The Desert's Daughters

Opening Quote

The English word ‘desert’ and its equivalents in the Romance languages all derive from the Latin ‘desertum’, meaning ‘abandoned’.

Roslynn D. Haynes.

The Characters

Alejandra—waitress at the ‘Don Thomas’

Anu—Incan boy

Augustin ‘Gus’ Chavez—Mia’s grandfather

Chotek—Panuchutec’s brother and Anu’s uncle

Ckamur—Atacameños tracker

Cul—Atacameños lead tracker from Tolec

Coyllur—Panuchutec’s wife and Anu’s mother

Ellie Clarkson—Mia’s friend

Emma Chavez—Mia’s mum

Heke Griffin—Archaeology student friend of Mia

Init—Atacameños tracker

Ira—Kiki’s brother

Juan Javiera—Official from the Chilean Archaeological Antiquities Authority

Katir—Kiki and Ira’s younger brother

Kiki—Atacaman girl

Mamut—The Shaman

Mia Chavez—Archaeologist

Panuchutec—Anu’s father

Popina Lickau—Shaman who trains Mamut

Professor Oliver Brown—Archaeology lecturer

Rosa Chavez—Mia’s grandmother

Suti—Kiki’s and Ira’s mother

Toletitian—Kiki’s father

Waldo Mendoza—Tour guide

Mia’s notebook sketch of the Atacama Desert

Sites

San Pedro de Atacama

The Snow-capped mountains/The Andes Mountains

Black Mountains/Cordillera de Domeyko

Salt lakes/Salar de Atacama

Licancabur Mountain

Calama

Pajonales

Catacombs/Juriques Mountain

Tolec/Toconao

Condor’s perch

Glossary

Atacama Desert: The world’s driest desert and situated high in the Andes Mountains of Chile

Atacameños: The desert people of the Atacama Desert

Alicanto: Mythological bird of the Atacama Desert whose wings shine in metallic colour

Amaro: Mythical serpent or dragon, most associated with the Tiwanaku and Incan peoples

Ayawaska: Powerful hallucinogenic cactus plant used in shamanic ceremonies

Bico: Kunza word for coca plant

Cachi: Saltpeter is a highly flammable mineral

Chakana: A talisman symbolising the tree of life

Chasquis: Incan messengers

Chinchurrons: An early people of Northern Chile

Chuspa: Woven carry bag

Coca (bico): Plant whose derivative is cocaine

Condor: South American vulture

Cusco: Inca capital

‘Don Thomas’: Hotel in San Pedro, Atacama Desert

Enfloramiento: A ceremony honouring the Earth Goddess

Geoglyphs: Engravings on rock surfaces

Hanaq Pacha: The upper world of the tree of life and depicted in the heavens

Huasca: Kunza word for magical or supernatural

Incan: People of the Incan Empire that subjugated parts of South America

Kay Pacha: The middle world of the tree of life and depicted the earth

Kunza: The language of the Atacameños people

Licancabur: Highest Andean mountain overlooking the Atacama Desert

Lichau: Woman

Machitun: Shamanic ceremony

Manta: A squared, woven shawl worn by women for warmth

Museo Gustavo le Paige: A museum in San Pedro de Atacama housing Atacameños artefacts

Pachamama: The Incan peoples’ name for the Mother Goddess

Pat’ti Hoy’ri: The Atacameños peoples’ name for the Mother Goddess

Petroglyph: A rock art engraving

Puma: Large cats with highly adaptive habits and a mass up to 100kg

Qhapaq Nan: Inca road system, ‘Royal Road’

Pukara: A fortress

Shaman: Spiritual leader

Tambo: A resting place along Incan roads

Tiwanaku: Native tribe who lived on the Atacama Desert prior to the Atacameños

Tolec: Village of the Atacameños in this story

Unca: Sleeveless shirt worn by those on the desert

Ukhu Pacha: The lowest world of the tree of life and depicted the underworld

Warachicuy: Ceremony of initiation to adulthood

Yacolla: Woollen outer garment worn by men

Yungaas: A nearby tribe of people to the Atacama Desert

Part 1

1

The Desert’s Call

Mia Chavez sat in the restaurant of the hotel, ‘Don Thomas’, situated along one of San Pedro’s many dusty streets. A few hundred metres from the centre of the town, she had cause to doubt why she had opted to travel to Chile in the first place. Her mother had said she should ‘get to know her ancestral origins.’

