The king took his seat, and Sumaq sat on the bench to his right, the usual position for the eldest son, while the queen sat across from them both, opposite the king. The king leaned toward a servant on his left and placed an order for more food and drink than the three of them could possibly consume in a single sitting. Normally, the excess and extravagance would irritate Sumaq, but he took a deep, steadying breath instead of lecturing his parents. Today, there was something much more important. Someone more important.
“Now, son,” the king said, returning his attention to his dinner companions as the servant strode from the room. “Tell me this urgent matter.”
Sumaq took a deep breath, preparing himself. “I met someone.”
The king and queen exchanged a look, both smiling, the queen’s eyes sparkling with mirth.
“Oh?” the king said, keeping his voice calmer than he appeared.
“But she needs our help.”
“You know we will help any woman who has agreed to become the next queen of the Kumya,” the queen said, smoothing the fabric of her dress across her knee.
“That’s just it,” Sumaq said, butterflies flitting around his gut. “She hasn’t exactly agreed to that. Yet.”
His parents exchanged another look, this one filled more with confusion than joy.
“And why not?” the king demanded.
“She is the Inti shaman’s apprentice. Her mistress is...not kind.” That was putting it mildly. “She is not keen on releasing her from her apprenticeship.”
“You should have sent us a letter! We could have begun the bride negotiations.”
“The shaman is unwilling to negotiate,” Sumaq said, thinking back to all the comments about Quri, all the bitter hatred Chuki directed at the idea of them as a couple. “And unwilling to allow her apprentice to marry, it would seem. When she learned of my...affections, she was none too pleased.”
The king’s face grew grave. “I see. So you need our help to retrieve your Thunder Bride?”
“I believe it is necessary, Father.”
“Then we must go fetch her immediately.” The king’s face was grim, and he leaned toward Sumaq. “You know, I rescued your mother from a similar situation. Sometimes women need rescuing.”
Sumaq glanced at his mother, that capable, kind woman who ruled with the grace and compassion he wished to one day possess himself. It was hard to imagine she ever needed rescuing. As he watched her drink from her cup, he saw the almost imperceptible eye roll. Her adoring gaze was back on his father’s face almost as soon as she set the cup down.
Then again, his father was known to embellish.
And Quri. Did she really need rescuing? Something inside him said no. Quri was strong and capable.
But while she didn’t need rescuing, she did need help. And there was no weakness in help.
The servants reappeared at that moment with platters full of cured meats, stews, fruits, vegetables, and breads. One servant filled fine gold cups with a sweet wine that always made Sumaq’s head swim, then stepped back with the pitcher, ready to refill empty goblets.
The king turned his full attention to the meal, apparently ravenous. “Don’t worry yourself, son. We will rescue your bride. Just as soon as we are feasted and rested!”
Six
QURI SPENT THE rest of her day, and the week that followed, behaving as the model student. She studied, she practiced, and she kept the hut so clean that she and Chuki could have eaten off the dirt floor. Her arm was blue and green after how tightly Chuki had twisted it, and it bloomed into yellow over the next few days. Her bones ached every time she tried to pick something up or hold her writing feather or even lean on the table. Yet, every time, she bit back the cries, pretended nothing had happened, that nothing was the matter.
Had she deserved it? Chuki had never been so violent with her before. She yelled and bestowed punishments like gifts, but she had never injured her student. Quri wanted to say yes, she deserved it, to say that she had betrayed her mistress by entertaining thoughts of another life away from Chuki, but something stopped her.
Sumaq had treated her with a kindness she had never before known. Was that friendship? Something more? He talked to her as an equal, while Chuki only ever talked to her as her superior. He played games with her. Chuki had never done that, not even when Quri was a young child. And Sumaq truly seemed to care about her feelings and her friendship, even going so far as to kneel in the sooty hearth with her. On her level.
Chuki would never do that. Even if Quri stayed until they were both old and gray, she would always be inferior. She would never be seen as equal, would never have control of her own life, of what she wanted and needed.
And if Sumaq was to be believed, she deserved better. The only question remaining was what, if anything, Quri would do about it. Chuki was her only home, her only support. Where would she go?
For her part, Chuki simply brought Quri a new dress of the brightest blue, the softest hide and woven reeds, the finest beading and stitching. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever owned.
And it hid her bruises from the sight of the community. Not that anyone dared confront Chuki.
There was no sign of Sumaq over that next week, but now and then Quri heard a whisper of his name, a mention of him returning to bargain for a woman of the Inti. Her heart fluttered at the rumors. On one hand, she worried he would simply forget her, give up, and leave her here to rot until she broke under Chuki’s temper. One day, Chuki might even go too far and Quri’s spirit would leave her body to roam the jungle forever, alone and forgotten. After that last outburst, it seemed to be all she could see every time she closed her eyes: Chuki squeezing the life out of her.
A new thought struck her as hard as the floor beneath her feet. Perhaps Quri could leave. Surely she could find a new home, perhaps even with Sumaq. Would his offer still stand, to move to the Kumya and find a new master?
