Ibai

Ibai, the infant son of Amaia Salazar and James, is both the emotional center of their family life and the child whose attempted ritual killing makes the investigation’s danger painfully concrete. His presence is rendered through intimate, ordinary details—sleep, babbling, touch, and play—while the threat to his life connects him to the novel’s inquiry into infant deaths and sacrificial beliefs. He survives the attempt to use him in a ritual, but his vulnerability changes the stakes of every surrounding mystery.

Identity and Family

Ibai is cared for by both parents and is closely surrounded by Amaia’s family. At home, James watches over him while holding a book he is not really reading; Ibai rests in a small hammock placed on the sofa. The scene gives the child no adult role or knowledge of the danger around him. Instead, his importance lies in the care others organize around him, and in how quickly that care can be put at risk.

Amaia’s bond with him is conveyed through touch and attention. After a tense family argument, she rocks him until he stops crying, then lies beside him and lets his hands explore her face—her eyes, nose, and mouth—as he gradually falls asleep. His calmness passes to her as directly as her earlier tension had passed to him. Watching him sleep, she is overcome by tenderness and by the familiar scent she associates with him, like biscuits and butter. The scene makes their closeness bodily and immediate: he steadies his mother without understanding the conflict that has unsettled her.

Abduction and the Ritual Threat

Ibai becomes a direct target when Rosario takes him from the family home. Amaia later insists that Rosario left the hospital on her own, came to the house, and took the child; she recalls Rosario as resolved and capable as she walked through the hills toward the cave. James, who did not witness those events, questions Amaia’s account and points to the evidence that Rosario’s coat was found in the river and that searchers believed she had been swept away. Their disagreement is not merely about Rosario’s fate: it exposes how the abduction has unsettled their marriage and how differently they understand the danger that reached their home.

Amaia’s investigation connects the threat to a group that had operated in the Baztán area and had discussed sacrifices involving newborns and very young children. Its beliefs placed special importance on children under two, whose souls were said to be in transition. When Amaia learns the group’s reasoning, she thinks of Ibai lying on the cave floor and of the many circumstances that had aligned to keep him alive before he was even born. The ritual framework gives her fear a terrible logic, without making the danger less personal: the abstract category of a suitable offering was her own child.

She also sees the case’s wider pattern in the reported connection between infant deaths and Inguma, the mythological being said to steal the breath of sleepers. Amaia points to deaths, remains, and ritual offerings as anomalies that seem entangled in the valley. Her questions about why anyone would take the body of a dead baby belong to that investigation; they do not establish that every infant death or missing body has the same cause. Ibai’s attempted sacrifice is the immediate, undeniable danger amid those unresolved connections.

Everyday Life and Separation

In the early mornings, when James can sleep longer, Amaia carries Ibai around the house for hours, showing him familiar objects and looking with him through the windows at the river passing outside. She invents songs about how beautiful he is and how much she loves him. He watches with wide eyes, smiles, and presses his open mouth to her cheeks in his own version of a kiss; she answers with kisses to his blond head. These repeated acts of looking, singing, and touching form an unthreatened domestic world sharply unlike the cave and the investigation.

His playfulness appears again when Amaia returns home tired and wet. In the sitting room, he is enjoying a large, padded play area that takes up much of the available space and has pushed the coffee table against the wall. The colorful, elaborate toy gives the room a child’s scale and makes his ordinary pleasure visible even as Amaia carries exhaustion and shame from her work. He does not need to understand her mistake or the case for his presence to alter the scene: she turns her attention toward him, and the household briefly gathers around his amusement.

When Amaia and Ibai are separated by travel, the narrative shows the distance through disrupted routines rather than explanation. James reports that the two of them miss her while she is away, and Ibai’s babbling can be heard during a call. At home, Engrasi cooks lentils, but the absence of James and especially Ibai leaves the house unusually quiet. Amaia redirects a brief conversation with James so that Engrasi and Ros can make affectionate sounds to the baby over the telephone. Later, when James is far away with Ibai, the child wakes crying at night after the journey and changes to his usual schedule. James rocks him and sings until he settles, then watches the restless movements that continue to disturb his sleep. Unable to reach Amaia, James checks his phone repeatedly and finally calls; she does not answer, and the silence deepens his fear that their separation has become a message in itself.

Survival and Narrative Significance

Ibai’s life remains the central stake when the hidden violence is finally confronted. In the tomb, Amaia points to the bones and tells Markina that her mother killed her sister, had tried to kill her throughout her life, and that the conspirators were going to kill her son. Markina promises that nobody will harm Amaia or Ibai and asks for the chance to begin a new life together. His assurance cannot erase what has been done or restore trust; it reveals instead that Ibai’s safety is still being invoked amid the confrontation’s conflicting claims and loyalties.

The novel gives Ibai no independent account of the events. He is understood through the adults’ memories, acts of care, fears, and decisions. That perspective makes his infancy more than a sign of innocence: it exposes the gulf between the ritual language used to turn children into offerings and the particular child whom Amaia kisses, carries, sings to, and struggles to protect. His survival is therefore both a family reprieve and the measure of what the investigation was trying to prevent.