Chapter 24
Idon’t remember falling asleep.
I wake up with my clothes covered in dirt and my arms full of Yanami.
She’s fast asleep. Mare is too deep in the cave for me to see him, but the silence indicates he must still be unconscious.
Yanami said it would be normal if he’s groggy for days, so I shouldn’t worry.
I shake Yanami and bask in the tender way she cuddles deeper into my side instead of jolting awake.
The sun is just starting to rise, and it feels like the beginning of something grand.
That feeling doesn’t go away. All through the morning, as I wash my shoulder and wrap it again, I float on the feeling of a new start.
I startle Yanami with a kiss every chance I get.
I cuddle Mare into my side whenever he’s cognizant enough to walk.
I think of Suyai and how close we are to getting back to Lima, how close we are to a new life.
First, the four sacred lakes. Then, Lake Titicaca.
With the Sun Staff, I’ll return to Lima a hero with the new Inka at my side.
More than at my side. Yanami is my lover. The new Inka is my lover. We just need to get her samay back, on her own terms.
The trek to the lakes is not easy, but the lightness of the day makes it go by faster. I don’t feel tired. I don’t feel pain. My body floats beside time like we’re old friends. It feels like only a few hours have passed, though the sun rays say otherwise, when we get to the K’eswachaka bridge.
“Scared of heights,” I tease, though my voice sounds distant even to me. It’s as if I’m watching myself speak from afar. Yanami scoffs, and I catch sight of the faint tremor in her hands.
I scan the surroundings I feel so disconnected from.
I stand at the bridge, but I don’t feel the ground beneath my feet.
The bridge is traditional for these parts.
It’s made of plant fibers that are maintained once a year in a celebration that lasts four days.
In the far reaches of my mind, I wish there were celebrations now.
I wish I could hold Yanami close to me, kiss her, and dance the day away.
But the bridge is deserted.
My mind struggles to focus, but Yanami’s hands won’t stop shaking, forcing me into a sharp perspective that’s been absent all day.
I’ve crossed many bridges just like this with the army during routine visits to the outer provinces, waiting in lines to cross behind packs of llamas and local artisans.
It may look dangerous, but it’s held entire armies.
I know Yanami knows this as well. I know the Inka and Panaka have crossed more of these than I could count. Which is why I can’t stop staring at Yanami’s visible fear.
I scan the area for threats. The distinct aspect of this bridge is that it hangs over the Apurimac river that rages 20 meters below.
The river rushes with life, crashing into the naked rocks that make up the deep canyon.
My heart speeds up, and I savor the living feeling, faint but breaking through the haze of my mind.
Yanami grimaces, swallows hard, and still doesn’t move. I can’t swim. She told me that barely a week ago, with the sea spitting at our faces.
“I’ll walk backwards and face you,” I say. Yanami opens her mouth to argue, no doubt, but I won’t give her the chance. “Here, help me get Mare on my back.”
Her jaw is tense when she nods. Mare is strapped to my back in no time, and the weight grounds me despite my mind revolting at the sudden realness of it all.
Walking backwards on the swaying bridge doesn’t make me feel a thing.
Yanami’s shaking hand in mine, her harsh and fast breaths, her tense body, that does.
When we get to the other side, after the swaying middle and her bitten-off curses, I peck her on the lips, and she smiles, bright as the sun. My mind calms again, safe from the creeping heaviness that threatens to drag me under.
It’s only the sound of thunder that disrupts my focus on her shining skin.
I look up, but I’m met with the clear skies of early evening.
During the dry season, the mountain skies are a light blue, undisturbed by clouds or rain.
Yet, thunder roars again, louder as if the heavens got impossibly closer to us.
“What is that–” My words are cut off by the ground shaking beneath my feet. Thunder roars once again, but this time it doesn’t stop. It rumbles and grows, and my back is to the first lake, and my face is searching the sky, and that’s why I don’t see it until Yanami whispers.
“I won’t cross again,” she says. My eyes lock on her face.
She’s staring at something behind me, a determined look in her eyes that both calms and terrifies me.
Yanami scared is a sight I never want to see again, but Yanami set on something, focused to the point of obsession, that type of fire I’d kill for.
I turn around in slow motion, like I’m wading through honey.
