Inguma

Inguma is a spirit associated with stolen breath and sudden suffocation. In the book’s final crisis, the folklore takes on an unsettling double edge: Amaia Salazar wonders whether an invisible inguma might be breathing life back into her, rather than taking it away.

Definition and Folklore

The glossary describes Inguma as usually malignant. It steals human breath during sleep, levitating over the sleeper’s chest and placing its jaws over the mouth and nose. The account gives the creature a specific bodily method: its danger lies not in a distant curse but in the intimate obstruction of breathing.

Amaia’s Crisis

As Amaia’s body collapses, she feels crushing pressure on her chest, registers the missing beat, and becomes certain she is going to die. In the midst of that apparent cardiac crisis, she draws in air scented with ozone from the storm. The narration suggests, without confirming, that a benevolent inguma may be breathing over her mouth and nose and rescuing her from the heavy stillness she had nearly accepted. She gasps repeatedly, then tells Jonan Etxaide to stop the car.

Narrative Role and Ambiguity

The scene reverses the glossary’s usual threat: the same creature imagined as a thief of breath becomes a possible giver of it. Yet the possibility remains tentative. The storm air, Amaia’s bodily sensations, and the invisible spirit are placed together without settling whether the rescue is supernatural or can be understood otherwise. Inguma therefore gives the moment a folkloric vocabulary for the passage between suffocation and renewed breath, while preserving its uncertainty.