Whispers by the river

The wind shifted.

Not across Obade.

But far beyond it.

Over ridges, across valleys, through cities where the rivers had long been paved over, their names replaced by highways and housing estates.

But the rivers remembered.

Even when silenced.

Even when strangled beneath concrete.

They waited.

And now, they stirred.

News from Afar

Iyagbẹ́kọ received the message by gourd.

Not letter.

Not voice recording.

But gourd.

Sent from a village miles to the north, its surface etched with river glyphs and sealed with beeswax.

It had drifted downstream, navigating bends and tributaries no one thought connected.

But it arrived.

In her hands.

It pulsed faintly—alive with something unspeakable.

She broke the seal.

The gourd hissed.

And from it came the whisper of a woman's voice.

"She rose in the dark.

They tried to laugh.

But their teeth fell out.

She sings with no tongue."

Iyagbẹ́kọ's hand trembled.

Èkóyé stepped forward.

Ola listened, frowning.

"It's not our Queen," she said.

"It's another."

The Children Gather

That evening, beneath the House of Listening, Rerẹ́ led the children in drawing a new spiral—one that extended beyond the familiar boundaries of Obade.

They traced connections.

Rivers that had no names.

Tales that had never been told aloud.

One boy asked, "Are there more Queens?"

Rerẹ́ touched her chest.

"There are many rivers.

Some flow backward.

Some never dried."

She dipped her fingers in ash and wrote across the clay floor:

"Ẹ̀nítàn was not alone."

Meanwhile…

In a city called Iwárẹ́, a woman awoke from a coma.

She had no name on her ID.

But the nurses whispered.

"She hums underwater."

She hadn't spoken since they pulled her from the lagoon near the abandoned textile mill.

She'd been pregnant. The baby survived.

But the woman?

She wouldn't open her eyes.

Until this morning.

When the hospital fish tank shattered—though no one had touched it.

She whispered one word:

"Ẹgbẹ́rẹ́."

No one knew what it meant.

But the wind carried it.

And the rivers listened.

Iyagbẹ́kọ's Warning

She gathered Ola and Èkóyé beside the Iroko tree.

"This is no longer revival," she said.

"This is reckoning."

Ola asked, "Should we go to them?"

She shook her head.

"No. They are already coming."

Final Lines

That night, the river swelled.

Not from rain.

But from rhythm.

And somewhere, far away, a second Queen stepped into the shallows of a forgotten river and opened her mouth

not to sing.

But to roar.