Sun Kissed

6.ii Encantado (EDITED)

6.ii Encantado

Sofi crept into the forest and silently trailed behind Amancio. He easily led her back to the overhang where she found him the day before. His guitar lay on top of the grassy mound.

Sofi darted ahead of Amancio and grabbed the instrument.

"Sofi? What the hell are you doing?"

    Sofi swung with all her might. The guitar collided against bone, and Amancio crumpled to his knees. After he slumped face down in the earth, she tossed the instrument aside and knelt beside him. Her pulse thundered in her ears as she searched his body for anything strange – anything nonhuman.

    But she didn't need to.

A nameless horror gripped Sofi as his hair bled back to red. She stood up. Her hands shook horribly. She paced the overhang, trying to get them to rest.

Paola.

The thought of Toni's sister in danger put knots in her stomach. She looked back at Amancio's unconscious body, willing his hair to go back to brown. But it wouldn't.

He was a liar. He was something that wasn't human. He was . . . he was . . .

The guilt and fear hurt so much, Sofi couldn't do anything but moan. Then she let go of everything she had been holding in. The release gave her the clarity she needed. She wiped the edges of her mouth with the back of her hand and left the overhang.

"Paola! Paola!" She half cried, half whispered as she wove her way through fronds and creepers. When she reached the sandy bank, she saw no one. Paola was gone.

    "Paola!"

Tears of panic crept up her throat. Sofi continued to call out Paola's name until her search was cut short. Something grabbed her by the arm and roughly spun her around. She whimpered at the sight of a wet Amancio crushing her wrists between his thumbs. He didn't bother to hide his hair color now. Everything about him burned – his hair like a torch. His eyes like the sun.

    "Why did you hit me?" He said, his expression dark.

    "Let go of me!" She screamed, her own anger overriding her fear. She kicked him where she knew it would hurt. Amancio grunted and let go. Sofi stumbled, caught herself, and tried to run.

    "No!"

    She choked on a scream as Amancio yanked her by the hair. Anger and perhaps even betrayal laced his voice as he dragged her towards the river.

    "Don't you want to see?"

    Sofi didn't care who found out where she was. She emptied her lungs. The sound of her own screams was ugly, surreal. Like a horror movie she was being forced to watch.

    "Don't you want to see what I really am?"

     Sofi managed to swallow some precious air before Amancio's hands took hold of her neck and shoved her under the water. She thrashed as hard as she could, but his firm grip kept her under.

When the weight of her tormentor subsided, Sofi thought it was some cruel trick. She resurfaced, kicking and thrashing, this time determined to survive.

    "Sofi, it's okay. It's me!"

    Sofi opened her eyes to see Toni standing over her, soaking wet and bleeding at the lip where she had hit him. Out of the corner of her eye, something slender and gray undulated through the water until it was out of sight. She recognized that flexible fluke as it crested the shallow waves.

    Toni's voice quavered. "Christ. That boy . . ."

    "Don't say it." Sofi wrapped her arms around Toni because she didn't know what else to do. If she didn't hold onto something, her legs would give out. Toni rocked her until her body stopped shaking so much.

    "I heard you from the road. I thought you were dying."

    Sofi closed her eyes against his chest. "I thought so too." There was no thick sweetness clinging to him. Nothing in his voice that made her question her own decisions. She wasn't sure if she liked it better this way. And that thought alone made her sick.

    "Sofi?" Toni whispered. "Where is my sister?"

Sofi took a step back. "I don't know."

She couldn't look him in the eye, but she saw in the reflection of the water how his whole body went rigid.

"What do you mean? She was with you. I left her with you."

The silence that followed was louder than the water dripping from their bodies and the slosh of the waves against their clothes.

Sofi didn't know where she found the nerve to speak. "I didn't know what I was doing. I'm sorry."

"No, you knew exactly what you were doing when you brought her here."

Sofi wrapped her arms around herself and headed for the shore. In a voice so unlike his own, Toni roared, "You don't get to walk away. Sofia, look at me!"

Sofi paused, forcing herself to meet his gaze. She could hardly bear what she saw there.

Her voice cracked. "I didn't think they were real. I –"

    Her words were interrupted by people shouting in Portuguese. Both of them looked at the shore to see several locals emerging from the road.

They stole glances at each other before they bounded towards the crowd. Together they pushed and squeezed their way through the herd of people until they reached the source of everyone's attention.

Through a corridor of ferns, not far from where they came from, Paola's clothes lay sprawled out at the shore like a corpse. The locals turned to Toni, spouting question after question in Portuguese. Toni ignored all of them and sank to his knees, bowing toward the earth. With trembling hands he reached for Paola's clothes.

Sofi watched him mangle the garments and moan Paola's name, interrogating the river as if it could somehow answer.

"Porquê? Minha irmã, porquê?"

The whispering around Sofi reached a feverish crescendo. In the mess of dialect, she locked onto a single word: Encantado.

In that moment, the consequences of her decision had manifested so unforgivingly before her eyes.

This is my fault, she thought, eyes unblinking. I did this.

All around her, locals whispered. Toni moaned and bowed over Paola's clothes while the great Amazon River pushed and pulled water back and forth. Back and forth.

Sofi did the only thing she could think of. The only thing she had done since arriving in Brazil. Since pai died. 

She ran.