13
Child of the Condor
Blackness filled the shell of herself, creeping out her pores and draining through her fingertips. The first awareness. Of tiny things. A ticking of blood through her veins, the prickle of every hair, the slide of moisture under the membrane of her eyelid. A grain of dust under her fingernail. And then an itching where her heart must have been, too deep to scratch.
A shape, a mass was moving somehow through her. It had layers, depth. The silhouette of speech. Speech. The shape was a word, a sentence. Husky roughness, scraping senses. Shards of meaning. Reference. Symbols. Yes, meaning.
‘What is it? A spirit?’
‘Roll it over.’
‘Don’t touch it.’
What were these words? Who were they for? Familiar yet entirely alien. English? Spanish? Quechua? But guttural. Deeper.
