Daily Magic - Short Story 4. The Call of the Sky

1. The Interrupted Funeral

The priest's Latin is a monotonous murmur. I stop paying attention. I need another point of reference or I'll fall asleep with the litany. And I'm not going to stay in this damn town a minute longer than necessary. Ten years without setting foot in Altomira, and it still seems too few. Don't be angry with me, Aunt Margarita. I had a great time here with you all those summers, but we're in the present now. All I have left in this town is to sign the family house papers and leave. And you... well, this sad hole and those red roses that some idiot has placed on your coffin.

"Too predictable, Paco," you would have said, with that half-smile of yours that confused me so much, disguising how much you hated those flowers. At least they're freshly cut: the petals still seem to move. But, what the hell! The entire bouquet is moving. An inch, above the polished wood of your coffin. The flowers are... floating? But, what's happening? Is this one of your little games, great-aunt?

I blink. It's fatigue. I'm falling asleep and imagining things that aren't there. As soon as this matter is over, I'll have a coffee and go to Madrid. Better yet, I'll go to Madrid and have a good coffee with churros there and forget about this town forever. It must have been a draft. But... it doesn't seem like it. The cypresses stand motionless, silhouetted against this too-blue spring sky. The truth is that the town was beautiful. It still is: beautiful... and a town. That's the problem with towns, they're towns. Well, I understand myself. The curious thing is that no one seems to have noticed anything strange.

I search with my gaze for some explanation, a fishing line, a hidden spring. Nothing. The faces of the attendees—weathered faces, expressions of rehearsed grief—remain fixed on the priest, oblivious.

I calculate mentally... yes, it's about to end. The priest is already repeating his final prayers from memory, without reading his breviary. Wait. The pages of the book that the priest holds with solemn hands begin to turn by themselves. One, then another, as if an invisible breeze were leafing through them, with a soft and unnatural cadence. The man doesn't even flinch.

Perhaps I need to have something a little stronger than coffee. This doesn't make any sense. Can't anyone else see it? Impotence begins to take over the false calm I've tried to convey since arriving in town this morning. Maybe someone else has noticed, some knowing look, someone else to confirm to me that it's not just me. The air is still, heavy with the damp smell of earth and cheap incense. An icy uneasiness runs down my neck.

Then I see her. Lucia. Standing, discreet, in the corner, staring at me without blinking. Her eyes express no surprise. Only a silent reproach.

Lucia's gaze traps me like an insect in amber. I cannot take my eyes off hers, and suddenly the ten years that separate us compress into an unbearable instant. Her expression shows no surprise at the phenomenon I've just witnessed, but something worse: a silent reproach that sinks like a stone in my stomach.

Memories slide through my mind: those summers under the cypresses, her fingers intertwined with mine, promises made with adolescent naivety. And afterward, silence. Letters accumulating in my Madrid mailbox, increasingly thick, until I decided to return them unopened. The last one, with my handwriting on the back: "Please, don't insist."

Lucia hasn't changed as much as she should have. Or perhaps I'm the one who hasn't changed enough. Suddenly, my urban architect suit, my perfectly designed life in Madrid, and my impeccable logic seem like a fragile construction against that gaze that knows everything.

I'm not here for this. I just came to bury my great-aunt and sign some papers.

But the weight of the unspoken, of what I did and didn't do, crushes me against the cemetery ground, while the flowers continue to float imperceptibly above the coffin.

"The architect returns home. I suppose gravity now seems like a respectable science to you."

Don Tomás's raspy voice breaks the invisible thread between Lucia and me. The old man, leaning on his knotty wooden cane, watches me with that crooked smile that was always loaded with hidden meanings. His comment, loud enough for several people around to hear, provokes some murmurs and glances in my direction.

Gravity. The word falls like a sentence. Has he also seen the floating flowers? Or is it just another of his barbs aimed at the boy who left swearing never to return to this "well of superstitions"?

Sweat runs down my back under my suit. I feel like a specimen under a microscope, dissected by gazes that know my intimacies, my weaknesses. Lucia continues to observe me, now with a shadow of something that could be compassion. Even worse.

I look at my watch. The ceremony can't last forever. A few more minutes and I'll be able to get away from these judging eyes, from these impossible flowers, from Don Tomás and his enigmas, from Lucia and our past.

The priest finally closes his book—whose pages have stopped turning by themselves, thank God—and makes the sign of the cross. The murmur of the final "amens" rises like a flock of liberated birds, and the congregation begins to disperse with that unmistakable rhythm of small towns: unhurried but steady.

Some approach the coffin for a final goodbye. Others form small groups exchanging memories of Margarita. My parents haven't even come. "An important conference in Singapore," they told me. Their absence doesn't surprise anyone here; after all, they too fled from Altomira in their own way.

I take advantage of the general movement to step back, calculating my escape route to the car. I just need to sign the papers at the notary's office, and I can be back in civilization by dinner.

But Don Tomás, with the surprising agility of an octogenarian, materializes before me, blocking my retreat like a stone guardian. His cane gently taps the ground, marking an impatient rhythm.

Damn it.

Don Tomás studies me for a second that stretches like chewing gum. The earlier irony has disappeared from his face, replaced by a gravity—that word again—that I had never seen in him.

"Your grandmother said to give this to you when things began to lose their weight."

His gnarled fingers extend toward me a yellowish envelope, sealed with red wax. The seal has a mark that I recognize: the symbol that Margarita drew in her notebooks when I was a child.

Time seems to stop. The flowers on the coffin. The pages of the book. "When things began to lose their weight..." The coincidence is too perfect, too calculated.

I stand motionless, unable to decide if taking the envelope means also accepting everything it entails: this madness, this mystery, this connection to a place I swore to free myself from.

My fingers take the envelope almost of their own volition. It's heavier than it appears, as if it contained something denser than paper.

"What does this mean, Don Tomás?" my voice comes out weaker than I intended.

The old man shrugs, suddenly disinterested.

"I just keep promises, Francisco. Your grandmother was an extraordinary woman. And very, very precise with her predictions."

He walks away limping slightly, leaving me standing there with an enigmatic envelope and a thousand questions stuck in my throat.

