Two sisters. One is in a coma in a Berlin hospital, clinging to her life through a strange force that binds her to her sister. The other is in the south of Argentina, trapped in the atrocious fire that in March 2021 devastated nearly the entire population of El Hoyo. Together they belong to a family whose last two generations have sought its own extinction, and they seem on the verge of succeeding.
Are great-grandchildren responsible for the atrocities of their ancestors? In one way or another, we all belong to pained and damaged societies. Can we dream of the possibility of reparation? What if we only begin to understand how to do this in the abyss of extinction?
In the fire that rages through El Hoyo, there is an Indigenous Mapuche woman who has known this story before it began. And in Berlin, near the other sister’s deathbed, someone knows a number that this Indigenous woman is still searching for: 8,564. Could something as abstract as a number teach us a new way of thinking about the past?
The force that unites the sisters is also the narrator of this story. It pushes the living one toward death, and clings to the life of the dying one. This force has a reason why it’s telling this story, a mission for each sister, and a reason why it needs the reader to understand not only what is happening, but the consequences of what will happen next.