Chapter 4: Awakening

Silence.

In the darkness, the boy dreamed of his past: a seven-year-old child, naked and crying on a beach, discovered by a woman who took him in and raised him as her own, calling him Rodrigo.

Rodrigo grew, but the children feared him for his great strength, so his mother often reminded him that he must learn to control it.

Suddenly, these memories slipped away, and Rodrigo tried to reach for them, but they vanished forever…

And again, silence.

From afar, he heard a woman’s voice, different from the girl he had met in the cathedral.

“I don’t know, Tania. I think he’s rather handsome,”

the mysterious feminine voice said.

“Is that all you notice, Ana?”

replied the familiar voice of the woman Rodrigo had encountered.

“Hey, look, I think he’s waking up.”

Rodrigo slowly opened his eyes and, through a blur, saw a pair of striking blue eyes. As his vision cleared, he beheld a beautiful girl with long black hair, pale skin, and a face sprinkled with freckles. She smiled as she gazed down at him.

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“Hello there. Welcome back to the land of the living, boy. How are you feeling?”

the blue-eyed girl asked, while Rodrigo lay on a bed, still regaining his sight.

Startled, he quickly reached for his right arm—only to discover it was still there, though he was certain he had lost it.

“My arm, my arm—it’s still here?”

he exclaimed.

“Relax, you’re fine. Nothing happened to you,”

the black-haired girl reassured him in a soothing voice.

“Don’t get too attached to him, Ana. Remember, he’s our prisoner,”

said the other girl Rodrigo had already seen before.

Now Rodrigo could observe the mysterious woman more clearly, for she no longer wore her veil. She had tanned skin, fiery red curls, a well-shaped figure, and ample bosom. Tattooed symbols—like those often worn by Berber women—adorned her face, making Rodrigo assume she was native to the great Sahara Desert.

The redhead approached him.

“All right,” she said. “If you tell me your name and who you work for, we won’t harm you. Deal?”

Rodrigo lowered his head and replied:

“My name is Rodrigo, and I don’t work for anyone. Almanzor invaded my city while I was traveling with a merchant caravan, and he killed my mother. I only wanted revenge.”

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Quickly, he raised his eyes and asked:

“You… you don’t work for him, do you?”

The redhead grew impatient.

“Stop playing dumb, boy,”

she snapped.

But Rodrigo’s desperate expression didn’t change.

“It’s the truth, I swear!”

he cried, trying to sit up.

The black-haired girl studied his eyes, then turned to the redhead.

“As strange as it sounds, I think he’s telling the truth. He may be a nephil who never knew his real parents,”

she suggested, while the fiery-haired woman looked upward in doubt.

“Are there still gods in these times who sleep with mortals? You must be joking,”

the Berber woman replied.

Rodrigo stared at the two women.

The black-haired, blue-eyed girl had skin even paler than the blondest people he had ever seen among the Franks, and her face and shoulders were sprinkled with freckles. Though her hair appeared black, in the sunlight it shimmered with shades of violet and pink at the tips. She wore a long green dress with a kind of corset at the waist. Around her neck hung a necklace with a greenish stone carved with a spiral symbol—unlike anything Rodrigo had ever seen.

The Berber girl, by contrast, wore a blue blouse and grayish zaragüelles. Around her neck gleamed a finely wrought golden necklace, not Arab or Spanish in design. It resembled the ancient relics sometimes unearthed in the south of Spain, said to belong to the legendary “Punic” people. Her lips were painted black, her amber eyes burned with fury, and her beauty was wild, intimidating.

The blue-eyed girl looked back at Rodrigo.

“That mother of yours—was she really your mother? Have you ever met your father?”

“No,” Rodrigo replied sadly, staring at his lap.

“She found me as a child on a beach and adopted me. I never knew my real parents, and I have no memory of what happened before then. She was the only family I had.”

The freckled girl smiled gently and turned to the redhead.

“I detect no lies. It isn’t common nowadays for gods to have children with humans, but it’s possible. He could have been conceived that way, then survived a shipwreck. Don’t worry, Tania, I don’t think this happened within your jurisdiction.”

“Fine, fine—I believe you,”

the Berber girl said at last.

“Still, with the rage in your eyes, I doubted you were any kind of divine being.”

Rodrigo felt as though they were speaking in riddles, his head spinning.

“Excuse me, I don’t understand what you’re saying. Are you witches?”

he asked.

The black-haired girl laughed softly.

“No,” she replied with a smile.

“But I suppose we owe you some truth. My name is Ana, and that hot-tempered salamander-haired over there is Tania.”

“Salamander-haired? Shut up, crow-face,”

snapped the redhead.

The two women bickered, but Rodrigo interrupted them.

“Then what are you? And… what am I? Do you know?”

“Since I was little, I knew I was stronger and faster than everyone else. My mother made me hide it, but I always knew I was different,”

he admitted.

Ana smiled and told him:

“Of course. We are goddesses.”

Rodrigo frowned in disbelief.