I observe the dispersing attendees, the normality with which everyone acts. Has no one else seen anything? Or do they all pretend not to see, as I've suspected this town does since I can remember?

The envelope seems to burn between my hands. My certainties wobble like a poorly founded building: the rationality on which I've built my career, my life, my identity. "When things began to lose their weight..." There's no logical explanation for what I've witnessed, nor for Margarita knowing it would happen. Unless...

No. Absolutely not. I'm not going to fall for that.

I find myself alone next to Margarita's coffin. The cemetery is emptying with that ceremonious slowness so typical of small towns, where even death seems to have its own unhurried rhythm. The envelope weighs in my hand as if it contained lead instead of paper. I turn it between my fingers, contemplating the red wax seal with the symbol my great-aunt obsessively drew in her notebooks.

"When things began to lose their weight..."

I raise my gaze to the mountainous horizon surrounding Altomira. The cypresses, motionless. The ground, firm beneath my feet. Everything seems normal now, as if what happened a few minutes ago had been a product of my imagination. But I know what I saw. And the most disturbing thing is that she, somehow, knew it too.

The silence of the cemetery is only interrupted by the sound of departing footsteps and some distant conversation. My parents should be here. Their aunt. My great-aunt. The only Miralles who still remained here. At least make an appearance, even if just to keep up appearances. But for them, Margarita was always "the peculiar one," the one who stayed in the town when everyone else escaped, the one who talked about incomprehensible things they preferred to ignore.

"There are things that don't fit into your ordered world, Paco," she told me once. At that moment, I thought it was a typical phrase from an eccentric old woman. Now, with the flowers floating above her coffin, her words take on a disturbing meaning.

I put the envelope in the inside pocket of my jacket, feeling its weight against my chest. I should already be on the road to Madrid, not here contemplating ghosts. I have meetings tomorrow. Projects to finish. A life built on solid, measurable, rational principles.

I take one last look at the coffin. The flowers have returned to their place, as if they had never defied the law of gravity. Perhaps it was all a trick of my tired mind. A hallucination caused by stress, jet lag from my last trip, or simply guilt for having maintained such distance from Margarita in her final years.

But then, how did she know that today "things would begin to lose their weight"?

I run my hand through my hair, irritated with myself for allowing these nonsense to affect me. Ten years building my reputation as a rational, pragmatic architect, and five minutes in this town are enough for me to start questioning reality.

I turn to leave. Three steps. I stop. The envelope seems to pulse against my chest, demanding attention.

I'll just take a quick look at the house before leaving, I tell myself. For Margarita. To check that everything is in order before selling.

But a part of me knows that I'm searching for answers.

2. The House That Lightens

The door resists with an agonizing creak, as if protesting my return. Ten years without setting foot in this house, and now I only return to sell it. The smell of old wood and dusty books hits me with a familiarity that hurts more than I was willing to admit.

"Just documents, sign, and leave," I mutter to myself, trying to anchor myself to my original plan.

The entrance hall opens to the dimly lit living room. I don't bother opening the curtains; the less I see of this place, the better. The walls are still covered with those star maps and diagrams that fascinated Margarita so much. Always among stars, calculating celestial cycles and positions with maniacal precision.

I advance toward her office, where I assume I'll find the papers I need. A silver flash catches my attention from the corner of my eye. I stop dead in my tracks.

Margarita's fountain pen—the one with which she performed her astronomical calculations—is floating at eye level, suspended in mid-air as if gravity had decided to take a break right there.

"Impossible..."

My hand trembles as I reach for it. The pen sways gently, as if pushed by an invisible current. When I touch it, it descends docilely onto my palm.

My heart accelerates. On the desk, a photograph begins to rise. It's an image of Margarita, young, standing next to a man I never knew. My great-grandfather Esteban, as I was told. I follow it with my gaze, astonished, as it ascends until it's suspended a meter above the floor.

And then another. And yet another.

Margarita's glasses detach from the case where they were resting and rise gracefully, as if someone invisible were trying them on.

"No," I mutter, stepping back. "No, no, no..."

This isn't an illusion, or exhaustion, or guilt. It's real. And it's happening exactly as Margarita predicted.

The envelope. The damn envelope that burns in my pocket.

I extract it with trembling fingers, breaking the red wax seal. Inside is a paper folded with meticulous precision. As I unfold it, I immediately recognize my great-aunt's precise and tiny handwriting.

"Dear Paco:

If you're reading this, it means it has begun. After ninety-seven years, The Ascension returns to Altomira, just as my calculations predicted..."

My mind tries to dismiss what my eyes have just seen. The floating pen, the suspended photographs, the glasses... everything defies every physical principle I know. With a nervous spasm in my hands, I break the seal of the envelope that Don Tomás gave me.

The contents unfold before me: pages covered with astronomical equations, gravitational vectors, and margin notes in that tiny and precise handwriting so characteristic of Margarita. I recognize some calculations related to celestial cycles, planetary positions, and... alternate gravitational fields? I don't have astronomical training, but my specialty in parametric architecture allows me to understand the underlying mathematical logic.

Among the papers appears a map of Altomira, meticulously hand-drawn. Several areas are marked with concentric red circles, like epicenters of something. Margarita's house—this house—is at the exact center, highlighted with darker ink. The cemetery forms part of the second ring. The library, the third circle.

There are formulas written in each zone, as if Margarita had been calculating... intensities? Times?

"Your grandmother always had a knack for decoration," Don Tomás's voice startles me from the threshold. I didn't hear him enter. "Remember when you tried to impress Lucia with Newton's laws under this roof?" he points with his cane toward the floating objects. "Seems like Newton has tendered his resignation."

I close the map abruptly, like a teenager caught with a forbidden magazine.

"How did you get in?"

"The door was open," he responds, shrugging. "Like Margarita's mind. Always open while yours was closing."

My instinct is to deny what's happening, to look for invisible threads, drafts, any explanation. But Don Tomás observes the scene with the tranquility of someone watching rain from a window.

"Did you know this was going to happen?" I ask, unable to hide the tremor in my voice.

"The question, Paco, is whether you knew," he taps the floor with his cane. "Your great-aunt spent fifty years preparing for this day."

