The river hissed like an open wound. Beneath its surface, bones clinked and turned, restless as memories. Thunder cracked above, though no storm brewed. The twelve daughters stood barefoot in the mud, skirts soaked, faces streaked with ash and old salt.
Adamma's voice rose above the chanting—raspy, ancient, not entirely her own.
"*O jụchaa mmiri, ọ dịghị nkọ.*
If you ask the water, it does not lie."
A shadow rippled across the river. The water split.
Something climbed out.
Not with feet. With form.
It was woman-shaped. Bone-white, eyeless, covered in symbols burned into its skin. A tongue of smoke where its mouth should be. The girls gasped. One of them, Ijeoma, fainted and was caught before her head hit the earth.
"She was the First," said Nneka, the Bonekeeper, arriving behind them without footsteps. "The one they betrayed."
"Who betrayed her?" Adamma asked, though part of her already knew.
"Her own blood."
The being knelt in the riverbed. Her hand swept the water. It turned black and still. In its reflection, the daughters saw not their faces—but fragments of past lives.
One had burned in a Dahomey palace.
One had died nameless in an English parlor, chained to a porcelain smile.
One had taken her own child's life rather than see him shipped off in chains.
Tears streamed silently.
Adamma dropped to her knees. "Why show us this now?"
The First looked at her.
And in a voice that was inside them all, she answered:
"Because the forgetting is ending."
**
In the capital city, hundreds of miles away, in a museum of stolen things, a child screamed in front of a mask exhibit. The lights went out. When they returned, the glass cases were shattered. The mask of Oba Eke was gone.
No one had entered.
No one had left.
But the walls wept red where it had once hung.
**
Back in the village, elders gathered in the sacred grove.
They had not spoken the old tongue in decades.
But tonight, they did.
One by one, they placed offerings—salt, kola, hair from their firstborns—at the base of the sacred iroko tree.
A sign had returned.
The time of reckoning was near.
**
Later that night, Adamma stood alone in the courtyard.
Kelani approached—her cousin by blood, rival by tradition.
"You think this is glory," he said, eyes gleaming. "But what if it's ruin?"
She turned slowly. "They crucified our mothers in silence. I'd rather burn than forget again."
Kelani nodded once, solemn.
Then handed her a small blade.
"Then spill it," he said. "The offering must be completed by dawn."
**
Adamma cut her palm.
Blood fell on the soil.
The ground drank it.
And somewhere in the darkness, drums began to play.
But there were no drummers.
Only ancestors, waking up.
—