Although, arriving by bus late the night before, she wondered why you’d decide that having a holiday in a desert could rival Noosa, on the Queensland Sunshine Coast, in the midst of an Australian winter. She wasn’t prone to compulsion and pondered whether breaking up with her boyfriend, Jacko, just as she finished her archaeology studies had something to do with her decision.

Her best friend, Ellie, told her that ‘moping around in her Sydney apartment wasn’t going to get her anywhere, and besides there aren’t any jobs to keep you around.’

‘Thanks, El,’ was the most respectful reply she could offer, before digging her heels in and arguing that she already had a job.

‘Yep, you do,’ Ellie giggled. ‘Working as an assistant curator at the Museum, getting paid to dust down fossils and ask people, mostly politely, to get their kids to stay behind the exhibit lines. Oh, and please, stop them touching the velociraptor femur that is a few years older, and a bit more priceless, than the plastic T-Rex toy you’re carrying.’

‘You are spot-on about the Neanderthals that visit the Museum. You’re a little harsh on my part-time job, Ellie. I like my job!’ Mia replied, brandishing her perfect smile set within lips as full as an Andy Warhohl art piece.

Smiling in mock response, Ellie scolded, ‘Sydney is a place that isn’t going to have any long-term prospects for an archaeologist, in reality, is it? Unless, you’re thinking that one of the building excavations is going to turn up proof that the Incas had explored Australia five hundred years before the Portuguese, or Cook, or whoever,’ she continued with more mirth and less mercy.

‘It’s the indigenous Australian that discovered Oz by the way, El, and okay, I get your point. I was just hoping that life would be a little easier, that’s all,’ Mia said, lowering her head and wishing she could just go home, watch Netflix and eat lots of chocolate for a few weeks.

‘It’s easier for you, Ellie Clarkson,’ she rallied. ‘You have your law job, you are drop-dead gorgeous with your Taylor Swift rockin’ it looks. You’ve got hair from a shampoo ad, not to mention legs that start somewhere around level one of the Centrepoint Tower,’ Mia retorted, regaining her spice.

‘That’s more the feisty girl I know,’ Ellie smiled. ‘My point is, still, that your mum has something in what she is saying, Mia. You’ve got all that Latino history on your maternal side and you’ve never even been there. Look at you!’

’You’ve got your own mop of raven-coloured hair, brown eyes like beacons, your lips pout so much you’d swear they had a double dose of filler, you’re knee high to a very sexy looking grass-hopper, a body that would make most men weep for mercy and you are as breasty as any bikini centre fold. To cap it off, you have a brain!

’So, if you don’t know where you came from then all those smarts and you see-you-later physical traits get lost in an Aussie ether that knows as much about you as you do. Ignorance of your cultural origins isn’t an excuse in this anaemic country. You’ve got nothing to lose, have you? Your dad said he’d buy you the plane ticket.

‘You’ve saved enough to be a millionaire in pesos. It’s a crappy winter here, and besides, I’m going to Greece, so you being back in your cosy Mosman apartment, eating junk and watching Game of Thrones for the third time is a complete waste of life. I think you’ve got more going for you than that,’ Ellie concluded by poking Mia on the chest to make her final point.

‘I’ll think about it. Anyway, I thought you were supposed to be my best friend and you are soooo mean,’ Mia replied, as they both laughed, raucously causing people at tables on either side to turn and wonder about the uproar.

Mia felt better reliving her conversation with her friend. She looked around the restaurant and began to take in the many tourists who apparently descended on San Pedro, chiefly to visit the incredible features of the Atacama Desert. Of course, she knew all the tourist attractions.

