I thought it was shadows around me and cracks in the cave letting in light, but it’s the Guardians themselves. Condor’s wings wrap around us all, a wall of shadows. Puma’s tan coat lights up the corners, the breaks between feathers.
And Amaru, Amaru stands closest to me, my size, as if we were equals.
This close, I notice what is unnoticeable. The texture. I cravetouch. I want to feel the silk of the feathers, the fuzz of the coat, and the slide of the scales. But this close…
They’re made of stone.
All the features, both the ones that shine and the abysses that eat light, are illusions. The Guardians are mere earth.
We stare and stare, in broken time, outside of the world I know, we stare at each other until Amaru takes one step forward.
“It is my power that kept the child alive when she should have died. They called upon me, and I answered. I shouldn’t have. No one should survive a power like that. No one should have it forced upon them,” Amaru says. I know it’s the confession the Serpent has been hinting at in my ears for days. Did the Guardians yearn? Did Amaru want to speak this with a desire so great that they burst out of their scales reborn?
Did they understand me?
I can see them for what they truly are. They’re not Inti, the Sun God, granting me one of his sun rays in the form of a Sun Staff. They’re not humans. I search for something familiar, a cut out, lost flesh, something to signify the humanity I lost and all I threw away.
But they are not my redemption.
Amaru looks at me, ever-changing their form, showing no emotion, not in a way I understand. The other Guardians stand still, no signs of impatience, no signs of frustration. Are they friends? I think of Suyai and I laying on grass dry enough to pinch through our clothes, holding hands, children, innocent, staring at the stars and making up stories.I’m the one with the sword right there! I’m killing the monster!
Friends, what do I know of friends?
“I allowed this to happen,” the all-encompassing voice says.
No matter what Amaru thinks, I am not their redemption either.
“If I call upon you, will you answer?” I get to the point. Time doesn’t move here, but I am a simple human. I need to act.
“No.” Their voices echo around me. Amaru steps back in line with the others. “You were chosen because you do not mimic us.Your want for things is great, larger than we’ve ever sensed, yet you have never taken from us.”
“Because I can’t.”
“Because you don’t want to.”
The certainty in their voice stops my next denial. My mother is a mimic. My grandmother, too. Even in families without the genetic line, there have been miracles of children unlocking mimicry in times of stress.
My hand is rubbing the star-shaped scar on my shoulder.
I wasn’t used to pain back then. My mother wasn’t abusive. When I hurt, it was because I couldn’t protect myself from obvious consequences. That’s a vital lesson to learn.
But what if I could have protected myself? When my mother’s dagger came toward me, the air shifted. I felt it back then. I sensed mimicry in the air, the harmless kind my grandmother often used before she passed, already old enough not to fear age.
Focus, Sinchinrei.
My mother’s dagger flew toward me. My mother’s eyes widened as the air turned electric. I wasn’t doing anything consciously, but she looked so disappointed in me, I assumed I must have.That’s a cheap way to win. I told myself I was too mesmerized by her words to dodge, but no. Dodging was body memory. It was instinct.
I didn’t dodge because my body thought we already handled the problem.
Until I shut it down and let the dagger pierce my shoulder.
That’s a cheap way to win.
That’s what my mother said about mimicry. If I used it to beat her, if I used it to get back to her, she would never be proud of me.
“I never used mimicry because of my own ego,” I say, whispering, wanting to keep the confession to myself, knowing there is no use. The Guardians already know.
“What you call ego, we see as will power,” they answer, so neutral, so unaffected, like they aren’t tearing apart my world.
