she was wearing snow pants, just like when she was little growing up in Montana. The frayed jeans and hippie tunic she had on under the alpaca sweater were not doing anything to keep her warm. Frozen fingers brushed lazily over her cheeks from the hulking mountains all around them. Off in the distance, something howled. Nazaret covered her nose with one mitten to muffle another sharp sneeze and it echoed off the mountains in the night.
“’Scuse me.” Noah cheerfully pushed past Wara, carting a gigantic burlap sack of potatoes.
“Coming through,” Nazaret’s father followed him, hauling a second bag of something edible. Wara huddled next to Nazaret for a minute, watching as the guys hefted the food and sleeping bags onto a haggle of scrawny burros. A few Quechua guys in black jackets and slacks had materialized from an adobe hut and were helping to arrange everything on the donkeys by the light of a shimmering bonfire. Pastor Martir, who came every year to preach at this rural Bible conference in Potosi, said that it was best to climb the mountain at night, when it was cooler.
Right now, Wara really hoped he knew what he was talking about. They still had a seven-hour hike ahead of them, up the forested granite. She stifled a heavy yawn and fixed her gaze on the diamond stars.
In the morning, she woke up to scruffy feathers and a beak. A chicken scratched through the pebbles right outside the crumbling adobe wall of the community school house where she and the others had crashed for a few hours after the hike. The local Christians had gone to all the trouble of fixing up wooden pallets with woolen blankets here at the school, so their guests could have a private place to stay. Wara knew they had gone to a lot of trouble and hated to admit that it honestly hadn’t been worth going to sleep. A well-organized army of fleas had taken up residence in the wool blankets long before she had, and she, Noah, and Nazaret had scratched and grumbled for a few hours before Pastor Martir coated their beds with Raid.
Maybe that was why now, with daylight streaming through the holes in the schoolhouse wall, it was so darn hard to move. Could you overdose on Raid?
Wara kicked off the sleeping bag, grabbed her glasses from the dirt floor, and pulled herself to sitting. Pastor Martir was already gone, probably outside at some morning prayer vigil with the Quechua Christians. Nazaret curled on her plank bed, still snoring. Noah’s long legs stuck out the end of his unzipped sleeping bag, leaving his filthy socked feet sprawled in the dirt near giant maroon Nike tennis shoes.
When she moved to stand up, the powdery remains of dried up fleas shifted on the navy fleece of the sleeping bag.
Eeww.
Wara had to grin at the sight of those dried bugs. She really loved these kind of trips.
She dusted her bare feet off on the edge of her jeans and stuffed her sockless feet into Doc Marten boots, hoping to find someplace outside to use the bathroom before everyone else got up. A waist-high cluster of boulders overlooking the valley below turned out to be the best option for privacy. She brushed her teeth with water from a dented bottle of Pura Vida and spit off into the deserted valley. Trailing wisps of clouds slithered around boulders below. The only structures visible were the schoolhouse where she had slept and two sturdy adobe houses a little way down the rounded path.
A Quechua lady with a huge smile was waiting in the school with a breakfast of sweet purple corn drink and boiled eggs. She wore a knee-length circle skirt called a pollera, this one a soft sage green. Despite the morning chill, her mahogany legs were bare and she wore scuffed black plastic ballet flats. She did have on a warm cardigan over the lacy white blouse Quechua ladies always wore.
The lady bringing breakfast introduced herself as Doña Petronia and patted Wara on the forearm in greeting, telling her how happy she was that God had brought Wara to this conference. Wara smiled back wanly, even though it was a lot of fun to be speaking Quechua up in the mountains again. She still didn’t feel good about the idea of her being part of this Bible conference, acting like she was all sweet and good here with Pastor Martir, Noah and the Bible school students.
She felt like