The dry season came late.
And with it, sickness.
It began with fevered dreams. Children waking in the night screaming. Elders muttering names of the dead. The shamans burned herbs, pounded roots, sang long into the night, but the air itself seemed to carry heat that no chant could dispel.
Within a moon's turn, three had died. Others lay still with eyes half-closed, breath shallow.
Ma'kua tightened the food stores. Warriors doubled the watch. Nothing strange entered the village — but something had stirred. Birds avoided the central grove. A line of ants broke formation one morning, crawling in slow circles. A dog howled at the sky and then lay down and did not rise again.
Arã, untouched by the fever, sat beside Iwame as she tended the sick. He ground leaves, stirred clay into poultices, soaked cloth in river water.
But more than that — he listened.
He watched how Iwame tilted the bowls just so to catch the right light, how she checked the tongues of the fevered, how she murmured old blessings while working.
He listened to the silences between coughs, the tremble in a child's hand, the shift of breath when someone passed from the edge into death.
Takarê was among the ill. His voice faded to a rasp, but his eyes remained sharp. One evening, as Arã replaced the ash bowl beside his mat, the old shaman beckoned him closer.
"Sit," he whispered. "The fire remembers."
Arã obeyed.
Takarê lifted a pinch of sacred root and cast it into the coals. Smoke rose, blue and sweet. It curled like serpent trails, then split into three ribbons that danced over the flame.
"Close your eyes," the old man said. "And listen."
Arã's heart beat louder. He smelled bark and rain. He heard voices — soft and far away, like echoes in water. Not words. Not yet.
And so Arã listened — not with ears, but with memory.
Whispers moved within the smoke.
The smoke turned darker, thick with memory. Arã did not move. His breath slowed. His body remained beside Takarê, but his spirit... it drifted.
He saw flashes — not visions, not dreams, but fragments:
— a circle of masked figures dancing around a flame.
— a tree with roots shaped like reaching hands.
— a child with eyes closed and mouth open, exhaling stars.
The whispers grew clearer. Not voices, but stories pressed into the air, unfolding without sound. They came with feelings — a mother's loss, a warrior's doubt, the sorrow of rain falling on empty huts.
Arã felt all of it. The ache of old wounds, the pride of long-forgotten chiefs, the terror of spirits unnamed.
Then came Takarê's voice again, from far away and close all at once.
"You hear it, don't you?"
"Yes," Arã said.
"They only speak to those who walk between breath and silence. Few stay long in that place. Fewer still return."
"I want to understand."
"You already do. But words will fail you."
The smoke twisted. A shape appeared — brief, fragile. It looked like a bird with antlers, wings unfolding in a spiral of ash. Then it became a storm, then a boy, then fire itself.
Arã reached toward it.
He felt warmth in his fingertips — not heat, but knowing.
The smoke scattered.
He gasped, blinking, the world returning in pieces. The coals glowed low. Takarê's hand rested weakly beside him.
"Every fire ends," the old man said. "But some take their stories with them. Others leave them behind."
He coughed, then added, "You must choose which you will be."
Outside, a hawk screamed.
The fire cracked.
And the smoke rose thinner now — not gone, but waiting."
Takarê slept after the trance, his breath shallow but steady. Arã remained by the embers long after others had gone. He watched the smoke fade, then stirred the coals with a twig until all that remained was a red glow and soft heat.
In the silence, a single word echoed in his thoughts:
"Remember."
At dawn, Iwame found him seated beside the ashes.
"You should sleep," she whispered.
"I have," he said. "In fire."
Later that day, the fever began to break.
Not for all — but for enough. The children opened their eyes again. The elders stopped whispering names. The dogs barked again.
But the air still held something — a silence where noise once dwelled, a breath held too long. The village moved slowly, as if waking from a shared dream that had not yet faded.
Takarê did not wake for two more days, but when he did, he asked only for water — and for Arã.
When they spoke again, the old shaman offered no riddles.
"You walked into the smoke and found its bones," he said. "One day, the people will burn for truth, and you must be the one who does not flinch."
"I will remember," Arã said.
Takarê gripped his wrist briefly, then let go. "When you light your own fire, feed it with memory. Not with fear."
In the days that followed, Arã returned to the fire pit each night, alone. Not to speak to spirits. Not to see signs.
But to practice listening.
He arranged stones around the embers — four, then five, then six — trying to trace the spirals he had seen in the smoke. He whispered stories to the coals, but only those he remembered, not those he imagined.
And every so often, when the coals cracked, he smiled.
As if answering someone only he could hear.