The Copper Egg

by Catherine Friend

  Nancho was one of Peru’s indigenous natives, derisively called “indios” by some. Most of the natives spoke Quechua, the language of the Incas. Dozens of other languages died out when the Spaniards arrived, so many natives later adopted Quechua as their language. Claire only knew enough Quechua to recognize it, but not to speak or understand it.

  As they neared the entrance to Chan Chan, Claire’s body tightened. Even though the voices had finally faded in DC, she expected they would start up again now that she was back in Peru. She quickly downed two aspirin, since the voices were always worse at the edges of cities and in the rural areas, the sites of many as-yet undisturbed tombs. You didn’t have to dig very deep to find an ancient skeleton in Peru. Literally—sometimes less than half a meter would uncover bones or pottery sherds. She clenched her fists and closed her eyes. First the voices would come, then the pounding headache would follow.

  But nothing happened. Claire finally cracked her eyes open to see they’d passed the entrance to Chan Chan and were well on their way out of Trujillo. Huh. Perhaps she needed to get farther out into the countryside to hear the voices.

  Claire loved this part of Peru. The ocean and the Andes were so close together you could turn in a circle and experience both. This early in the day, the foothills were indistinct blue shadows, deeply curved, as if a dozen denim-clad women had laid down to rest. But this afternoon, the sun would highlight every crag and crevasse on the mountains. While Claire loved the summers, she did miss the funky fog collectors set up only in the winter. The large poly nets sparkled with condensed fog, to be collected for drinking water. Thanks to the breezes off the ocean, the nets would dance with light.

  Twenty minutes later, Claire still had no voices clamoring to be heard. “Nancho, could you take me back to Chan Chan?” The voices were often worse there, since over the centuries thousands and thousands of people had lived in that huge city.

  “You gots it, Mrs. Claire.” He quickly found a place to turn around.

  Soon he pulled into the long street that led to the Chan Chan Visitors Center and Museum. Surprised to feel a lump in her throat, Claire squeezed her hands together until the damned nostalgia passed. Yes, she had enjoyed working here, but that was part of her past. People who dragged their pasts with them into the future were as burdened as pack llamas.

  Nancho parked in the lot.

  “I’ll just be a few minutes.”

  At eight square miles, Chan Chan had been the largest city in the Americas, and the largest adobe city on earth. Over ten thousand structures, some with walls nearly thirty feet high, were connected with mazes of passageways and streets. Some Chan Chan streets were over twenty-five feet wide. By the time the city was overrun by the Incas, Chan Chan held 60,000 people.

  The parking lot was at the edge of Chan Chan’s nine adobe compounds, each of which had been governed by its own Chimú monarch. A ruler built his compound and filled it with pyramidal temples, gardens, reservoirs, rooms for the royal family, and administrative rooms where the Chimú from other cities would pay their tributes. There were doors of silver and walls of gold. When the ruler died, he was buried in a tomb within his palace.

  The new ruler would then build his own complex of plazas, gardens, and rooms, displacing city residents so the city kept spreading out. Outside of these palatial compounds lived everyone else who went about the business of supporting city residents. To find water in an area that received less than one-tenth of an inch of water per year, they dug sunken fields, stopping only when they reached the water table. Some fields were planted nearly twenty feet below ground level.

  King Chaco hadn’t been one of the rulers of Chan Chan. His city had been somewhere else, its location lost to history. A lost city meant a lost tomb.

  Claire headed down the path leading to the Tschudi compound, which was now called Nik An. Years ago, the compounds had been given mostly Spanish names, or named for archaeologists. One of her last triumphs as subdirector of excavation was to convince her boss, Silvio Flores, to rename the compounds with native names.

  The restored, towering walls of the Nik An complex glowed bronze in the morning sun. The walls of the other compounds, however, were barely a meter high and looked like they’d melted in the sun, thanks to centuries of rain beating down on the adobe. The city had been abandoned when the Incas forced the Chimú to become their slaves and marched them all to Cuzco. The city had been stripped of all its gold and silver by the conquering Spaniards fifty years later.

