The Cleft Rock

They left before dawn.

No songs. No drums. Only footsteps and silence.

Ola walked first, his head bowed beneath the weight of memory. In the leather pouch pressed to his chest were the ashes of the shattered drum once the heart of his lineage, now reduced to dust. But even ashes remember fire.

Behind him, Èkóyé walked with the steady rhythm of one who had spent years learning how to listen. He cradled a tightly sealed gourd against his ribs its contents sacred: a mixture of river water and dew gathered at the precise breath between night and dawn. A ritual long forgotten by most, but remembered now because remembering was all they had left.

Iyagbẹ́kọ came last. Her steps were slow, deliberate, like a heartbeat echoing through the earth. Her staff, carved from driftwood struck by lightning, tapped against the ground with each stride. The air around her shimmered faintly. She was not just a guide today. She was a keeper of memory.

They did not speak. Not because there was nothing to say but because some journeys could only be walked in silence.

The path to the Cleft Rock lay beyond the river's second bend and past the sleeping banyan grove, buried deep within a gorge so overgrown it seemed the land itself wished to swallow the truth it guarded. Ferns brushed their legs. Vines pulled at their garments. Birds, watching from high trees, did not sing. Even the wind moved in reverence.

None of them had walked this trail in years if ever. Few had. Fewer returned unchanged.

Legends whispered that the Cleft Rock had been formed on the night Ẹ̀nítàn, Queen of Rivers and Rhythm, had wept for the final time. Her tears, unheeded by kings and priests, split the stone in two. They said her sorrow carved the rock like grief carves the human heart deep, jagged, permanent.

When they reached the summit, the sky was silver with pre-dawn haze. The light had not yet claimed the day, and shadows still clung to the trees like spirits unsure of their place.

And there it stood.

The rock was massive towering, black, and solemn. It rose from the earth like a forgotten altar, cracked cleanly down its center. A narrow stream of water trickled from the cleft, steady and endless, as though the stone itself still wept.

Ola stepped forward, his voice rough. "This is where she mourned."

Iyagbẹ́kọ nodded solemnly. "And where she must forgive."

They approached the cleft in silence, kneeling without instruction. This was no ordinary ritual. There were no incantations here only reverence, only the aching hope that the past could still be heard.

Èkóyé broke the stillness. He uncorked the gourd with care and poured the river-dew mixture into the base of the cleft. The liquid caught the faint light and shimmered as it spilled, swirling into the earth below the rock.

The ground responded.

Not violently but with a shimmer. A pulse.

Then came the hum.

It began deep within the stone, like breath beneath a song, and rose until it trembled through their bones. Not a warning. Not rage. A melody ancient and slow. A sound shaped by grief.

Ola's fingers trembled as he opened the pouch. He took a pinch of ash between his fingers, then slowly released it over the shimmering water. The rest he emptied into the basin below the cleft.

As the ashes touched the pool, the earth beneath them quivered again.

Then… the wind itself began to sing.

It wasn't a gust. It wasn't air.

It was a voice.

Feminine. Ageless. Full of echoes of mothers, daughters, queens, slaves, warriors.

The sound wrapped itself around them, warm and cold at once. It came not from above or below, but from within the air itself as though the sky had learned to speak sorrow.

And then… words:

If ever breath dares sing my name,

Let not the sound return with shame.

One final chord, one sacred flame

Return the rhythm, not the blame.

They froze.

The verse did not just echo it inhabited them. It filled the spaces between their ribs. It pressed into old wounds. It carved itself into memory.

Ola wept silently. Not for himself, but for her for the queen who had been forgotten, twisted into myth, reduced to warning. Her name had been erased from temples, her story poisoned with fear. But now, she was singing again.

"She… she gave us the last line," he whispered.

Èkóyé stood, breath shallow. "And it wasn't vengeance," he said. "It was mercy."

Iyagbẹ́kọ, still kneeling, placed her palm against the rock. Her eyes fluttered shut. "She remembers," she said softly. "Now she's listening."

For a moment, the world held its breath.

Then thunder rolled across the sky not near, not loud, but present. Like a mother waking from a long, haunted sleep.

Raindrops began to fall, gentle as whispers.

Where they touched the rock, they shimmered gold.

Not all memory is a curse, the land seemed to say. Some memory is a seed.

Ola wiped his face and stood. "Does this mean it's done? That the river's curse is lifted?"

Iyagbẹ́kọ didn't answer immediately. Her hand remained on the stone. She inhaled deeply. The air smelled of moss and lightning.

"No," she said. "Not yet. This was the remembering. But restoration must happen where the forgetting began."

"The River's Mouth," Èkóyé said, a whisper of dread in his voice. "The Sacred Hollow."

"The place where her name was erased," Iyagbẹ́kọ confirmed. "That is where the final rhythm must be returned."

"But it's been swallowed," Ola said. "Lost."

She turned to him then, her eyes alight with something fierce and beautiful. "The river did not swallow it. She hid it. She protected it until her song could be heard again."

Ola took a deep breath. His heart beat like a drum for the first time in years.

"This isn't the end," he said.

"No," she replied. "It's the threshold."

They stood in silence for a while longer, each one gathering their thoughts like cloaks around them.

The sky had shifted now no longer silver, but tinged with soft gold. The sun was rising.

Ola turned to look at the Cleft Rock one last time. The water still flowed. The melody had faded, but the air still thrummed faintly with the memory of her voice.

The forgotten queen had sung.

And now, her people would answer.

They turned back toward Obade, no longer carrying relics or silence but something older and heavier: permission.

The final descent into the depths of the river was near and for the first time, they weren't going to silence a monster…

They were going to sing with a forgotten queen.