Treasure of the World by Tara Sullivan (free ebook reader txt) 📕

shadow unrecognizable, but now that I’m up close, with the light of the lamp shining on her, there’s no doubt who it is.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

She gives me a wrinkled smile.

“I came to keep you company. Nights alone are long.”

“But you shouldn’t be out in the cold . . . you’ll get sick . . .”

“Pah! These old bones never sleep through the night anyway. Might as well put them to good use. Now, where were you sitting? Was it out of the wind? Take me there.”

Though I still feel like I should make Abuelita go home and rest, I’m grateful that I don’t have to be alone anymore, so I show her where I’ve been sitting. Using the blankets Abuelita brought, I make her a warm little nest, hand her some coca leaves, and we settle down together in an easy silence.

“The city is so beautiful,” murmurs Abuelita after a while. “It sparkles like a rich person’s Christmas tree.”

Whenever we go into the city near Christmas, Abuelita and I always love the decorations in the shops. Sometimes you can even see through windows into people’s houses. The trees with their fairy lights are so pretty. Then my smile fades.

“Just like a rich person’s Christmas tree, none of the gifts there are for us.”

For a moment Abuelita is quiet. “What’s wrong, Ana?” she asks at last.

I wave my hand, half brushing off the question, half pointing to everything around me. “I . . .” I struggle for a moment. “Doña Elena wanted to marry me off.”

Abuelita snorts. “Elena is an idiot. Ignore her.”

I smile at my grandmother’s support, but the feeling doesn’t go away so easily. “I won’t be able to ignore her forever,” I say. “I mean, maybe Mami and César won’t force me to get married anytime soon, but eventually . . . ? No matter how long I manage to put it off, my life will always be to marry a miner, have his children, and be his widow. I’m supposed to break rocks and keep house and send my sons into the mine.”

Abuelita is watching me carefully.

“And I just . . . I don’t want that. You’re always telling me stories of the Inca—look at us! We’ve been doing this for centuries, trapped on this mountain for hundreds of years, no one ever doing anything different than their parents or their parents’ parents. I wish . . . I wish I could do something else with my life . . .” I trail off and drop my head onto my crossed arms. “But girls like me don’t have choices. There are good things out there, but we’ll never have enough money to buy them. Everything is just too hard.”

For a long moment Abuelita is quiet, considering me. I finally lift my face, feeling rude and ungrateful that I’ve told her I want a life that is nothing like the life she lived.

“Abuelita—” I start to apologize, but she cuts me off.

“All this talk of gifts and buying,” she says, “you’re thinking like the Spaniards.”

I roll my eyes, not wanting another history lesson. I’m talking about my life now. I don’t care about any epic clash between Andean and Spanish cultures in the 1500s. But either Abuelita doesn’t see my eyes or doesn’t care, because she keeps talking.

“The Spaniards came here searching for El Dorado, a mythical city made all of gold. They wanted to melt it down and turn it into coins and buy better lives for themselves, just like you’re saying. Do you know what the Inca called gold and silver?”

“No,” I mumble into my knees. Once Abuelita gets started, you can’t cut her off. You have to let her finish.

“They called gold ‘the sweat of the sun,’ and silver ‘the tears of the moon,’” she says. “They thought they belonged to the gods and used them for religious artifacts because they were beautiful. They never gave them value beyond that. Do you know what the currency of the Inca empire was?”

I shrug.

“Work.”

I look up at her.

“You were wealthy in those times if you had good lands to farm for food, or herds of llama, alpaca, or vicuña that you could shear for fine wool to make cloth. People worked in family units and everyone contributed to help make life good for the whole family. The Inca took that model to the level of an empire. They made the people they conquered work for them two months out of the year, and in exchange they fed and defended them. With this model, they built everything they needed, from over forty thousand kilometers of paved roads to cities, fortresses, way stations, and storehouses.”

I’m not sure where she’s going with this. “So?” I say. “They were defeated by people that had horses and guns and new germs. They were squashed by Spain and forced to work like slaves. Who cares what the Inca did?”

“You”—Abuelita’s voice is fierce, and she pokes me in the middle of the chest with a bony finger—“are Inca. You are a child of that heritage. If you want a different future, it will never be yours if you chase it like a daughter of Spaniards. Money, pah! When does anyone ever have enough of it?”

“Never,” I grumble.

“Exactly. It’s the wrong currency. Up here, if you measure your future in coin, you will always be poor. Remember your ancestors. Work, Ana. If you want a different future, don’t wish for it. Work for it.”

And with that, Abuelita wraps herself in her manta and leaves me to my thoughts.

By the tiny hours of the morning, Abuelita has dozed off and not even the sparkle of Potosí is enough to keep me warm. I try staring up at the stars instead, but they’re far away and just as cold as I am. Besides, looking at heaven makes me think about dead people, and I don’t want to think about them either. I realize that I had no idea how long a night could be, cold, and awake, and alone. It’s not good to be alone, whispers an echo of Mami’s voice. I