Son of Sun (Forgotten Gods (Book 2)) (18 page)

“Of course it’s me, Rhea. Who’d you think it was? The boogie man?” Chassan let a laugh escape his pursed lips and then stepped from the forest onto the trail so Rhea could see him.

“Oh, Chassan! You’re a life saver,” Professor Abrams gasped, peering around a large tree and clapping Chassan on his back. Chassan flinched from his touch, but didn’t break his smile.

“Yeah. We’d love to have you.” I faked Chassan’s enthusiasm as he breezed passed me on the trail, acting as if his anger hadn’t just whipped up a storm so savage it made everyone on the mountain cower in fear of what was about to unleash.

My eyes bore holes into Chassan’s insufferable head the entire way back to the village. The storm softened, and faded away over the mountaintops. The red sun returned to its normal place and color in the sky and the clouds became fluffy white cotton balls again. We walked along the path single file, listening to Rhea recount their misadventures of the past days. I only listened to her with one ear, nodding and smiling when I needed to. With the other ear I listened to the steady grinding of Chassan’s teeth, as he led the way, never once looking in my direction. Not having the first clue what was going on inside his brain. The only thing I did know? My secret was still safe. At least for a little while longer.

As it turns out
, saving the king’s granddaughter had made me a bit of big deal, and he happily agreed to let our friends share our tent for the night. But there was no great feast to welcome them. The Q’ero were superstitious people and believed that Anyi’s sickness was sent by the gods to make the village pay for their sins. Chassan’s angry storm certainly hadn’t helped, even though it had dissipated. The king ordered everyone to stay in their tents until the shaman could appease the god’s with sacrifice. A thought that made me roll my eyes.

And so the evening found us once again huddled around a fire—Professor Abrams telling stories, Todd hanging on every word, the natives tending the fire and making food, Luke sitting silently beside Chassan and Rhea sharing my bedroll with me.

“Have you ever heard the legends of the Incan sun god who was cursed to live his life a bird?” Abrams asked when he finished yet another grand tale of far away places.

My eyes flared and heart sank, fearing the story he was about to tell.

“Um...we should probably talk about something else. I mean, the Q’ero are the Incas after all. It’s disrespectful to talk about their gods.” I hoped I was making some sense as I rambled on, trying to steer the conversation in any direction other than that one.

“Oh, no. I’d love to hear it. Since we’re here and all.” Todd smiled across the fire. “They can’t understand us anyway.”

I shrugged and looked down into the fire. It was his funeral, after all.

Chassan’s back straightened, yet he remained bent to the task of carving beside Luke, just as he had all night. My eyes flickered up to his, but his face has hard as stone, concentrating on the wood in his hands.

With a grand flourish of the beautiful rainbow colored poncho he had bought off a local to warm his shoulders, Professor Abrams locked onto each face around the fire with a purposeful gaze before he began.

“The sun god, Inti, and Pacha Mama had four sons. Each given a direction of the sky to rule over—one north, one south, one east and one west.” He clicked off the four compass points with his hand around the fire. “Everyday, the four brothers would take to the skies, ruling over the air in their father’s stead.

The Incas believed that these great god’s took the form of a condor, a great and honored bird that would also transport the soul’s of the dead to the heavens where they would spend eternity with Inti.” Abrams placed a hand reverently over his heart.

“When the last world was coming to an end, the youngest brother got greedy. In the chaos that ensued, he killed his three brothers in cold blood, thinking he would rule the entire sky when the world righted itself.” He slashed a hand through the air, imitating the action one would make if they were slitting a throat with a knife and Todd wrapped both hands over his own neck for protection.

“What the greedy brother didn’t know was that all of existence would be wiped out once ice covered the planet, and he would have little to rule over when it was all done. Inti cursed his son to remain in this world all by himself, living life as a harbinger of death for all eternity. The Q’ero believe he stalks these mountains still, waiting in the shadows to snatch life from unsuspecting souls.” The Professor finished and sat back, satisfied he had told a ghost story that would have everyone sleeping with one eye open.

Slowly Chassan rose, his menacing size casting the entire hut in shadow and causing Todd to shrink in fear. On his face, an expression as dark as any storm cloud twisted his features into a black mask.

“You forgot about the staff he was given to settle Cusco,” Chassan barked, bringing the stick he had been carving to the ground with a great
thunk
before turning to the door and stalking out.

