What I would have given to be that important to someone at his age.
I catch the princess’s eyes. She looks lost in her own head too.
We’re both snapped out of our reverie when a family cuts us off in the street. They’re arguing amongst themselves, and when I look closer, I see the youngest one crying. In fact, looking around, many are crying. People are kneeling next to buildings and creating miniature shrines. There’s gold on the streets, coca, flowers, wool, everything. Those in skirts and blouses look like they’re rising out of lakes of rainbow water, their polleras pooling around them. Those in ponchos look like mountains rising out of cracks in the rocks.
Some are already mourning. Some are brimming with fear. I want to grab them all and tell them it’ll be alright.
Because I’m here. I can do it. But it won’t be until tomorrow that I prove it to them.
Another person bumps into me, and I hold the princess’s hand tighter and pull her to my side in an act of pure instinct. It’d be so easy to lose her in this crowd with the ceremonial cloth covering her distinct white hair. Our bodies come together with the force of two magnets, and a part of me relaxes.
We don’t continue our conversation until we enter the restaurant the innkeeper mentioned.
“Tell me what your plan is,” she orders.
I freeze. While Mare is the missing puzzle piece, the princess is the essential piece of the plan. Not that I wanted to tell her until tomorrow… not that I wasn’t trying to figure out a way to not include her at all. I just swore to myself that I needed more time to find alternative solutions, but time is running out. I wasn’t going to not give her a choice.
But I need her to say yes. There’s no other option.
“Tell me,” she snaps.
“It’s the only chance I have,” I start, then feel the need to correct myself. “That we have.”
“I’m not a part of this. I told you I’d come to Cusco with you as a stop to the lakes, but that’s it.”
“I need you–”
“You’re going to use me too,” she cuts me off.
“We’re going to work together–”
She waves her free hand between us in a cutting motion. It’s something defensive and sharp, something that breaks my heart. I don’t want her to defend herself, not against me. “Of course you’d find a way to use me even without my mimicry. I shouldn’t have been a fool.”
“Just listen to me!” I shout, and the woman at the front gives us a look. I continue with a lower voice. “Listen. It’s not ideal, but I’m notusingyou. I need your help.”
She stares at me, dead and glassy eyed, and I realize I haven’t seen that expression on her in a while. It stabs at something deep in my chest.
“Tell me your plan,” she says, and I do.
I explain it all on our walk back to the lodge, in whispers and stutters as I fill in some blanks I hadn’t figured out until that very moment. I explain it as she looks forward in silence, her hand in mine but refusing to make eye contact. I explain it and by the end my voice feels raw with the need for approval. It both does and doesn’t come.
“Only someone as foolish as you could make that work,” she says.
“So you believe it can work?”
She sighs. We’re at the entrance of the lodge yet again. The rustic stones making up the wall are so different from the palace that I worry they’ll tumble with a stiff breeze. I may have the mountains in my heart, but I’ve spent enough time in Lima to grow spoiled. I look at the princess, the way she holds herself so different from everyone else here. Yes, I have grown spoiled with so much beauty around me.
“You don’t know if Mare will be able to project anything for long,” the princess says, not whispering exactly but dropping her voice low as if Mare could hear us. Actually, with his newfound samay, I can’t say for sure that he can’t.
“I know he’ll be able to do it. I believe in him,” I say.
“You say that like it’s a compliment and not a curse,” she replies.
My mouth drops but I cannot speak. What is there to say? I won’t admit guilt when it won’t change a thing, even when I feel it burning past my ribs straight to my heart. Even when a voice in the back of my mind screams that I’m wrong. I can’t be wrong, not with this much on the line.
I stay quiet.
The princess shakes her head and turns around to head inside.
