“Sorry Miss Princess,” Mare says, reaching out for her. She recoils further. I wonder if she dreamt of blood too. “Oh. Okay. That’s okay! You don’t know me well Miss, but I won’t hurt you like those freak birds. I promise. You need to be strong and unafraid, princess, just like Rei. She wouldn’t–”
“Call me Yanami, uh, Mare,” The princess looks at me with complete loss. My lips press into each other as I hide the ghost of a laugh. “And I am okay. I’m not scared. I just don’t sleep well with others.”
Mare doesn’t look like he believes her, but he just juts out his bottom lip with ahumph. “Well, okay, Miss Prin- Prince-uh-,” Mare stutters and looks at me for help.
“Yah-nah-mee,” I enunciate for him and ignore the way my core feels hot when saying the princess’s name. I like the way her name feels on my lips. I want to make a habit of tasting it.
Mare nods his head in one decisive action, and then, instead of repeating after me, he ignores the conversation and says he’s going to the bathroom. He’s off before either the princess or I acknowledge what he said.
I should be more scared of him out there by himself. Suyai would be. But this is how it is when Mare and I are alone, as rare as it is. He does what he needs to do and I trust him not to mess up. I taught him how to fight, and Suyai taught him when to run. Yesterday I imagined Mare bloodied and tied up beside the Inka, but now that seems impossible.
“Should he be out there by himself, after the… after last night?” the princess asks, contorting her body to try to sit up in the far back of the cave. She looks a little ridiculous like this, hunched over, hair sticking up at odd places, sleep lines on her face. I start moving out of the cave to give her more space, but she reaches out to hold me in place. “Should any of us be out there?”
The Aya Runa didn’t reveal any of our faces last night. Yanami has always been veiled except to a select few, and it's only those same people that know I’m the hero. Everyone ranked high enough to know about us has no doubt been trained to protect their thoughts from Ave mimics. But I don’t think saying any of that will help.
“We can’t stay here forever,” I say instead.
She looks off into the distance. We’re far enough from the town of Ollantaytambo that there are no signs of anyone else in our immediate area. The closest terraces for agriculture are still far, so even the early morning farmers aren’t cause for concern. She frowns, then looks at where she’s holding my arm and lets go as if she just got burned. “Right,” she says. “Let me out, then.”
“No,” I say, aware of how hypocritical it sounds. “I mean, you’re the one who needs to stay hidden right now. Let me scope out the place, and then I’ll give you the all-clear.”
The princess visibly grits her teeth but says nothing. I wait for her to nod before leaving, if only to have the peace of mind that she agrees enough to stay out of sight. Her face might not have been up there, but she looks enough like her siblings to put me on edge.
I don’t feel the same deranged desire to wind her up like I did yesterday when I was riding the adrenaline of a fight. Now I feel subdued, and the last thing I want to do is start a fight that will have the princess running.Help her, the wind whispers as I crawl out of the cave, and I shake my head to clear the noise from my ears.
Right. Help the girl who might still try to kill me. I get it.
The sun barely reaches my face through the morning fog. I’ve missed this. At this altitude, we’re at the same height as the clouds. I stand and stretch. The knot in my back burns, but I ignore it for the feel of dew on my skin.
My throat is parched. I have a satchel of water tied at my waist, along with coca leaves and talismans. The coca leaves will last, but we’ll need to find more to drink soon.
Yesterday we arrived at early twilight. Now, I have a better understanding of where we are with the morning light. There’s the town below us to the east. We landed high in the mountains and not in the valley, thankfully. Somehow we avoided the agricultural steppes as well. The princess managed to land us in a pretty safe area, for all that she didn’t have any idea where we were. The ground is flat and green enough to take away any worry I had about landslides with the rain. The vegetation around us keeps everything in place. This area wouldn’t normally be thriving, but the irrigation systems the Inka put in place generations ago have made it so there’s greenery year-round.
I see Mare trotting back from behind a tree. He’s looking at the valley below us with childish wonder, and I’m sure I look the same. As much as I’m weighed down with the knowledge of yesterday, I’m also floating high with the clouds of today.
Home. This is home.
“Rei!” Mare shouts, and I have to shush him before he starts screaming it out to the world.
“Let’s keep it a little quiet for right now, okay?” I say as he runs into my arms.
“Is this because of whatever it was you didn’t let me see last night? Are we in trouble?”
I slam my hand on his mouth because he has yet to process the wordquiet. His voice almost echoed from the force of his questions. He licks my hand to try to free himself and starts to ask things even though I don’t let go.
I sigh.
I let go, and the Gods have smiled down at me because his voice is just quiet enough for me to accept it.
“I can’t help if you don’t let me know what’s happening, and, oh,” he says, rambling to a stop once he realizes my hand is gone.
“Did you see anyone out there?” I ask, changing the subject to something he can help with.
“Not a single person.”
“Can you check the north side for me? Around the bend?” I ask, knowing his answer will be yes before he says it.
He shoots out of my arms toward the north, to the left of the cave. I want to go myself, but I’m decked out in ceremonial garb, and that’s the last thing we need right now.