Don Tomás's words about Lucia hit me like a punch to the stomach. I suppress a grimace and carefully fold the map, trying to keep my hands from betraying my distress.

"I didn't come for an applied physics class," I respond, storing the documents in the inside pocket of my jacket. "I just need the house papers and I'm leaving. Besides, no one has called me Paco for ten years. Now I'm Francisco, or Mr. Francisco, when I'm working in my studio."

"Such hurry," Don Tomás walks around the room with slow, studied steps, hitting his cane against the floor in an irregular rhythm that sets my nerves on edge. "Are you afraid of meeting her? Or is there another reason to stay with us mortals?"

Lucia. Her name resonates in my head like an echo in a deep cave.

"I'm not afraid of anything," I lie, while searching among the papers on the desk, avoiding looking at the objects that continue to float. "They're expecting me in Madrid this very afternoon."

Don Tomás lets out a dry laugh that bounces off the wooden walls.

"And you think Altomira will let you leave so easily?" he gives a tap with his cane just as a framed photograph rises from the desk. "The town has memory, Francisco. And sometimes, that memory weighs. Or... stops weighing, depending on how you look at it."

I'm about to respond when a door slam resonates at the entrance. Hurried footsteps cross the reception area. I know that rhythm. I would recognize it anywhere.

"Don Tomás! Are you here?" Lucia's voice approaches through the hallway, altered, urgent. "It's started in the library! The books are..."

She stops short upon seeing me. Her eyes, those that so many times looked at me with adolescent adoration, now pierce through me with a mixture of surprise and something colder, more calculated. Her hair is gathered in a messy ponytail, and her black jacket, the same from the funeral, shows dust stains on the shoulders.

"Francisco."

She says my name as one who states a fact, without apparent emotion. Her eyes, those that used to light up when they saw me arrive each summer, now pierce through me as if I were transparent. But her hands, always revealing, tense slightly against her side.

"The books in the library are floating," she continues, addressing Don Tomás while deliberately ignoring me. "The entire bookshelf that Margarita organized last month."

My brain tries to process the information while I observe how her hands tremble slightly. She's scared, but there's something more in her gaze. Fascination?

"More floating objects?" I ask, trying to sound professional, distant. As if I were evaluating a structural problem in any Madrid building.

"The entire astronomy section," Lucia responds, taking out her phone. "And now this."

She shows me the screen. A live broadcast: a girl in designer clothes of a striking emerald green and perfect makeup smiles at the camera while manipulating a small perfume bottle that floats before her.

"I literally can't believe what I'm experiencing, guys," says the young woman with an enthusiastic voice. "I came to Altomira for a report on picturesque towns; the natural colors are so cool for my posts! But now I'm living a supernatural experience. Everything is floating! Isn't it incredible?"

"Luna Montalvo," Lucia explains with bitterness. "Lifestyle influencer. One and a half million followers. She arrived yesterday to promote rural tourism and now..."

I remain motionless, looking at the screen of Lucia's phone. The influencer—Luna, as Lucia has said—holds a perfume bottle that floats as she moves it as if it were a new toy. Her nails, perfectly manicured and a green color matching her dress, barely touch the glass that sways in the air.

"This is super magical, guys!" she exclaims with a dazzling smile. "I swear it's not any trick! I came to photograph this charming little town, with these authentic natural colors and all that stuff, but this... this is much better for my feed!"

The camera turns to show a group of amazed people, pointing to various objects floating in the square. I recognize the central kiosk, the planters, and the fountain where Lucia and I... Put that memory away right now.

"Wonderful," comments Don Tomás, resting both hands on his cane while looking at the screen with poorly disguised disdain. "Fifty years studying the phenomenon for a brat with a phone and a green dress to make it famous in ten minutes. Your great-aunt must be turning in her grave... possibly upward."

Despite the tension, I can't help a grimace that's almost a smile. Don Tomás's black humor was always this accurate.

"How many followers does she have?" he asks, leaning toward the screen.

"One and a half million," Lucia responds, tucking a rebellious strand behind her ear.

"Well, now we have a million and a half tourists for tomorrow," declares Don Tomás.

Before I can process what's happening, a strident ring breaks the tension. The landline phone of the house, one of those old black Bakelite devices that Margarita never wanted to change, resonates like a fire alarm.

I look at Lucia, who in turn looks at Don Tomás. No one moves.

With a sigh, I approach and pick up the receiver.

"Hello?"

"Francisco Miralles?" the voice on the other end sounds authoritative.

"Yes, that's me."

"I'm Julián Vega, the mayor. Sorry to interrupt on a day like today, but we have an emergency situation. We urgently need an architect."

My body tenses completely.

"Excuse me, but I only came for the funeral and to arrange some papers. I have a commitment tonight in Madrid."

"Francisco," the mayor interrupts me, "objects are floating all over town. Cracks are appearing in some structures. We need someone to evaluate the stability of the buildings, especially the older ones. You're the only architect available."

I pinch the bridge of my nose, closing my eyes tightly.

"Mayor, I understand the situation, but..."

"Your great-aunt always said you were brilliant," he cuts me off again. "And right now, that brilliance is exactly what this town needs."

I hang up the phone with a slow movement, as if the black plastic of that ancient device weighed a ton. I perceive the gazes of Lucia and Don Tomás fixed on my neck, waiting.

"The mayor wants me to check the stability of the buildings," I mutter, turning toward them. "As if a phenomenon that makes objects float could be managed with an architecture manual."

Don Tomás lets out a dry laugh.

"And what did you expect? That he'd call Newton himself to ask for explanations?"

I take a step toward the desk where Margarita's map seems to call to me. I unfold it again and observe the concentric circles, the meticulous calculations. I don't understand half of the annotations, but I recognize mathematical patterns that bear some similarity to the parametric models I developed for my doctoral thesis.

"This is no coincidence," I say, more to myself than to them. "Margarita knew exactly what was going to happen."

Lucia approaches, maintaining a prudent distance, but close enough for her perfume—the same from ten years ago, damn it—to reach me.

"I'm only here out of deference to your great-aunt," she clarifies coldly. "Margarita shared many ideas with me during this time. I wrote you seventeen letters telling you about it.

