AUTHOR'S NOTES:
1.  The Quechua here is spelled the way Graham heard it.
2. If you want to hear what a Tinku sounds like, go to
http://www.llajta.org/real/sariri.ram
you have to have recent version of real player installed.
             or for just a sample go to
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000005J9F/qid=967561051/sr=1-/104-5946624-4283921
and click on #6 Kullaquita        (Tinku in Quechua)
or              #8 Sariri Del Ande  (Tinku in Spanish-one of my faves)
                (by Karumanta Jamuyku)
                you have to have real player installed.
3.  It really helps if you've seen Inca Mummy Girl.   BTW, there really *is*
a Quechua/Inca thing about a chosen one, a girl picked by the village to be
given up as a sacrifice to the king and priests.  The same Quechua word is
now used in Bolivia to refer to the winner of beauty pageants -- which is
really kinda creepy if you think about it.
4.  The ritual offering of the first sip of alcohol to Pachamama, by
spilling a bit on the ground, is called a 'ch'alla'.  And you *always* do it
in the Andes, or people can get really nervous.
5. Sebancaya, afaik, exists only in the buffyverse, thank Pachamama.
6.  OK, guilty confession.  I thought it would be a real hoot to write
slashy sex in Quechua.

Maybe He's Canadian, 14: Tinku *
Pay Canada-manta ichas, 14:  Tinku

Xander runs his hand through Graham's hair.

"Go on."  Xander urges.

"OK, so I was tied up on the dirt floor of the head guerilla guy's hut.
Basically just waiting and not knowing what was going on."

Graham snuggles a bit as he puts his head back down on Xander's chest.
Xander holds him, thankful that at least Graham was finally talking, hoping
he was hiding how freaked he was and praying that he could handle whatever
was coming.

Graham took a deep breath, and the rest of the story just spilled out.

Night was the worst.  It was really cold.  And quiet. I would lay awake just
shivering and being really hungry.  Somewhere in the middle of the third
night I heard this howling, not human, and like no animal I'd ever heard,
way in the distance, way up the mountainside.    It seemed to go on forever.
  It was the scariest sound I'd ever heard.  Guerilla guy got out of bed and
grabbed his rifle.   It was pitch dark, no lights, no candles, no fire, no
nothing.  So I could only hear him go to the door and call out something to
the guerilla on guard.  The two were talking in Quechua, just above a
whisper.

They kept repeating this name, Sebancaya, and it sounded like they were
really scared.  And when the guerilla leader guy walked back in, I asked him
"Que pasa?" , What's happening?  figuring he'd know that much Spanish.  He
was silent for a minute looking for the Spanish words and then said in his
thick Quechua accent,.
      "Sebancaya chica quirir, la eligida"
        Sebancaya want girl, the chosen one.

And he was scared.  He just kept shaking his head and repeating
"mana alyi, mana alyi-punichu,"
which I figured meant it was not good by his tone of voice.  I asked him who
Sebancaya was.  And he tried to explain it to me.  But I couldn't understand
anything, except that Sebancaya had to do with the howling thing and the
mountain, and it wanted this chosen one girl, and that it was really not
good.

Then he came over and just hugged me for a second, and patted the back of my
neck as I was kneeling there on the floor, and then he told me to go back to
sleep, or I guess that's what he told me, cause he sort of gently pushed me
back down on the dirt floor and then went back to bed himself.

The next morning, the entire village was all abuzz.  The women were messing
with this milky liquid stuff in these big cauldrons, and it smelled pretty
rank.  And the boys brought in this baby llama, and the girls spent hours
dressing it up in this really elaborate girl's clothing.  And people were
chatting and laughing, but everybody was really tense.

And in the middle of the afternoon, it began.  One of the old women came out
with a bunch of stuff, and began this chanting thing.  Burning insense and
coca leaves, tossing whole cigarettes on the little fire, and pouring some
kind of alcohol from a bottle onto the ground,  and the people stood around
chewing coca leaves and watching, and taking turns going to the fire and
pulling the smoke from the insense onto their heads.  And people kept
repeating prayers to Pachamama, the earth mother goddess.

And then the older women starting handed out tin cups and tin bowls of the
cheecha, the liquid in the huge pots, this kind of corn beer.  And everybody
would pour a little of it on the ground, and then just toss the rest back,
and hand the cup back, and it would get refilled and given to the next
person.  The guerilla leader guy brought me a cup, spilled a bit on the
ground, and whispered something about 'Pachamama', and put it to my lips and
had me drink it all.  A couple of the girls came over and did the same,
always pouring the bit on the ground before letting me drink.  And it must
have been pretty powerful stuff, 'cause I was really feeling it, and y'know
high altitude gets you drunker faster.