Every eye in the tent followed him, wide with surprise, and then turned to me for an answer.

“Well!” Rhea exclaimed. “What was that all about?” She looked from me to the door where Chassan had made his exit.

“Who knows.” I shrugged it off. “I’d better go check.” I slipped from the cover of my sleeping bag, zipping up my fleece as I wandered out into the night.

I could follow Chassan’s scent, a heady mix of forest and campfire, out the village trail Anyi had taken me down. Several paces away he turned off the trail and was standing on a bluff looking over the valley. Warily, I approached, having no clue whatsoever the type of mood he was in. He hadn’t spoken to or looked at me since he told me to leave him alone. Even when he breezed into my reunion with Rhea, he hadn’t so much as looked my way.

His body stilled, ram rod straight as if fighting the urge to leap from the cliff and turn into his condor body, maybe flying away so that he never had to see these people again. After what he’d just sat through it had to be tempting, and I wondered why he bothered to stay at all.

“Chassan, I’m sorry. I tried to stop him.” I offered in a small voice.

“Do you honestly think I care what those people think about me? Abrams is a fool who spends more hours in books than the real world. He doesn’t have the first clue about life.” Chassan sneered, keeping his eyes focused forward.

“Then why are you so upset?” I asked. My answer was silence that stretched out into what seemed like infinity.

“What must
you
think of me?” His question sounded more rhetorical than anything else. Not something he expected to be answered, but I did anyway.

“I think you struggle to find a purpose in life just as much as I do.”
Struggle
was an understatement, given his performance earlier.

He turned towards me, his eyes flaring deep ochre in the dark. I failed miserably at hiding the automatic recoil that seized my body.

“You think I’m some sort of monster?” He took a lunging step toward me, clearly meaning to intimidate me. But, I held my ground, refusing to let him scare me again. We were cast in shadows except for the moonlight dancing on our cheeks and the greyed faces of a few large boulders.

I simply shook my head and walked past him to the cliff instead of running like he expected me to, sitting down on the ground so my legs dangled off the edge of the bluff. Chassan watched me, his brow pulling together in surprise. After a few silent seconds, he sighed and dropped down on the rock beside me, dangling his legs into the darkness.

“It wasn’t in cold blood,” he said, his voice blowing a puffy cloud in the dark.

Not cold blood?
It was amazing to me that just the words
cold blood
could make my veins run icy. I turned my head to him but said nothing, encouraging him with my silence since I knew how much he hated to be interrupted.

“My brothers fell in love with humans, married them and had families just as normal men.” Chassan’s look was lost in the ages as he stared forward into the darkness, as I hung on his every word. “The world was different back then. We did not have to hide what we were. Gods could live easily among the humans.” He shrugged and shook his head, snapping out of it as he suddenly realized how lost he had been. Grabbing a handful of pebbles from the ground, he began to toss them, one by one into the valley, listening as their fall echoed through the forest.

“But then a great unbalance fell upon the world. Seraph’s magic escaped the underworld. Zeus demanded her death and called upon the daughters of water to destroy all that lived outside their borders. Danu retreated to LisTirna instead of fighting alongside my father. There was nothing we could do to stop them. They cast the world into a tailspin that resulted in the ice ages.”

Daughters of water?

I gasped, remembering the blue haired woman beneath the stream in Mission woods. Goose bumps prickled over my skink, realizing how closely I had danced with death that night. Chassan nodded, watching intently as my face fell into a look of understanding.

“As gods, we knew the world was ending and humans would not be spared. My brothers didn’t want a life without their families.” He paused and tossed another pebble into the valley. My brain twitched when he stopped, pulled from the memory of the blue lady and back to his story.

“Do you remember telling me that your love for Dayne was selfless because you didn’t want to live a life without him?”

I nodded, my mouth hanging dumbly open as I tugged at a rough piece of cuticle around my thumb nail. His story was spinning my mind in a million different directions.

“My brothers felt the same way. They welcomed death, and I was the only one who loved them enough to give it to them. Our father refused them, and when he learned what I had done, he cursed me to live eternity alone in these mountains.”

All the pieces suddenly fell into place like some giant, cosmic jigsaw puzzle. Chassan wasn’t the horrible beast all the legends made him out to be. He was the furthest thing from it. And at that moment, I realized Chassan and I had something else in common other than crazy magical powers. Something that made him seem more human than he ever had before.

