The One Who Remembers

The village of Obade was unnervingly quiet that night. Not the peaceful stillness of a place at rest, but the heavy silence of something watching. Even the wind had stilled, as if refusing to rustle the palm leaves or disturb the hush that had fallen over the land.

In the central courtyard, Ola sat near the communal fire pit. The flames had long since dwindled into flickers, offering faint light and even fainter warmth. The fire's heat barely touched him, its glow catching in the wetness beneath his eyes, though he would never let a tear fall. There was too much inside him now too much he didn't understand, too much he feared he soon would.

The river had once given him power. Not just magic, not just guidance but identity. Through the sacred drum, through the rhythm of the ancestral tones, he had spoken with the past and pushed back the dark. But now, the drum was buried. The rhythm had shifted. And something far older and darker had begun to stir below the surface of the river something for which the drum had merely been a seal.

His hands trembled despite himself. He stared at them as if they were strangers.

Then

A sound.

Not a birdcall.

Not a whisper of leaves.

A knock.

Slow. Deliberate. Not on wood but on stone.

The kind of sound that shouldn't be possible at this hour, in this place, unless something old was arriving or returning.

He stood and turned slowly, the heat of the fire a memory at his back.

From beyond the last hut, through the dim outline of moonlight and mist, a figure approached. Their movement was slow, burdened. They limped, dragging something behind them something wrapped in cloth and tied with dried vines. The figure was cloaked in robes woven from reeds and river grass, the kind used only in rituals long since lost. A veil of cowrie shells covered their face, swaying with each movement like rattling warnings.

Èkóyé had emerged from her hut by then, sensing the shift in the air. She moved swiftly to Ola's side, her own hand tightening around the carved bone talisman at her waist.

She stepped forward. "Who are you?" she asked, her voice calm but charged, as if standing between the village and an approaching storm.

The figure stopped. Slowly, with effort, they knelt. Their hands moved up to the veil, fingers shaking, not from fear but from age. With care, they removed the mask of cowries.

Beneath it was a woman. Wrinkled and weathered like the bark of the oldest ìrókò tree. Her skin bore the etchings of time itself deep creases, ceremonial scars faded with age, and tattoos inked in patterns no longer practiced. But her eyes they glowed faintly blue, not from youth, but from memory.

"I am Iyagbẹ́kọ," she said, her voice thin yet resonant, echoing like a forgotten drumline. "Last daughter of the river's forgotten keepers."

Ola blinked in disbelief, stepping forward. "We thought they were gone. All of them."

She gave a soft, brittle smile. "We were. Until the Drowned One began to stir."

Behind her, the cloth bundle shifted slightly, as if the object inside was responding to her words. She untied the vines with trembling fingers and unwrapped the layers, revealing what had been hidden.

A small, cracked drum no larger than a dinner plate sat in her lap. Its hide was worn, its frame chipped, but it was undeniably powerful. Silver inlay glimmered around its rim, and in the center was a symbol that sent a shiver down Ola's spine.

It was only half a mark.

But it matched the one from his own broken drum.

Its twin.

"This," she said softly, running her fingers along its surface, "was its counterbalance."

Èkóyé inhaled sharply. "The twin drum… We thought it was a myth."

"The myths," Iyagbẹ́kọ said, eyes glinting, "are all we have left to guide us. This drum was not made to summon, but to seal. Yours called the rhythm. Mine silenced what answered."

Ola crouched beside her, reverently touching the cracked edge. "They were never meant to be used apart."

"No," she agreed, "because together, they held the boundary. They balanced the voice and the silence, the song and the shadow."

She looked up, her expression hardening. "But that balance was broken the moment your drum struck the final call. When the Herald fell, the last wall cracked."

Ola swallowed, guilt pooling in his chest like cold water. "We had no choice."

"You had courage," she corrected. "But now, you need understanding. Because what lies beneath the river is no beast. No monster to slay."

She paused, letting her words sink in.

"Òjiji Ẹ̀mí," she continued, "is not a creature. It is a curse. A memory left too long in silence. A sorrow buried so deeply it began to rot."

Èkóyé spoke softly, eyes narrowed. "And if we descend without knowing what it truly is?"

"You will not return," Iyagbẹ́kọ said. "Not as you are."

Ola sat back, his mind racing. "Then what is its name? What memory keeps it alive?"

The old woman closed her eyes, as if remembering cost her something.

And then she said it:

"Ẹ̀nítàn.

The One Who Was Buried Singing."

The name struck like thunder.

The fire beside them cracked violently, flaring upward as if gasping. The trees around the village bent inward, their branches rustling in a sudden windless sway. And somewhere across the river, a deep pulse thudded beneath the water's surface twice, like a heart remembering pain.

Ola's breath caught. The name had a weight, a presence. It didn't feel like a word. It felt like a door creaking open.

Iyagbẹ́kọ's voice softened, yet the air around her remained tight, trembling.

"She was once the river's voice. Long before us, before drums, before language. Ẹ̀nítàn sang the balance into being. But when humans began to take more than they gave, her song became burden. And then she was silenced."

"By who?" Èkóyé asked.

The woman met her eyes. "By everyone who chose fear over memory. Power over truth."

Ola felt the weight of the name growing heavier in his chest. "And now… she's waking?"

"No," Iyagbẹ́kọ said. "She is remembering. And when her voice returns fully, the river will flood not with water, but with truth. Every hidden lie. Every buried crime. Every broken promise. All of it will rise."

Amaka had joined them by now, holding a lantern close to her chest. Her voice was barely audible.

"Then what do we do?"

The old woman looked to the cracked twin drum and placed her hand over it.

"You listen. You enter the chamber again not as hunters or defenders. But as those willing to carry the sorrow she left behind."

"She won't attack?" Amaka asked.

"She doesn't need to," Iyagbẹ́kọ replied. "If you enter with lies still buried inside you, they'll drown you before you reach her."

Ola stood, the air around him trembling. "Then we take only truth."

Iyagbẹ́kọ nodded. "And the twin drums. They must be struck together not in force, but in harmony. One to remember. One to release."

Èkóyé touched Ola's arm, grounding him. "We'll go. But we go as one."

Iyagbẹ́kọ looked into the fire, her eyes glassy with a sadness so old it felt sacred.

"When her name is spoken again beneath the river," she said, "she will know you come not to bind her but to listen.That is all she ever asked."

The fire crackled once more.

And across the river, deep in the hollow bend, something pulsed again.

Not in rage.

Not in grief.

In readiness.

The descent had begun.