  Since then, centuries of El Niño rainy seasons had nearly destroyed the city. Only a small portion of the walls were now protected with awnings. Chan Chan employees all worked hard to slow the destruction, but there was little work more futile than this. Claire’s heart went out to the devoted employees and volunteers who raced against nature to slow the decline.

  As she walked, she probed her brain for voices. Where were they? Waves crashed against the beach to the west. A few seagulls called as they swooped over the sugarcane fields surrounding Chan Chan. Bits of sand blew down the path.

  She passed a well-preserved section of fishnet wall. Instead of being solid, the thick walls were carved in a series of deep Xs, like a net. Archaeologists believed these were to improve airflow within the walled compounds.

  A group of tourists approached from Nik An, so she veered off to the north. Workers stood around a van, so she avoided them as well. It looked like Hudson was making progress on Fechech An, a small compound with well-preserved carvings, although, sadly, most of the walls were disfigured stumps.

  Claire followed the path through Fechech An until she reached the ancient city’s northern edge. To the north, a long ridge of sand rose above the crops. Her favorite spot in Peru had been at the top of that ridge. She and Sochi had called it “our hill,” and they would hike there after work with a bottle of wine and a picnic supper.

  Footsteps grated against the rocky path.

  “Silvio.” Claire recognized the bowlegged gait of Chan Chan’s director.

  “Claire.” The man came to a halt, ignoring her outstretched hand. “Why are you here? There are no job openings.” He licked his lips.

  She blinked. “Seriously? Wow. It’s good to see you as well, Silvio.” He was as agitated as the last time she’d seen him, the day the papers had gloated over the ridiculous Chan Chan subdirector who claimed to have found tombs by listening to dead people. The day he’d fired her.

  “Silvio, relax. I’m not looking for a job.” She should smile to put him at ease, but she didn’t really smile. It wasn’t her thing. People who smiled too much made her nervous, except for Sochi, whose face just naturally fell into a smile. She already had great crinkles in the corners of her eyes, and would have a beautiful face when she was older.

  Silvio scanned the horizon. “We can’t afford any more bad press. Are there reporters with you?” He was tall and gaunt, with hair that had begun receding in primary school. His personality had begun receding in utero.

  “I’ve come back to Peru for a few days. There’s nothing illegal about that, is there?”

  “No, of course not.” He had the good grace to blush. “I’m sorry. Looting in the surrounding area has gotten worse, so I thought you might be a looter scoping out the compounds. I am sorry to have accused you, Claire.” This time he offered his hand and she took it. Then, with an embarrassed wave, he left her alone.

  Weird man. But she’d always be grateful to him. Even though she’d had her PhD and lots of excavation experience in Turkey and Guatemala, she’d been shockingly underqualified for the subdirector position. Yet Silvio had offered her the job anyway.

  She faced north again. The long, sandy ridge sent Claire’s heart into a weird thumping act. That pile of sand and rocks and tired bushes had been their place, hers and Sochi’s. To her left, the ocean was a perfect, thin blue horizon. Far off to the right, foothills to the Andes bumped along to form a more ragged, but quite distinctive, horizon.

  In between lay the desert,
home to Moche and Chimú civilizations. The Andes Mountains effectively created the desert, since the prevailing winds blew westward from Brazil to Peru. The mountains blocked the moisture so it fell as rain on the Brazilian side of the Andes. By the time the wind topped the mountains and rushed down into Peru, the air was dry as a desiccated mummy. Despite this, the land was highly cultivated in sugarcane and avocados, fields and groves so lush you could easily forget they’d been planted in sand until you saw the irrigation pipes. The Moche and Chimú had brought the desert to life centuries ago, also by irrigating.

  Yet popping up now and then were sandy hills with erosion-cut rivulets running down their sides. Many of these hills were actually tombs that time and wind had disguised. Looters left them alone because they were too big to safely excavate without being buried in an avalanche, or being caught by the authorities as the work went on night after night.

