1
The game had just begun, and Nina was determined to win.
The fields around her were eerily silent; the sky above, crisp blue and clear; the soil between her toes, damp and cold. She stood tall, but even if she stretched, she wouldn’t be able to see above the stalks of corn spread far and wide. Instead, she crouched low and listened.
The wind was a gentle caress that made the long leaves whisper and tickle her face. In the distance, she heard a familiar giggle and smiled. Lali could never keep quiet.
It was Sacha she would have trouble finding. Her younger sister had won last time, much to Nina’s dismay. This was a game they had played many times since they were old enough to walk. One that terrified their mamay, especially when they would disappear without a trace.
But they always found each other, no matter how long it took.
Nina closed her eyes and exhaled, focusing on the sounds of their home that she knew so intimately. This morning, one of their llamas had given birth to a stillborn, so her parents had taken it as an offering to their earth goddess, Pachamama, and left Nina in charge of her sisters. They wouldn’t return until well after dark. There was no one but the three of them for miles.
A loneliness crept beneath her skin—a strange, unspoken desire for a different life. It was one of Nina’s greatest secrets. She kept it close and only inspected it at night, under the cover of dark and away from her sister’s shrewd eyes, but sometimes it filled her with a longing that she couldn’t deny. A thirst for adventure among a land devoid of it.
This game was as close as she would get to feeling anticipation. Excitement.Possibility.
Without a word or whisper of noise, Nina took off in a crouched run in the direction of Lali’s pealing laughter, so carefree and childlike that it replaced her loneliness for a moment longer. She saw a flash of Lali’s ocean-blue dress and long, dark hair and smiled.
“I see you,” Nina sung quietly, stifling a laugh as Lali shrieked with joy.
But instead of following after her, Nina paused. There was a sudden pressure in the center of her chest. A slight prodding that pushed her to turn around. It was the same feeling she’d had at market day two weeks ago, when she had gotten distracted by a black stone sitting on a small table.
It isachilla, the woman had told her.A stone forged by the gods to offer protection from those who wish to harm us.Nina had heard whispers of it, but had thought they were just rumors. She reached out to touch it, mesmerized by its fathomless, swirling center, when she had felt that prodding again.
Reluctantly, she had abandoned her curiosity to follow that relentless prodding and had found Sacha just off the main path, her back against the rough stone of a small storehouse, cowering beneath the attention of two boys.
What had happened next was a blur of nightmarish images. The boys on their knees, blood dripping from their noses and ears, Sacha’s voice pleading with Nina. She shook her head clear of it, determined to shove it back into the recesses of her mind. And though she also wanted to ignore the sensation of being lured toward danger once again, she couldn’t. Not when her sisters were her responsibility. Not when a feeling deep in her belly told her something wasn’t right.
At first, her steps were measured. They were in the middle of agame, after all, and Nina’s imagination had a tendency to run away with her logic. There were times she thought she could see things. Golden lights and dancing threads that floated in the corners of her vision. Sometimes, she thought she couldfeelthem. Like she could reach out and grasp that light in her hands and bend it to her will.
But as the stalks of corn stretched out endlessly before her with no golden threads in sight, and the tug in her chest became undeniable, she knew that her logic was firmly in place. This was something else entirely. Nina began to run.
Slender leaves whipped against her arms and legs. Panic colored her thoughts. The air stung her nostrils. If she didn’t calm herself, she would lose all control again. She might hurt someoneagain. Her mamay had taught them better than this.
Stay calm and in control. Do not let them see what you love. It is the only power that matters, and you are its only master.
But Nina always felt powerless against the strength of her own emotions and insecurities. Against the pressure in her chest that felt like a flood barely contained. One mistake, and the dam would burst.
Bloody eyes and mouths open in a silent scream flitted across her lids with every blink. She wasn’t sure if it was real or imagined. A fear of things past or things to come.
A flock of birds burst upward, dots of black puncturing the unending blue. Their calls were the only thing she could hear above her own breathing. Behind her, deep within the corn, Lali had fallen quiet again, hiding until one of her sisters came to find her.
Everything is as it should be, Nina told herself.Everything is fine.Perhaps, if she imagined it hard enough, it would be true.
The last line of tall stalks parted beneath her hands. Steps slowing, she pushed through and breathed a sigh of relief. There, in the colorful dress her mamay had sewn for her just this season, was Sacha. Herdark, chin-length hair blew gently forward so that it hid her features, and her bare feet were planted firmly in the rocky dirt of the path that led from the center of their ayllu to their home. She was doing a terrible job of hiding, but she was standing, and she seemed fine, and that was all that mattered.
“Sacha,” Nina called out. “You do realize that you’ve lost the game? It will take but a moment for me to find Lali again and...”
Nina’s words trailed off as she walked closer to Sacha, who hadn’t moved since Nina called her name. A breeze had blown her hair from her face, and Nina now saw that her eyes were trained on the distance, toward the edge of their fields and the far-off ayllu center.
“Sacha?” Nina said again.
“They’re coming,” Sacha finally answered, but it was barely a murmur. A string of words almost drowned out by the thrumming of Nina’s heart.
Nina glanced down the path but saw nothing. “Who’s coming? Mamay and Tayta?”
The closer she got, the more persistent the tug became, until Nina could have sworn there was a light in the center of Sacha’s chest like a beacon calling her home. Nina squeezed her eyes shut for a heartbeat, took another step, and reached for her sister. She wanted to pull Sacha into her and ground herself in logic, in the things she knew to be truth. They were safe, and Nina would do everything in her power to keep it that way.
