Lamia

Lamia appears in Amaia Salazar’s dream as one of a group of uncanny women whose commands—clean the river and wash away an offense—give the vision its unresolved purpose. The scene binds them to a silent river, Amaia’s dead sister, and coffins that prove empty, but it does not explain what offense must be repaired. Their power in the narrative lies in that combination of vivid physical presence and incomplete meaning: they leave Amaia with a phrase she remembers, and a question about what her search may uncover.

Appearance and Setting

The encounter takes place beside the Baztán River, which runs between dry, stony banks toward the dark forest. The dream is unusually silent: Amaia hears neither birds nor the sound of water. This muted setting makes the Lamias’ later gestures and speech feel more forceful, while the river itself becomes the scene’s central, unsettled presence.

Before the women appear, Amaia sees a child she once believed was herself at six or seven. She now recognizes the child as her sister, who died before reaching that age. Barefoot in the river and dressed in a white nightgown with a pink bow, the girl is at once familiar and irretrievably lost. She points along the descending banks, where tall white flowers open and release a scent of cookies and butter. Amaia recognizes the smell as Ibai’s, linking the dream’s strange landscape to the living child without explaining the connection.

The girl disappears and a dozen young women take her place. They wear lambskins that barely cover their breasts and thighs, and comb long hair while standing with their feet in the water. Amaia calls them witches. Their transformation from the silent child to a group of openly uncanny figures shifts the dream from intimate bereavement toward confrontation; the women do not offer comfort or identify themselves, but direct Amaia’s attention back to the river.

The Command and Its Images

The Lamias smile, showing teeth sharp as needles, and beat the still water with webbed feet. The surface bubbles as though fed by fire beneath the earth. Their bodies make the river active and threatening, despite the silence that has defined it up to this point. They speak in brief imperatives: clean the river, wash away the offense. The words suggest injury and a need for redress, but neither the nature of the offense nor the action required is made explicit.

As Amaia looks back to the riverbed, the white flowers have become pale coffins for children. The boxes tremble on the stones as if their occupants are struggling to leave, and their movement makes a sound like bone striking bone. Their lids burst open, but there is nothing inside. The dream therefore turns a lush image into an image of burial, then strips the burial of the expected remains. The empty coffins do not explain the Lamias’ demand; instead, they make its language of cleansing and offense more disturbing, placing absence where the dream seemed to promise a visible answer.

Return of the Words

The dream ends when someone enters Amaia’s room and wakes her. Its images do not end with the awakening. Later, when she speaks with her aunt Engrasi, Amaia murmurs that the river is what she remembers; the Lamias’ words then resound in her mind: “Limpia el río, lava la ofensa.” The recurrence converts a dream command into something she carries into waking inquiry, rather than a vision that can simply be dismissed once she opens her eyes.

Amaia asks what the vision means. She considers two possibilities: that people have been affected by a hallucinogenic plant in the mountains, or that there is a reason for the apparitions—something still present and going beyond the crimes she has been investigating. This is Amaia’s stated uncertainty, not a confirmed explanation of the Lamias or the dream. Engrasi acknowledges that there is something more but says she fears the doors Amaia may open and where her search could lead. The conversation gives the words a consequence outside the dream: they intensify the inquiry while also registering the danger Engrasi sees in pursuing it.

Narrative Function

The Lamias occupy an uncertain boundary between supernatural appearance and a possible clue. Amaia knows she is dreaming and is able to move through familiar dream landscapes to gather details, yet the vision’s vividness does not settle whether its figures are external beings, mental projections, or something connected to events beyond her understanding. When Amaia later raises the possibility of hallucination alongside that of a continuing cause, the narrative preserves rather than resolves this ambiguity.

The dream’s images also resist a single, finished interpretation. The sister points; the Lamias command; the flowers change into coffins; the coffins open onto emptiness. Each movement redirects attention without supplying a complete account. In particular, the repeated appeal to clean the river gives the landscape the shape of a grievance, while the empty coffins leave the object of that grievance unshown. The Lamias thus function less as a source of answers than as messengers of an unresolved demand: their phrase returns to Amaia, and her investigation continues under the pressure of what it might mean.