She had spent countless hours researching the history and geography of the area. She was increasingly fascinated that her ancestry had called this dystopian place home.

‘No wonder my grandparents left,’ she mused.

In preparation for her trip, she had arranged the ‘specky’ tours that every tourist took. They all looked fine. Once her first four days of visiting the forbiddingly named, Valle de la Muerte, the exotic Valle de Arcoiris, bathing in the hot mineral springs of Puritama and seeing the sunset at Moon Valley were done, she had organised eight days with a private tour guide to try and ‘unearth’ a better understanding of her lineage from this desolate piece of earth.

‘Mum,’ she recalled asking, in the weeks prior to departing on her trip, ‘how the hell did our family come to be in Sydney, via a generation in Santiago, and yet have, who knows, how many generations of ancestors living in an Andean desert of all places?’

Mia’s mother gave her daughter the look and sentiments only a mother can give a beloved child.

‘I think you’ll find that a desert has magical qualities, Mia. You like your Egyptians and their bordered deserts. The Chilean desert isn’t that much different! Besides, you’re the archaeologist.’

‘Can’t see anyone else in this room more qualified than you to understand that people have to make the most of the historical environment into which they are born. I think you’ll see some astounding things. Now can you chop up those onions, please, before you make me cry?’

‘Good one, Mum,’ Mia replied with a smirk.

Yet, in the weeks preceding her trip, Mia had studied those ‘astounding things’, trying to find enthusiasm for one, or any. From what she had observed in her internet searches, backed by her bus trip from Calama, since her arrival in Chile, it still remained a ‘bloody desert’.

There was the small matter, for an archaeologist whose specialism and interest was Egyptology, that the only uniform appeal between the delta land of the Egyptians and this salt-encrusted basin, were the devastating battles against the ravages of deserts. It seemed to her that the Delta was withstanding the onslaught of sand far better than the Atacama had done.

She gazed out the windows that lined the restaurant for such a long time that a waitress came over and spoke.

‘Señorita, lo siento. Cómo estás?’

‘Gracias,’ Mia mumbled, before gathering herself and asking if she might please have another coffee? While she waited for the coffee, Mia took out her note-pad and commenced flicking through her intended itinerary. A note-book was an acquired habit gathered from her many field trips. E-devices didn’t like dust!

The pages of this Chilean, vacation note-book were all dog-eared as she had leafed through them dozens of times. Also, she used pencils, as her choice for writing, due to the graphite’s ability to be a working tool, no matter the weather, hot, cold, dry or wet.

If she was going to be spending her time in and around San Pedro, she intended to make the most of it. Two weeks seemed a long time now she’d arrived!

‘What was I thinking?’ She mentally scolded herself. The waitress returned and placed the drink on the table.

‘Toda buena, Señorita?’

‘Gracias, a todas buenas,’ Mia answered, knowing that she felt anything except ‘all good’.

2

The break of day in the high Andes in the year of 1535 was like any other. The range of snow-peaked mountains behind the young woman arched to the heavens. She had clambered amongst these endless rocks since she could recall. At first with her father and then her younger brothers.

All the while, learning the dangers and the beauty of her ancestral home. After her fifteen seasons, as her family honoured the earth goddess, Pat’ti Hoy’ri, she had heard all the stories of timelessness where her foremothers and fathers had travelled the same trails she knew. She felt as though she had always been a part of this untamed land, these brooding mountains, this unrelenting desert.

The sun appeared diluted, such was the expanse of sky. Several vapid, cirrus clouds, uncertain of their presence, drifted nonchalantly. Kiki revelled in this backdrop, her attention on a lone condor whose wings, dusted with traces of the mineral, cobalt, shimmered in the early morning sunlight breaking over the Atacama Desert.

Kiki, as with all her Atacameños peoples, revered the condor. This condor specifically, as its feathers had almost magically become coated with sun-lit mineral sediments.

