not. Solana felt Masimu watching her as she picked her way closer, certain of exactly what she would see below.
An endless sea that met an endless sky, but these waters were still.
There were no whitecapped waves, no ripples of breath.
And the sun was diluted, desaturated like the light had turned in Supay after she left the caves.
Everything was so still that it looked dead.
Nothing but an imitation of the living realm.
“There is no time here.” Masimu’s voice resonated through the emptiness. “There is no night or day, no moon to push or pull, and so the waters stay calm and the light doesn’t change, even as everything else falls into disrepair.”
“Where is here?” Solana asked without turning to face her father. She was afraid of the man she would see in this lonely place.
“The Uku Pacha is a mirror world of Key Pacha—the mortal realm, as you call it. In the time before the fall of the gods, it was only meant to contain the dead for a time of reflection, but Supay’s curse tainted that.
Now his dead stay too long and the realm grows too heavy.
It expands like an overripened fruit, and then it bursts. ”
Solana remembered the pressure that had exploded beneath her hand. The shift of the air that rushed over the land and toward the city. “And the muki overflow,” she whispered.
“Exactly,” Masimu said. “Twenty years ago, I tried to end the curse—”
“I’m not here to hear your version of the story.
” Solana turned to face her father and instantly regretted it.
There was a layer of pain in the shadows underneath his eyes and in the downturned angle of his mouth.
The way he looked at her made her wonder what he saw.
Made her wonder if he missed her and if he was as full of regrets as she was.
“I only want to know how to break the curse so I can free the people I love.”
As if realizing he was staring, Masimu cleared his throat and averted his eyes. It was only then that she noticed he was wearing all black, a Masters uniform, just as she was, but without the badge. “What we want does not matter,” he said with a sigh.
“I don’t have time for this.”
“You do, actually.” Masimu rubbed the back of his head, contrition in the lines above his brow. “The only way to leave the Uku Pacha is to rift.”
“Rift?” she repeated, the word sending a thrill through her. Just then, Masimu’s form melted into a shadow that surged toward her. Solana inhaled sharply and held out her hands as if she could fight an incorporeal thing.
“It’s how the muki move between realms,” Masimu said from behind her. “It’s how you and I are such formidable fighters.”
Heart in her throat, Solana spun around. “Are you a muki, then?”
The hairs around her face shifted and shadows curled around her. “No,” Masimu whispered in her ear. “But we do share their blood.”
“This isn’t a game,” Solana said, refusing to rise to his bait.
He solidified in front of her, his back to the doors once again. “I know,” he said somberly. “I told you I will tell you everything. But first, there is something I have to show you.”
Solana blinked at him. She had given her hand to a man who was trapped in the underworld for twenty years with no one but demons for company. She shouldn’t have expected to receive a quick, uncomplicated answer.
Shit. There was nothing to do for it now.
With a sigh, Solana swept a hand toward the door. “Lead the way.”
Masimu turned and strode through the double doors of the dilapidated throne room and into the receiving room, where two crumbling staircases spiraled into the second floor.
The silver gilding on the banisters had long since flaked off, and the carpet was shredded and discolored.
Masimu skirted a puddle of water—that’s where the dripping was coming from—and exited through the main doors and out into the castle grounds.
There was no sun in the sky, or moon, or clouds, or anything that would give any hint of what time it might be.
It was a bleak, washed-out blue that bordered on gray and cast the world beyond in shades of the same color.
The wall surrounding the castle was piles of crumbled stone with iron gates propped between them.
They opened with a flick of Masimu’s hand.
The main road that was flanked by markets and taverns in Sonqo was eerily empty and forgotten there. Shattered glass littered the ground. Strips of colorless fabric fluttered from awning poles. The path underneath her feet was cracked and cumbersome to walk.
“Where are all the muki?” Solana asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“The ones who have accepted their fate stay. They find their homes and sometimes their kin and they continue to exist together. Then there are those who seek release or revenge,” Masimu said. “They went when you called.”
He glanced at her, waiting for a reaction.
She couldn’t help but wonder if Sami would have been there had she not called him to her.
Instead, he was corralled into a cage with hundreds of other muki, waiting for a fate that would never find him.
Solana shoved her guilt down and focused on the task at hand.
“First lesson in rifting.” Masimu turned and walked backward, his black cloak fluttering around his legs. There was no breeze except the one he created with his shadows. “You can only go to a place you can see in your mind. This is why muki tend to return to the place where they died.”
“Is this what you brought me here to tell me?”
“Partially.” With a puff of wind, Masimu was gone. A soft exhale, and he was beside her once again. “With night and rest comes strength, which is why muki rift away with the light. It takes a lot of power to leave Uku Pacha.”
The amount of power beneath the castle, all those muki desperate to return to their homes without understanding why, and now they were trapped there forever in a sort of involuntary stasis. It was her worst nightmare. Solana shivered at the thought of it.
“And what form of gift would this be considered?”
“Manifesting.” A small rock appeared in Masimu’s outstretched hand.
He threw it, waited until it clacked against a building far-off, and then held his hand out to her once again.
The same rock sat in the middle of his palm.
“When you rift, you are this rock. You are creating your new reality and setting yourself within it.” Masimu tossed the rock aside and brushed his hand on his pants.
“Your mind must be clear and focused for this to work.”
Solana kicked a rock down the street. The buildings were starting to look more like homes than piles of rubble.
Some of them still had their small iron balconies, and one up ahead had a flower box with what looked like skeletal flowers poking out.
“And if I fail to clear my mind or create a new reality?”
“Your body could split into thousands of tiny pieces that scatter across Supay,” Masimu said quickly, and then he clapped. The sound was especially sharp in the emptiness of the city. “Let’s give it a try.”
“Now?”
“Is there a better time for you?”
With a click, Solana closed her mouth and pressed her lips together. There wasn’t a better time. In fact, it was difficult to feel as though all of this wasn’t already a waste of time. Might as well indulge him in this to hopefully get what she wanted in return.
She came to a stop in the middle of the road. “Where to, then?” she asked with a sigh.
The lines of Masimu softened so subtly that she wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been closely watching. “To your home,” he said softly, head tilted toward her as if sharing a secret. “In Qhilli. There’s someone waiting for you there.”
Solana stared at her father, eyes darting between his, searching for the implication behind the words he wasn’t saying.
She refused to ask the question on the tip of her tongue.
Refused to hope. The challenge in his eyes was all the motivation she needed.
If she was right about where exactly they were in this imitation of Supay, then on foot, it would take hours and hours to get there.
But with rifting? It could be the blink of an eye, as easy as a thought.
Only if Solana could manage to clear her mind and picture her new reality.
Or an old reality. It had been months since she had last seen her home.
Even when she was in Qhilli, she avoided those four walls as much as possible.
It had never been the same without Lucia, who had made their small space as homey as possible.
There were herbs in the window that kept spiders out, and hand-knit blankets tossed over the bed and chair.
Clay plates in the kitchen and a dusty and unused cuatro in the corner.
When Lucia died, Solana had been forced to sell everything she could just to feed herself. Only the blankets had stayed, and even those had been chewed by mice over the years until there was hardly anything left of them.