BACHUÉ:

My mother used to beg in town. I was four years old, so I still didn't understand the concept of poverty. I didn't even understand the concept of money. I thought it was normal to beg strangers to give you a coin. Years later I would see it very clearly: we were very poor. Miserable.

I remember that a man once showed my mother a gold coin, while she and I were asking for money on a street full of dust and mud.

"Do you want this coin?" Asked the man.

My mother nodded, not quite sure what that stranger wanted from her in exchange for that gold coin.

"Kiss my feet," he requested.

I was startled. I was very little, I didn't understand many things in the world, but I could feel that what he was asking was an insult to my mother.

She didn't know what to do, I noticed it in her eyes.

"Kiss my feet," the man repeated.

I don't know if it was hunger or desperation, but she knelt down and kissed both of the man's feet.

"HA, HA, HA, HA, HA," he burst out laughing. Then he tossed the coin into the mud. "Go find it," he said before leaving.

My mother crawled over to pick up the coin and clean the mud on it.

I looked at her sadly and she couldn't see me in the eyes for days.

And then, I started dreaming. That is free. Imagine a better life.

You know what? Let's do that exercise. Imagine you have a dream. One that you have dreamed of every day of your life since you became aware of poverty. Think that if you fulfill that dream, you will not have the right to ask the Saints for anything else, because you would already have everything.

In my case, that dream was to be THE QUEEN of Alba Terra.

Now, imagine that you live in a world where, if you are born with certain skin color, in poverty, under a certain house name and if you love the "wrong person", you will NEVER be able to fulfill that dream. It seems unfair, doesn't it? I did not choose to be born dark-skin, I did not choose my family and who to love, but even so, I will be punished my whole life for that.

Let's go by parts: The light-skins came to our lands two hundred years ago. They were militarily superior and in a few years, they conquered the entire continent. The dark-skinned natives were cut off from the society that the foreigners established. Suddenly, the dark skins were unwanted in our land. We were ridiculed, hated, condemned to poverty, and some of us were enslaved.

Our gods were forcibly replaced by The Supreme and all his children The Saints. Our monuments were destroyed and our temples burned to ashes. They erased our history. Our identity.

We were free, and then, we are convinced that we need the light-skins.

After realizing what it meant to be poor, I realized that I was the victim of another injustice. The one of not loving freely. what do I mean? Well ... I fell in love with Delilah, my best female friend. I don't know how or when, it just happened.

One day, without realizing it, I began to think about her before sleeping, to tell everyone about her. I missed her when she was not by my side, and when I saw her, I felt a warmth in my chest and a tickle in my belly.

At first, I struggled with those feelings. I forced myself not to see her, or to talk about her. In this world dominated by light-skins, that love is considered an abomination. However, I couldn't contain it. Eventually, I gave up.

Then I found out that she felt the same way about me. When she was twelve years old, she stole a kiss from me.

I was never so happy and miserable at the same time. Why? Our romance would NEVER be possible in the eyes of the people.

For a while, we lived our fantasy. She wrote me love letters, but I couldn't read them, because I couldn't read at that time, so we agreed to exchange drawings of the two of us under the moonlight, by the sea, or of hearts with clasped hands, which we imagined were ours. Or of the two sleeping next to each other under the shade of the tall trees in the forest, surrounded by plants, flowers, and butterflies. Those images spoke for me. I wanted to keep those drawings, but I destroyed them so that there would be no evidence.

When our adolescence arrived, whenever we had time, we walked along the riverbank near our town. Holding hands, with the sole company of the wind.

"I love your red eyes, Bachué," she would tell me.

"And I love everything about you, Delilah," I replied with a wide smile.

And it was true. I loved her toned body, her strong arms, her cute face, her thin lips, her big eyes, and her short copper hair.

It has always bothered me to be looked directly into my eyes. I feel my soul being searched and I tend to look away or lower my head. But not with Delilah. I lost count of how many times we were silent just staring at each other.

One day while we were in the forest, sitting and hugging in the bank of a stream, I saw how my red eyes were reflected in hers.

"Promise me that you will never love anyone else?" She asked me.

I patted her face and her short copper hair.

"I promise you," I replied.

Although I knew it was a promise that I could not keep. We were already seventeen years old, so soon she and I would have to marry some suitor and form families. Fulfill our duties as daughters, wives, mothers.

I remember we once had a conversation about it. We were alone, on the top of a hill, watching the stars when we had it.

"Why do poor people have children?" She asked me.

"I don't know," I replied. "I guess they don't want to feel alone."

"How irresponsible. If they don't have money to eat, they shouldn't bring a new creature into the world. How much have we suffered, Bachué? And not just because of hunger, which is bad enough, but because of this shitty unfair world..."

"Unfair because we can't be together?" I dared to ask.

She nodded.

Then she knelt before me and took my hand in hers.