Yet at the same time, she hoped he would forget about her, about the trouble she brought to his life. That he would move on and find a bride better suited to be the Kumya queen. Someone without duties to the shaman, without the expectation of becoming the next Inti shaman. Someone raised among the nobility.
The thought sent a streak of pain deep into her heart, that Sumaq would choose someone else.
So she pushed the thoughts away as often as they came and continued on as if nothing had happened, hopeful yet afraid to hope, burying herself in her education...yet still longing for his presence, his touch, his kind words, remembering the bright sideways glances and the low rumble of his voice.
Quri was deep in her studies, exactly one week from Sumaq’s departure, when a loud, sturdy knock resounded on the door.
“See who that is, will you?” Chuki called from the hearth. She was busily concocting a poultice for the chief’s wife, who had been afflicted with a stubborn rash.
“Yes, Mistress Chuki,” Quri said dutifully, her voice soft.
She rose, placing a rock in the shape of a bird onto the open page of her book, and tugged her sleeve down over the edges of the purpling on her skin. She reached the door in only a few steps and pulled it open just enough to show her face, hiding her body behind the bulk of the door.
“Yes? What is it?” she said.
A man stood on their threshold, surrounded by a contingent of soldiers carrying spears and knives. His bearing was proud and regal, and his clothes were the finest Quri had ever seen, even finer than the apology dress from Chuki. Yet the look on his face, and the soldiers at his side, hinted that this visit was anything but a visit to be proud of.
Her heart pounded. What had Chuki done now?
“We have come to bargain with the Shaman Chuki,” the man said, his voice deep and booming like thunder. There was no hesitation in his words, no suggestion that anyone would contradict him. This was a man used to being obeyed.
Quri glanced back at Chuki, who still stirred the pot. Chuki didn’t turn, but her stirring had slowed as she listened.
Quri looked back at the man, heart fluttering nervously. “May I ask why?”
The man took a step to the side, and Sumaq’s beaming face filled the gap in the door. Quri smiled so wide, she was sure her face would crack like a dropped pot.
“Sumaq!” She said his name without thinking, without remembering that Chuki listened behind her.
She heard the three steps it took Chuki to cross the room, enough time for the smile to drop and the blood to drain from her cheeks, and then she was slammed backward, away from the door. The shock of the door slamming into the frame shook the hut, and Quri tumbled to the floor, wincing as she caught herself on her injured arm.
The man pounded and shouted from outside. “I command you to open this door, under the authority of the Chief of the Kumya!”
“I most certainly will not!” Chuki cried back, her voice shrill. “I am Inti. I do not recognize your authority!”
Chuki didn’t recognize the authority of her own chief either, but Quri wasn’t about to mention that. She picked herself up off the floor and brushed dirt from the dress. The motion seemed to remind her mistress she was still in the room, and Chuki whirled back to face her. Her eyes were wild, almost feverish. Quri didn’t see her move, but then she was right beside her, gripping her injured arm so tightly that Quri cried out. Chuki threw a handful of green dust at her face, and Quri sneezed.
And then the world changed.
It stretched and grew, contorted and swayed. Quri’s joints popped painfully, and she gasped.
But it came out as a squeak, like the squeak of a mouse. In front of her towered a large black bird...right where Chuki had been standing. The bird squawked in her face, and she squeaked in terror. It hopped forward, wrapping enormous talons around her body, pricking her ribs with their sharp edges. Her heart was beating so fast, it was more like the roar of a great cat than a pulse.
She barely noticed the thuds of men slamming against the door, the way the boards shattered as the Kumya broke into the hut.
The bird flapped its wings with a great wind and lifted off the ground, gliding toward the back door, propped open to allow air to circulate in the warm hut.
Quri squeaked in fear and pain as they rose up, higher, higher, into the bright blue sky. The ground fell away beneath them until the huts were nothing but specks, until the shouts of the men on the threshold faded away. She stopped wriggling as soon as they’d cleared the top of the last hut, afraid Chuki would drop her to splatter on that now-distant ground, but still Chuki held on, digging sharp talons into Quri’s tiny body.
If she had still been human, Quri would have cried. She wouldn’t have been able to stop it, to hide it.
But she wasn’t human. She was a mouse. A tiny, frail, easy to break or eat or crush, mouse. She squeaked in despair.
The bird soared across the top of the city, over the bright green jungle trees, toward the towering mountain cliffs and the tall tombs where all the ancestors rested in their final homes.
Quri’s tiny mouse heart raced with fear. Once the ancestors were buried, the tombs were sealed. The only way in or out was the small, T-shaped window near the ceiling. If the shaman took her there, she would most certainly be trapped.
Just as Quri had feared, Chuki swooped toward one of them, gliding easily through the opening and dropping Quri to the floor. Quri tumbled across the dusty stone, unable to stop her momentum until she struck a decaying burlap bag of dusty grain. She came to a stop against the bag, her head on the floor and her tail in the air, and stayed exactly as she landed for several moments as the room stopped spinning.
