The whispers by the river

The night after Ẹ̀lúwà's confession, the air refused to settle.

It wasn't just the people who felt it. The trees were restless. The river shimmered even in the absence of moonlight. The very soil beneath Obade trembled with memory.

Ola couldn't sleep.

His skin itched with heat—not fever, but recognition.

The kind of heat that comes when something buried begins to rise.

He stepped outside the threshold of his hut, barefoot, and stood beneath the Iroko tree. Wind whispered through the branches, but carried no coolness.

Only a message.

"Come."

No voice spoke it.

But Ola heard it clearly.

He knew where to go.

Not the river.

Not the shrine.

The Ash-Mound.

The Place of Fire

The Ash-Mound sat behind the ceremonial platform, hidden by a veil of bamboo and silence. No child played near it. No elder approached it without prayer. It was where the remains of sacred drums—those too worn to play, too burdened to hold—were burned and returned to the land.

Ola had only been there once.

After the first descent. After the Queen rose.

He remembered placing the final shard of the broken drum into the pyre, whispering the last line of the verse into the smoke.

That night, the flames had danced. But the ash had fallen like grief.

Now, as he arrived, the wind stilled.

The mound pulsed faintly—gray by day, but now shimmering with a soft red glow.

Like embers remembering they were once flame.

Ola knelt beside it.

The ash moved beneath his hand.

And then—

It spoke.

The Voice Within

He was no longer in the grove.

The world shifted around him—became breathless, fluid, strange.

He stood in a chamber of shadow and glow, surrounded by mounds of ash rising like hills, forming spirals and symbols.

And in the center…

A drum.

Broken.

Still smoking.

But singing.

Each wisp of smoke lifted a note into the air. Not melody. Not rhythm. But history.

And from the drum's center, a woman rose.

Not Ẹ̀nítàn.

Not Ọláàbíyá.

Something older.

Her skin was the texture of clay that had never dried. Her eyes were twin coals. Her hair coiled like river reeds caught in fire.

She wore no crown.

Only ash.

"You've come for the final teaching," she said.

Her voice was not loud. But it struck the soul like thunder.

Ola could not speak. He simply knelt, his chest heavy with the weight of the drum fragment he no longer carried.

"What do you seek?" she asked.

He answered with breath.

Then, finally:

"I want to understand why the drum broke.

And why the ash still burns."

The Trial of Flame

She stepped aside and motioned to the drum.

"Touch it."

He hesitated. The heat was alive.

"Is it pain you fear? Or the truth inside it?"

He placed his hand upon the ash-drum.

Fire did not consume him.

Memory did.

The Visions

He saw a field of dancers—hundreds moving in spirals, hands raised to a sky that pulsed with red moons.

At their center, a Queen drummed with both joy and command.

But then: the sky shattered.

Colonial soldiers.

Missionaries with iron crosses.

Local kings wielding foreign law.

"Silence her," they cried.

"Erase her rhythm."

And the Queen did not run.

She struck her drum once.

It cracked.

Not from weakness.

But choice.

To fracture the rhythm… so it could live in pieces.

Hidden.

In sons.

In daughters.

In songs disguised as lullabies.

In dreams buried in the bones of a village.

The Drum's Truth

The woman of ash spoke again.

"It was never just a drum.

It was a womb. A seed. A weapon.

And when they broke it

they thought they had killed the rhythm.

But ash…

ash remembers fire."

Ola wept.

Not from sorrow.

But from recognition.

He had carried the ash.

He had buried it.

But he had never asked what it wanted.

He looked up. "What do I do now?"

She stepped forward, placing her ash-stained palm to his chest.

The heat surged through him like breath caught in song.

"You sing what is unsingable.

You beat the drum even when it's broken.

And when others come to silence it again—

you remind them:

fire can speak in silence too."

Return to the World

Ola gasped.

He was back by the mound.

His hand covered in ash.

His heart pulsing with new rhythm.

And at his feet

A single coal.

Still warm.

Still glowing.

He picked it up, wrapped it in cloth, and held it close.

The Gathering

By dawn, he stood before the House of Listening.

Children gathered.

Elders followed.

Iyagbẹ́kọ, Èkóyé, even Ẹ̀lúwà stood at the edge of the circle, watching.

He unwrapped the coal.

Held it aloft.

And said:

"The drum was never broken.

Only hidden."

He turned to the children.

"To you, I pass this ash—not as sorrow.

But as song."

And then, softly, reverently, he sang.

Not a full chorus.

Just one line.

But in it was fire.

And grief.

And return.

And every heart present knew:

The ash had spoken.

And the river was still listening.