"The last six you returned to me unopened," she adds, with a bitterness so dense it could almost be touched.

The reproach hits like a punch. I want to defend myself, explain to her that maintaining distance was necessary, that I was afraid of being trapped in this town, in its superstitions, in her. But the words don't come out.

At that moment, a pen, a paperweight, and three pencils simultaneously rise from the desk. The shopping list that was on the table ascends like an autumn leaf carried by the wind. Outside, through the window, I distinguish several objects floating over the garden. The anomaly is spreading.

I run my hand through my hair. How am I supposed to deal with this? I had planned to sign, sell, forget. Return to Madrid in time for dinner with clients. The ordered and predictable life I've built for myself is crumbling before my eyes like a house of cards.

"I need to make some calls," I say, taking the phone out of my pocket.

No signal.

Lucia sketches an ironic smile.

"The networks stopped working ten minutes ago. Only the landline is still operational."

Trapped. The word resonates in my head with echoes of foreboding. Trapped in Altomira, in the past, in Margarita's secrets, in Lucia's hurt gaze, in a phenomenon that defies everything I thought I knew about physics.

I observe the papers in my hands, the map with its meticulous marks. My instinct to flee encounters something deeper, something I thought I had buried: curiosity. The same that led me, years ago, to listen spellbound to Margarita's theories under the starry sky of her improvised observatory.

3. Margarita's Notebooks

The pencil slides over the paper with the ease it has always had in my hands, but the lines I trace now seem to mock me. Parametric architecture, tensegrity structures, load distribution... concepts I've mastered since university and which today, in this town hall room converted into an improvised office, seem as useless as a hammer underwater.

"It doesn't make sense," I mutter, crumpling the thirteenth sketch.

Lucia, sitting in the opposite corner, looks up from her tablet. She's been frantically typing, retrieving information about similar phenomena, without success. Her expression says it all: we're wasting time.

"These are just patches," I confess, dropping the pencil which, paradoxically, doesn't float, but obediently rolls on the table, which frustrates me even more. "The anchors could temporarily hold some buildings, but we don't know if the force will increase or change direction."

I contemplate my drawings: structures with underground tensors, counterweight systems, reinforcements for foundations that were never designed to resist a gravitational inversion. Good theory, except that no engineering manual contemplates this scenario.

"It's like trying to stop a flood with beach buckets," I say aloud.

"At least you're trying," Lucia responds, in a tone that I can't decipher whether it's sincere or sarcastic. "Margarita spent decades studying the phenomenon, Francisco. Decades. And your great-grandfather before her."

The mention of my great-grandfather hits like something unexpected. In family stories, Esteban Miralles died in a mining accident, not studying gravitational anomalies.

"My great-grandfather?" I ask, turning toward her.

Lucia bites her lower lip, a gesture I remember perfectly.

"Margarita had a study, a... workspace. Not in the house," she pauses. "Well, not exactly in the visible part of the house."

I frown.

"What are you talking about?"

"There's a basement," she finally says. "Your great-aunt showed me once part of her research. There are notebooks, many notebooks. All identical, all filled with calculations, observations."

I drop the pencil. The anchor sketches now seem ridiculously simplistic to me.

"And you're telling me this now?"

"I'm only here because half of my library is floating," she replies, avoiding my gaze. "And because, although it's hard for me to admit, this goes beyond old books and cracked roofs."

Lucia's clothes sway slightly as she descends the narrow stairs ahead of me. The air is cooler down here, damp against my skin. I follow her steps, with Don Tomás closing our small expedition, his cane hitting each step with a rhythm that irritates my nerves.

"Margarita built this place little by little, over years," Lucia explains, pushing aside a curtain of ropes hanging from the ceiling. "At first it was just a storage room, but..."

Her voice fades as she turns on the switch and the light reveals what's before us. My breath catches.

It's not a storage room. It's a laboratory, an observatory, a library, and a workshop, all compressed into a space no larger than the living room upstairs. Shelves from floor to ceiling, filled with identical notebooks, with black covers, with dates written on the spines. Meticulously labeled boxes. Astronomical and topographical maps of Altomira pinned to the walls. An old telescope in a corner.

"Damn," is all I manage to articulate.

Lucia advances, running her fingers over the spines of the notebooks as if they were old acquaintances. I look at Don Tomás, who examines the place with an indecipherable expression.

"Did you know about this?" I ask him.

The old man lets out a short, dry laugh.

"Your great-aunt wasn't one to keep all her eggs in the same basket," he responds, leaning on his cane. "The Ascension." A pompous name to describe how to fly away. Although I admit your grandmother had method. Fifty years looking for evidence while we all called her crazy, myself included."

His words fall on me like stones. I imagine Margarita, alone in this basement for decades, meticulously documenting a phenomenon that no one believed was real.

"The Ascension?" I repeat.

"That's what she called it," Lucia takes one of the notebooks. "And, occasionally, The Call of the Sky. She documented everything, every minor gravitational inversion, every rumor, every historical evidence. Look, this one is from 1971."

She passes me the notebook. Margarita's handwriting, precise and meticulous, fills each page with astronomical calculations, stellar position diagrams, observations of local phenomena.

Don Tomás approaches another shelf, extracts another notebook.

"This is one of the good ones," he says. "1982. When she contacted that professor from Madrid."

I take the notebook he offers me and open it carefully. The first page contains a simple but impactful title:

The Ascension - Calculated Cycle: 97 years. Next occurrence: 2025.

The numbers in Margarita's notebooks reveal a language I didn't expect to understand so well. Equations that, at first glance, seem absurd align under my architect's gaze with an implacable internal logic. I recognize patterns, cycles, predictions. My great-aunt wasn't a lunatic obsessed with superstitions—she was a methodical scientist working without adequate resources.

"97 years," I mutter, turning the yellowed pages. "The complete cycle."

Lucia nods, shoulder to shoulder but maintaining a studied distance, as if between us there were an invisible line she dared not cross.

"Margarita was convinced it was predictable, not a random phenomenon," she points to a series of annotations. "Observe these dates: 1831, 1928, 2025..."

My finger stops on a specific page. A black and white photograph shows a group of miners in front of what appears to be the entrance to a mine. One of them, in the center, has a face that seems vaguely familiar to me.

