Fury m-4

by Rebecca Lim

  They lead him back towards the archway, out of the rain, holding onto his hands, onto the hem of his navy sweater with its incongruous preppy logo. He goes with them without a word.

  Ryan and I look at each other in confusion. Then he fetches our backpack from where it was torn off during our rough landing and hoists it up by its broken straps. I hook one of my arms through his and we turn and follow the children.

  ‘Why do they keep saying that?’ he asks under his breath as we draw beneath the archway where the children are clustered around Uriel, still chanting, ‘Ayar Awqa! Ayar Awqa!’

  ‘It’s a name,’ Uriel says, looking away from the adoring faces of the children for a second. ‘In Quechua, the local language. They believe that Ayar Awqa was a winged man who flew down from the sky and transformed into a foundation stone of this place, Qosqo, Cusco.’

  The oldest child, a girl of probably no more than seven, picks up a small basket filled with knitted finger puppets from where it was tucked against the archway, out of the rain. She takes Uriel by the hand and indicates he should follow her. The remaining children crowd around us shyly, taking our hands, tugging at the hems of our jackets, calling me ‘Sister of Ayar Awqa’ and calling Ryan ‘Maki Sapa’.

  The name makes me laugh out loud, and Ryan says curiously, ‘What’s so funny?’

  I exchange conspiratorial looks with the bright-eyed, dusky-skinned children and try to keep my face straight as I reply, ‘Oh, they’re calling you Monkey Features — I think your grooming could use a little work.’

  Ryan’s mouth falls open in surprise, then he screws up his face and lets his arms dangle down. He starts chasing the smaller children up and down the arcade, making monkey noises.

  Uriel and I and the older girl look on, smiling. But then she claps her hands together, and we all stride out into the rain.

  It beats down as if it will never stop. But the children pull us eagerly by the hands through the deserted streets, pointing out things they think we’d like to see, like special stones and good places to eat. The further we go past rain-soaked squares and quiet barrios, past glistening stone churches and the narrow, chaotic workshops of local craftspeople, the poorer and more crowded the neighbourhoods become. Finally, we reach a two-storey shophouse, where the baskets of local wares have been shoved in deep under the dripping awnings to keep their contents dry.

  There’s no one inside the store, which smells of wool and tobacco and spices, soap and incense, bodies, dust and earth. The children take us up a narrow set of stairs at the back to an apartment with its front door thrown open. Beside me, Ryan’s breathing heavily and his face is streaming with sweat. With so many of us here, the tiny place — three, maybe four rooms in all — feels unbelievably crowded.

  Ryan suddenly sags over at the waist, dropping the broken backpack on the floor at his feet. He stands there bent over and shivering, wheezing and wet through, his head hanging down, his elbows braced above his knees, oblivious to everything around him. I put a soothing hand on his back, but he doesn’t respond, almost gagging for air.

  Uriel and I exchange glances. Then, together, we take in the people in the room the same way they’re studying us.

  There are a couple of elderly women seated on a low, sagging velvet settee beside a radio that’s prattling loudly in Spanish. They wear the same colourfully embroidered skirts and short woollen jackets as the little girls do, and have skin like gleaming mahogany and grey hair wound into long, tight plaits. Their seamed fingers fly as they work at intricate pieces of knitting, their black eyes never leaving us.

  Two men sit across the room either side of a round, wooden table, small glasses of a cloudy green liquid in front of them, a deck of cards laid out between them. By the similarity of their looks and the degree of grey in the older man’s hair, I guess they must be father and son.

  I get a glimpse of a woman — maybe the younger man’s wife — momentarily framed in the doorway to what must be a kitchen, her eyes wide with surprise, before she moves out of sight, her long, full, red skirt, bordered in gold, twitching out of view.

  Nobody speaks, until Uriel says quietly and politely in Quechua, ‘We are honoured to be among you.’

  Then, suddenly, all the children are talking at once in their high, clear voices.

  ‘They fell from the sky!’

  ‘Upon the Plaza de Armas!’

  ‘Like Ayar Awqa!’

  ‘The woman is his sister!’

  ‘The sister of Ayar Awqa!’