So these guys pulled out this beat up guitars and and this huge skin-covered
drum, and wooden flutes and those pan pipes, like at the Espresso Pump, and
they started to play.  And everybody kept drinking and started to dance, but
they really just kind of stood around and shuffled their feet and swayed
back and forth in time to the rhythm.  And two of the older women came and
got me, my hands still tied behind my back, and dragged me into the dance,
and sort of jostled me until I started to do the shuffle feet dance too.
Guerilla leader guy kept giving me more sips of cheecha.  And this just kept
going until it got dark and we were dancing next to the fire they had built
in the middle of the village.

And then the old woman, the one who was doing all the chanting, yelled out
something and everyone stopped cold.  And the guerilla guys went and got the
baby llama, all dressed in girl's clothes and brought it to the old woman.
She picked it up, held it tight under her arm and held it over the little
insense fire so the smoke surrounded the baby llama, and then she poured
some alcohol from a bottle onto its head.  And the llama was bleating away,
and then she pulled out this machete, and with one motion, she just slit its
throat, and then walked around the village sprinkling the llama blood
around.  And then they wrapped the llama up like it was a mummy and put it
on this wooden table or alter, along with bottles of alcohol, packs of
cigarettes, and bags of coca leaves.

And I was pretty much trying to keep my cool.  Cause I'd never seen anything
like this before.  OK, I was pretty freaked out, and, yeah really drunk.
And they kept referring to the baby llama as 'the chosen one'.  I figured
that they were using a baby llama instead of a girl, and hoping this
Sebancaya wouldn't notice.  But from the looks on the little girl's faces,
it was like they really had just sacrificed a girl.

The old men took chosen-one llama-mummy and the bottles of alcohol, and the
packs of cigarettes and the bags of coca leaves up the mountainside that
night.  I don't know if they buried it up there or what.

And anyway, everybody in the village looked really relieved, and everyone
went around hugging each other, and patting each other on the back.  And
guerilla leader guy, who was pretty drunk, came up and gave me this big hug,
and called me 'suldadu-cha', and made me drink another cup of the cheecha.

And basically everybody got back into party mode, and the band started up
again, and everybody danced.  Then the girls started chanting "tinku!
tinku!  tinku!", and everybody moved to the sides, and the guerilla leader
guy went to the middle and slung his rifle over his shoulder, outside the
poncho he was wearing.  Then he slung the front of his poncho over his
shoulder, so his arms were free.

And the band started to play the tinku, this sort of marching song.  And the
guerilla leader guy jumped forward one big step in time with the music and
then more steps forward, and then steps back, did that twice and turned
slowly around 360, then raised his arms, kinda like a bear, and made these
three big steps forward, like the bear attacking..  Then the other guerilla
guys joined in, lining up in pairs behind leader guy and following his
steps.  I just stood there watching.

Graham hesitates.  He swallows hard.  Xander rubs his neck, feeling the
tension.
"It's OK, Graham, it's OK," he whispers soothingly.
Graham lets out the breath he's been holding.  He continues, his voice a bit
softer, less sure of himself.
"It was beautiful, Xander.  It was just beautiful.  It was clearly this
warrior's dance, a soldier's dance, and incredibly . sexy in this really
macho way.  And I couldn't take my eyes off the guerilla leader guy.  The
way he moved.  Like he had this power to protect me and protect everyone in
the village form whatever this Sebancaya was.

And everybody in the village stood around clapping and moving their feet in
time to the rhythm of the tinku, the song,  and watching the guerilla guys
dance.  And when it ended, the guerilla guys all pulled out their rifles and
then shot off a few rounds, and everybody cheered like crazy.

People started drifting off to bed, or just passed out where they were.
Cause these people really socked it away.  And guerilla leader guy came over
with this big grin and put his arm around me and asked "Tinku alyi-ki?"  and
I knew that 'alyi' meant 'good', so I just repeated 'alyi' and nodded and
grinned back.  He hugged me again, and he was leaning on me cause he was
pretty drunk,  too.  He sort of led me back to his hut.

We walked in, and I don't know, maybe the cheecha or seein' him dance or all
the hugging, but once we got inside, I kinda nuzzled his neck.  I kinda had
to lean down to do it, cause he wasn't very tall, none of 'em were.

So it was pitch black inside the hut.  He took hold of my head with both
hands and asked "suldadu-cha?" in this really questioning way.  And the only
thing that came out of my mouth is 'yes sir' and then I repeated it in
Quechua, 'ari, sinyur.'  And there was this hesitation while he held my
head, and then he kissed me.

Xander's face freezes on hearing the 'yes sir.'  Suddenly he understands
where this is going.  A shiver runs down his spine.  Sebancaya isn't the
only thing Graham's dealing with here.  He runs his hand over Graham's back
as soothingly as he can.

OK, I was 18, and I had never been with a guy, never kissed a guy, and off
the football field never been hugged by a guy until that day.  And I guess
it just all came out.  And I kissed him back with a vengeance.  Ok, my hands
were still tied, and I was really drunk, and when he let go of me for a sec,
I kinda, well, I fell down.  And I was on my knees, and I rubbed my face
against his crotch.  And he was totally hard.

