Onwuka woke to a symphony of tongues—each voice a different thread in the tapestry of suffering that draped these walls. Portuguese cut through the air like a trader's knife, while Yoruba flowed beneath it like blood, and Kikongo and Twi wove through the spaces between, carrying memories of home. The languages tangled and untangled, each syllable a reminder of what had been stolen.

The narrow bed beneath him was no longer the ship's hollow belly, yet his body remembered. Even now, days later, the ghostly rhythm of waves still rocked in his bones, and the taste of salt never quite left his mouth.

But then the room settled into focus—the dormitory, the wooden beams overhead, the scent of maize porridge wafting the air.

Here, men wore their histories like second skins. Some bore the raised patterns of their homelands, their tribal marks still defiant against the forced sameness of captivity. Others had scars that told of past lives, of knives that had sliced, of whips that had cracked. Each man carried his own grief, his own unspoken loss. And yet, they moved—rising, dressing, stepping into the day's toil as if yesterday had never happened.

Onwuka's joints creaked like old wood as he sat up. The blanket—thin as a whisper, rough as regret—slid away. Around him, men moved with the careful precision of those who had learned that every gesture carried weight. A few glanced at him, some with curiosity, others with indifference. He was still new, still unfamiliar. His presence had not yet been accepted, nor had it been rejected. In this place, survival depended on adaptation, on learning when to speak and when to hold one's tongue.

He had never known silence to be so heavy.

When the door creaked open, a woman entered, and the air shifted. Her headwrap, dyed the deep red-brown of sacred earth, crowned a face that held both mercy and steel. She moved like a mother who had buried children, like a warrior who had laid down her sword but never forgotten its weight. The men's spines straightened not from fear but recognition—here was power that understood its purpose.

The woman simply pressed a bowl of steaming porridge into his hands. The porridge inside swirled with memories—its thickness reminded him of his mother's hands shaping fufu, its scent carrying echoes of cooking fires at dusk. "Eat," she said, the word thick with an accent he recognized.

Onwuka's head snapped up. Through the fog of exhaustion, recognition struck. "You—"

"Igbo," she completed, her mouth curving into what might have been a smile or a scar. "Not much remains, but enough to remember."

"You have no idea—" His voice caught on the thorns of emotion. "To hear Igbo again, after so long in this desert of foreign tongues..."

Her eyes held shadows deep as wells, though her smile remained. "I understand," she said. "Welcome to Paraty." The town's name dropped from her lips like a sentence, like a prophecy.

He had not realized how thirsty he was for his own language, how desperate he had been to hear even fragments of home. Questions rose in his throat like birds taking wing: Which village? Which clan? How long? But she was already turning away, moving with the quiet confidence of someone who had learned how to endure.

Outside the dormitory, Paraty was already stirring. Through the narrow windows, he glimpsed it—the harbor where ships bobbed like terrible memories that refused to sink. The town itself was a clash of worlds—European men striding through streets in their stiff collars and cruel certainty, while African women moved like colors come alive, their wraps and headscarves defiant flags in the morning breeze. The cobblestone paths, slick from last night's rain, shimmered in the morning light.

These were the stories that had haunted his village nights—tales whispered around fires, of people who stepped into the forest one morning and became smoke on the wind. Now, he was inside one of those stories, living it, breathing it.

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They put him to work that day. The labor was no different from what he had known in his village—lifting, carrying, moving. His hands found comfort in the familiarity of effort, even as his surroundings remained foreign. He was assigned to the marketplace, where goods arrived from the ships, where merchants shouted over one another, where the scent of roasted fish mixed with the pungency of spices he did not recognize. 

Here, languages wove together in a chaotic tapestry. He heard his own tongue, though altered, reshaped by distance and time. He heard Yoruba, spoken in quick, decisive bursts. Portuguese, thick and unwieldy, slithered around him, foreign yet inescapable. He struggled to understand, to make sense of the words tossed his way, but comprehension remained just beyond reach. 

And then there was the sea. 

Its presence was inescapable. The breeze carried its breath, the salt clung to his skin, the waves hummed their endless song. It was no longer the sea that had tried to claim him, no longer the wild beast that had dragged him into its depths. But it was still powerful, still unknowable. 

He caught himself staring at it too often. 

That night brought no peace. The dormitory filled with the symphony of exhausted men—bodies turning like leaves in the wind, breaths heavy with the weight of days endured. He lay still as death, counting the wooden beams above until they blurred into meaningless shapes, while the distant waves provided percussion to his restless thoughts.

And then the dreams came. 

They were not kind. 

They dragged him back to that moment—the ocean claiming him, water pressing against his skin like countless cold hands. But in this version, there was no salvation, no mysterious rescue from sirens. Only darkness bloomed, infinite and consuming, a flower of the deep opening its petals to welcome him home. His scream birthed bubbles that rose like prayers toward a surface he would never see again, while salt burned through him like liquid fire, baptizing him in brine and terror.