"Esteban Miralles and crew, a few hours before The Ascension of 1928," I read the handwritten caption.

The air in the basement seems to become denser. My great-grandfather didn't die in a mining accident. There was no collapse.

"Among the witnesses," I continue reading, my voice strangely calm, "five people ascended that day. My father among them."

Don Tomás approaches, resting his gnarled hand on my shoulder.

"Margarita was eight years old when it happened," he says. "She saw her father rise and not return. She dedicated every remaining day of her life to understanding it."

A mixture of anger and sadness pierces through me. Not for Margarita or her work, but for my family's silence. The lies told. The true story erased and replaced.

"Why didn't anyone tell me?" I mutter. "Not even my parents..."

"Your grandfather Fermín fled from Altomira as soon as he could," Don Tomás responds. "People don't always want to remember what they can't explain."

Lucia, who has been reviewing another section of shelves, suddenly stops. She holds a different volume, older, with worn corners and a cracked spine.

"I think... I think you should see this," she says, extending it toward me, careful not to brush my hand.

"What is it?"

"Look at this. It seems to be your great-grandfather's diary," she responds. "The handwriting is different. Stronger, more angular."

I take the notebook and open it with reverence. A shiver runs down my spine as I see the decisive strokes, the precise diagrams. Sketches of a mechanism that seems designed to measure fluctuations in gravitational fields, using principles that, amazingly, are not so far from those I myself studied in my doctorate.

My great-grandfather's first words hit me hard: "Something is calling us from above. It's not God. It's something else. And I intend to find out what."

The correspondence appears in a metal box that Lucia extracts from behind a star map. Letters neatly organized by date, wrapped in string, with the sender written on the first page: "Doctor Alejandro Velasco, Department of Astrophysics, Complutense University of Madrid."

"Velasco," I mutter, running my fingers over the yellowed paper. "I've read some of his articles on gravitational anomalies when preparing my thesis."

It's as if two worlds I never thought could meet were colliding in my hands. My great-grandfather, my great-aunt, and now a respected scientist whose work I've studied.

"Margarita wrote to him in 1965," Lucia explains, her voice surprisingly soft. "She sent him her initial observations. Everyone expected him to ignore her..."

"But he didn't," I complete, reading the heading of the first response.

"Dear Mrs. Miralles: Your observations on the cyclical gravitational fluctuations in Altomira represent the most fascinating set of data I have had the privilege of examining in my career..."

I unfold more letters, dated over three decades. Shared diagrams, theories refined together. Velasco visiting Altomira several times, bringing equipment, books, validating Margarita's work when no one else did.

Don Tomás observes in silence as I immerse myself in this scientific exchange. For the first time since I've known him, there's no irony in his gaze, only a deep melancholy.

"Your great-aunt wasn't a crazy old woman, Francisco," he finally says, his voice lower and harsher than ever. "She was an extraordinary woman trapped in a time and place that didn't know how to value her."

Something breaks in his usually sarcastic expression. He leans more heavily on his cane.

"Margarita once asked me to take care of you if you returned, when she was no longer here," he confesses, looking toward the maps on the wall instead of facing my eyes. "I told her it was absurd, that you would never return. It seems I lost the bet."

I swallow with difficulty. The image of Margarita, in her last days, worrying about me, about my return, completely disarms me.

"I didn't know..."

"Of course you didn't know," Don Tomás interrupts me. "You were too busy escaping. Like your grandfather. Like your father."

His words contain no reproach, just a sad observation. I look at the notebooks, the letters, Margarita's years of meticulous work, her correspondence with Velasco. She wasn't crazy or confused. She was following the scientific method with the means at her disposal, documenting a phenomenon she knew would return, preparing for this day.

And I, with my academic arrogance, never gave her the chance to bring me up to date on her research.

I hold my great-grandfather's diary in my hands, and it's as if time were compressed. His calculations, his diagrams—rudimentary but brilliant—seem to speak directly to me across the decades. I run my thumb over the angular strokes, feeling a connection I never imagined possible.

"He used principles of structural tension to measure gravitational fluctuations," I mutter, more to myself than to others. "Before terminology existed for this."

My gaze jumps from Margarita's notebooks to Velasco's letters and back to Esteban's diary. These are not the ramblings of a family of eccentrics. They are the pieces of a scientific puzzle spanning three generations.

"I've been so blind."

I sit on a rickety stool, overwhelmed. For years, I've perceived Margarita as the peculiar aunt that everyone tolerated with indulgence. I had reduced her to a caricature: the eccentric old woman obsessed with superstitions.

"I need all the notebooks from 2000 onwards," I say, standing up with renewed energy. "And Velasco's final calculations. If we're going to understand this, we need the complete picture."

Lucia looks at me with a mixture of surprise and something that could be approval.

"You no longer just want to contain the problem?" she asks, cautiously.

"We can't contain something we don't understand," I respond, feeling how my perspective transforms as I pronounce the words. "Margarita wasn't trying to stop The Ascension; she was trying to understand it, maybe even modulate it."

Grasping the depth of her knowledge and the complexity of her research leaves me astonished. The anchors I had been designing upstairs were exactly the wrong approach, a temporary patch to a natural phenomenon that goes far beyond my capacity for perception.

The knowledge I was seeking wasn't in my architecture books, but here, buried beneath my grandmother's house, waiting all this time.

I take another notebook and open it at random. The pages are filled with atmospheric measurements correlated with small gravitational anomalies over decades. The level of detail leaves me breathless.

"It's extraordinary," I admit, with a lump in my throat. "All this time I thought she was... God, I was so arrogant."

Don Tomás lets out a soft laugh, lacking his usual mordacity.

"She always said you would return when necessary. That it would be you who would complete her work."

I find myself staring at Esteban's hands in the photograph, hands that almost a century ago traced the diagrams I now hold. Then at the shelves full of Margarita's meticulous work. My family wasn't fleeing from rural ignorance, as I always believed: they were fleeing from a truth too big to accept.

And now that truth awaits me, as the town begins to rise above our heads.

