2026-10-14 09:31:18
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
The Song Nobody Taught Him
Elena did not sleep well that night.Every time she closed her eyes, she heard the single guitar note that had come from the storage room. It had been clear and delicate, almost indistinguishable from the sound of someone testing a string before beginning a song.But nobody had been inside the room.She had checked.Mateus had checked too, though neither of them admitted how frightened they were by the discovery. The guitar remained beneath its cloth, exactly where Mateus had left it. Its strings were still. The window was closed, and the narrow door had not been disturbed.There was no explanation.Elena eventually returned to bed, but her thoughts remained with the melody.She remembered the night Alfredo was born: the storm battering the roof, the pain that seemed to split her world apart, the sudden silence after her son cried for the first time.She remembered Mateus standing in the doorway afterward, his face pale and his eyes fixed on something she could not see.At the time, s
What Mateus Remembered
The question followed Mateus into his dreams.He had not heard the melody in years, yet that night it returned with the same terrible clarity he remembered from the evening Alfredo was born.Three notes.A pause.Two notes.Then one long, trembling sound that seemed to stretch beyond the walls of the room.In the dream, Mateus stood alone in a small house filled with rainwater and candlelight. His younger hands rested on the neck of a guitar, but he could not remember picking up the instrument. The strings moved beneath his fingers without his permission.Someone was crying in the next room.He tried to turn toward the sound, but his feet remained fixed to the floor.Then the crying stopped.The melody stopped with it.Mateus woke with a sharp breath.For several seconds, he lay staring at the ceiling, listening to the ordinary sounds of the house. A wooden beam creaked above him. Somewhere outside, a rooster called too early for dawn. Bento scratched himself against the wall before s
The Sound Between People
The argument began over a broken flowerpot.By the time Alfredo heard the shouting, three neighbors had gathered in the narrow street outside Dona Celeste’s house, and a fourth was standing in a doorway with her arms folded across her chest. The morning sun illuminated the uneven cobblestones, turning the damp patches left by the previous night’s rain into little mirrors. Somewhere farther down the street, a man was calling out the price of fresh bread.Nobody seemed interested in buying any.“You cannot keep pretending your son did nothing wrong!” Dona Celeste declared.Across from her stood Senhor Augusto, a broad-shouldered man whose gray mustache seemed to bristle whenever he spoke. His youngest son, Paulo, stood beside him, staring at the ground.“My boy was carrying the basket,” Augusto replied. “Your flowerpot was sitting on the edge of the wall. If it fell, that is not automatically his fault.”“It did not fall by itself!”“And you saw him push it?”“I saw him running away.”“
The Things Animals Know
The first sign that something was changing in Ouro Preto came from a goat.It belonged to Dona Celeste, a woman who lived near the lower end of the cobblestone route. She kept two goats behind her house, along with several chickens and a stubborn old rooster that seemed to consider every passing stranger a personal enemy.Alfredo liked visiting her whenever his mother sent him on errands.Dona Celeste always had something for him to eat, and she never complained when he stayed longer than necessary to watch the animals.That morning, however, he heard shouting before he reached her gate.“Hold it! Hold it, you stubborn creature!”A loud crash followed.Then a chicken screamed.Alfredo hurried forward.Dona Celeste stood beside the open gate, holding a length of rope. One of her goats had broken free and was racing around the yard, knocking over a wooden bucket and scattering the chickens.“Dona Celeste?” Alfredo called.“Alfredo! Stay back!”The goat charged past the water trough.Its
The Boy Who Sang to Birds
By the time Alfredo turned five, the birds had begun to recognize him.At least, that was what the people of the neighborhood believed.Every morning, before the streets became crowded, Alfredo would leave the house with a piece of bread in his hand and walk toward the old stone wall near the hill.He never called the birds.He never threw food into the air.He simply sat beneath the mango tree and sang.The first bird usually arrived within minutes.Then another.Then another.Some perched on the wall.Some landed in the branches above him.Others hopped across the ground, stopping only a few steps away.Alfredo never tried to catch them.He simply sang.And the birds listened.It had become such a familiar sight that people began changing their morning routes just to see it.“Look,” a woman would whisper.“There he is.”“The singing boy.”“The boy who talks to birds.”Alfredo didn't care what they called him.To him, they were simply his friends.He had names for some of them.The s
The Streets of Ouro Preto
By the time Alfredo turned six, he had developed three firm opinions about the world. First, breakfast tasted better when someone sang while preparing it. Second, his grandfather owned far too many rules about touching musical instruments. Third, nobody in Ouro Preto could convince him that a person needed to be tall to become a great musician. He had reached the third conclusion after watching a travelling singer perform in the town square. The man had been short, round-bellied, and almost entirely bald, yet his voice had carried across the crowd with enough strength to make people stop shopping and listen. If that man could command a square full of strangers, Alfredo reasoned, then surely he could do the same one day. He had already begun practising. Unfortunately, his audience consisted mainly of his mother, his father, his grandfather, and Bento, who had learned to leave the room whenever Alfredo repeated the same verse more than five times. On the morning Alfredo decided t
You may also like
The Supreme Genius Reborn
Mattimeo34.5K viewsWorld Evolution
Zero_writer54.7K viewsThe Ultimate Devourer
Daoist Of Lies16.9K viewsI Turned Out To Be The King Behind The Scenes
doe20.0K viewsThe Antique Dealer of Veyrath
Rian D92 viewsThe Witch Who Bled The DragonFire
HYFE69 viewsFirst Class Through the Apocalypse
Suka231 viewsThe Hidden Master
TsPen230 views