  The younger man snorts suddenly and points at Ryan, who is still struggling to get air into his body. ‘And this gringo? He is like Ayar Awqa, too? The man can barely stand, let alone fly. He has soroche, the sickness all the gringos get. Look at him.’

  The man searches out the oldest child with his eyes and beckons her forward. ‘Flor,’ he says sternly, ‘you were not raised to lie. Nor should you ever bring the gringos,’ the word is said with disgust, ‘into our home. We are not exhibits. How we live is not for them to see.’

  ‘But, Papi,’ she says quietly, ‘we are not lying.’

  She takes his hand, and he gets to his feet reluctantly and allows her to tug him in Uriel’s direction.

  ‘Look at the man and the woman, not the gringo,’ she says. ‘Then look at us — at me, Luis and César, Ana, Gabriela, María.’

  She takes her hat off and wrings the rain out of it onto the floor.

  The man — compact, tanned, clean-shaven, his short black hair oiled back neatly — approaches us. He scrutinises Uriel, who stands there calmly in his designer-look clothing without hat, umbrella or baggage. The man looks up sharply into his face, reaches out to touch the skin of his cheek, then quickly withdraws his hand. He does not look at me, but his body language, his thoughts, are no longer unfriendly, only confused.

  ‘It must be some trick,’ he mutters, looking back at the older man seated at the table.

  ‘It’s no trick,’ the older man pipes up. ‘If the children say he is Ayar Awqa, and that one is the sister of Ayar Awqa, then who are we to deny it? They are our children, and they are good children. But that one is certainly a gringo, and if we do not get him some coca tea, he will be a dead gringo before he has even climbed Dead Gringo Pass.’ The old man throws back his head and laughs with his toothless mouth.

  The young woman sweeps out of the kitchen, looking down shyly as she passes us, and hurries out the open door of the apartment and down the stairs.

  When her footsteps have disappeared, the old man shouts in Quechua, ‘Welcome! Welcome! Siblings of the Great Owl. Pull up a chair and tell us what it is that you want with us, and we will do everything in our power to help you.’

  ‘A moment,’ Uriel tells the old man politely, then he turns to me and says in a fierce whisper, ‘As good-hearted as these people undoubtedly are, “pulling up a chair” is the last thing I have time for. I need to reach Machu Picchu now. Anything could have become of Gabriel in my absence. Let the mortals nurse Ryan back to health before he heads for home, but you and I cannot remain here drinking their tea. If it’s indeed true what Ryan said, that you slew those demons single-handed,’ I hear a disbelief in his voice that he’s unable to hide, ‘then I would welcome your aid in locating Gabriel. We fly in there, we take the place apart and we get out. Then you leave Gabriel and me to find the others.’

  Ryan straightens slowly, pale-faced and holding his head. ‘Uh, wouldn’t they be expecting that?’ he wheezes.

  ‘Speak plainly,’ Uriel snaps, his dark eyes flashing.

  ‘They’ll be expecting you to, um, approach Machu Picchu — shit, in Peru, we’re in Peru?’ He sees Uriel’s face and continues huskily: ‘They’ll be expecting you to go in in full celestial regalia with, uh, swords blazing. It’s what you guys do best. But it’s too … obvious, isn’t it?’

  He turns slowly, wincing, his eyes struggling to focus on the local man standing beside us. ‘You trek to Machu Picchu, right?’ he says in English, the only language he knows. �
��I remember reading about it once. How long does it take, sir?’

  The man looks Ryan up and down with his jet black eyes. ‘The Camino Inca takes many forms,’ he says in heavily accented English. ‘The Mollepata is the longest and hardest route. It would not suit everyone,’ he adds diplomatically. ‘But there is a trek that can take four days, and a trek that can take one. My cousin’s son is a guide. He can better answer you.’ He turns and says to his father in Quechua, ‘Go and fetch Mateo.’

  The toothless old man snorts. ‘You go and fetch Mateo, if Mayu has not already brought every one of our friends and relatives back with her. See, she returns now.’

  More people spill into the room: handsome, black-eyed women, pretty children in colourful dress, work-worn men and older folk, until we are ringed around by their energy, by their curious faces. Several people touch their hands to Uriel’s briefly, almost reverently, and I hear someone exclaim, ‘How beautiful he is!’

