The Hollow Between Breaths

My grandmother’s house sat on the edge of the Mekong, where the river’s hum was a constant, low-throated song. I was sixteen that summer, visiting with my mother and my younger siblings. My grandmother was a keeper of herbs and old prayers, but it was my great-aunt, Aunt Sao, who everyone called the ‘old woman of the river’—not because she was old, but because she knew the river’s moods better than she knew her own heartbeat. She was not a shaman, but she saw things. I inherited that from her, I think.

That night, the house was thick with the smell of jasmine and damp earth. My cousins were sleeping on the floor near the window, their breath a chorus of sighs. I lay on a woven mat by the hearth, awake, listening to the river’s whisper. Then I heard it—a sound like a wet cloth being wrung out, but softer, like a sigh from the water itself. I turned my head slowly, and there she was. A young woman, no older than twenty, hovering a hand’s breadth above the floor, her hair dripping as if she’d just emerged from the river. Her face was turned down, but I could see her lips moving, forming words I couldn’t hear. She was crying—not sobbing, but a steady, silent weeping that made the air around her shimmer.

I didn’t scream. I wasn’t afraid. It was like seeing a reflection in murky water—you know it’s there, but you’re not sure if it’s you or something else. I watched her for what felt like hours. She didn’t move, didn’t look up. She just hovered, crying, as if she was trapped in a single moment of grief. My aunt Sao came in from the kitchen, saw my face, and followed my gaze. She didn’t see her—she told me later that only those with the ‘thin blood’ could see the river’s mourners. But she knew something was there. She took my hand and whispered, ‘Do not speak to her. She is not here for you.’

I didn’t speak to her that night. But I couldn’t sleep either. The crying stayed in my ears, a low-frequency ache behind my eyes. The next morning, I asked my aunt about her. She told me that every river has its mourners—souls who drowned, or who were drowned, and who cannot leave because they are bound to the water by a promise broken. This one, she said, was a girl who had been promised in marriage to a man she didn’t love. On the night before her wedding, she walked into the river with stones in her pockets. She has been crying ever since, waiting for someone to hear her, to release her. But to hear her is to take her burden.

I should have left it at that. But I felt a pull—a strange, magnetic empathy. I began to sit by the river bank each evening, just watching the water. And she would appear, hovering just above the surface, her face still down. I started talking to her, telling her about my life, my fears, my small joys. She never responded, but her crying would soften, like a lullaby. I began to feel that we were connected, that she was a part of me somehow.

One evening, as the sun bled into the river, she lifted her head. Her face was pale, but beautiful, and her eyes were black, like wet stones. She opened her mouth and spoke—not with sound, but with a vibration that I felt in my chest. She said, ‘You are the first to speak to me. Will you help me? Will you find my name?’

I nodded, not knowing what I was agreeing to. She disappeared, and the river seemed to sigh. I went back to the house and searched through old family records, hoping to find a mention of a girl who had drowned decades ago. My aunt Sao found me late that night, hunched over a dusty ledger. She saw the look in my eyes and shook her head. ‘You’ve been talking to her,’ she said. ‘You must stop. She will ask you to do something that cannot be undone.’

But I didn’t stop. The girl’s name was on the tip of my tongue, in the rhythm of my breath. I finally found it in a half-burned village record: ‘Mayly.’ She had been my grandmother’s cousin, promised to a man who was already married. She drowned on the night before her wedding, and her family had buried her in the river, as was the custom for a broken promise. Her name had not been spoken since, because to speak it was to call her back.

That night, I went to the river bank. The moon was full, the water like a sheet of silver. She was there, waiting, her face lifted toward me. I spoke her name into the wind: ‘Mayly.’ The moment the word left my lips, the river turned black, and the air grew cold. She began to rise, her feet touching the surface of the water, and then she started to walk toward me. Her eyes were no longer black—they were white, like the belly of a fish. I wanted to run, but I was frozen.

She stopped just before me and reached out her hand. ‘You have called me back,’ she said, her voice now audible, a hollow sound. ‘Now you must take my place.’ I saw in her eyes the reflection of myself, but older, wearing the same clothes, same hair, except my eyes were black. I tried to scream, but no sound came. She touched my chest, and a cold spread through me, a chill that felt like drowning from the inside out. I fell to my knees, gasping for air, and she faded into the water.

I woke up on the river bank, soaked to the bone, my mouth full of silt. I crawled back to the house, shivering. My aunt Sao found me in the morning, curled up in a fetal position. She took one look at me and said, ‘You have become her. She has become you.’

Now, I sit by the river every evening, watching the water, waiting for someone to speak to me. My family thinks I’ve gone mad—they see me staring at nothing, weeping. They don’t know that inside me, there are two souls sharing one breath. I feel Mayly’s sorrow, her longing, her rage. I see the river through her eyes, and I know that I am bound to it now, forever. Sometimes, a young person sits on the bank across from me, and they look at me with a flicker of recognition. I do not speak to them. I only cry, hoping that maybe, one day, someone will say my name and set me free, as I once did for her. But I’m not sure I want to be free, because now I understand her pain, and I don’t want to be alone in the silence either. I wait, and the river waits with me, and the hollow between breaths grows a little thinner each passing night.