Page 185 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue #3 - December 2015

Dark Matter: Women Witnessing - December, 2015 Issue #3 - EXTINCTION / DEVOTION

Visions of her girlhood in a remote canyon of the altiplano mingle with the shouts of children playing in

the schoolyard behind our hostel. She is a chosen woman – first by the Apu to be a seer, and then by

the Incas to become an aklla, a woman who serves the gods and the Empire.

I take powerful antibiotics and slowly recover. Mikhail and I hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. Mara

walks alongside me, layering her story over the tour guide’s explanations. She is a woman trying to find

her way in a time of flux, as the world around her falls under the domination of the rapidly expanding

Empire.

At the top of Huayna Picchu, Mikhail asks me to marry him. He has two silver rings. One fits. The other

we throw off the peak into the cloud forest below, our pago to the gods.

Back in the U.S. months later, I knew the story wanted to be a book, but I resisted writing it. An epic

historical novel seemed beyond me. I wrote short fiction instead, but I couldn’t get Mara’s story out of

my head. Finally, I decided to write down the idea, thinking that might quiet the voice.

Sixty pages later, I accepted my fate. “Okay, okay,” I said, and wrote the first draft.

A first draft, of course, is only the beginning of the journey. I returned to Peru on a Fulbright Fellowship

to research and continue writing the book. Mikhail and I, newly married, criss-crossed the country for a

year, tracing Mara’s story through the lines of topo maps and over the dirt roads of the campo.

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