“It’s not about the stone,” Magali said softly. “It’s the moment your mother chose it. She wanted you to remember that home is not a place. Home is the love you carry inside you.”

Magali closed her eyes. She pressed the stone to her heart.

In the floating village of Lençóis, where houses were built on wooden stilts above a lagoon that changed color with the seasons, lived a girl named Magali.