Chapter 9
Caio
I couldn’t bring myself to leave her alone.
How could she not sense this connection between us?
I went out to the front of the house, where my parents sat in their rocking chairs and settled into the hammock.
The rough weave was an unwelcome stranger against my back.
I’d given Luzia my bed, but sleep was the last thing on my mind.
Staring past the dark silhouettes of the trees to where the river whispered in the night, my thoughts tangled around a single, impossible point—her ankle.
“The river is restless tonight,” Mom stated, her gaze fixed on the water.
“Mom, it’s just a river.”
“Is it?” she countered, her voice soft but sharp. “You brought a girl from its banks with an injury that healed itself. Do not tell me it is ‘just a river.’ ”
My father placed a hand on her arm. “Elisa…”
“Our son needs to be careful,” she insisted, turning her gaze to me. The moonlight caught the worry in her eyes. “She will steal your heart, and then the river will steal her back. It always does.”
The words tasted like a lie even to me. “That’s folklore.”
My heart clenched at the thought of her being stolen from anyone. I scoffed to cover the feeling. “Don’t be dramatic.”
“Do you think the Seolais belongs to her?” she pressed, her voice sharp. “Where did you get that idea? From your… friend? Or should I say, the Encantado from the river?”
“Hush,” Dad said quickly, his voice strained. “Be quiet. You don’t know who is listening.” He leaned forward. “Bringing her here means you are committed to protecting her.”
“So she is an Encantado?” I whispered, the word barely audible.
“I believe so,” Dad replied, his voice grave.
My gaze shifted to Mom, seeking an answer. “That’s where you got the Seolais from?”
“It’s been passed down through generations,” she explained, her gaze distant, as if lost in thought.
“Were there… more?” I asked, a sudden curiosity piquing my interest.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “They’re in the museum in the village. As you know.”
A thought sparked in my mind. “She should have it back,” I said, the words escaping before I could stop them.
Mom sighed. “Maybe,” she conceded. “But you don’t really know if that’s the right thing, Caio. You don’t know what’s going on here.”
“You mentioned a friend… one you played with at the river years ago,” I said. It was the first time I’d heard her mention anything like this.
“I’d forgotten about that,” she murmured. “It seems more like a dream now, nothing real. And what does that mean, if she is from the river?” Mom’s voice was laced with a final warning. “That she’s not yours to have,” she stated firmly. “Help her return to the river quickly, Caio. That’s my advice.”
She stood and patted Dad on the arm before disappearing inside.
“Listen to your mother,” Dad said, his eyes filled with a mixture of concern and weariness, before following her, leaving me alone in the darkness.
The sound of the river, usually a comforting lullaby, now roared in my ears. It wasn’t just water—it was the echo of my mother’s words, calling to me, awakening a restless energy within. It felt as if a part of me, a hidden, dormant part, was stirring, reaching out to the swirling currents.
What is she?
My mind recoiled from the word. Encantado.
It was superstition, a name given to the shadows our knowledge had yet to illuminate.
My world was one of biology, cause and effect, and facts.
A sprained ankle swells, bruises, and takes weeks to heal, according to every law of physiology I had ever studied.
And yet, hers hadn’t.
The conflict raged inside me, a war between a lifetime of scientific certainty and the undeniable evidence. The stress of it was a physical weight, pressing down on me until a familiar tightness began to blossom in my chest, a cruel fist clenching around my lungs.
My breath hitched. The air, suddenly thick as syrup, refused to enter.
I gasped, but the sound that escaped was a ragged, high-pitched wheeze.
Panic flared, hot and sharp. I swung my legs out of the hammock, trying to sit up, to force air into my starving lungs, but the attack was too swift, too strong.
The edges of my vision began to prickle with dark stars. I was suffocating.
My vision tunneled. The sounds of the jungle faded into a dull roar. In the dizzying haze of oxygen deprivation, a shadow detached itself from the deeper darkness of the doorway. Was I hallucinating?
Then, a presence was beside me. A small, warm hand pressed flat against my chest.
The effect was instantaneous and absolute.
It was a spreading coolness, like sinking into the deep, still water of a shaded pool on a burning day.
The fist inside me unclenched. The vise grip vanished.
Air—cool, clean, and miraculous—flooded my lungs in a deep, shuddering gasp.
I took another, then another, the ragged wheeze replaced by the simple, staggering sound of my breathing. The world rushed back into focus.
I looked down. Luzia was kneeling beside the hammock, her hand still resting over my heart. Her face, illuminated by the pale moonlight, was a mask of fierce concentration. She looked capable, as if she were performing a task she understood completely.
As my breathing evened out, her expression softened, the otherworldly light receding from her eyes.
She held my gaze for a single, unreadable moment.
Then, as silently as she had appeared, she withdrew her hand and slipped back into the shadows of the house.
The soft click of the door closing was the only proof she had been there at all.
I sat frozen, my hand rising to cover the spot on my chest where hers had been. It was still warm. I took another deep, effortless breath. The asthma was gone. Not just subsided, but completely and utterly gone.
My scientific mind was in tatters. Was it a dream? A hallucination brought on by lack of oxygen? Hypoxia can induce vivid ones. But a hallucination cannot leave behind lungs that feel cleaner and stronger than they have in years. A dream cannot perform a physiological miracle.
The air filling my lungs was real. The calmness in my chest was real.
She was real. The truth of it settled in my soul and rewrote my entire existence. I could only truly breathe when she was near.
I swung gently in the hammock, the simple motion doing nothing to soothe the vertigo of my shattered worldview. All I could think of was Luzia. Not just the image of her asleep, but the impossible reality of her. The girl with moonlight in her eyes and a river’s calm in her touch.
I sighed, but it was different now—not of frustration but of a profound, aching wonder.
A wave of longing washed over me, a yearning so intense it was a physical ache.
It was no longer a simple wish for her company.
It was the desperate, elemental need of a man who has just been shown that the one person who makes his world incomprehensible is also the only one who can make him breathe.
I wished she were here, beside me, the space between us filled not with darkness and uncertainty, but with the comforting warmth of that shared, impossible silence.