Rebecca Lim - Fury

Uriel smiles and accepts their greetings politely, but in my head his voice is blunt and impatient. We need to move. Now. We cannot waste another moment in idle talk .

I disagree , I reply, nodding and bowing in all directions as he is doing. Ryan is right: the only way to combat Luc is not to behave as he would expect. It would probably never occur to him that the great Uriel would approach on foot. We will infiltrate the site as human trekkers — it will be slower, but may tip the odds in our favour.

‘What are you two up to?’ Ryan rasps suspiciously, looking from Uriel to me, intercepting the silent exchanges we make with our eyes.

Abruptly, the room, the building, begins to shake: a long, low tremor that shivers the dust from the ceiling, rattles the light fixtures and the bright ornaments and colourfully painted pottery on the wooden shelves. I almost expect Luc to hit me with all he has; to burst into my head and hold my consciousness hostage while he tears the knowledge of my whereabouts from inside me.

But the shaking suddenly stops, and Ryan staggers, almost falling over. A giggling woman in a brightly striped shawl pushes at him with her hands to steady him.

‘Earthquake,’ Uriel says, shooting me a worried glance.

I’m so relieved it’s just an earthquake that I almost shrug.

The man whose home we’re in says quietly, ‘For three days it has rained. The guides speak of landslides near Llaqtapata, heavy fog and tremors on the mountain, injuries, cancellations. If you wish to trek, as the gringo says, there are permits. We can get them for you, no passports, no waiting, if that is what you want.’

The whole room suddenly seems to be watching Uriel to see how he will respond.

‘Don’t do that thing with your eyes again,’ Ryan finally says, exasperated, looking from Uri to me. ‘My advice is that you go in on foot and get the flaming swords out only when you need to. But I’m just the half-dead gringo ,’ his voice is bitter, ‘so what would I know?’

Our host pushes a new man forward — younger, moustachioed, fit-looking, dressed in khaki and rubber slides. ‘I am Mateo,’ he says, studying the three of us keenly. ‘My uncle tells me you need a guide and permits?’

‘Please,’ I urge Uriel quietly. ‘Let’s do this the way Ryan suggests. He’s done as Michael commanded — he’s kept me alive in more ways than you would ever understand. None of you has ever had someone like Ryan on point guard. None of you would even consider taking direction from anyone remotely like him. To be cast adrift in this sea and still find someone to anchor me like he has — you couldn’t even begin to calculate odds like those. You’d do a lot worse than to listen to him, Uri. We can reassess the terrain once we’re there.’

Uriel regards Ryan silently for a moment before nodding tightly. One day , he says grimly in my head. We do it in one day, or we don’t do it at all .

Then he smiles at the people gathered about him and it’s like the sun coming out. The women all around us, young and old, clasp their hands together and sigh.

‘Sit, sit,’ our host tells us, and a path is immediately cleared for us to the round table in the corner of the room, now groaning with platters of food people have brought from their own homes.

Ryan leans on me a little as he shuffles along like an old guy. ‘Can you hear that sound?’ he whispers, as I help him into one of the bentwood chairs.

A middle-aged man in a dark shirt and black woollen waistcoat places a warm glass of milky-green liquid with leaves floating in it into Ryan’s hand, closing his fingers around it. Ryan’s still sweating heavily as he takes a sip and grimaces.

‘What sound?’ I reply curiously.

The air is alive with sounds, both exterior and interior to all the people here. There’s a clock ticking somewhere, voices on the radio, the sound of female laughter coming from the room behind us. People are shoving furniture to one side of the room as an older man tunes a guitar.

Ryan drains the glass and closes his eyes, mumbling sleepily, ‘The sound of the clock restarting. We’re back in penalty time, you and me.’

He smiles, swaying against me a little in his seat, his eyes still closed. And the happiness that suddenly overtakes me — to be here, beside him still — makes me grasp his left hand in my left and pull his arm across my body. I lean into him, feeling the beat of his heart like bird’s wings inside his chest, as Mateo describes how it’s possible to get a one-day trekking permit without a passport, and what we’re likely to face in the morning.

After we rise from our discussion with Mateo, the children surround us, begging us to try the pumpkin soup and lomo saltado , the buding de chocolate and a sweet dish made from a kind of stewed purple maize that they fall on excitedly called mozamora morada . And we do, we do try. But though it all smells delicious, to Uriel and me the food tastes like ashes. After a while, we discreetly push it away.

Ryan only manages a tiny portion of dinner before he curls up and goes to sleep on the low settee. I beg a blanket from Gabino, our host, to cover him, then hang up his wet jeans to dry. I kneel on the floor beside Ryan’s sleeping form and move our belongings from the broken backpack into the replacement Gabino pushed into my hands earlier, made of thick felted wool and crawling with bright Peruvian needlework.

‘What’s wrong with him? What’s the “ gringo sickness” they were talking about?’ I ask Uriel, who’s standing there with a strange look on his face.

‘We’re over eleven thousand feet above sea level,’ he murmurs, watching me buckle the bag shut. ‘Everything in Ryan’s body is working overtime to keep him alive. He’s not yet acclimatised to this atmosphere, and, I confess, neither am I. Explain to our hosts that I needed some air? I’ll be back before first light.’

As silently as a cat, Uriel leaves the room without drawing anyone’s attention — a feat that would be impossible for anyone else in this tightly packed space. It hits me suddenly that this may be the most time Uriel has ever spent in the company of humans. The colour and movement that so delight me must be spinning him out.

A long while later, Mayu, Gabino’s shy wife, offers me a place to sleep.

I shake my head. ‘I don’t need it,’ I whisper in Quechua with a smile, ‘but I thank you, lady. I’ll stay and watch over the gringo .’

She inclines her head at me before sweeping away in her beautiful red skirt. When I look up again, Mateo is regarding me with a strange expression in his eyes.

‘You need to get some rest,’ he says in Quechua, looking around before asking, ‘Where is your brother?’

Gabino’s father calls out, a little drunkenly, ‘Ayar Awqa cannot be caged! He has flown away into the night sky. To speak with the stars!’

‘No, really, señorita , where is he?’ Mateo says worriedly. ‘I come back for you in only a few hours. The train leaves Cusco at six, and from Kilometer 104, the trek is short but still difficult for people who are not used to our conditions.’

I look up into Mateo’s face with a smile. ‘Uriel finds the modern world a little … claustrophobic. He’s not very good with crowds, but he’s strong and sure-footed and he can walk forever. He’ll be fine, and he’ll be back before you are.’

‘Then he will feel at home tomorrow.’ Mateo looks relieved. ‘It is wild, high country where we are going: the country of gods.’

And of demons , I think, shivering despite the light and warmth and music in the room, imagining Gabriel chained by fire, in darkness, in the heart of a dead city.