The Guardian of Machu Llaqta by Ariel Tachna

Author:Ariel Tachna [Tachna, Ariel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gay romance
ISBN: 978-1-64405-982-1
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2021-01-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 29

GIVEN THE spate of words that came at Victor in return, he’d probably miscalculated, but he’d had to try. He was going to be living here, and that meant learning as much Runasimi as he could. Immersion might not be the best teacher until he had a better base to build on, but he had to start somewhere.

“Help?” he said softly to Urpi.

“Tamya, slowly,” Urpi said in Spanish, then in Runasimi.

Victor repeated the word, committing it to memory.

“I only speak a little Runasimi,” Victor said carefully, “but I wish to learn all I can.”

“I only speak a little Spanish,” Tamya responded in Spanish, “but I will teach you what I can.” She reached for his hand and he offered it, letting her grip his fist with both her gnarled hands. Her strength surprised him. She probably didn’t even weigh half what he did, but that didn’t stop her from digging her fingers into his until they seemed to reach into his very core.

“Come. Learn.”

He followed her to the wall of the temple to the right of the doorway and what seemed to be the first of the murals around the room. As she began to talk, he only caught a few words—Pachamama and then a few moments later Chapaqpuma—but when Urpi started to translate, Victor stopped her. Between the images and T’ukri’s stories, he knew this one. This was the creation story of their people, how the goddess had chosen them, or they her, and how she had granted them a protector to keep them safe from outsiders. A protector who, from the images in front of him, was the same creature who had saved his life when he was sixteen.

Tamya finished her tale and started to move on, but Victor stayed where he was, transfixed by the images. He didn’t touch. He had too much respect for religious iconography to do that. This trip had been his last-ditch effort at finding his erstwhile savior. If he’d failed, he would’ve given up. Not his belief in what happened, but his attempts to prove it to anyone else. He would’ve faded into obscurity as just another anthropologist interested in the Incan Empire. And d’accord, that’s all he’d be now, since he’d be staying in Machu Llaqta and wouldn’t be sharing his discoveries with anyone but Jordan, but he knew now.

If T’ukri’s estimates were correct, these were the oldest extant Incan images in the world, but more than that, they represented the religious beliefs of the people he was claiming as his own. He had never been a particularly religious person, but his experiences with Nkóko had nurtured a great respect for others’ beliefs. The brightly colored figures called to him, and he leaned closer to study Chapaqpuma and his mates. Of all the images on the panel, this one called to him most. Though the artist had depicted them as three distinct figures, the aura that surrounded them unified them clearly, setting them apart from the others. Victor wanted that union for himself with Jordan and T’ukri.

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