  Uriel smiles and accepts their greetings politely, but in my head his voice is blunt and impatient. We need to move. Now. We cannot waste another moment in idle talk.

  I disagree, I reply, nodding and bowing in all directions as he is doing. Ryan is right: the only way to combat Luc is not to behave as he would expect. It would probably never occur to him that the great Uriel would approach on foot. We will infiltrate the site as human trekkers — it will be slower, but may tip the odds in our favour.

  ‘What are you two up to?’ Ryan rasps suspiciously, looking from Uriel to me, intercepting the silent exchanges we make with our eyes.

  Abruptly, the room, the building, begins to shake: a long, low tremor that shivers the dust from the ceiling, rattles the light fixtures and the bright ornaments and colourfully painted pottery on the wooden shelves. I almost expect Luc to hit me with all he has; to burst into my head and hold my consciousness hostage while he tears the knowledge of my whereabouts from inside me.

  But the shaking suddenly stops, and Ryan staggers, almost falling over. A giggling woman in a brightly striped shawl pushes at him with her hands to steady him.

  ‘Earthquake,’ Uriel says, shooting me a worried glance.

  I’m so relieved it’s just an earthquake that I almost shrug.

  The man whose home we’re in says quietly, ‘For three days it has rained. The guides speak of landslides near Llaqtapata, heavy fog and tremors on the mountain, injuries, cancellations. If you wish to trek, as the gringo says, there are permits. We can get them for you, no passports, no waiting, if that is what you want.’

  The whole room suddenly seems to be watching Uriel to see how he will respond.

  ‘Don’t do that thing with your eyes again,’ Ryan finally says, exasperated, looking from Uri to me. ‘My advice is that you go in on foot and get the flaming swords out only when you need to. But I’m just the half-dead gringo,’ his voice is bitter, ‘so what would I know?’

  Our host pushes a new man forward — younger, moustachioed, fit-looking, dressed in khaki and rubber slides. ‘I am Mateo,’ he says, studying the three of us keenly. ‘My uncle tells me you need a guide and permits?’

  ‘Please,’ I urge Uriel quietly. ‘Let’s do this the way Ryan suggests. He’s done as Michael commanded — he’s kept me alive in more ways than you would ever understand. None of you has ever had someone like Ryan on point guard. None of you would even consider taking direction from anyone remotely like him. To be cast adrift in this sea and still find someone to anchor me like he has — you couldn’t even begin to calculate odds like those. You’d do a lot worse than to listen to him, Uri. We can reassess the terrain once we’re there.’

  Uriel regards Ryan silently for a moment before nodding tightly. One day, he says grimly in my head. We do it in one day, or we don’t do it at all.

  Then he smiles at the people gathered about him and it’s like the sun coming out. The women all around us, young and old, clasp their hands together and sigh.

  ‘Sit, sit,’ our host tells us, and a path is immediately cleared for us to the round table in the corner of the room, now groaning with platters of food people have brought from their own homes.

  Ryan leans on me a little as he shuffles along like an old guy. ‘Can you hear that sound?’ he whispers, as I help him into one of the bentwood chairs.

  A middle-aged man in a dark shirt and black woollen waistcoat places a warm glass of milky-green liquid with leaves floating in it into Ryan’s hand, closing his fingers around it. Ryan’s still sweating heavily as he takes a sip and grimaces.

  ‘What sound?’ I reply curiously.

  The air is alive with sounds, both exterior and interior to all the people here. There’s a clock ticking somewhere, voices on the radio, the sound of female laughter coming from the room behind us. People are shoving furniture to one side of the room as an older man tunes a guitar.

  Ryan drains the glass and closes his eyes, mumbling sleepily, ‘The sound of the clock restarting. We’re back in penalty time, you and me.’

  He smiles, swaying against me a little in his seat, his eyes still closed. And the happiness that suddenly overtakes me — to be here, beside him still — makes me grasp his left hand in my left and pull his arm across my body. I lean into him, feeling the beat of his heart like bird’s wings inside his chest, as Mateo describes how it’s possible to get a one-day trekking permit without a passport, and what we’re likely to face in the morning.