4. The Division of the Town and the Modulator

The setting sun draws golden and purple stripes in the sky as I adjust the final calculations. The anchors should work, at least in theory. I hold the equations with both hands to prevent them from floating. The paper feels light, increasingly lighter between my fingers. Bad omen.

According to Margarita's plans, the metal fixings I've installed at specific points on the external perimeter should stabilize the gravitational fluctuation, at least temporarily. But something doesn't fit. The diagrams show a system of counterweights and anchors, but there are additional symbols, lines that converge toward a central point I can't identify.

I spread the plans on the table as shadows lengthen across the room. The paper curves slightly upward, as if breathing. I follow the trajectory of the lines with my finger, and they all seem to point to the same place: the roof.

"There must be another part of the system," I mutter, hastily gathering the plans.

I climb the stairs to the top floor, where a metal ladder leads to a trapdoor. I had never gone up here during my childhood visits; Margarita always kept this area closed. The trapdoor yields with a metallic squeak.

The observatory. Of course. I had forgotten this space existed.

I freeze. Before me rises a structure that seems taken from a steampunk dream: brass gears, concentric spheres, carved crystals, and intricate mechanisms that draw impossible orbits. All connected with a precision that I immediately recognize as high-level paranormal architecture. My specialty.

The Modulator occupies the center of the space like a miniature cathedral. Under its crystalline dome, several discs rotate slowly, almost imperceptibly, without an apparent source of energy. Three metal rings intertwine forming perpendicular axes, holding what appears to be a three-dimensional map of the town and its surroundings.

"The Modulator," Lucia's voice startles me. She's at the entrance to the observatory, looking at me with an indecipherable expression. "I used to come help her every week. She would tell me her theories while working on it."

I look up, unable to hide my amazement.

"You knew about this and didn't tell me?"

Lucia returns a cold look. I immediately regret the question.

From my position next to the Modulator, I observe Don Tomás climb the last steps with surprising agility for his age. His agitated breathing doesn't prevent him from arching an eyebrow as he examines my expression of amazement.

"If you think this is impressive," he says, leaning on his cane, "you should have seen her work. Your grandmother built this piece by piece over years. If you ruin it, I'll haunt you even if I have to fly to the stratosphere with my arthritis."

There's something in his tone, a mixture of sincere warning and rough affection, that reminds me of summer afternoons when he scolded me for climbing too high in the garden trees.

"I don't intend to ruin it," I respond, approaching the central mechanism. "Just understand it."

The explanation Lucia had given me continues to flutter in my mind. She came every week. She told her theories. Meanwhile, I returned her letters unopened.

I run my fingers over the polished surface of the concentric rings. The metal is warm, almost alive. Each gear, each connection, responds to a precise purpose. I recognize elements of the theories I developed in my doctoral thesis on architecture reactive to magnetic fields, but taken much further, into territories I had only intuited in my most daring research.

"It's amazing," I mutter almost to myself.

The central discs rotate with a mathematical precision that seems familiar to me. My architect's mind begins to decipher the structural language of the device: it's not a containment system, as I had assumed with my anchors. It's something much more sophisticated.

"It's not designed to stop anything," I say, feeling how the pieces fit into my understanding. "It's a gravitational frequency modulator. It doesn't aim to prevent the phenomenon, but to... tune it."

I adjust my position to examine the base of the mechanism. There are marks, annotations in Margarita's precise handwriting, alongside symbols that seem to map specific points in the town.

"She didn't want to prevent Altomira from rising," I continue, as the implications unfold in my mind. "She wanted to control how it happened."

A creak shakes the floor beneath my feet. Through the small circular window of the observatory, I see how a zigzagging crack crosses the main street of Altomira. Two trees gently detach from the earth, their roots dancing in the air like jellyfish in an invisible ocean.

"It's getting worse!" I exclaim, instinctively adjusting one of the Modulator's dials.

Lucia's smartphone emits Luna Montalvo's strident voice: "Incredible, guys! I'm literally documenting how half the town is separating from the ground! Do you see those cracks? They're real! Does anyone else notice I feel less weight? My hair is like in zero gravity and it's divineeee!"

The image shows the influencer doing pirouettes in the Central Square, where the tiles slowly separate and the fountain expels water that forms perfect spheres that remain suspended. Her broadcast already has thousands of viewers.

The rumble of footsteps on the stairs precedes the mayor, who bursts into the room followed by a dozen terrified neighbors.

"Miralles!" he roars, his face congested and shiny with sweat. "Half the church just detached from the bell tower! The school children are tied with ropes to keep from floating! Do something, for God's sake!"

The neighbors crowded behind him murmur with anguish, some pointing toward the Modulator with a mixture of reverential fear and desperate hope.

"We're working on it," I respond dryly, turning my attention back to the mechanism.

"Working?" the mayor spits. "With this... this fairground contraption? We need real solutions, not artifacts from your crazy grandmother!"

I notice how my knuckles turn white on the metal of the Modulator. An instant before I can respond, Lucia interposes herself between us.

"Julián, please," she says firmly. "This 'artifact' is probably the only thing that can help us now."

Surprise momentarily paralyzes me. Her intervention, after hours of calculated coldness toward me, throws the mayor off balance enough to silence him. Lucia turns and looks me directly in the eyes for the first time all day. The personal animosity momentarily vanishes under the weight of the collective emergency.

"Francisco," she says with a voice that mixes hope and vulnerability. "Can you fix it?"

The question hangs between us. I examine the Modulator, Margarita's equations, great-grandfather Esteban's diagrams. I think about the unread letters, my rejection of everything that didn't fit into my rational vision of the world. About what Margarita tried to explain to me when I left.

"I don't think this can be fixed," I finally respond, finding a strange certainty in those words.

"I mean I'm not sure there's anything to fix," I repeat with more firmness, as my mind connects all the pieces of the puzzle.

The incredulous looks of the mayor and the neighbors drill into me, but I no longer care. Something has changed within me. I caress the edge of the Modulator, feeling its subtle vibration under my fingers. This is not a containment mechanism, as I had initially thought. It's infinitely more sophisticated.

"Margarita didn't want to stop this," I continue, pointing toward the window where Altomira slowly fragments. "She spent her whole life studying it, not to avoid it, but to understand it and guide it."

