Aurelia dos Santos Fidalgo stood on the edge of the vast open pit mine, its levels exposed as it descended deep into the earth. Copper-colored rock strata stretched as far as she could see, fading into the distance, and bleeding into the bright blue of the Brazilian sky above.
The giant trucks that transported ore to the processing area looked like toys from this distance high above, but the din of their engines echoed up the canyon regardless, the sound of weapons wielded daily against the land. The roads they traveled were scars that deepened every day, marks that Aurelia imagined were etched upon her own heart.
Mina de Fidalgo was her father's dream. Billions of tons of iron ore lay in the rock along with gold, manganese, bauxite, copper and nickel and he had spent his life creating this place. He fought hard for the permits to excavate this area of protected rainforest and once granted, he accelerated development. Each truck full of ore was another stack of dollars in his bank account, each gouge from the land lined his pockets and those of the corrupt government he propped up with his growing wealth. Now Aurelia stood in his bloated mansion on the edge of the mine.
The house had been constructed far away from the original dig, but over the years, the mine expanded until her father’s grand dwelling sat right on the edge of the precipice. She put her hand against the glass window. Her brown skin looked almost translucent in the sunlight, and she spread out her thin fingers to try to blot out the wound on the land.
If only she could erase the whole thing.
But her father’s recent death had not given her complete power over the mining company. It had only made her a figurehead with his name. The Board retained decision-making power, and they had plans to expand into the National Park on the western edge of the mine. It was nominally protected for biodiversity and conservation, but Aurelia knew it was only a matter of time before the company cut further into her beloved rainforest.
She turned from the window and sat down at the long tigerwood table carved from a single piece, its rich grain oiled and polished to a bright sheen. She wished it still grew in the forest, a living being, pulsing with sap, every ring a memoir of its long life. But her father had hacked it down himself and made the table back in the early days of his marriage when he dreamed of a vast family. He wanted strong sons to carry his name and beautiful daughters to marry off to wealthy landowners, an ever-expanding empire. This grand house had been but a dream back then, when the rainforest was thick and lush and his plans for the mine were just stakes in the ground.
The years passed and wealth flowed in abundance, but her father’s goal of a huge family remained out of reach. Her mother miscarried over and over, her womb barren even as the ground gave up its lifeblood.
As her father told it, Aurelia was a child given by God as a reward for his years of dedicated service. But her mother had whispered the truth as she lay dying from lung cancer a few years back, the same disease that had carried off her father in recent months, both of them killed by toxic fumes from the very mine that had enriched them. The truth of her birth was a secret that could end Aurelia’s position in the mining company, and she could not risk that until everything was in place.
A gentle knock at the door and the maid walked in with a breakfast tray. Her eyes remained lowered as she put it down at the only place setting and hurried out. Aurelia didn’t know her name. She didn’t know any of the local staff whose livelihood depended on the mine. There were thousands of people employed here — manual laborers, truck drivers, ore processors, scientists. The newly created wealth benefitted all levels of society — but at the expense of the land.
Aurelia didn’t need to know their names because all of this would disappear soon enough. All these people would die, and her own time would inevitably come. One human life was a mere brief flicker of light against the dark expanse of the world. But some could flare brighter than others, and she intended to leave a legacy far greater than her father's.
She sat in the seat she had always taken in the family hierarchy. She could not bear to sit in her father’s grand chair, and she would not take her mother’s inferior position. Aurelia took a sip of green tea from a white porcelain cup, delicate crockery given to her mother back in the days when her father’s wealth expanded and potential business partners came courting. Her mother had never liked the crockery or even much of her life out here, but she had done what she had to for her husband and eventually learned to tame her wilder nature. Aurelia had grown up here overlooking the mine, her mother's doted-on princess, her father's only child. The heir who would take over his empire when he died.
“This is all for you, anjinha,” he would say. “Never forget it. This is your inheritance.”
Even on his deathbed, her father still urged Aurelia on to greater things. But he had never noticed, or perhaps never cared, how she always gazed toward the rainforest instead of the mine.
Aurelia checked her breakfast plate carefully. Sometimes the maid put on too much, but today it was correct. Ten almonds. Ten small pieces of her favorite white melon, melão branco, cut into perfect squares. A tablespoonful of lentils.
She slowly picked up one almond, placed it in her mouth and forced herself to chew, wishing as she did every day that she didn’t have to eat. Every calorie of energy she took from the world was one less for Nature's own survival. Her family had already taken so much from this land, and she hated to be the cause of yet more destruction. She closed her eyes and forced it down. It was important to sustain herself for the journey ahead, but perhaps it wouldn’t be much longer. Perhaps this time they would find it.
Aurelia glanced at her phone, but the screen lay black and dormant. No word yet.
She picked up a square of melon and placed it on her tongue, letting sweetness flood her mouth. It was almost too much pleasure, and she longed to spit it out. She did not deserve such joy, but she had to eat. Her bones were brittle, her joints ached, and her skin lay tight against her frame. Whereas once she had been praised for her slim form, most would not even look at her now, crossing themselves as she passed as if to ward off the inevitable death that must come for all. But Aurelia didn’t care for their opinion. She only had to sustain herself until she achieved her goal, and surely, it was closer now.
The cry of a harpy eagle came from outside, its wings outstretched as it soared on the hot air rising from the pit. Aurelia watched it with envy, wishing she could be as free. Did the eagle mourn the loss of its land as much as she did?
She speared another cube of melon and raised it to her lips, smelling the sweetness before taking a dainty bite. As she lifted the fork, the crockery vibrated on the table as the excavation below shook the foundations.