  After we rise from our discussion with Mateo, the children surround us, begging us to try the pumpkin soup and lomo saltado, the buding de chocolate and a sweet dish made from a kind of stewed purple maize that they fall on excitedly called mozamora morada. And we do, we do try. But though it all smells delicious, to Uriel and me the food tastes like ashes. After a while, we discreetly push it away.

  Ryan only manages a tiny portion of dinner before he curls up and goes to sleep on the low settee. I beg a blanket from Gabino, our host, to cover him, then hang up his wet jeans to dry. I kneel on the floor beside Ryan’s sleeping form and move our belongings from the broken backpack into the replacement Gabino pushed into my hands earlier, made of thick felted wool and crawling with bright Peruvian needlework.

  ‘What’s wrong with him? What’s the “gringo sickness” they were talking about?’ I ask Uriel, who’s standing there with a strange look on his face.

  ‘We’re over eleven thousand feet above sea level,’ he murmurs, watching me buckle the bag shut. ‘Everything in Ryan’s body is working overtime to keep him alive. He’s not yet acclimatised to this atmosphere, and, I confess, neither am I. Explain to our hosts that I needed some air? I’ll be back before first light.’

  As silently as a cat, Uriel leaves the room without drawing anyone’s attention — a feat that would be impossible for anyone else in this tightly packed space. It hits me suddenly that this may be the most time Uriel has ever spent in the company of humans. The colour and movement that so delight me must be spinning him out.

  A long while later, Mayu, Gabino’s shy wife, offers me a place to sleep.

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t need it,’ I whisper in Quechua with a smile, ‘but I thank you, lady. I’ll stay and watch over the gringo.’

  She inclines her head at me before sweeping away in her beautiful red skirt. When I look up again, Mateo is regarding me with a strange expression in his eyes.

  ‘You need to get some rest,’ he says in Quechua, looking around before asking, ‘Where is your brother?’

  Gabino’s father calls out, a little drunkenly, ‘Ayar Awqa cannot be caged! He has flown away into the night sky. To speak with the stars!’

  ‘No, really, señorita, where is he?’ Mateo says worriedly. ‘I come back for you in only a few hours. The train leaves Cusco at six, and from Kilometer 104, the trek is short but still difficult for people who are not used to our conditions.’

  I look up into Mateo’s face with a smile. ‘Uriel finds the modern world a little … claustrophobic. He’s not very good with crowds, but he’s str
ong and sure-footed and he can walk forever. He’ll be fine, and he’ll be back before you are.’

  ‘Then he will feel at home tomorrow.’ Mateo looks relieved. ‘It is wild, high country where we are going: the country of gods.’

  And of demons, I think, shivering despite the light and warmth and music in the room, imagining Gabriel chained by fire, in darkness, in the heart of a dead city.

  19

  The apartment is quiet around me — just the creaks and groans of timber settling, breathing out — when Uriel returns. One minute I’m sitting there, gazing into the darkness, peering into those of my memories I can gather together, trying to puzzle out some kind of chain, some kind of workable order — but it’s a chain that keeps collapsing, because there are more holes than chain — when he’s suddenly just there.

  Ryan’s still sleeping on the settee, his breathing shallow and hoarse. Uriel kneels beside me, brushes a long curl of dark hair back from my face.

  You will never see so many stars as in the skies above Cusco, he says inside my head. Not unless you are home. Don’t you miss it? he continues. How could you not yearn to return? Every moment I am away I feel it in my soul, as if I am somehow … unravelling.

  I don’t tell Uriel that he’s almost described the way I feel around Ryan. It’s like we’re bound together now; as if the notion of home that I used to carry around inside me has been transposed, somehow, into him. And if we were not together any more, maybe I would unravel. It’s something I can’t bring myself to think about until all this is over — and that day is coming, I can feel it.

  Uriel sits down beside me, resting his back against the sagging couch, takes my hand in his. His skin is so warm, seething with his peculiar, living fire.

  I’m tired, he says. Tired of planning and plotting, protecting, fighting, moving. So tired. Am I allowed to say that? His laughter is ghostly.

  I think a little honesty is permissible, I reply wryly. And you’ve never been one to hold back.