“Sounds like your parents are as awful as mine,” I joked, leaning into his arm in a playful way. His lips twisted as if resisting the smile that wanted to break over his face.

“I’m sorry about earlier…” Chassan began, but I held up my hand to stop him.

“Don’t be. I know what it’s like to wrestle with demons, Chassan. You owe me no explanation. I, however, owe you my life, even if you regret saving it.” As soon as I spoke the words his brow wrinkled and he began to protest, but I continued undeterred. “And that leaves me in your debt. You have my word that when you need me, I will be there for you just as you were for me.” I bowed my head as I said this, hand resting over my heart in a solemn pledge.

“What need would I have for magic as weak as yours!” He sneered at me, trying to look serious but failing miserably.

“Weak? If I remember correctly you were just as surprised as I was about my first lesson!”

“Humph!” He waved his hand into the air. “I was just being supportive!”

“Right,” I nodded, and got to my feet, offering a hand to help him up.

He pulled me back as I turned to the trail to leave.

“Hey, no one knows the truth about what I did. You won’t…”

“I’m really good with secrets,” I crossed my fingers over my heart and twisted a fake key at my mouth, telling him the secret was locked away inside.

Rhea, the native woman and I shared our sleeping bags, using our body heat to stay warm in the separate room so the guys would have enough space to spread out around the fire. Rhea woke me early, asking me if I wanted to go with her to watch the sunrise.

My body was needing less and less sleep; one more thing I loved about being human that I was giving up by embracing this new life.

Rhea poured coffee into a thermos and followed me silently up a trail to where we could watch the sun blaze into the eastern sky, chasing the mist from the mountains as it rose higher and burned brighter.

Deep vermillion spilled over the mountainside, painting everything in its path with the rich red colors of morning—rocks, trees, birds and fields. From where we sat sharing coffee on a rocky outcrop it felt as if we were ensconced in a giant pink bubble gum bubble. Rhea leaned into me in a contented way, sighing as she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.

“Merry Christmas, Faye,” Rhea said as we watched the final edge of the orange ball ascend from its nighttime nap.

“Christmas?” My head jerked to her and I counted the days in my head. “I had totally lost track of the time.” In my head, I counted the days I had been gone and the days I had left before I had to return to St. Anne’s. Only a week remained and an empty feeling crept into my stomach. Not because I was hungry—food was becoming less and less important to me—but because no human I had ever known would be able to forget Christmas.

“I’m sure you’ve been lost in a lot of things,” Rhea winked at me.

“Rhea, Chassan and I are just friends.” Rubbing a finger over my bracelet, I thought about how far away my heart was. “I gave my heart away a while ago, and it belongs to someone else until he doesn’t want it anymore,” I sighed, clasping my bracelet in my hand and curling it into my chest.

Rhea nodded, watching me.

“You’re young, Faye. Much to young to make promises that sound like forever.” Rhea put an arm around me.

“Too late for that.” I fiddled with the clasp of my bracelet, wondering if Dayne’s gift still promised what it had when he gave it to me. Was Chassan right? Had Dayne let me go the moment the bracelet fell from my wrist? The thought was impossible to comprehend. So, I leaned into Rhea and pretended my tears were caused by the beauty of the morning, and maybe a little homesickness.

We were met with
grave faces around the hut when we returned from our early morning hike.

“What?” I immediately flew to Chassan’s side fearing Anyi was ill again.

“The king has caught Anyi’s sickness.” His eyes searched my face in a lost way as he looked down at me. “They’ve requested you come and nurse him as you did Anyi.”

“The king’s sick?” Rhea asked over my shoulder. “I’ve been a nurse for thirty years. Show me where he is.” Rhea knelt to her pack and pulled out a first aid kit that looked like an emergency room crash cart, her demeanor switching to serious work mode at the mention of illness.

My eyes darted back to Chassan.

“You won’t be able to touch him, Faye,” Chassan whispered so low only we could hear. “The Q’ero believe the power will leave him if he is touched by an outsider.”

“Well, won’t they all eventually sleep like they did with Anyi?”

He pursed his lips and shook his head.

“Maybe, maybe not. Even if they do, I will not let you risk your life again.”

