I drew a new diagram, a hypothetical molecule. “If we could find the right binding agent, something naturally occurring, something acidic from another plant perhaps… we could create a permanent bond. We could stabilize the compound ourselves, right after we pick it. No ritual needed. It would give us the one thing we don’t have… time.”
I had spent my life in labs and lecture halls, explaining concepts to students who stared back with blank faces. But Luzia saw it. She leaned forward, her finger tracing the hexagonal shape I had drawn. “A key,” she whispered, a soft breath ofdiscovery. “The ritual is a key that fits the lock for a little while. You want to build a new key. One that never comes out.”
“Exactly.” I exhaled, a wave of relief washing over me. She understood and saw the world through my eyes.
“Now let me show you my world,” she said. “Your science will not help you hear a jaguar in the reeds. It will not tell you where the ground is solid.”
She pulled me to my feet and led me to the center of the small room. Her touch was warm, her grip firm.
“Close your eyes,” she commanded. I obeyed. The darkness behind my eyelids was immediately filled with calculations, with the image of Zé’s map, with the face of Silva.
“No,” she said, as if she could hear the frantic noise of my thoughts. “Your mind is too loud. You are always thinking, analyzing. The jungle does not speak to the mind. It speaks to the blood. To the skin.”
Her hands found my shoulders, turning me to face the wall that overlooked the river. “Listen,” she whispered, her voice close to my ear. “But not with your ears. Feel the air. What is it doing?”
I focused, trying to push past the analytical part of my brain. The air was heavy. “It’s humid,” I stated.
“No,” she corrected, her voice patient. “That is a word. What is thefeeling? It has weight. It presses on you. It carries the scent of mud and wet leaves. Feel its pressure on your face.”
She took my hand and pressed my palm flat against the wooden wall. The planks were rough, warm from the morning sun. “Now, listen through your hand,” she instructed. “Forget it is wood. Forget it is a wall. Feel deeper.”
I closed my eyes again, concentrating on the texture beneath my palm. For a long moment, there was nothing but wood. My mind screamed that this was foolish. But I trusted her. I pushed the thoughts away, focusing only on the sensation. And then, Ifelt it. A vibration. Incredibly faint, a low, deep thrum that was so constant I hadn’t even registered it. It was the river. The massive, slow-moving power of the water, vibrating through the pilings, through the floor, up the wall, and into my hand.
I felt something else too. A presence beyond what I was used to sensing. It was like a sense of immense, slow life—the trees, their roots drinking from the river, their leaves breathing in the heavy air. The entire jungle was a single, interconnected organism, and for the first time, I could feel its pulse.
I opened my eyes and looked at her. “Wow.”
She gave me a small, knowing smile. “That is my magic,” she said. “It is the art of listening. In the swamp, you will need to listen with your whole body, or it will swallow you whole.”
Her lesson was a vital gift, but it didn’t change the deadline hanging over us. This quest for Zé was a dangerous detour, but it was also the only path forward. It was the only way to buy the time we desperately needed to protect her, reclaim what was stolen, and find a miracle for her sister.
A heavy silence settled between us, filled by the weight of Zé’s deadline. There was no more time to plan, only to act. I stood, my joints protesting, and gave her a determined nod. “Then let’s go listen.”
CHAPTER 21
Caio
I followed Luzia out of the suffocating confines of the room and toward the docks. The air was already thick with humidity, a promise of the trial to come. Just as Zé had said, a weathered machete and a long, sturdy pole were leaning against a post. Luzia took the pole, testing its weight with a practiced ease.
I picked up the machete. The worn handle felt heavy and clumsy in my hand. Without a word, she turned from the relative safety of the ramshackle village. I stood beside her and faced the wall of green.
The swamp swallowed us within ten steps. The air grew thick, a suffocating blanket of moisture and the smell of decay mingling with the sweet perfume of unseen flowers. My boots sank into mud that pulled with a greedy, sucking sound. Luzia moved ahead of me, a phantom in green and brown. She didn’t walk so much as flow through the terrain, her feet finding solid ground I couldn’t see, the pole testing the murky water beforeevery step. I was in awe. She was a living extension of this place, while I was an intruder, loud and clumsy.
“Careful,” she cautioned, her hand shooting out to stop me. I froze, my heart hammering. She pointed with the end of her pole. Coiled on a low-hanging branch was a snake, its scales a brilliant, jeweled green. It was beautiful, and my blood ran cold. I wouldn’t have seen it in a thousand years. My contribution felt pathetic in comparison.
“The ironwoods,” I said, my voice low, pointing past her shoulder. “They prefer acidic water. See the reddish tint to the soil on that bank? And the way the ferns are stunted? That’s our best bet.”
Luzia nodded, accepting my piece of the puzzle without question, and adjusted her course.
The sky, a sliver of gray seen through the dense canopy, opened up without warning. The rain was not a drizzle but a vertical river. A solid, roaring wall of water that blinded us and turned the ground to soup. “This way!” Luzia yelled over the din, pulling me by the arm toward a dark slash in a rock face. We scrambled under a wide overhang, water cascading in a curtain just feet from us. Trapped, we could only watch the deluge, the violence of it shaking the very air.
The roar of the storm created a strange pocket of intimacy. Luzia looked at me, her eyes dark in the gloom. My gaze drifted from her face to the waterfall in front of us. I watched how the torrent carved new paths through the mud, but my mind was no longer just analyzing. It was listening, the way she’d taught me. I was trying to feel the rhythm of the water.
Luzia suddenly went still, her head cocked. “The river,” she whispered, her eyes unfocused. “Its song is wrong here. It’s being pulled.”
Her words slammed into my observation—a system. My mind ignited. “Silva’s camp,” I said, turning to her, the ideastriking me with the force of the storm. “It’s on the river. They need fresh water. They’re not hauling it. They have a system.” I grabbed her hand, my palm still tingling with the memory of the river’s pulse. “An intake pipe, pulling water from the river. That’s what you’re feeling! A false current. It’s a vulnerability. A vein leading straight into the heart of the compound.”
Her eyes widened, the understanding dawning. It wasn’t my idea or hers. It was ours, forged between her magic and my science.It was no longer a frontal assault. It was infiltration.