From her hiking across a series of ever-rising trails, she had a rare vantage point to survey the flat, salt-crusted desert that stretched as far as her vision could see. A slight breeze, no more than a zephyr, gently ruffled her straight, black hair. Her fringe was cut straight, and formed a line across her forehead so it appeared as though her eyebrows were a part of her hair.

An array of coloured stones, serving as both a talisman and braids, threaded together by a pure gold chain as thick as her slender forearm, kept her shoulder length hair from her face. Her nose was small in a face with high cheeks. Kiki wore a manta over her shoulders which acted as a shawl. Hers was brightly coloured with patterns in red and yellow, white and black.

Rather than a tupu pin that clasped the manta, Kiki’s manta was bound by several chains of fine gold that gleamed in the morning sun. Her eyes, the colour of the dark green, hornblende stone of the desert glinted too, as they peered beneath her cupped hand to reduce the sun’s glare, enchanted by the condor’s ungainly path. She knew that the condor preferred more wind, such was its size.

The circling condor was a mere slingshot away and Kiki thought that its nest might be close by. She grimaced against the sun breaking over her and surveyed the rock faces around her, even though her recessed position didn’t create sufficient angles to determine where a nest might be.

With an inaudible sigh, she returned her gaze to the condor and accepted that the prominent rock jutting over her head, maybe thirty shuffling paces along a steep-sloping ridge, seemed the most likely place. Kiki knew, also, that the condor’s prey would be carrion and that the condor would have competition on the ground.

Kiki scanned the desert, left and right, background and foreground, seeking any moving creature that prized the lifeless animal, and would ensure life to any forager. She was inquisitive and the desert fascinated her. She knew the desert even more intimately than her own home.

She observed everything that the desert offered. On the desert, there was always danger. There was nothing she could see, yet she wondered why there was any reluctance by the condor. Kiki continued to be patient and curious. She watched intently, until the wind’s direction changed, imperceptibly shifting from the prevailing westerly to the east.

The condor’s path drifted to the moving breeze and brought the bird even closer to Kiki’s crouched position, so she could see individual plumes fluting in flight. Still, there was no other sign of life on the desert.

Assured, Kiki decided it was safe enough to see for herself what creature had succumbed to the unconcerning desert. Picking her way, deftly, she descended, cleared the last of the rocks, and jumped lightly to the pebbled sand of the desert. She maintained her crouched pose, neither moving her body or head, until her eyes only, had pierced each low-set, sinewy shrub.

Bright light magnified all that Kiki could see. She studied the condor again. Gently, the giant bird appeared to dangle on a tarantula’s web, lulled as though captured in the moment. The air was without disturbance and even the soft breeze had evaporated as the day warmed. The condor began making wider arcs optimising the ponderous downbeat of its heavy wings in the absence of any wind.

Kiki stood and reassured she was alone, weaving from near leafless salt-bush to ‘tola’ shrub, lonesome black bush to rice grass, made her way to the dead creature. Quickly she arrived at a small cleared area. At first, she thought the sand was copper-stained, such was its red tinge. Then horrified, she realised that the pigmented sand was dried blood, bleached by the early morning sun.

She feared to look beyond the blood trail as she could see there had been a fight for survival in the many paw marks and swept sand all around her. It was then that she made out the braiding of a familiar silk and llama wool garment and wished she had not ventured from her observatory. Emotions shattered her focussed attention. Before Kiki lifted her eyes from the signs of the struggle, she became aware of a thumping that transcended the pounding of her heart.

Not fifty strides away a twihard of pumas were gaining speed from a canter. Their collective eyes willing her to be stilled in fear. Kiki, however, was filled with rage and instinctively turned for the high ground trail she had left and sprinted with every sinew of her body not knowing if she would be able to outpace the predators.

As she ran, she didn’t spare a glance either side of her, she knew her only hope was to reach the mountain path she had descended. Between gasping breaths, she thought she had noticed five or six pumas, she couldn’t be sure. ‘Mutsisma, mitchala, mutsisma, mitchala, mutsisma, mitchala,’ Kiki loudly chanted with each stride. ‘Five, six, five, six!’

