And that from the lake Iguaque, the great mother Bachué emerged holding a boy by the hand, and when the boy was grown she made him her husband and gave birth to his children, traveling the earth, leaving daughters and sons like stardust wherever they went. This was how the world was populated, Mauro said. Bachué and her husband educated their progenies, taught them the laws of humanity and the ceremonies to live and remember them by, and when they were old, they returned to the sapphire lake, transformed into snakes, and disappeared into the water.

Mauro appreciated that these stories offered explanations for his being, reminded him there was another land, a better one of divine logic wrapped inside this professed tierra de Colón, that he wasn’t pacing the earth blind as he often felt and Creation provided clues that made paths clearer, as simple as the blackbird song that announces oncoming rain and the whistles of the Andean sparrow that signal the clouds will soon part. And also because they were stories his mother had learned from her parents before leaving their ancestral home in Guachetá to find work in the city, and were the only inheritance she’d left Mauro before pushing him to the streets.

Talia once saw a movie about a dead grandmother who visited her family members from the afterlife. She came to them each night, stood by their beds, and gave instructions and advice for how they should go on in the world of the living without her. When Perla started forgetting, her breath already something she could only hold steady with the help of plastic tubes up her nose, Talia told herself she didn’t need to worry because her grandmother would still come see her after they buried her.

Mauro was living with them for a few years by then. Talia knew she would be safe with him. But she would miss Perla’s face, her voice, the way she talked about Elena and Talia as if they were almost the same person so Talia could feel connected to her mother even though she had no memory of her touch or embrace.

But after Perla died, she never came to see Talia, even as Talia kept vigil and whispered her grandmother’s name until she fell asleep. They celebrated a Mass for her in a church and Talia saved a space for Perla beside her in the pew. She set a plate for her at every meal and cleaned her room as if she might walk through the door at any moment. She recited Perla’s favorite psalms, sang the songs she’d taught her, and when her grandmother didn’t come, Talia sat before the large crucifix hanging in the foyer, staring up at the son of God—his glass eyes, that mane of real human hair—touching the five wounds the way Perla did every day before she left the house.

Mauro told Talia their Muisca ancestors believed the soul leaves the body at death and begins a long journey through gorges and valleys of golden and black soil, crossing wide rivers until it reaches the kingdom of the dead at the center of the earth, beginning a new immortal existence that’s not so different from this mortal life in the upper world.