When I see the deity before us, I don’t cower.
When the giant beast turns, every footstep a thunderous hit to the ground, I look it dead in the eyes.
When it growls, and my hair whips around my face, all I do is close my eyes and breathe deep.
I grab Yanami’s hand, and I’m invincible. Safe.
“Koa,” Yanami says. Yes, that is Koa before us, the giant feline god of mountain weather. With paws the size of boulders and teeth as long as my body, Koa is a force of nature. Would the Sinchinrei of the past have bowed before its majesty?
I don’t know. The line between who I was and who I am is blurred, just like my eyes are unfocused with unshed tears. The mania that rules my body refuses to wane, but maybe that’s how I’ve always been. Maybe it's the only reason I’ve made it this far.
“Koa, I will not turn back. Grant us passage, and we can all be on our way,” Yanami speaks with an authority that turns my stomach iron-hot. She’s the strongest person I know, and she’s mine. That much I can grasp in the haze of my mind. She’s mine.
Koa growls again, and the wind hitting my face is ice cold. However, it can’t penetrate my skin, not when my body is alight with desire from within. The god doesn’t hold my interest the way Yanami’s body does, so I indulge myself and shift my gaze.
Yanami squeezes my hand once and lets go. My breath hitches, but I don’t stop her. I’m her champion, the sword in her capable hand, and after all we’ve done, no matter how my head buzzes at the thought of all we’ve done, I know I owe her my trust.
I track her every movement through the eyes that don’t feel like mine.
Yanami is a feline mimic through and through.
Determined, headstrong, and bold when she leads.
My own feline genes dictate I should be similar, yet I’ve never worn power as comfortably as she does.
No matter how much she protests, Yanami was born to be Inka.
I have to believe I was born to be by her side, too.
After everything, there’s no other choice.
“Turn back,” Yanami says, and Koa slashes a heavy paw through the air. It misses her by inches. My heart is in my throat, but I stay still. “Turn back,” she repeats, and Koa snarls in her face and lunges. She moves divinely fast, so agile I think she must have regained her samay.
No. This is just Yanami. Her body reinforces what she told me before. Her life of training and battles and expectations. She surpasses them all.
“Turn back,” she says again. How fitting that the only time Yanami repeats herself is in the face of a god. She zips around the beast and hits its paws, physically forcing it to shift and move. “There is no reason for you to stop us,” Yanami screams.
When I think I should help her, when I make the first move to lift Mare off my back, she slams her fist into the god’s leg, and the beast rears back.
“You will not succeed,” the thunder screams at us.
The hypnosis I was under cracks, and my body moves of its own accord. I lay Mare on the ground and run to Yanami’s side. If the god’s words are true, then this is not a fair match.
Except, by the time I’m at her side, the god is long gone. I see the trail of stars left in its wake as it jumps back to the heavens it calls home. I stare for less than a second, more concerned with Yanami’s body crumbling at my feet. She’s curled around her right hand, holding it to her chest.
“I should have come sooner,” I whisper, but she shakes her head.
The movement allows me to see the true state of her hand.
My stomach rolls, and I hold back the bile that builds up in my mouth.
My mind protests at the sensation. It’s too much.
It wants to go back to the sunlit haze. Yanami’s skin is an angry red, shredded and ripped.
Her fingers are bent, like twisted dry roots forced out of the dirt. “Yanami, I’m sorry, I should’ve–”
“Thank you,” she whispers through grinding teeth. “Sinchinrei, all I can say is thank you.”
It strikes me that Yanami may be out of her own body, too.
As I see her stretch out her hand and hiss, in lurching pain from a self-inflicted wound, I recognize her actions.
While I want to stay in the illusions of my own mind today, she is doing everything possible to force herself back into reality.
Can I bear this reality? Maybe with her by my side, maybe once she has her samay back and I have the sun staff in my hands, maybe then reality will be worth living in.
It has to be. I pull Yanami up and kiss her senseless, her injured hand between us.
I help Yanami splint her fingers with cloth and sticks.
The sound of bones grinding against each other barely registers in my mind.
I get Mare on my back, and we begin to walk.
The further we get from the bridge, the less my mind replays Koa’s only words. You will not succeed.
But we did.