She hoped, with every desire, to live beyond this moment; that she hadn’t miscalculated and that she had surprised these pumas who had dragged the body of her younger brother away from their killing site. If she survived, she thought, you will all, ‘mutsisma’ or ‘mitchala’, give a price. How she wished she knew how Ira came to be here, and now mauled to death, were only fleeting imaginings in her own quest to survive.

Reaching the rocks, she sprang to the side of the natural path and vaulted over a steep-rising ledge. Scampering and clawing on all four limbs, Kiki scaled the steepest possible rock face, pebbles and dust spraying behind her, in her frantic attempt to escape. She must have been a quarter way up her desperate climb, near her earlier vantage spot, when she heard the whining frenzy of the wild cats behind her.

They must have reached the point where she commenced ascending. Strangely, in the stilled moment, she could smell their arrival, fetid and abhorrent, knowing perhaps, that it was her brother’s death that clung to them now. Her own plight of defying death was at hand. Sprawling in ferocious fear, Kiki continued her attempt to escape.

Each moment she anticipated a snarling puma would pounce. Every other moment, she imagined losing her balance and tumbling to her death, not by fangs and claws but by a devastating fall to the desert floor.

Passing close to her previous hiding place, her manta resting on a rock, she threw daring haste in her movement along the sloped ridge of granulated stones that she felt led to the condor’s lair. She willed that there might be a look-out point that would rise above the surrounding rock surface. It was her only hope. Behind her, she could hear the yelping pumas and ever-nearing clattering as paws displaced stones and sought purchase on the shifting ground in their lightly checked pursuit.

Darting around the last formation, Kiki reached the highest point of this promontory. She saw only a single, larger rock. She was momentarily startled, too, at its blue and green coated luminescence, and immediately crest-fallen that it was no higher than she stood. It was not the raised condor lookout she had hoped.

At least, she consoled herself, she now understood the origins of the bird’s shimmering feathers. She looked at the terrain around her and then down the side of her climb. There was no escape! She saw that there were six pumas. Each spread in a filed line, determinedly and speedily, only a lazy stone throw beneath her.

Quickly, she unsheathed her slingshot and looked for any reasonably sized stone. There was none. Her only recourse was to climb the condor’s sentry position and hope she might defend her precarious place atop the rock.

She did not have to wait long before the first puma appeared over the narrow ledge. A second, a third, and a fourth, forebodingly followed. Kiki examined them in a way that a hunter might consider which was to be her choice. She was scared, yet she was measured, driven by the revenge she wished to exact on these animals who had killed her brother. She drew the tapering, copper and stone-welded knife from her waist-band. She knew the knife offered her no superiority.

Kiki was unsure why the pumas appeared to pause not ten paces from her raised position. She assessed their stalking impatience, their whimpering and snarling. Two pumas were large enough, maybe more than half her body weight.

The other two were larger still, imposing and tawnier in colour. She saw their exposed fangs, drooling with saliva after their exertions in the climb. She noticed the many scarred snouts and legs, one with an ear missing and another showing a slight limp.

Most of all she was near-entranced by the thunder-cloud blackness of their eyes. Each set appeared to be images of the others. Kiki’s wondering was short-lived as another leaner puma, an adolescent, she assumed, and a much larger-framed female, jumped over the remaining rocks to the narrow platform that held her fate. The thick-set female with a streaked face of black and fawn marking, snarled deeply, sinisterly, Kiki imagined. She sneered back with equal fierceness generated by the sight of blood stains around the cat’s chest.

The sun was fully risen. Kiki squinted into raw light. The condor was unsighted. Kiki’s world was reduced to a racing heartbeat, deep-taken breaths and the stark, sequined sunlight making the pumas appear like a series of wavering mirages. Yet the pervasive sound that remained for Kiki was the gurgling, gruff growling of six pumas appearing indecisive in how they would attack her.

She spread her arms and dared the attack and resembled the very condor on whose rock she stood. There was nothing more that she could do. She looked below and the slope was so sheer she couldn’t see how she could survive such a fall to the desert below. For an interminable amount of time, each of the pumas held her stare.

