Chaski of Pututus

A condor caught my attention first.

It was circling high above the road, riding the air so effortlessly that I stopped walking just to watch it. Then I heard footsteps approaching, quick and rhythmic against the stones, and a runner came into view below it. For several moments, the two seemed to move across the landscape together, one through the open sky and the other along the road beneath it.

The runner carried a pututu in one hand. He never raised it to his lips, but I found myself waiting for its call anyway. I had heard that sound before. I knew how far it could travel and how quickly it could change the attention of everyone who heard it. Yet this pututu remained silent, moving swiftly toward some place where its voice was apparently needed.

I wondered what would happen when he arrived. Would its call gather people? Announce something important? Warn them? Mark the beginning of something? The silence suddenly felt full of possibility because the message had not been given yet.

When I looked toward the sky again, the condor was still above him. Sky and earth, wing and foot, silence and sound, all moving in the same direction until the road carried the runner behind the mountain and the condor drifted beyond my sight.

I never heard the pututu sound. Somewhere farther down the road, someone else would.