The Song That Was Buried

The moment Iyagbẹ́kọ whispered the name Ẹ̀nítàn something shifted inside Ola.

Not a tremor, not fear something deeper. As if the sound of her name had reached into the marrow of the earth and into the hollows of his soul, rattling the parts of him he didn't know were still waiting to wake.

The world around him lurched.

The air grew heavy.

The flames of the fire bent inward.

Then he heard it.

A sound that didn't belong in the present. A sound not made by wind or water or earth.

Singing.

Soft.

Wounded.

Ancient.

It rose not from a mouth, but from memory melody bleeding through time like mist through cracked stone. The fire around Ola blurred. Faces flickered like phantoms. Voices faded to whispers. Then, without warning, he was no longer in Obade.

He stood beneath a storm-dark sky, where the wind howled in mourning and the river thundered like a living beast. It was not a dream. It was a memory alive, vibrant, pulling him through time.

The river before him surged wide and powerful, its waters crystalline, its current fierce with purpose. On its banks stood a village, not unlike Obade, though older so much older. The structures were made of reeds, stone, and carved wood painted in ochre and deep blue. Sacred totems stood in the center of the village, spiraling with symbols now half-lost to the present day.

And the people there were many.

Dressed in ceremonial robes of woven palm and feathers, marked with body paint in sacred geometric patterns, they moved in rhythm. Not celebration. Not war. A dance of reverence. They circled a central figure, a woman who stood taller than the rest, her presence commanding even in stillness.

She held a golden drum carved from sacred ìrókò wood. Its surface shimmered as if it drank moonlight. Her hair was braided with river shells and charms, and when she opened her mouth to sing, the river itself seemed to pause to listen.

Her name came to Ola like a whisper in the wind.

Ẹ̀nítàn.

She was not a monster. Not a curse.

She was a songbearer.

The chosen of the river.

The voice between the living and the drowned.

Her melody carried no wrath, only warning.

"Do not break the silence," she sang,

"Do not strike the cursed rhythm.

Do not awaken what sleeps."

Her voice echoed like bells underwater. The villagers bowed their heads. But not all of them.

Among the gathered were younger men and women bold, curious, and proud. They bore drums not carved in ritual, but forged hastily, carelessly. They whispered of ambition, of more fertile land, of control over the river's timing. They feared drought. They feared decline. And fear, Ola now saw, had always been the seed of betrayal.

When Ẹ̀nítàn turned her back, her sacred song still echoing in the air, the younger ones struck the forbidden rhythm.

Three notes.

Three beats.

A rhythm banned since the first covenant was made with the river.

The elders screamed.

The sky cracked.

Ola watched helplessly as the storm split the clouds. The water, once calm, swelled and writhed as if the very soul of the river had been wounded. From its depths rose a figure no longer golden, no longer regal.

Ẹ̀nítàn.

But changed.

Her robes clung to her like a shroud, soaked with grief. Her drum floated beside her, cracked. Her song had lost its shape no longer prophecy, but pain. She did not scream. She hummed. A broken melody. A lullaby for the betrayed.

The river's chosen had become the river's prisoner.

And no one tried to save her.

Instead, they chanted words of binding, forced her back beneath the current. They performed the burial not with hands, but with silence. No mourning rites. No apology. They buried her memory and sealed her name.

Ola fell to his knees in the vision.

His heart throbbed with sorrow, not his own.

He saw the drums of balance split apart.

He saw the flood that came after.

He saw generations forgetting her face, her name.

And then

She turned to him.

Not in rage.

In longing.

Her eyes met his. And in them he saw a question that pierced his soul:

"Will you listen this time?"

He gasped, breath rushing back like a wave crashing onto shore.

His body was trembling. The fire was real again. He was back in Obade collapsed on the earth, soaked with sweat, lungs heaving.

Èkóyé and Iyagbẹ́kọ were leaning over him, worry lining their faces.

"You saw her," Iyagbẹ́kọ said, voice like gravel and wind.

Ola nodded slowly, unable to form words yet. His chest rose and fell like a drum still vibrating from the final strike.

"She wasn't always darkness," he finally whispered.

"No," the old woman replied. Her eyes did not blink. "She was our voice. And we silenced her."

Èkóyé's voice trembled slightly, a breath catching in her throat. "Then maybe… to stop her, we don't fight."

Ola looked at her, the words of Ẹ̀nítàn still burning behind his eyes.

"Maybe… we listen."

The village remained silent that night, but the silence had changed. It wasn't fear. It was anticipation.

Iyagbẹ́kọ sat beside the fire, holding the twin drum in her lap. She rocked it gently, not playing it, but cradling it like a child who had not been touched in centuries.

Ola stared into the flames, his eyes distant.

"She looked at me," he murmured. "In the vision. She looked right into me."

"What did she say?" Amaka asked from nearby.

"She didn't need to say anything," he said. "Her eyes asked everything."

Èkóyé stood, her fingers tracing the scar beneath her collarbone. "Then what's next?"

"We return," Iyagbẹ́kọ said.

"To the chamber?" Èkóyé asked.

The old woman nodded. "Yes. But not just to see. This time, we must carry the memory with us."

"Memory?" Amaka echoed.

Iyagbẹ́kọ's voice was steady. "When she sank, she didn't just lose her place in the world. She lost witnesses. Those who remembered her were forced to forget. So now, we must remember. Fully. Openly. That is how we prepare."

Ola looked to the twin drum. "Then we take them both the drums. And descend not as warriors, but as witnesses."

Èkóyé stepped beside him. "What if she doesn't accept us?"

"She will," Iyagbẹ́kọ said softly. "If your heart is clean. If your song is truth."

That night, no one in Obade slept.

The drums were not beaten. The fire was not high. But the listening began.

People gathered around the sacred tree, each one offering a piece of memory family stories, fragments of forgotten prayers, ancestral names. They spoke openly of their fears, their failings, their silences.

They mourned Ẹ̀nítàn aloud.

They spoke her name into the wind, into the soil, into the stillness of the river.

And for the first time in centuries, the river did not recoil.

It shimmered.

As dawn approached, Ola stood at the river's edge with Èkóyé, Amaka, and Iyagbẹ́kọ beside him. He held his drum the broken one and Iyagbẹ́kọ held hers.

Two drums.

Two rhythms.

One purpose.

"We do not call her," Iyagbẹ́kọ said. "We return to her."

"And we don't fight," Amaka added.

"We remember," Ola said.

They stepped into the river, the water parting slowly as if finally recognizing them not as trespassers, but as kin. The current guided them toward the deep bend where memory once drowned, and where, now, it waited to be heard.

Below them, the chamber pulsed.

Ẹ̀nítàn was waiting.

And this time they would not bury her silence.