For an unknown reason, she recalled her many times at the rock shrine of the goddess of fertility. ‘Why now?’ She wondered momentarily. ‘Is life and death about to merge for me?’

The image passed instantly, as the condor’s shadow eclipsed the sun. Kiki forlornly imagined climbing the condor’s wings to escape? Her reality though, was she had nowhere to go. For the first time, the pumas began circling rather than pacing, moaning deeper, their glistening, feline fangs flared, snarling in blood-curdling, high-pitched cries.

All seemed lost. She crouched low, desperate. The pumas were edging closer, gaining confidence, losing any restraint, all waiting for Kiki’s eyes to shift. Kiki inched nearer the overhanging edge of her rock that led to the cavernous fall and the dune below. Trying to maintain her perilous balance on the rim of the precipice, Kiki looked quickly to her feet and the distance she held to the edge.

Suddenly, a puma struck, springing onto the rock and launching itself to hit her chest rather than her throat, as Kiki pivoted, in singular desperation to her right. Nevertheless, the force of the puma’s impact could not be withstood as both Kiki and the puma were catapulted down the shoulder of the rock face. Uncontrollably, they rolled over and over. Dust splashed the air.

A flurry of futility as gravity gained control. Lunging, Kiki managed to thrust her knife into the puma’s stomach as together they cascaded over the final, near vertical drop like a pair of autumn leaves swept before a wreath-like wind. The desert remained unmoved.

3

Anu felt more self-assured in his new home. He had not, previously, experienced the harshness of a desert in his life, and after several months he knew he still had much to learn. His life was very different and he was finally accepting the will of his destiny.

He remained determined, soon, to progress to the ritual of manhood and leave his childhood and past behind, not with reservation of what was to follow, but with mastery of his new life. The small challenge was that the desert had humbled all before him and the lingering shortcomings of his humanity betrayed his adolescent bravado, particularly before his father’s glare.

He had prepared for the next few days, as he would in every action, diligently. He spent the night ensuring that he had water, a short spear and his favourite knife. He had promised his father that he would be careful and rose early so he didn’t need to hear his repeated admonition.

He was aware too, that there remained unease with his people, the Incas, and the Alacamenos. The reluctant acceptance of Inca into the desert had been passaged before his father’s time, although the arrival of his family from Cusco, to join those of his cousins and kinsmen, was something that he could not control. His father’s word on all things was final.

‘A desert!’ was all he could conjure in resignation at his father’s announcement.

On this day, on the salt-crusted lands of the Atacameños, a far distant reach of his Incan empire, he set out to explore the hot water springs on the other side of the desert. After three months in his new life, the springs had been spoken about with glee by the other young men. Anu could guess that they would have freedoms there, as would the younger women of the desert, however for Anu the adventure was the attraction.

So, he set off on his expected five-day return walk full of enthusiasm. He had camped out for single nights on five occasions and felt prepared for four consecutive nights, conscious of the potential dangers of the desert.

The first day’s walking was directly across the desert. His family was settled in the west, among the foothills of the black mountain that led to the coast and formed the rim, facing across the desert, to the snow-capped mountains to the east. The trek to the snow-peaked mountains was etched with salt flats and a biting wind this day. He saw very little and plodded on in a trance-like state fixated on his destination.

His head was bowed as salt speckles were sprayed by the wind and bounced into his face like memories of his mother’s kisses. The sun glared with disinterest and he drank regularly as the wind seemed to evaporate the sweat from his body equally, despite the seasonally modest heat. He ate sparingly as he had conservatively rationed his food. He nibbled some of the salted ch’arki he’d prepared and was intending to retain as much as he could for his homeward trek.

He knew that the chewiness of the meat would take his energy, and on his way home he would not need to care with only a two day’s walk. The day passed uneventfully. Anu had only his thoughts and the wind sprayed, nagging salt specks for company. He felt his loneliness in mind and spirit. His former life in Cusco, his beloved, mother, all that he knew, lost