It’s as if I blink and the first lake is before us.
There are four of them, but it’s the last and largest one that is our target. Yanami still takes the time to leave offerings and pray at the first three, dried blood falling in with the coca leaves she sets down. As I watch her become more and more of a heavenly thing, I drift.
“Pomakanchi,” she whispers, then turns to me for the first time in hours. “Dedicated to the Feline. There’s an eye of water hidden somewhere among the trees here. That’s where I need to bathe.”
An eye of water, a fountain of sacred water coming out from the earth to feed the lake. I nod and begin to search. I find it first and wish I hadn’t.
The eye is off the side of a large cave right next to the lake so that the water feeds directly into it. Feeds. Gushes. The water comes out of the rock wall with the force of a tsunami. I reach up to touch it, and my hand is shoved down.
Yanami will be pushed into the lake. I’m sure of it.
But we’ve come this far. I have no choice but to call her over anyway. I think somewhere in the reality I refuse to enter, I hate myself.
We’re between mountains, and the ground couldn’t be sturdier beneath us. It’s serene. The water sounds beautiful, peaceful even. The war inside Yanami isn’t.
“It’ll push you in,” I say. She stays still and doesn’t respond. “You don’t know how to swim.”
Still no response from her, but it doesn’t frustrate me, not when I’m stuck in the same purgatory. I’ve seen her go nonverbal enough times now. All I can do is try to guide her back.
“I’ll go with you,” I say and grab her hand. I don’t pull her in any direction.
That seems to snap her out of her head.
“It has to be just me,” she says.
My tongue feels heavy in my mouth when I speak. “Does it or do you just feel like you deserve it?”
Her eyes widen at my pushback. “I do deserve it.”
That’s enough of an answer for me. “I’m going with you,” I say. Before she can argue, I’ve already let go of her and begin to gently set Mare on the ground. “Some sacred water will probably do wonders on my shoulder anyway.”
“Sinchinrei,” Yanami interrupts me. “You don’t have to.”
“You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to, Yanami. So, come on, strip.” I wonder how old Sinchinrei would have acted, so I throw in a wink there for good measure. The tension drains out of her body as she begins to blush.
She strips to her undergarments efficiently and goes up to the eye with little fuss.
That scares me, the way she turns herself off to force herself to do something she doesn’t want to.
It’s a mirror I don’t want to look into.
I don’t want her to be gone during this.
I want her here, present. But how can I ask her for that when I’m so far away?
I’m at her side when the water bruises our bodies and forces us into the lake. My arms are around her, refusing to let go even as her body goes lifeless.
I pull her impossibly closer.
“Just hold onto me. It’s okay. You can just hold onto me.”
As we’re pushed into the calm center of the lake, Yanami begins to talk.
She talks about the feeling of hands on her shoulder, forcing her beneath sacred waters until she passed out.
She talks about waking up in pain, something foreign in her body that she couldn’t scratch out.
How she spit up water mixed with bile until she felt empty, yet the feeling of intrusion remained.
She talks about how they told her the water of Lake Titicaca would cleanse her, but all it did was make it possible to place the stone without killing her.
“They said the waters saved me, but all it did was keep a dead thing breathing.”
She talks about her childhood, alone and separate from anyone who could catch a glimpse of her scar. She talks about what power did to her, and then she asks me, out of breath from fear or wonder, I don’t know, she asks me to touch her scar.
We have to untangle ourselves for me to do that, and I miss her body heat immediately.
The cold sacred water of Pomakanchi fills the space between us and feels like ice.
She doesn’t give me an option. With one hand tight around my arm to help stay afloat, she grabs my right hand and lays it right over where I should feel her heartbeat, but don’t.
The moment I touch it, it burns.
It burns and it hurts and I’m scared it’ll meld our skin together if I don’t let go, but Yanami won’t let me let go.
Save her. Save our child.
“If I broke your skin right now, I’d start draining your samay.” She’s whispering, so why does her voice thunder in my head?
Save her because we couldn’t. I know the Guardians’ voice now, the cacophony of every world in one, and I don’t feel fear. I could never.
And just like that, Yanami lets go of me. She shoves me away and uses the momentum to push herself deeper into the water.
Then, she’s gone. Her head disappears beneath the waves we caused.