"What are you doing, Delilah?" I asked.

"Bachué, marry me."

I jerked her hand away.

"You are crazy!" I shouted.

"Crazy about you, yes."

"You know it is impossible. We would be executed as abominations. "

"Don't use that word ..."

"Abomination?"

"Yes. I can't stand it. "

"You know that's what they call us," I reminded her.

"Why do we have to follow other people's rules? Why can't we choose our destiny? Let's do what the heart asks of us! No permission from anyone! What does it matter what the King says? Let's be a couple before the Saints! "

I shook my head, but wanted to shout "Yes, yes, yes, and thousand times yes!". I wanted to hug her, kiss her and never let go of her again. But I didn't. I got up and before leaving I told her: "This story of the two of us will be beautiful while it lasts."

What a pain to say that to her. And what a great pain to see how her heart broke.

And to make matters worse, since I was little I can see… things… or rather people. People who shouldn't be there. Because they're supposed to be dead. And the dead don't walk, or talk, right? Or so it is supposed.

In Terra Alba having magical powers can lead you to the stake. Magic is forbidden among dark skins like me. Only the nobles are allowed, thanks to the magique, magical artifacts given with the permission of the King. How do my powers work? Do not worry. I'll tell you more about my abilities later.

The Crown takes the prohibition of magic among dark skins so seriously that they are capable of killing babies to prevent any of us from developing powers.

Just like it happened with Michua, my older brother, whom I never met. He was kidnapped when he was two years old, in the so-called "spring massacre." When the soldiers of the Dukes of Terra Alba took hundreds of children who were shown to have magical powers.

One day, when he was with my parents in the market of the capital of the South, my mother was filled with terror when she discovered my brother playing with some fruits that floated above his head. He was not aware, but he was being watched by hundreds of people, witnesses of a baby manipulating fruits with his mind.

Within minutes the guards of the city arrived and took him away. They tell me that Michua cried a lot and my mother cried even more. She crawled, begged to be taken away instead of Michua, but my brother never came back. We can only assume what they did to him.

By then my mother was pregnant with me. They say that it was a miracle of the Saint of Fertility that I was born alive and healthy because the stress and anguish to which my mother was subjected during pregnancy could affect my health.

When I was born my parents were concerned about my eyes. They were crimson. That is not a good sign among dark-skinned people. We are a very superstitious people, and legend has it that the last empress of our empire, before being invaded by the light-skins, had red eyes like me.

It is said that she freaked out by voices talking to her. The voices of the dead, and that she danced with ghosts in the night. Madness consumed her so much that she could not lead our people to defend ourselves against the invaders.

I'll tell you something, so you know how seriously some people take this superstition. My family is not originally from the town of Barranca. My mother and biological father come from White Valley, on the border with the South and the Green Wall. They were forced to leave everything because the people of that town were too superstitious and considered that a red-eyed baby would bring them doom.

At night, strangers threw stones at our house. They left dead animals at the door, they wrote messages with blood on the walls like "Nuna, blasphemous witch" (Nuna is my mother's name). And once they even tried to burn our home with us inside. That was when my parents already knew that things had gone too far. Our Count did nothing to ensure our safety. "That is your business, dark-skins," he told us.

It was rumored that our family had been cursed. Not long ago my brother had been taken away by the authorities precisely because he had manifested magical powers. So my parents decided to move to Barranca, where no one knew us and the dark-skinned population was smaller and less superstitious.

Thanks to the Saints my parents made that decision. Not only it did save our lives, but that led to me meeting the love of my life.

In our new home, my mother prayed to the Saint of Life that I would never show magical powers. And for years it was like that until one day I saw Mrs. Ita, a neighbor of the town who died at the age of ninety.

She was dead, but I could see her. As if she was in front of me. Live. Of flesh and blood. I never told anyone. Not even Delilah, the love of my life. If someone found out about my powers, I could be separated from her.

I prayed to the Saint of Life, even to the Supreme himself, to remove that "dirt". I was a living blasphemy. Our family was always very devoted and having powers was a grave affront to our faith.

Only the Supreme has the power over reality. That is why our people, the dark skins, were condemned. We practiced heretical arts and now we paid our penance under the yoke of our conquerors.

Or that was what I believed then.

Nidia, my little sister came to this world when I was four years old. Unlike me, she was born sickly. There was a night when she burned with a fever. They thought she wasn't going to survive, but she did. And since then she has been in good health.

For the next several months my parents were careful that she did not reveal any magical powers either. She didn't reveal them, which was a relief.

So, recapping, I can be burned alive for loving who I love and for having powers that I was born with. Things for which I am not guilty. Things that I did not choose.

Now, I am going to ask you to imagine one last thing: that everything that you thought was impossible, all that for which you had dreamed so much, that caused you so much illusion, could become possible.

How? You're about to find out. Bear with me, because it is coming ...