The Board wanted to excavate directly under the mansion, to blow apart the rock beneath. In truth, Aurelia would be happy to see this place demolished, but she did everything in her power to thwart them, withholding permission for its removal claiming emotional distress at the thought of losing her family home. They said they would rebuild it exactly as she remembered, but miles away from the noise and dust so it would be even better. But Aurelia wanted to wake every day to the din of the mine, each clang a sound of the end of the world. For that is what it was.
They would never stop. These voracious men clawed at the ground and sold truckloads of it for gold. They raped and stabbed and slashed and burned the Earth that they had once seen as a mother, and yet still She lived.
Enough.
It was time to restore Nature to Her rightful place, and Aurelia intended to fulfill the promise of her birth.
On her deathbed, her mother had beckoned Aurelia over. Her skin clung tight to her skull, the flesh hollowed out by cancer. She could barely speak for coughing, but she persisted, whispering between labored breaths.
“The Earth Mother punished me for the sins of your father. His polluted seed would not grow in my womb and every child that began to grow died within me until blood ran freely once more.” Her eyes filled with tears. “So many babies…”
She wiped the tears away as her gaze grew hard and determined. “After each time, he would return in the dark, force himself upon me even as the blood of the lost lay wet upon my skin. He would pray as he did it, asking God for a miracle to open my barren womb. But as the years went by and the wound in the ground grew deeper, I understood that the land scarred me within. The Earth Mother was raped as I was and She would never let me be fertile while Her body was broken apart.”
She coughed slightly, and it turned into a hacking retch that convulsed her body.
Aurelia held honeyed water to her mother’s cracked lips. “What then, mãe?”
Her mother took a deep breath and sighed. “I went to the only place I could turn to. The rainforest — and the shaman.” She smiled, her eyes alive with memory. “I traveled the old ways, unknown to your father, so he could not follow or send a man to track me. My people — your people, Aurelia — are rainforest dwellers who thrive under the green canopy. My soul died a little every day I lived on the scar, but as I walked into the forest, the call of the howler monkeys nourished me. The smell of the damp earth and the bright flowers replenished me, and the nuts and berries I foraged on the way renewed my health. I found the village on the third day. The shaman sat by the remains of a fire, staring into the embers. He looked up with no surprise and nodded in welcome.”
Her voice trailed off as she closed her eyes, her skin as pale as the waxy petals of an Amazon orchid.
Aurelia shook her a little, desperate to know the rest of the story, the truth of her history. “What happened then? How long did you stay?”
Her mother’s eyes opened once more, the color deepening to the brown of Brazil nut wood with a hint of green, the colors of Nature restored once more.
“The shaman passed his gourd for me to drink and as night fell, the other villagers gathered around. Strong men with limbs like the trees, women at one with the rainforest. We sang songs of our ancestors under the full moon and welcomed the Goddess into our midst. I entered the upper realms that night and you were planted within me.”
She grasped Aurelia’s hand, her grip suddenly tight. “I know it, for when I woke the next morning, the shaman still sat by the fire. This time, he smiled at me before placing a hand on my belly.”
Aurelia frowned. “So, who was my father?”
Her mother shook her head. “It doesn’t matter whose seed you came from. You were born through me. You are a true child of the rainforest, a pure soul of the trees made flesh.”
She pointed out the window toward the scar of the deep mine. “You were born to avenge the rainforest, but your father must never know of your lineage. I came out of the forest several weeks later and accepted his advances once more, but I knew you already grew within me. He considered you a miracle from his God, the one who teaches that man is the pinnacle of creation, but you truly are a child of Nature. When it is time, you must take your place and tear down all that he has built.”
Her mother died later that day, and her father made sure she had a proper Catholic burial with all the trappings of the religion Aurelia knew her mother hated. But she smiled to herself as the casket passed by, for her mother was not in that hard wooden box. Her spirit soared high above, drifting back into the rainforest, part of the Earth once more.
Soon after, Aurelia told her father she was going to Rio de Janeiro, to take some time out to think about her life.
He had waved her away, his focus on the latest iron ore figures from the mine. “Go. Spend what you like. Have a good time.” He looked up. “Find yourself a young man, have some fun.”
But Aurelia had not traveled to the big city for nights of pleasurable excess. She had journeyed deep into the Amazon in search of her true ancestry. The village her mother spoke of had been moved on by deforestation, but deep in the green, she found a shaman willing to share the gourd with her. By his age, he might have been the man her mother sat with, but he did not remember such things.
In the depths of her trance, Aurelia saw what the world could become without humanity’s pollution. An expanse of green with the flash of natural color from flowers and birds. Creatures living in harmony.
She would be the one to restore the Earth again.
After the rainforest, she had gone to Rio, but not to have fun. She spent months studying, learning, following a trail back to the European settlers of Brazil who wrote of a map to the Garden of Eden.
A sudden alarm sounded, interrupting her memories, the blaring din a warning of impending explosion.
Aurelia put her hands over her ears as the blast shook the house and echoed inside her head. Booming aftershocks rumbled through the ground, then the crash of rock collapsing, the roar of soil subsiding around it.
Another wound.
But this time, she relished the pain. It would be silenced soon enough.
At last, the noise subsided and there was a moment of silence before the giant trucks roared to life again. The manmade destruction would never stop unless she made it so.
Aurelia took a sip of her tea and separated the items on her plate. She would only eat half of each today. She trusted Mother Earth and it wouldn't be long until her body would return its energy to the rainforest where it belonged.
Her phone buzzed, and the screen lit up with a message from Amsterdam. The first piece was finally theirs.
Aurelia’s father had spent his life exploiting and destroying the natural world. She would spend hers restoring Nature to Her rightful place.