Don Tomás nods slightly, his wrinkled face illuminated by a flash of recognition.

"We've all been approaching this wrong. It's not an accident, nor a catastrophe to prevent. It's a natural cycle," my hands trace the contours of the mechanism as I speak. "The Ascension occurs every ninety-seven years. My great-grandfather Esteban didn't die in an accident; he ascended. And Margarita wasn't trying to prevent it from happening again."

The mayor's face contorts into a grimace of incomprehension.

"Are you saying we should let half the town detach and float into space? It's madness!"

"Not exactly," I respond, adjusting one of the Modulator's rings. "I'm saying we can't stop it, but we can modulate it. The town is dividing because that's how it should be, but we can influence how it happens."

I direct my gaze to Lucia, searching in her eyes for some indication that she understands me. Her expression has changed; the coldness has turned into something more complex, a mixture of amazement and recognition.

"It's what she always said," Lucia murmurs. "'It's not about clinging to the ground, but finding your own weight.' I thought it was one of her poetic phrases, but she was speaking literally."

The Modulator emits a soft hum as the last ray of sunlight filters through the circular window. Outside, the division of the town becomes more evident; a serpentine line now clearly separates two sections that begin to distance themselves.

"We don't need anchors," I declare, feeling a strange calm. "We need a bridge."

5. The Divided Town

The observatory trembles beneath my feet. Through the circular window, I contemplate how the first houses in the upper part of Altomira no longer just float, but begin to rise with determination. A strange sensation invades my stomach, as if I too were losing gravity.

Don Tomás approaches limping until he stands before me. His cane hits the floor forcefully, anchoring him to the reality that crumbles around us.

"You have to choose, architect," he snaps at me, with a harshness I had never seen in him before. "As you chose ten years ago. Stay or leave. This time, others depend on you."

His words hit me like a punch to the chest. The muffled cries of the neighbors and Lucia's expectant gaze intensify the pressure. Ten years fleeing from this place, from these people, from this reality I always considered too small for me. And now, the weight of all those decisions converges in this instant.

A terrifying creak runs through the structure of the house. Time is running out.

"What do I do?" I mutter, more to myself than to others.

"What Margarita would have done," Don Tomás responds, slightly softening his tone. "Accept the inevitable and shape it."

I take a deep breath and turn to the Modulator. Its gears shine with an almost supernatural glow under the dim light of dusk. I recognize in its design the principles I studied in my doctoral thesis: parametric geometry that responds to gravitational fields. My great-grandfather imagined it, my great-aunt built it, and now it's my turn to operate it.

My hands move with determination over the controls. I adjust the angle of the concentric rings according to Margarita's calculations. I calibrate the tensions at the points described in her notebooks.

"Lucia," I say without taking my eyes off the mechanism. "I need you to turn that crank exactly when I tell you."

I look at her, but she simply approaches without hesitation and nods, placing her hands on the brass crank.

The Modulator emits a hum that gradually increases in intensity. The gears begin to turn by themselves, as if they recognized my presence, my blood, my lineage.

"Now!" I order Lucia, and our synchronized actions release a vibration that runs through the entire structure.

The Modulator vibrates under my hands as its gears rotate with mathematical precision. Each adjustment I make provokes an immediate response in the mechanism, as if the machine were responding to a language that only my family can understand.

"A quarter turn more," I indicate to Lucia, who turns the crank decisively. "Slowly... now!"

The humming intensifies. Through the observatory window, I see how the division of the town begins to follow an orderly pattern, as if an invisible hand were tracing a perfect line between the two halves of Altomira.

"It's working," Lucia murmurs, with a mixture of amazement and concern in her voice. "Exactly as she said it would happen."

A tremor runs through the entire house. For a moment, I fear I've made a mistake, but then I feel it: the soft but unmistakable sensation of elevation. It's not a violent detachment, but a fluid and controlled movement, as if Margarita's house had been waiting for this moment for decades.

From our privileged position, we contemplate how the upper half of Altomira begins to separate from its base. The houses, the roofs, the cobbled streets... everything rises with a grace that defies logic. The gap between the two halves of the town gradually widens, revealing an abyss that grows by the second.

The observatory trembles beneath my feet. A strange sensation invades my stomach, as if I too were losing gravity.

Don Tomás approaches limping until he positions himself at the edge of the elevated platform. His cane hits the floor forcefully, anchoring him to the reality that crumbles around us. With a surprisingly agile movement for his age, he jumps toward a cornice that still remains connected to the ground and clings with both hands to an ancient column.

"This old man stays on the ground," he shouts as his knuckles whiten from the force with which he grips the structure. "Someone has to stay to tell the story. And I've always preferred to keep my feet on the ground. Besides," he adds, with that mischievous glint I know so well, "someone has to stay to make sure the bar doesn't run out of supplies when all this is over."

His words cross the increasingly rarefied air between us. I observe his figure gradually diminish as the distance widens. His choice is unshakable, carved in the same stone to which he clings.

Margarita's house continues its inexorable ascent, separating me meter by meter from the earth, from Altomira, from everything I once deliberately left behind. The ground beneath my feet feels increasingly lighter, as if gravity were a suggestion rather than a law.

Beside me, Lucia remains silent, with her hands still on the Modulator's controls. When she finally takes her eyes off the mechanism and looks at me, her eyes contain everything we never said to each other: reproaches for the unread letters, unanswered questions, and something else I can't completely decipher. Longing? Resignation?

My body feels light, but my chest compresses with a weight I recognize too well. It's the same I felt ten years ago when I decided to move away from this place, from her, from everything I considered too magical and not rational enough.

I look down, toward the half of the town that remains firmly anchored to the earth. There's Don Tomás, witness and guardian of what remains. Lucia stands by his side. She has gone down with him and I didn't even notice.

Then I look up, toward the unknown that awaits us as we ascend. Margarita's legacy, the answers about my great-grandfather, everything I never understood.

The gap widens. In a matter of seconds, it will be impossible to jump across.

The Modulator vibrates under my fingers, obeying the adjustments I make mechanically. Margarita's house continues to rise, taking me with it toward that mystery that so obsessed my great-grandfather and my great-aunt. As I contemplate the two worlds separating—one ascending to the sky, the other clinging to the earth—something breaks within me.

