Chapter one
'A girl! And this one is more beautiful than the last!' an Incan midwife said as she held a newborn baby.
The mother, lying on straw, moaned in pain once more, while the father turned to the wall in fury. They both saw that it was true, that their baby was beautiful, more beautiful than the last one. The father and the mother looked at one another for a moment sharing their pain until the father started choking and stormed out of the house.
This was early morning and the sky was beginning to brighten around all those with the blessing of sight, a clear sky that gave you the rising sun on one side and the setting moon on the other. The sun was higher than the moon with both its full curvatures visible even as one walked from one side of the mountain to the other.
This was a village of around five hundred people, all from the same tribe, with houses built along the side of the mountain. A white stone staircase connected the ledges with one another to make the mountain a village, a village with layers of natural geometry for residence. All the houses were built on one side of the mountain, houses that were built with stone but their roofs thick straw. A river flowed on the other side of the mountain that was responsible for the greenery that plotted around the village the Incas called Heaven's Bridge. A mountain that was a shortcut between the sun and the moon.
It was on this bridge that Maita, the man whose child had just been born, was walking with a face drained of blood, fury in his twitching fingertips. He stood a moment and looked from one celestial body to the other, something he had done many times before, his ledge being in the centre of the mountain's face. He had been going in the direction of the sun but decided against it and went towards the moon, turning, when he got to the white staircase. Maita played with the levers of creation as with each of his steps he seemingly made the moon rise and the sun set. He passed the other houses set on vernal ledges whose greenery made the mountain feel more like a hill than a dead piece of rock until he got to the ledge towards the bottom where a group of village men were busy with man's work. They were building a tomb.
