Every
breath you take
Every
move you make
Every
bond you break
Every
step you take
I'll
be watching you............
Every Breath You Take
Written by Sting
Leah stopped singing when she reached the fork in the path.
She pushed up her Twins cap and swiped her forehead with the back of her arm.
Her t-shirt stuck to her skin, soaked through with perspiration. Rivulets
trickled down her back; she squirmed against a growing pool of sweat at the
waistband of her shorts. With a deep breath of hot, humid forest air, she
reminded herself that had she been, at that very moment, back in Minnesota, she
would most likely be freezing; instead of trotting through the forest, she
would be stomping snow off her boots. This,
she thought with a grin, is certainly
preferable to that.
She peered down one path, then the other; her eyes could
follow the trails only so far before they disappeared into the thick growth.
Somewhere in the distance, she caught the low rumble of a big cat, probably the
jaguar. The jaguar. The same one she
always heard when she traversed this part of the forest. Over the months she
had been there, Leah learned to differentiate between sounds. This sound was,
in an odd way, comfortingly familiar. Hector told her about the cat: he
belonged to the Mamacuna, was very well fed, and for all intents and purposes,
rather tame. Although she had never seen him, she heard his deep, rumbly voice
with great regularity. Leah suspected he kept his eye on her much the way the
villagers kept their collective eye on her. She couldn't always see who was
watching her movements through the forest, but she knew she was always watched.
She didn't mind. "Okay, Hector," Leah said out loud, "where are
the steles?" She looked down the path to the left, then checked the map
again. "That's gotta be it," she muttered as she readjusted her pack.
A chain of accidents, beginning almost twenty years earlier,
brought Leah to this peaceful world. Dr. Hector Morales stumbled onto the
people when he fled Trujillo after the great earthquake. He was permitted to
stay because he convinced their high priestess he would not reveal where he
found them. He remained with the people for three months before he felt ready
to return to what was left of his home. There, he resumed his research in urban
epidemiology, but every chance he had, he ran back to the forest.
In time, Hector found he could no longer divide his time
between Trujillo and the people he had come to love. He closed up his
laboratory, resigned from the hospital, and found the perfect place to perch a
small clinic. From there, he could tend the people while keeping one foot in
the modern world. He devoted his days to the clinic, but at night he worked in
his little lab and wrote long papers on the transmission of tropical disease.
Hector was the only link between the people and the outside
world. His clinic, an abandoned sheep ranch, sat on a ridge at the edge of the
forest. The residents of the modern
hamlet closest to the clinic knew some of what lay behind the curtain of green,
but they wanted no part of that ghost world. Whatever the doctor did out there
in the forest made them think he had spent too much time in the hot sun around
his little house. Even the local padre had given up trying to convince Hector
to keep out of the forest.
And that was fine with Hector. "Let them think what
they want," he told those few who knew the truth, "all the more
reason for them to stay out." Still, Hector knew the days of people
staying out his corner of the world were numbered. There were mining
expeditions much too close for comfort as well drug dealers looking for prime
coca growing land. Eventually they would find their way to this eyebrow of the
world and the people would lose their home. It was simply a matter of time. The
outsiders would come.
Leah Fine was an outsider, but she was the kind of outsider
he needed. As a doctoral candidate in anthropology, she would be able to record
the people's world before it disappeared. She had written to him after his
article on folk medicine appeared in an anthropological journal. From the
moment she stepped from Paolo's silver bird onto the little landing strip near
his house, he knew had made the right decision. She was everything he wanted
her to be, and then some. She came speaking the language well enough to make a
smooth transition to the old dialect; she had an air of calm about her, of
confidence and ease. He liked her from her letters, but he loved her in person.
He had no hesitations at all when he walked her into the forest to the ayllu
where she would live for the next year. Leah had not disappointed him.
Willingly, he gave her new keys to the kingdom every time she set a foot on his
doorsill.
On Hector's advice, Leah was using this trip back to her
ayllu for a little side research. Convinced that his charge understood the vagaries
of the rain forest, Hector offered Leah a chance to see something quite unusual
and, as he expected, she jumped at the opportunity. Hidden deep within the
forest were nine huacas, shrines,
dedicated to Mamaquilla, the Moon
Goddess who shared the Supreme Throne with her male counterpart, Inti, joining together to become
Viracocha, the Great Faceless Deity.
"I've never made the pilgrimage myself since I am a man
and it would be inappropriate," explained Hector when he gave her the map,
"but you, a woman, can make the pilgrimage without desecrating the
huacas."
Leah had heard whispers about the huacas, but no one had
offered to show them to her. All she knew was that they were hidden along the
edge of the forest along the line where the forest gave way to the first
foothills of the Andes. "I figured eventually I would ask Saba about
them."
"Before you can ask, niña, you have to know what
questions to ask. Saba didn't ask you to join her at the summer solstice, did
she?"
Leah admitted she had not, much to her disappointment. She
knew about Janajpachallacta, the Village of the Sky, where the Mamacuna and her
council of sages lived apart from the ayllus. The major religious ceremonies
were held there, including the two solstice ceremonies so central to the
people's spiritual consciousness. Although she had hinted she wanted to go,
Leah was told she could not even enter the stone village nestled in the
mountain without an invitation from the Mamacuna herself.
"That was because you haven't made a pilgrimage,"
laughed Hector. "It's a sort of Catch-22, if you don't mind the reference.
One cannot ask; it must be done in secret. Once you have made pilgrimage to the
huacas, Saba will have no reason not to ask the Qewa Ñawi to the winter
solstice, the big situa, in June."`
Leah smiled at the use of her local nickname. Whenever he
wanted to remind her she was still a guest of the people, he referred to her as
Grass Eyes. "Okay, janpeq,"
she countered using his own nickname, "how long will it take?"
"Not long. If you leave here early tomorrow morning,
you should reach your ayllu in three days, instead of her usual two."
Her smile lit up the darkest corners of his house.
"Hector, you're on. Tell me what I have to know."
Suddenly, Leah spied the steles almost completely overgrown
by forest brush. The first marker on Hector's map, they stood between the path
and a long deserted shrine to San Francisco de Assisi, left by monks of the
last century. Three neglected, yet carefully mounded stone graves, probably
belonging to the members of the order who perished in the forest, sat a few
feet behind the weatherworn statue of Saint Francis. Leah paused long enough to
take a swig from her canteen before she followed the path which the map
indicated would lead to an arroyo.
The swiftness of the waters, coupled with the greenish
color, told Leah this was no little creek, but rather a deep stream. She found
a footpath on the rise above it, and followed the track for a couple of
kilometers. The next marker was easy to spot: two carved monuments, far more ancient
than the first set and clearly Chimu in design. Pulling the little Nikon from her pocket, she photographed the pillars
from all sides and then sketched the fine details in her black notebook.
According to Hector, this was the gateway to the pilgrims' path.