A sudden clarity hits me with the force of a physical revelation. It's not the sky I need now. It's not answers about impossible phenomena or family legacies. It's something much more tangible, more urgent.

I look at Lucia down in the square, who returns a serious and stern gaze. Her profile illuminated by the evening sky returns to me, like a relentless mirror, the image of everything I abandoned. Ten years fleeing. Seventeen letters without response. Six of them not even opened. An entire decade building a life of certainties while systematically ignoring the most important questions.

"If you leave now, there won't be another moment," an inner voice tells me. The mystery of my family will continue to ascend, but the unspoken words between Lucia and me will forever remain in that abyss growing at our feet.

The knowledge pierces through me like an electric current: I need to close this circle before I can open another. I need to confront my past before facing the unknown.

Almost without thinking, I move away from the Modulator and rush toward the edge of the roof. The wind whips my face as I evaluate the distance to the anchored part of the town. Three meters. Maybe four. And increasing by the second.

My architect's mind instinctively calculates angles, distances, possibilities of impact. The fall could be fatal if I fail. The space between both worlds is already too large for a safe jump.

The gap continues to grow. It's now or never.

I position myself at the edge, my muscles tense like steel cables. I inhale deeply. A part of me knows that this jump is a perfect metaphor: I'm about to launch myself into the void to return to everything I once abandoned.

I close my eyes for a fraction of a second, more to gather courage than to deny the reality that unfolds before me. Every architect knows the basic principle of gravity: what goes up must come down. But we can't always choose how or when.

I launch myself into the void with a cry that springs from the depths of my being. The air hits me violently as my great-aunt's house continues its inexorable ascent toward the unknown. For an eternal instant, I float between two worlds: the one that rises toward the sky taking with it a family legacy of mysteries, and the one that remains anchored to reality with all its open wounds.

The impact against the ground is brutal. My knees absorb the main blow, followed by my hands and, finally, my left shoulder, which creaks alarmingly. I roll several times over the irregular cobblestone until my body stops next to an old stone bench.

The pain comes in waves, but I'm alive. On solid ground.

Around me, the neighbors of Altomira shout and point to the sky where the upper half of the town—with Margarita's house as the epicenter—continues its slow but steady ascent. Some cry, others pray, while several simply gape at the impossible spectacle.

Don Tomás approaches limping until he reaches me, his cane hitting the ground with an irregular rhythm.

"Quite a jump, architect," he comments with his usual sarcasm, but there's a tone of admiration in his voice. "Are you so afraid of heights? Or is there another reason for staying with us mortals?"

I don't have time to respond. A commotion among the crowd catches my attention: Lucia makes her way through the stunned neighbors, her face an indecipherable mixture of emotions. Our gazes cross as I stand up shakily, dusting off my clothes.

She stops a few steps away from me, holding something against her chest. An envelope.

"Francisco," she says, her voice tense but firm. "I found this among the fallen books in the library. It was hidden in an astronomy volume that Margarita consulted frequently."

She extends toward me a yellowish envelope. Her hand trembles slightly when she hands it to me, our fingers brushing for the first time in ten years. An electric current runs down my spine.

"It's another letter from her," she continues, as I open it with clumsy fingers. "It contains equations... for a second mechanism."

The paper crackles between my hands. It unfolds before my eyes a series of complex mathematical formulas, precise strokes that I recognize as Margarita's handwriting. Diagrams and sketches occupy the margins, suggesting a structure that resembles the Modulator but with crucial differences.

"A second mechanism?" I ask, my mind accelerating as I try to understand the implications.

Lucia nods, approaching to point to a specific paragraph.

"According to this, Margarita was working on a device that would allow voluntary travel between the two planes. A way to connect both worlds in a controlled manner, in both directions."

"The equations are incomplete," I observe, running my fingers over the symbols that abruptly interrupt at the bottom of the page.

"I know," she responds. "I think she expected you to complete them. Your specialization in paramagnetic structures..."

The vibration of my phone abruptly interrupts this moment. The screen lights up with a name that suddenly brings me back to another reality: "Dad." Three missed calls.

Before I can decide whether to respond, a text message arrives: "Francisco, you have to return to Madrid immediately. The situation in that town is not safe. An emergency helicopter can pick you up in an hour. Confirm your location. Don't argue."

Don Tomás observes over my shoulder and lets out a dry laugh.

"Ah, the third Miralles generation facing the same crossroads," he murmurs. "Your great-grandfather chose the sky. Your grandfather, the earth and Madrid. And you, architect?"

The phone vibrates again in my hand. Another message from my parents: "Francisco, this is not negotiable. We don't know what madness is happening there, but whatever it is, it's not your problem. Your place is here. Confirm your position for the helicopter. Now."

I raise my gaze toward the sky where Margarita's house continues to rise, increasingly smaller, taking with it a literal and metaphorical part of my heritage. The incomplete equations tremble in my other hand, promise of a bridge between worlds that I could build... or abandon.

Don Tomás hits his cane against the ground forcefully, claiming my attention.

"Look, boy," he says, with a seriousness unusual for him. "You've spent your whole life carrying the decisions of your family. Your great-grandfather leaving for the sky. Your grandfather fleeing to Madrid. Your parents denying this place." He pauses to look significantly at the phone that keeps vibrating. "But the answer to your dilemma is not owed to me, nor to them."

His gaze shifts toward Lucia, who remains a few steps away, with her arms crossed over her chest, apparently impervious to the tension of the moment but with eyes bright with contained emotions.

"You owe it to her," Don Tomás concludes, pointing to her with a chin gesture. "And to yourself."

With that sentence, the old man turns around and limps away among the dispersed crowd, his hunched figure gradually swallowed by the shadows of dusk.

The silence that remains between Lucia and me seems to expand like the gap between the two Altomiras. Ten years of unspoken words, decisions that separated us, unread letters. Now, only the two of us remain, face to face, with a literally divided town as a perfect testimony to our situation.

The phone vibrates once more in my hand. The rational world demands my return. The incomplete equations promise a challenge that only I can solve. And Lucia, with her unfathomable gaze, awaits an answer to a question she hasn't even formulated.