@mc5punk 25 February 2025 more from that month

Short story: Under the Ceiba Tree of Whispers

The market Perseverance boiled under the sun of Barranquilla. Valeria crossed the Guadua arch covered with purple vines, feeling the humidity sticking her shirt to her back. To his left, a man was shelling cobs with a dry, rhythmic noise; to his right, a girl was selling cocadas stacked like small lunar craters. The air was a thick soup of smells: ground chili pepper, fried fish and the sour sweetness of the overpowered guava.  Don Hernán was waiting for her at his craft stand, a shady shelter where seed mobiles hung that tinkled like fine rain. His hands, furrowed with ancient scars, were carving a tagua figure as he spoke:  —In the 80s, this market was only twelve mats in the mud. Violence ran us from the sidewalks, but here we planted new roots —his blue eyes, rare as moonstones, followed the flight of a red tanager. Each craft contains three stories: the one about the material, the one about the craftsman and the one that will be invented by whoever buys it.  Carmen appeared with a tray of juices. The scars on his neck moved to the rhythm of his voice, like sleeping snakes under the skin:  - My truck caught fire on the road to Santa Marta. Ten years saving for those stainless steel machines... -he turned the knife on a handle, pulling out perfect strips that fell in a spiral shape-. Now I know that the fueph purifies. These hands - he held up the palms marked by superficial burns - no longer tremble when peeling the pineapple.  A high-pitched scream interrupted the conversation. Mateo, the kid with the goats, was climbing up the wooden beams of the ceiling like a marmoset monkey, dodging the bunches of green bananas that were hanging. Falling in front of them with a broken-toothed laugh, he pulled out of his pocket a carved figure - a ceiba tree with roots that turned into hands.  "Don Hernán taught me—" he said, proudly, showing the razor marks on his small fingers. Each sheet has the name of someone who left.  Lucia opened the burned-out photo album. Among the faded images was an intact polaroid: a log bridge over the Jerez River.  "It all started here," Ramiro whispered, pointing to the photo with a calloused finger. The paramilitaries dynamited the bridge in 2002. My father rebuilt it five times with rotten planks, until a bullet... -his voice cracked as he noticed that Mateo was listening, absorbing every word like dry land-. Now the river swallows up those who try to cross it at night.  In the late afternoon, Don Hernán lit a kerosene lamp. From his trunk he took out the book of stories written with granadilla juice, the pages of which gave off a bittersweet aroma as he passed.  "Look here," he said, placing the sheet over the flame. Rust-colored letters emerged like ghosts: *"March 14, 2009. Today we buried my son under the ceiba tree. His body came in a black bag, but we planted a lemon tree where the blood watered the earth."*  Carmen served them sancocho in totumas. Valeria noticed that he intentionally dropped pieces of yucca to the ground, where a row of red ants carried the pieces as microscopic offerings.  "That's how we deceive fear," Carmen explained, following his gaze. If the ants are working, it means that there are no strangers nearby.  The evening brought with it a cricket concert and the distant howling of a dog. While transcribing the recordings, Valeria discovered a pattern in the stories: they all mentioned the centenary ceiba tree. Don Hernán showed him his trunk, where hundreds of carved initials formed a bark of memories.  "The old people say that its roots go all the way to the Magdalene bed," he mused, feeling a cross—shaped scar. That's why he survived the 2010 floods.  At dawn, he found Mateo sitting under the tree, feeding his goats with passion fruit peels. He handed her a map drawn on napkins: "The safe ways to get to the river—" he said, pointing to red crayon markings. Don Hernan doesn't want me to know, but I follow the vendors when they are going to drop off the paper flowers.  On her last day, Valeria participated in the ritual. The merchants wove purple crepe flowers while Lucia sang a modified song: * "Ay ceiba madre, guardian of tears / receive these roots of our brokenness"*. As he deposited his offering, he felt Carmen and Ramiro's hands resting on his shoulders, forming a human chain that reached to the entrance of the market.  At the airport, when emptying his backpack, he found three gifts: a tagua pendant shaped like a wave (Don Hernán), a bottle of corozo juice sealed with wax (Carmen), and the mahogany seed wrapped in verses written by Mateo: *"Plant me where the river does not reach / you will see how I grow even if the earth is blind"*.  Years later, when the ceiba tree in the market was declared a national heritage site, Valeria returned with a 30-centimeter sapling. Together they dug a hole next to the ancestral tree, mixing dirt with ashes from Lucia's burnt album.  "Roots need memory to grow—" said Mateo, now a teenager, marking the stem with his initials next to those of his grandfather.  As the sun filtered through the leaves in the form of luminous tears, Valeria understood that the real story was not in her recordings, but in this soil where pain and hope intertwined like vines, indestructible, eternally alive. Source of the images. Image created with Starryai.