And he whispered 'ay, suldadu-cha' in this really sweet voice.  And he threw
the front of his poncho over his shoulder and pulled down his trousers, and
fed me his cock.  And, yeah,  I was pretty drunk and I don't remember much,
but I definitely went after the cock and was sucking it for all it was
worth, and he was standing there going
"Ari!  Ari, suldadu-cha! Ari!", ya know  'yes, yes, soldier-boy, yes!'

I don't know exactly what happened, but suddenly I was on his bed, face
down, and he was pulling my pants off.  And I knew what he was going to do,
and I was suddenly scared shitless, and my hands were still tied.  And he
climbed on top of me and pushed it in and started to fuck me.  And it was
pretty brutal, cause it was my first time, and he was just drunk and ramming
into me, and I could barely speak.

And I wanted to tell him to stop, I wanted to tell him 'no!', to yell out
"Mana!"  but I couldn't, and he just kept fucking me and he was whispering
'ay, suldadu-cha' in my ear as he lay on top of me, humping away.

And he came inside of me, and then just passed out, and my arms were trapped
between my back and his body, and my cock was rock hard, and I basically
couldn't even move, but I sort of ground myself against the straw matress,
and I finally came, and then I basically passed out, too.

The next day, I woke up with the biggest hangover of my life, and really
sore in places, and he was there standing looking down at me, and he had
this silly grin on his face.  And he leaned over and kissed my cheek really
softly and said good morning or something, and called me 'suldadu-cha,' and
helped me get my pants back on, and brought me more of the coca tea and held
the cup while I drank it.

Anyway, the llama sacrifice thing must have worked, cause I never heard the
howling again.  And a couple of days later, the drug lord's goons came for
me.  They marched me down the mountain, put me in a jeep, and two hours
later I was on a cargo plane heading for the US base in Panama.  I found out
in Panama that I had been traded for the drug lord's drug dealer cousin.
And when they debriefed me, I told'em about Sebancaya and the sacrifice and
all.  I guess the demon experience is why they eventually transferred me to
the Initiative.
 

Graham, clearly finished, just lies there not moving.  Xander somehow knows
his eyes are open.   Xander holds him.  He has been more than just a little
freaked since the first mention of Sebancaya.  Been getting the whole
goosebump thing going.  At least, it wasn't a real girl that Graham saw
sacrificed.  Xander couldn't even bring himself to think about the rest.
"Sounds pretty freaksome."

Graham says "Yeah, it was, it all was.  The howling, and the whole Sebancaya
demon thing and the sacrifice of the baby llama, and everything. But really,
the part that freaked me the most, was how I felt when the guerilla leader
guy was doin' it to me.  I just couldn't deal.  I knew I was supposed to
make him stop or at least tell him to stop.  I was supposed to want him to
stop."

Graham looks up at Xander for the first time since he began to tell the
story.  Xander sees that he is close to tears.  "But I didn't want him to
stop, Xander.  I wanted him to fuck me.  I really wanted it."

Xander runs his fingers along Graham's jawline, and nods slightly, barely
moving his head.  "I know, Graham, I know."

<< Stay tuned for part 15, In which Graham insists on doing something really
brave:  returning to the Espresso Pump; same Graham-Time! Same
Graham-Channel!>>
--------------------------------

Quechua glossary (just in case it's not clear)
alyi                good
alyi-ki?    was it good?  'ki' indicates a question
ari         yes
ay!         Oh!
-cha        indicates 'little' or affection
ch'alla     ritual spilling of alcohol as offering to
            Pachamama
cheecha     homebrewed corn beer
coca (cuca) the plant from which cocaine is made.  In the Andes, coca leaves
are used for making tea, for chewing (you get a slight buzz, but mainly you
just feel less tired and less cold), and in all incantations.  You never ask
a god or spirit or a saint for anything without offering alcohol, tobacco
and coca.
cuy          guinea pig, usually eaten roasted
mana         'no', or 'not'
pa           for, it comes after, not before as in English
               so 'Pachamama pa' = 'for Pachamama'
Pachamama    'Earth Mother', goddess central to Quechua life
Pay Canada-manta ichas.    Maybe he's Canadian
-punichu      ending meaning "really" or "very"
Sebancaya     Buffyverse Quechua/Inca sacrifice-hungry demon
              (Inca Mummy Girl)
sinyur         sir
suruchiki      altitude sickness. Not fun. 'soroche' in Spanish
suldadu        soldier
suldadu-cha    (my) little soldier, soldier boy
Tinku          Tinku is a kind of marching song that village warriors play
and sing on their way to battle, and the dance/march that goes with the
song.   A Tinku is properly this highly ritualized village-versus-village
mock battle, whose purpose is to spill blood to make the earth fertile.
Tinku battles still happen and villagers do occasionally die in them.