She blinked her big mouse eyes and righted herself, darting terrified glances around her. The tomb was only a single room, and this one must have been old, judging from the decayed state of most of the objects. The bags of grain and food were dust, barely held together with the prayers of the people in the city below. The furniture was covered in dirt and grime. And the floor was dusty flagstone, once painstakingly laid and painted, now faded with age.
Quri’s breath was fast in her mouse lungs, too fast, and the tomb was spinning around her again. She had seen these tombs from afar. She had even seen them up close at funerals. Once sealed, there was no way out.
No way except the window.
She scurried across the floor toward the window. If she could just reach it fast enough, perhaps she could—
Something cold struck her, and she sneezed and tumbled against the wall. Her body shifted and morphed, growing even as the room appeared to shrink around her. She reached one clawed paw up toward the window in desperation only to watch her own slender fingers return.
She was human again, too large to squeeze through the window.
The great black bird cawed behind her, and as she turned, the caws morphed into the cackles of Chuki. By the time she faced the other way, the bird was gone, and Chuki stood in the middle of the room. The old shaman wiped at her eyes, and her chuckling subsided as she eyed her apprentice critically.
“What are you doing?” Quri shrieked.
Chuki’s laughter faded as she glared at the girl.
“Protecting you. You are my apprentice! Not some whorish bride of the Thunder People!” Chuki’s laughter was replaced with the red-faced anger that had been growing all too common recently, the anger that had been escalating to violence ever since Sumaq had come to her hut.
Chuki didn’t wait for a response before shifting back into the great black bird and soaring through the window and out to freedom.
Seven
SUMAQ WATCHED IN horror through the window as his men broke down the door. Quri morphed into a field mouse, so small he could cradle her in the palm of his hand and still have room for two more mice. Then, Chuki was a bird, one of the dark black forest birds they saw feasting on the carrion of dead beasts. She had grabbed up a stunned mouse-Quri from the floor and swooped over their heads, riding the air up and up, far out of reach and away from them before any of them could react.
He ran down the small village road, trying to track the bird, but she disappeared into the brightness of the sky. All he had was the direction she had vanished.
A wide swath of dark rainforest and the tall, nearly inaccessible cliffs of the dead lay in that direction. It could take years of searching...and he still might never find her.
But he would search for as long as it took.
My Quri, my beautiful Thunder Bride, do not lose hope. I am coming for you!
Eight
QURI COLLAPSED TO the floor, her knees suddenly weak. Puffs of beige dust billowed up around her, and she coughed. The dust stuck to her cheeks, mingling with tears. She couldn’t hold back the keening wails anymore as fear gripped her.
Sumaq. What was Chuki doing to him? Would she dare attack the prince?
Yes. If she thought she could get away with it, if she thought she could keep out of reach of the king and his soldiers, Chuki would kill him.
The thought only made her wail louder, the sound deafening in the stillness of the tomb. She cried until she could no longer breathe, until her head pulsed with pain and each breath was a fight. She cried for herself and for Sumaq and for the future they could have had together.
In her mind, she could see Chuki returning to the hut, to the soldiers and the royals, could see her ripping them to shreds in the stolen form of a jaguar. Or turning them into ants and crushing them into the dust. Or, perhaps worst of all, stealing the prince away and torturing him in the black night of the jungle for daring to negotiate for Quri.
She pushed the thoughts away as the tears flowed faster. She couldn’t think like that. She had to believe Chuki’s vindictiveness wouldn’t extend to treason, that she would simply be content to hide Quri and wait until the prince lost interest in searching.
But no, that would be even worse. Quri didn’t want him to stop searching. She wanted him here. Or better yet, she wanted to be out there, learning about the world with him.
She squeezed her eyes closed t
ightly, gripping one hand in the other, imagining she held Sumaq’s. Imagining he was here, complimenting her and encouraging her, planting tender kisses on her cheek to make her blushes blossom like flowers. The thought of his affection pushed against her fear and despair.
Eventually the tears began to subside, and her breathing eased. But a weight of despair still hung heavy in her chest, and she sank further onto the ground, laying her wet cheek against the dusty flagstone.
Would Chuki ever let her out? Would she return?
She had to believe the answer was yes. After all, as Chuki said, Quri was her apprentice; years of work had gone into her training already, time and money that couldn’t ever be returned. And Chuki was old. She wouldn’t want to start over with someone new. There wouldn’t be enough time.
But how long would she keep her trapped up here?
She sighed and pushed herself off the floor. There would be plenty of time for tears later. For now, she needed to know what she had here, what her prison held that could help her. She stood and spun in a slow circle, surveying her new, and hopefully temporary, home.
First, her eyes stopped on the prison’s only other occupant, lying on a rough stone slab covered in writing and pictographs. The bones were thankfully hidden beneath an ancient burial shroud, and the tomb must have been sealed for long enough that there was no scent of decay on the air, only dust and age. For that, at least, she could be grateful. Decay carried disease.
She took a few steps closer, studying the skeletal shape of the person beneath the shroud, hidden in thick folds of brown fabric. She had never been alone with the dead before. Usually, Chuki was with her to perform last rites, and then the temple would handle further preparations.
Seasons of Magic Volume 1 Page 3