  Claire left the boundaries of Chan Chan and followed the path she and Sochi would take, lunch basket in hand, circling around the sugarcane field. Twenty minutes later, she stood up on the ridge.

  Shivers ran through her. “No nostalgia,” she snapped. But as usual, she refused to listen to herself. She began hearing voices, but it wasn’t the voices of the dead. It was her voice, and Sochi’s, three years ago…

  …Claire stood under the Visitor Center awning, ignoring the chaos of two busloads of tourists disembarking. She focused only on the woman she loved approaching from the parking lot. Today might be the most important day of her life. For the hour they had together, Claire was determined to ignore the endless voices pounding against her skull.

  “Ready?” Sochi called. Her languid smile shot warm tingles down Claire’s arms. She had a good feeling about today, and about Sochi’s answer. She was ready for some quiet time with her, since the accolades had been coming fast and furious now that Claire had been declared Peru’s most successful archaeologist. She’d found five new tombs in the two months since the voices had started.

  Twenty minutes later, they reached the scruffy hill north of Chan Chan. Just then, the sun pierced the gray blanket overhead like a dagger slicing through fabric. The sun gave off no warmth, but when a shaft of radiant light hit the dull gray ocean, the water exploded into iridescent sparkles. Claire and Sochi stood in awe as the light danced for them. Claire took this as a sign Peru was blessing this day.

  She dropped to the sandy ground, sighing with relief. At her back, to the east, foothills rose up in a distinctive formation. Claire opened the basket, and Sochi spread out a towel to keep the sand out of the food. Claire leaned close, kissing her lightly. “Baby, I need to talk to you about something.”

  Sochi reached for Claire’s hands. “And I want to talk to you about something. But I have to go first. If I don’t, I’m going to pop.”

  “But—”

  “Please.” Fingers shaking, Sochi opened a flat package and slid out a wooden box with intricate Chimú designs painted on the top and sides.

  She handed the box to Claire, who lifted the lid to discover sand with a tiny shovel on top. “Oh, thank you. Sand. Just what I need.”

  “Funny you. C’mon, you’re an archaeologist,” Sochi said. “Excavate.”

  Intrigued by what was clearly a treasure hunt, Claire picked up the two-inch shovel by its tiny handle and began to move the sand around. After she found two small clay figures, one with short, white-blond hair, the other with long brown hair, she met Sochi’s gaze. “Love you,” Claire whispered.

  Sochi inhaled shakily. “Keep going.”

  “There’s nothing left in here. Oh, wait. Look. Here’s a teeny tiny key.” She brushed off the sand. “Is this the key to your heart?”

  Sochi laughed. “No, that’s way too mushy. It’s the key to that drawer beneath the sand compartment.”

  “Hidden treasure,” Claire whispered. The lock clicked and she slid the drawer open. “More sand?”

  Sochi just smiled.

  It didn’t take her long to find the only item in the sand. She gasped, then held up the ring. “Oh, my.” Claire’s heart thumped harder than a dog’s tail.

  “I had it custom made,” Sochi said softly. A series of stones circled the platinum band: diamond, gold ball, diamond, silver ball, diamond, copper ball. The pattern circled around the ring until it met itself. Chimú—gold, silver, and copper. Its beauty sucked the oxygen out of Claire’s lungs.

  Sochi licked her lips. “I know that in America we could legally marry, but I’m hoping this ring, and a ceremony with friends, will be enough for you. From the moment we met at Huanchaco Beach, I knew you were my other half, my soul mate. No, more than soul mate. I have never loved anyone in my life as deeply as I love you. I want to spend all my life with you.”

  “Stop.” Laughter bubbled up Claire’s throat, but she needed to have her say before she let it go.

  “What?”

  Claire reached into her pack and pulled out a black velvet box. “This is for you.”

  Sochi flipped open the box to find a single marquise diamond, stark in its beauty. They looked at each other and broke up laughing. “What happens when both of us propose?”

  Claire kissed her tenderly. “We both say ‘yes.’” Then she handed Sochi a thick envelope.

  Inside were pages of job listings. “Washington, DC?” Sochi asked.

