You are in the main square of Cuzco, the Inka capital, several years before the European invasion, on a day late in April-Inka raymi killa, the month of the festival of the Inka (GUAMAN POMA, 1615: 319 and 243), as the Inka and his royal entourage celebrate their victory over the year's harvest and commemorate the ending of the rains 2. The earth has died until the new agricultural year, the crop stored. It is a time for drying aquatic plants-morqoto and llullucha-for food. As in the antipodal rite in October, there is a llama-in this instance a white one draped in red (or reddish-brown)-tied to a gnomon on the square. The llama is fed with aha, maize beer, and thanked for the harvest. It sings the sound of the rivers, and the Inka sings with it (figure one). Here is what the early seventeenth-century ethnographer Felipe GUAMAN POMA DE AYALA reconstructed from the memories of his elderly informants 3: