Dawn broke over Paraty like a cracked egg, its yolk spilling golden light across waters that had swallowed too many stories. Onwuka stood among the dock laborers, his body a stranger to itself, each muscle crying out in the language of yesterday's toil. The sea-salt air carried more than just the sharp bite of fish entrails and tar—it carried memories of home, of marketplaces where his tongue had known the sweet pleasure of bargaining, where time flowed like palm wine rather than this relentless tide of labor.

Around him, the harbor breathed like a living creature. Ships towered overhead, their wooden flanks dark with age and sea-spray, their holds pregnant with cargo from distant shores. The sound of a dozen languages tangled in the air—Portuguese commands cutting sharp as whips, the familiar comfort of Yoruba floating like a distant song, Twi and a new language he realized to be Zulu, weaving through the cacophony like old friends at a stranger's feast.

His hands, still unfamiliar with the rough texture of labor, closed around the hemp rope tethering a barrel to the dock. A nearby merchant barked in Portuguese, the words slippery in his ears, but the meaning was clear enough.

Lift. Move. Do not falter.

He had spent his life as a hunter with his father but also among traders in his homeland, but this was different. There was no bargaining here, no soft wheedling in the marketplace, no leisurely pauses to exchange news under the shade of palm trees. Here, work was an unyielding current, dragging him along with the certainty of a river in flood.

When the foreman came with his leather purse singing its metallic song, Onwuka's palm burned with more than just rope burns. The two mil réis fell into his hand like seeds, cool and promising. His first earnings in this foreign land. A sliver of pride rose in his chest, but it was quickly tempered by the realization that he did not know what these coins could buy, how far they would take him. 

"You look at those coins as if they might bite you," a voice rasped behind him. 

Onwuka turned to find an old sailor watching him, his face like driftwood—weathered and lined, his eyes a sharp blue, startling against the deep brown of his skin. The old man chewed on something, his jaw working lazily. 

"You know the tongue of my fathers?" Onwuka asked in Igbo, the words feeling like overripe fruit in his mouth, sweet with disuse.

The sailor chuckled, the sound rattling in his chest. "I have worn many skins in many ports, young one. The tongue remembers, even when the mind would rather forget." He shifted his weight, bones creaking like ship's timber. "But you—you carry a question heavier than those coins."

Onwuka hesitated before nodding. "You've been to the waters off this coast?" 

"Aye, and many others." 

"Have you ever seen..." Onwuka's throat closed around the words he needed to speak. How to describe what he had seen beneath the waves? Those eyes that held centuries of knowing, that face that seemed carved from the ocean's memory itself?

The sailor's gaze sharpened. "Ah. You have seen the women in the water." 

The confirmation sent ice through Onwuka's veins, despite the day's lingering heat. "Tell me what you know." he managed, his voice barely more than a whisper.

The old man shifted, resting his weight against a stack of barrels. "Men tell stories to make sense of what they fear. Some say they are the unquiet dead, souls caught between water and air, between this world and the next. Others whisper of ancient guardians, keeping watch over secrets older than mankind's first ship. I have known men—good men, strong men—who heard their songs and walked into the embrace of the waves and never returned." He studied Onwuka for a long moment. "But I have never met one who lived to tell the tale." 

Onwuka swallowed hard, but before he could press further, a sudden commotion snapped their attention away. 

A young boy, no older than ten, darted between merchants, his small hands quick as a lizard's tongue. A loaf of bread vanished into his grasp, and before the merchant could react, the boy turned to flee—only to find his wrist caught in an iron grip. 

Onwuka's own. 

The boy twisted, his dark eyes wide, feral, but Onwuka did not let go. He had seen that look before—the wildness of hunger, the readiness to fight even when outmatched. The merchant, a heavyset man with the ruddy complexion of a foreigner, stormed forward, face already purpling with rage. 

"Ladrão! Thief!" 

Onwuka held up his free hand. "He is just a child."  he spoke in Igbo, momentarily forgetting that not everyone could understand.

The merchant sneered. "E o que você é então? Outro rato do porto?"

The accusation turned heads. Conversations faltered. Eyes, sharp with suspicion, locked onto Onwuka. The air changed, thickened, as the weight of his foreignness pressed upon him like an unseen hand. 

Before the situation could unravel further, the old sailor's laugh crashed through the tension like waves breaking on rocks. "This one?" He stepped forward, authority earned from decades at sea wrapped around him like an invisible captain's coat. "I know him. His hands may be new to rope, but they're clean of theft." The words carried power—the power of belonging, of knowing the harbor's unwritten laws.

The merchant's resistance crumbled like salt in water. "Next time," he growled, "the guards won't ask questions first."

The boy tore free, disappearing into the crowd like smoke into wind, but not before fixing Onwuka with eyes that held both fury and something deeper—perhaps recognition, perhaps gratitude.

The old sailor grinned. "In Paraty, boy, every kindness plants a seed, every slight leaves a scar. The trick is knowing which is which. Best learn fast." 

The words lingered as Onwuka made his way toward the old mango tree behind the kitchen, the weight of his earnings still a foreign pressure in his pocket. He found her waiting, her silhouette cut sharp against the dying light. A tobacco stick glowed at her lips, the embers flickering like fireflies. 

"You're late," she said, the words sharp as the knife he knew she kept beneath her skirts.

"I was working." The words came out thicker than he intended, heavy with exhaustion and the day's accumulated salt.

She exhaled a plume of smoke that caught the evening light like spider silk, her eyes regarding him through the haze with the detached interest of a cat watching a wounded bird. The cigarette dangled between fingers stained yellow at the tips, testament to a long-held habit. "Then let's not waste more time."

The Portuguese lesson was grueling. He did not yet know her name, but he knew the shape of her impatience—was a sharp instructor. Words flew from her lips like stones from a sling, and he caught them clumsily, turning them over in his mouth like unfamiliar fruit, testing their weight and texture.

"Fala devagar," she snapped when he mispronounced a phrase. Speak slowly. The words themselves were a reprimand, each syllable precisely carved.

And he tried, again and again, though his tongue felt thick and unwieldy as river clay.

Through the struggle, he watched her—the way she held herself like a queen in exile, the subtle tells of a life lived hard: the calluses on her fingers that belied her elegant bearing, the almost invisible scar at the corner of her mouth that deepened when she frowned.

"Do you always scowl when you teach?" he ventured, allowing a smile to warm his voice. The question was a small rebellion against her stern facade.

She tapped ash to the ground with deliberate grace, watching the grey flakes scatter in the evening breeze. "Do you always talk instead of listen?" But there was something there—a slight softening around her eyes, perhaps, or a ghost of amusement in the set of her mouth.

His laughter burst forth unexpectedly, rich and genuine, startling a nearby cat from its perch. The sound seemed to surprise them both, hanging in the air like an unauthorized joy.

But when he reached for her name, she withdrew like a tide, leaving only cold sand where warmth had begun to bloom. "Names are for friends, not business."

It wasn't until later, when the matron called her from across the courtyard—"Luísa!"—that the final thread wove itself into place.

But fate had no patience for such moments of discovery. A shout shattered the air—sharp, urgent, terrified. The cart seemed to move in slow motion, its wheel catching on a loose stone, its contents shifting like a wave about to break. The child—a girl with ribbons in her hair—stood frozen in its path, a doll clutched to her chest.

Onwuka's body moved before his mind could catch up, muscle and instinct taking command. He felt the rush of air, heard the scrape of his new boots on stone, sensed rather than saw Luísa's movement toward him. The impact came in stages: first the child's slight weight as he shoved her clear, then the crushing force of the cart, and finally the white-hot lance of pain as a rusty nail found purchase in his flesh.

Blood spread across the cobblestones like spilled wine, each drop a bright copper coin in the fading light. Luísa's face swam into view above him, her carefully maintained indifference cracking like a mask struck by lightning. In that moment, her expression held something he couldn't quite name—concern, perhaps, or recognition. Or maybe it was simply the pain making him see things that weren't there, as the edges of his vision began to darken like paper catching fire.

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