“That’s not your decision to make.” I leaned away from him and tucked my chin defiantly in the air.

He blew a tight breath through clenched teeth, shrugged and pushed passed me.

“This way, Rhea,” he held the door open for Rhea and she rushed out, her face blankly sombre in the way nurses often are.

Anyi stood like a gaunt little ghost in her white gown at the door to her grandfather’s bed chamber. Her black eyes danced when she saw me and rushed to my side, flinging her arms around my waist and hugging me closely.

I knelt down and took her in my arms, the relief of finally seeing her well so overwhelming I didn’t even try hide the pool of tears breaking against my lower lash.

She pulled away from me, and tugging at a few of my golden curls, nodded her head in a knowing way. I looked down at the curls she fisted and then followed her hand as she put a finger to her ruby lips, telling me she was still keeping our secrets. I smiled at her and put a finger to my lips as well.

“Faye?’’ Chassan broke the spell we were in and I hugged the little girl again before entering her grandfather’s room. She shrunk away into the shadows as if she was afraid to enter.

The moment I stepped across the threshold I knew why.

Death hung like musty old drapes in the large stone room—thick, heavy and hot—the smell so putrid I had to bring my shirt collar over my nose just to breathe. Rhea was unfazed, making her way to the bedside as Chassan spoke in their broken Q’ero words to inform them Rhea was a great healer, too.

As Rhea pulled tools from her bag the shaman stepped between her and the king, using his body as a shield.

“Rhea, you cannot touch the king. Everything must be administered by the shaman.”

“That’s ridiculous. He hasn’t had any training.” Rhea’s brow wrinkled into a row of deep lines between her eyes.

“It’s the only way they will let you help him, Rhea,” Chassan said firmly, leaving no room for negotiation. She shook her head, her brows rising up her forehead as if her tools of healing were suddenly rendered utterly useless.

After an hour of Chassan translating Rhea’s increasingly frustrated instructions to the shaman, she determined the king had chickenpox. Something that was rarely fatal in children like Anyi, but often deadly for older patients. Most likely brought back to the village by a man who had recently traveled into Cusco for supplies. These days everyone was vaccinated against the disease. The Q’ero, however, were sitting ducks, their immune systems unprepared to fight such a simple bug.

Rhea was frazzled and ragged as she watched the shaman’s bumbling hands use her medicine to treat the king. More than once she shrieked when he was doing it wrong, and startled the entire room, guards jumping to attention, ready to fight.

In the end, nothing worked. The king’s breathing grew increasingly shallow, his chest barely moving, entire body slicked with a thick sheen of sweat. Chassan and I exchanged glances over the room, and as dawn crept in on silent feet, it was clear I wouldn’t get a chance to save the king.

With a great, painful groan he breathed his last breath and silence fell over the mountain kingdom.

Seconds later, his servants frantically began to clear out, running from death, terrified to be in the room with it; leaving Rhea, Chassan and I staring at each other with blank expressions.

“I could have saved him if they’d let me touch him,” Rhea whispered, reaching with a practiced, gentle touch to close the king’s eyelids, and brushing the white wisps of hair from his drenched forehead in the tenderest way. She had tears down her cheeks for a man she had only known in his dying hours.

Chassan didn’t try to stop her from touching the king’s body. Instead, he looked to me, the feral wildness back in his eyes, and I knew immediately I needed to get Rhea out of there. His chest was heaving again, as if there wasn’t enough air in the room for him to breathe, and his muscles began to quake with restraint. Fearing he would transform into the Grim Reaper before her eyes, I ran to Rhea’s side and grabbed the remaining tools she was packing away.

“Rhea, will you come take a look at Anyi? She seems better, but I’d really like to get your opinion.” I rushed Rhea from the room as Chassan’s eyes went dark ochre, keeping my hand firmly on her back so she couldn’t turn around.

Just as I suspected, Anyi was fine. But after an hour of playing with her in her room, and Rhea trying to explain what diet she needed to her mother in broken Spanish, we returned to the hut to find Chassan hadn’t returned.

All day I waited by the tent, expecting him to come back.

He never did.

Maybe he had left me. Maybe after taking the king’s soul where ever he did, he had decided valuing life wasn’t worth it anymore and just wasn’t coming back. I tried not to admit the panic that was churning in my gut.

