📖 Chapter 3: A Crack in the Silence

After the “episode” under the tree, Silvermist Academy sent her to the school counsellor.

Mrs. Derksen — stiff blazer, soft voice, clipboard always in hand — didn’t ask the right questions.

> “Have you been feeling overwhelmed lately?”

“Do you have nightmares often?”

“Are you upset with your dads about anything?”

Aurora said nothing.

Because nothing she said would sound sane.

How do you explain visions of rivers that don’t exist? Names that echo through taps and mirrors?

So she just smiled. Nodded. Said she was okay.

Let them believe it was teenage pressure.

But the visions didn’t stop.

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The second time it happened, she was in biology class.

They were dissecting a fish.

Aurora hated it — not because of the gore, but because she could feel the fish’s memory. The weight of the ocean. The silence of death.

Her hands froze mid-cut.

Suddenly the smell of salt water flooded the room. The light flickered. Her ears rang.

She gasped and dropped the scalpel.

Then she spoke. But it wasn’t her voice. And it wasn’t English.

It was isiXhosa — fluent, old-sounding — a chant she didn’t even know she knew.

The entire class turned. Some screamed. The teacher panicked.

---

She was sent home again.

Martin and Lawrence were no longer calm.

> “This has gone far enough,” Martin said, pacing the kitchen.

“She needs a psychiatrist,” Lawrence added. “Something’s wrong. Something serious.”

Aurora sat at the table, fingers wrapped around a mug of untouched tea.

She didn’t try to defend herself anymore.

What was the point?

They didn’t believe in visions.

They didn’t believe in ancestors.

They believed in logic. Science. Appointments. Explanations.

But Aurora was no longer looking for explanations.

She was looking for truth.

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That night, while they were asleep, she did something she had never dared before.

She crept into the downstairs study.

Martin’s private room.

She went straight for the bottom drawer in the old oak filing cabinet.

It was locked.

But she had been watching them all her life. She knew where they kept the key — taped under the third bookshelf.

Her hands shook as she opened the drawer. Inside, neatly packed, were adoption files. Envelopes. Papers.

Her birth certificate was on top.

Not the new one — the original.

“OYENA NKOSI.”

Born in Khayelitsha.

Mother: Nomandla Nkosi.

Father: Unknown.

There was a social worker’s note attached, written years ago:

> “Mother reportedly involved in spiritual practices deemed dangerous by community. Child removed due to neglect, but claims of ‘visions’ and ‘callings’ were never investigated further.”

Aurora froze.

Visions.

Just like hers.

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She took a photo of the documents with her phone, then gently slid everything back.

Closed the drawer. Locked it again.

Back in her room, she stared at the screen.

Nomandla Nkosi.

That was her mother’s name.

And suddenly, Aurora Page Bermingham didn’t exist anymore.

Only Oyena Nkosi.

The girl the waters remembered.

The one whose visions weren’t madness.

The one who had been silenced... but not lost.

Not anymore.

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