  Claire leaned forward, unable to contain her excitement. “I’ve applied for four jobs at the Smithsonian. Any of them will be a huge move forward for my career. But I’ll have to move back to DC, so I want us to move there together. As you can see, there are oodles of jobs you are qualified for, and we might even be able to get you into the Peruvian embassy.”

  Sochi stared at the listings. “But I thought you understood…I thought we would live in Peru. There is so much work to be done here. I can’t abandon my country now.”

  Claire had been afraid of this, but was confident Sochi would see reason. She bit her lip. “I need to tell you something that might make a difference.” She set her ring back into the sand and slid the drawer closed. “Over two months ago, Hudson and I took San Pedro. It was his idea, not mine, and a stupid one. I started hearing voices…voices babbling in Quechua. The voices speak even faster than your grandmother, so I can’t understand them any better than I can understand Mima. They return every day. Whenever I hear voices, I know there’s a tomb nearby.”

  Sochi rubbed her face with both hands. “You hear voices. Of the dead? I am not surprised that someone hears them, but that it’s you is unexpected.”

  “I know. Nancho has been driving me up and down the Pan American, and I have him stop whenever the voices start. I tramp through the brush until the voices are at their loudest. Most of the time, I find a looted tomb, broken pottery, and skeletal remains scattered across the ground.”

  “Gods, I hate looters.”

  “But if the ground is undisturbed, I mark the location and send out a team from Chan Chan. They’ve been excavating the sites.”

  “Those were the five tombs you found?”

  She watched Sochi struggle to reconcile such a fantastical story with down-to-earth Claire. Balanced Claire. Organized Claire. Why hadn’t she told Sochi about the afternoon with Hudson and the San Pedro earlier? The freaking drug had really messed her up, and she’d been ashamed to admit it.

  “Something happened to me, something that opened a door in my mind, and I can’t shut it.”

  “No, that’s impossible. Let me research this. I’m sure—”

  “Sochi, don’t you think I’ve already done that? There’s nothing out there on this problem.”

  “Do you hear voices here, at Chan Chan?”

  Claire nodded.

  “But this is an abandoned city. There were only a few tombs here.”

  “The voices scream all day long. Do you believe me?”

  “Of course I believe you. The voices give you headaches?”

  Claire nodded again.

  “Okay, we’ll move south along the coast. Or i
nland. We can—”

  “I don’t want to live in Peru. It’s time for me to move to the next level. It’s time for us to move on together.”

  Her heart plunged at the look on Sochi’s face. “But I can’t leave Peru. People are raping the land, stealing our heritage right from under us.”

  “Come to DC with me. You can help Peru from there.”

  Sochi pressed her lips together and squeezed her eyes shut for a second. “Claire, I can’t leave Peru. My heritage won’t survive if all the people who can help just abandon her. We can find you a great job in Lima. We don’t have to stay in Trujillo.”

  “But I need a Smithsonian job to further my career.”

  Unable to look at each other, they stared at the cooler, the sandwiches inside forgotten. If Claire put even one bit of food in her mouth, she’d be sick.

  Sochi pulled in a huge breath. “We love each other, right? You’ve been dealing with this for months—thanks, by the way, for waiting so long to share it with me. But I’ve only had ten minutes. Give me more time. We’ll figure this out. I know we will. We can stay in Peru and you can still advance your career.”

  Why didn’t Sochi understand how important this was? A deep blanket of certainty fell over Claire. They weren’t going to work this out. It was impossible. She’d been deluding herself. She reached over and took back her velvet box, snapping it shut so emphatically that Sochi jumped. “Soch, you can’t leave Peru. I hear you. But I don’t want to stay. There’s nothing more to discuss.”

  As they stared at each other, Claire’s head throbbed with pain. She would not remain in Peru. She couldn’t.

  The day’s heat was suddenly unbearable. Sweat stung Claire’s eyes, but she refused to wipe them. Instead, she kept her gaze on Sochi, giving her one last chance to change her mind, to see that they had to move to DC.