When I finally saw the camp, something struck me immediately. Silence. Not the one, peaceful, the end of the afternoon, not the night without wind. A heavy, sick silence, as if everyone held their breath.
I've been walking for hours. My clothes were dirty. My hair tangled. I was hungry, cold and ashamed. I didn't know what Rodrigo said. I didn't even know if he was home.
I didn't know what was real anymore, so I kept moving. Nobody scolded me, nobody asked me where I had been. The eyes stood on me and turned away immediately, as if something else occupied all thoughts.
I finally found Mom near the central fire. Ella stood by his side. Both seemed to have aged for several years in a few days.
Before I could even talk, Mom shook me in her arms and started crying.
Again.
I think that's when I got it. Someone else had disappeared, but this time, just instinctually, I knew the names.
- Where's Maeva?
"Where is my sister?"
The silence that followed gave me the answer. I looked at Ella, then Mom, then the others. No one dares to cross my eyes.
- Where's Maeva?
My voice trembled.
Mom ends up answering.
- She's gone.
- Part where?
She lowered her eyes.
And it was Ella who spoke.
- She followed Kamino's path.
I felt my blood freezing.
Rodrigo, Maeva... Both of you. Disappeared. Like my father, like Maeva's father, like all the others.
For the first time in my life, I refused to remain silent.
- What does that mean?
No one answered.
- What is Kamino?
Always silence.
Then I repeated the question, over and over, until I screamed. And that night, for the first time in centuries, a rule was broken. I was not fourteen years old. I wasn't supposed to know. Yet Ella decided to reveal the secret to me.
I remember she took me away from the camp. We sat on a rocky promontory that dominated the valley.
In the distance, the lights of Granada shone in the night. The Alhambra looked like a red ghost on the hill. Ella remained silent for several minutes, then she spoke. She told me the story of our people.
The real story.
According to the elders, our ancestors were already living in the area when Granada was still a Muslim kingdom. They were people of the earth, descendants of the ancient Iberian peoples who had lived through the centuries by mixing themselves with the inhabitants of every era.
They had known kings, wars, invasions, famines and epidemics, but they remained. Then came the year 1512, the year of the foundation of the camp.
The year Kamino appeared.
Ella didn't know whether it was a man, a spirit, a curse or simply a story invented to explain the inexplicable. What she knew was that, since then, disappearances had begun.
Always the same. Always according to the same pattern. Often men. Sometimes women, who disappeared without a trace, as called by something, as attracted elsewhere.
- And no one ever found them?
Ella shook her head slowly.
- Never.
I immediately thought of Rodrigo, Maeva, my father, all those who were absent, and then I thought of the silhouette, the smile seen by the river. And for the first time, I told everything.
The night of the fire, the shadow on the other bank, the smile. The sudden disappearance of Maeva, Rodrigo's voice.
His actions towards me.
Everything.
Ella listened to me without interrupting. When she finally spoke, her voice seemed even older than usual.
"Then Kamino saw you.
I'll never forget that sentence. Never. For it was pronounced not as a hypothesis but as a certainty.
The months that followed were the strangest in my life. The camp continued to live, the children played, the adults worked, the guitars always resonated in the evening.
But something had changed.
Fear had become visible. Even the elders could no longer hide it, as if the disappearance of Maeva and Rodrigo had awakened an old wound, as if everyone had suddenly understood that our story was nearing its end.
In the meantime, Spain was also changing. More and more families left Andalusia. Every year, neighbours went to Barcelona.
To Madrid.
To France.
To Germany.
To Belgium.
The younger ones dreamed, and the older ones watched their children leave. Manuel was one of those who often talked about Paris. He had cousins there. According to him, we could find work there, a house, a new life.
I listened to him without really hearing him. I was just thinking about Maeva, Rodrigo and Kamino. All the time, day and night, to the point of making me sick.
Then came the rains. At first, no one was worried. Winter was part of life, rain too. But that year something was different, as if the showers seemed never to stop.
The hills were becoming unstable. The Darro grew more and more daily. I remember the ancients who watched the sky and the conversations in a low voice, the anxiety that gradually gained everyone.
Then, suddenly, the mountain gave way. Whole slices of land slipped. I saw the caves of my childhood collapse before my eyes and the ways that led to it disappear. It was as if the earth itself seemed to want to swallow up our world.
The authorities spoke of a natural disaster. The newspapers spoke of floods. But, in the camp, no one was talking about weather.
The elders looked at the destroyed hills, then they looked at the river and finally they looked at the void, as if they were still waiting for someone.
I remember Ella in particular. She wasn't crying. She didn't complain. She simply observed the ruins for a long time, then she murmured:
"This time it's over.
I didn't ask her what she meant.
Because I already knew. For the first time since 1512, our people no longer had a home. And, for the first time since 1512, even the elders seemed to have lost the desire to rebuild.
The camp was dead.
And, somewhere deep inside me, I couldn't help but think that Kamino had finally gotten what he was looking for from the beginning.