He jerked awake, heart thundering against his ribs like a trapped animal. Around him, the dormitory remained a cave of shadows, each man isolated in his own private darkness. Some whimpered in their sleep, others lay silent as corpses—all of them adrift in their own oceans of memory and fear.

Sleep became a distant shore he dared not swim toward. In the darkness, he turned his head, watching shadows dance across wooden beams until the walls seemed to close in like the sides of that cursed ship. The night air beckoned, promising temporary refuge from his demons.

Outside, uncertainty wrapped around him like a second skin. The dormitory rules were still a mystery, their boundaries as unclear as the line between sea and sky at dusk. Each step felt like a transgression, each shadow a potential witness to his wandering.

The lumber shed emerged from the darkness like a secret, its weathered walls holding stories he couldn't yet read. Then it hit him—that sharp, acrid scent that had haunted his journey across the ocean. The same smoke that had curled from the lips of men who traded in flesh and suffering, who turned people into cargo. The tobacco smell triggered memories he'd rather forget.

"Vagar longe do dormitório à noite é proibido," a voice cut through his thoughts, feminine yet carrying the weight of authority.

When he peered into the darkness, she emerged like a story come to life. She moved with the confident stride of a man, but her beauty was undeniable—a contradiction wrapped in female garments. Her skin told its own tale, a canvas where Europe and Africa had fought to a draw, creating something entirely new. Her hair defied containment, curls escaping their bonds like rebels staging a quiet uprising.

Her silence demanded response, and when none came, she studied him with the calculating gaze of a merchant assessing goods. The Portuguese rolled off her tongue first, then Twi, English, Yoruba, each language a key trying to unlock him. At "Igbo," his eager nod drew a scoff that carried both amusement and derision.

"So, you're Igbo," she said in his tongue, the words familiar yet strange in her mouth.

"How do you speak so many tongues?" Wonder colored his voice.

"Wandering outside the dormitory at late hours is prohibited." She wielded the words like a shield.

"But, aren't you outside?" The question escaped before wisdom could catch it.

She turned to face him fully then, shoulders squared, spine rigid with unspoken history. The flickering light from the lanterns caught the hard lines of her face, the set of her mouth, the glint in her eye. "Do we look the same?" she asked. A challenge, a warning, a truth too bitter to swallow.

Onwuka couldn't help but smile, memory stirring like a distant drum. She reminded him of Akirika, the warrior princess whose legend had been woven into the fabric of his childhood. Akirika, who had defied the expectations of her gender, who had led armies and commanded respect. In his village, they would tell her story during the festival of masks, when the boundaries between what was and what could be grew thin as morning mist.

But this woman was no legend—she was flesh and blood, tobacco smoke and defiance, standing before him in a lumber shed at the edge of a world he was still learning to navigate. She was something new, yet somehow familiar, like a word from his mother tongue spoken with a foreign accent.

"I need to learn the language of this place," he said, the words tumbling out before he could catch them. "Paraty language. Will you teach me?"

Her laugh was sharp. "You think I have nothing better to do than teach lost boys how to speak?" She took another long draw from her tobacco stick, the ember glowing like a defiant eye in the darkness. "Delusional."

"Please." The word felt strange on his tongue—he had never begged before, not even when they had chained him. "I cannot survive here without understanding their words."

She studied him then, really studied him, like a hunter assessing whether prey was worth the chase. The smoke curled around her face, making her look like one of the spirit masks from his childhood festivals. "Nothing comes free in Paraty," she said finally, each word measured and weighted. "Five mil réis per lesson."

The foreign currency meant nothing to him—might as well have been counting grains of sand. But he recognized the glint in her eye, the same look traders wore when trying to convince his mother that poor quality yams were worth premium cowries.

"You think because I'm new, I'm foolish?" His voice carried the edge of pride he'd managed to keep, even through the ships and chains. "I may not know your money, but I know when someone tries to cheat me."

She didn't flinch, didn't even blink. "Three mil réis then. That's my final offer." The tobacco stick traced red patterns in the dark as she gestured. "Take it, or I walk away. Maybe mention to the guards how some new arrival wanders at night like a lost spirit."

The threat hung between them, heavy as storm clouds. He thought of the sea in his dreams, of drowning in words he couldn't understand. "Fine. Three mil réis."

"Tomorrow. After the evening meal. By the old mango tree behind the kitchen." She spoke quickly now, business concluded. "Don't be late."

He turned to leave but paused. "You know, I could have threatened to report you too. For being out here, smoking their tobacco, wearing their clothes but walking like a man." The words were soft, almost gentle. "But that's not what friends do."

Her scoff echoed in the darkness. "Friends?" The word dripped with disdain. "We're not friends, lost boy. We're just two people making a deal in the dark." She flicked the tobacco stick away, its ember arcing through the night like a falling star. "Don't mistake business for friendship. That's your first lesson in Paraty, and this one's free."

He watched her stride away, her footsteps sure and steady as any man's, until the darkness swallowed her whole. The scent of tobacco lingered, mixing with the ever-present salt air, creating something new—like everything in this place, like he himself would have to become.

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