Rhea agreed to check on a few other villagers who were feeling ill. Since diagnosing chicken pox, she had used Luke’s translating skills to tell the village what they needed to do to avoid spreading the disease. Isolate the ill and leave the nursing to people who were immune—Rhea’s group of archeologists and me.

It was easy to tell by their faces that they were skeptical of the white woman and her crazy medicine, but they listened because the village was in such uproar without a king they didn’t know what else to do.

I busied myself by helping Rhea take temperatures and separate the sick from the well, but my mind was never too far from Chassan and where he might be. I had half resigned myself to leave camp with Rhea and her group if Chassan didn’t show by the time they left. I was nervous and fidgety and didn’t know what else to do.

Preparations for the king’s funeral began that evening. Still, Chassan was missing.

Rhea was so busy helping nurse the ill that Anyi’s father, who would soon be crowned king, insisted she stay until the sickness had passed. Everyone’s skepticism about her healing touch vanished when she realigned a little boy’s dislocated shoulder, instantly curing him. Apparently he had suffered with it for weeks, and with one touch Rhea was able to pop it back into place. Our hut had become a makeshift infirmary after that.

“Faye, will you go see if Luke has found me some decent soap to wash these compresses with?” Rhea clucked her tongue behind her teeth disapprovingly as she tossed soiled linen into a separate pile. “Stupid, prehistoric, backwoods medicine,” she grumbled under her breath. “I could’ve saved the king if they hadn’t been so superstitious!”

It was a constant conversation she had with herself. As if she needed reassuring that the king’s death wasn’t her fault. All day we labored over the beds of the ill, applying compresses, pushing fluids, and administering the few precious drops of medicine she had to the sickest.

By evening, I was sweaty and sticky, too. Wiping a hand over my forehead, I stood to stretch my back and caught Rhea’s eye.

“Where is Chassan?” She wrinkled her face as if she were just realizing for the first time he had been absent all day.

I shrugged in answer and turned my gaze to the sky. It was dazzlingly cornflower blue without a single bird or cloud cutting a swath across it. Never in my life had I felt more alone.

The next morning the
sun rose on a silent Q’ero village. The king would be buried today. Carried up the mountainside on a bed of long grasses and laid on an ancient altar, reserved for royalty. An offering would be made, a fire lit, and his soul would ascend to heaven to spend eternity with the gods.

No one dared to leave their huts, each family burning ceremonial fires of coca leaves. All over the village, chimneys sent up thick white smoke to the gods in honor of their fallen king.

The native man and woman remained inside the hut like the Q’ero. Abrams and Todd stood stone faced, hands clasped behind their backs, heads bowed as a show of respect under the overhanging thatched porch of our hut when the funeral procession began to emerge from the palace.

First came the shaman, carrying great bundles of burning sage in each hand, sending up smoke as he chanted and stomped. A bright red and black feathered headdress swayed along to his steps. His legs were tied with cymbals of shells that made a great clatter every time he landed a barefoot in the dust.

Next came two mighty strings of warriors, shoulder to shoulder, dressed in brilliant striped ponchos with feathers attached to their shoulders. They carried hand pipes instead of weapons, providing a low bass sound as they danced in time to the shaman’s chanting, their russet colored cheeks puffing like blowfish to create a tune.

Then there were wailers, female servants of the palace wrenched with grief, tear stained faces smudged with black soot to signify the endless streams of tears they would cry over their beloved leader. Beside me, Rhea wiped her own tears, moved by such a heartbreaking display of love or by the thoughts of how pointless the king’s death was since she could have saved him.

When the king’s lifeless body, laid atop a bed of grasses fresh picked from the meadows that morning, passed the doorway on the shoulders of more soldiers, Luke’s body went rigid beside me and he turned back to the hut, as if he couldn’t watch.

As the king passed, I had to cover my nose again, the stench of death so thick it clogged my throat.

Anyi and her family were behind the king’s body, each one walking like slow moving zombies behind the deadman. Not a single emotion showed on their faces, even little Anyi, who was really too young to understand the meaning of stoicism yet.

She reached out for my hand as she passed by. I expected a quick squeeze, until she jerked me into the processional line with her. In front of us her mother was escorted by a woman wrapped in a dark purple robe. A woman I had come to learn was her partner. Together they played their hand flutes as they walked, arms linked to support one another.