The river had always been a keeper.
Not just of water, not merely of fish or rain, but of something far more elusive—of memory, of body, of song.
The river was the thread binding past and present, a living archive of breath and rhythm. It held the names whispered in quiet homes, the laughter shared by children, the tears sung in mourning. It carried the pulse of generations, weaving the stories of a people into a ceaseless current.
Yet even the river, deep and enduring as it was, had limits.
Some songs had been taken from it.
Stolen.
Drowned.
Swallowed.
Lost beneath the tides of history, buried beneath silence heavier than water itself.
And now, Echo had come—not as a savior bathed in glory or legend, but as a daughter summoned to reclaim what had been claimed from her ancestors.
That morning began quietly, as all moments of great change often do, slipping between the hours unnoticed until it bursts open with the force of a wave.
Echo knelt by the river's edge, hands cupped in the shallows, rinsing the night's sleep from her skin.
The water was cold and clear, slipping through her fingers like whispers.
But then—something caught her eye.
Not the sun's reflection—no. Not light itself.
A glint beneath the surface.
Not solid, but sound.
A ripple that vibrated along her fingers, thrumming in a pattern older than language, older than memory itself.
It was a pulse, a song without words, but with meaning deeper than any voice.
She looked up toward Ola, who stood waist-deep in the river, smoothing oil into his skin before the morning rites. The rhythm of his motions was slow, deliberate, each gesture an echo of the past made present.
"There's something beneath," she said, voice low with certainty.
Ola's eyes narrowed, searching hers.
"Beneath?"
"Not just water," Echo whispered. "Songs. The ones they buried. The ones the ships took. The ones the rivers choked on."
Ola stilled.
His hands faltered over his own skin.
"Are you sure you want to go back down there?"
She nodded once.
"It's time someone listened."
Iyagbẹ́kọ, the village elder who carried generations in her gaze, had once warned her of the Deep Current.
It was a realm beneath the river's surface—an abyss not only of water but of memory itself.
"Even water forgets where it came from sometimes," Iyagbẹ́kọ had said, voice heavy with sadness.
"But that doesn't mean it doesn't ache."
Echo stood again on the ceremonial platform that edged the riverbank, the same one she had ascended before in moments both sacred and terrifying.
This time, no crowd gathered.
No eyes watched, no drums thundered.
This journey was not for spectacle or triumph.
It was for restoration.
She stepped barefoot onto the cold stone, feeling the pulse of the earth beneath her soles.
The gourd she carried had been carefully prepared—lined with ash, feather, and bone.
Symbols of passage and transformation.
"Let me go down in silence," she whispered, more a prayer than a command.
The river obeyed.
The water parted, not in a splash or crash, but in a spiral of sound—low notes pulsing upward from the deep, shaping themselves into steps of rhythm that only she could hear.
Echo inhaled deeply, touched her chest once, fingers over the place where the river's beat echoed strongest, and then she stepped in.
At first, the descent felt familiar.
Like her first journey to Ẹ̀nítàn's chamber—the place where the river's soul first revealed itself to her.
But the deeper she sank, the more the water changed.
It thickened, not with mud or debris, but with history—layered, dense, pressing against her skin like memory made liquid.
The sound became older.
Older than drums.
Older than voices.
The darkness surrounding her was not absence—it was presence.
It pressed against her with the weight of unspoken stories.
Suddenly, she was no longer walking.
She was floating.
Carried on a current not of water, but of drums.
A rhythm older than time itself.
The walls shimmered with fragments—faces too blurred to name, hands reaching upward from depths long ago lost to shadow.
Songs.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Each one a fragile thread stretched thin with the passage of years.
Each one a loss waiting to be reclaimed.
And then, the voices began.
Not in Yoruba.
Not in English.
Not in any language she knew.
But in something purer.
The language of ache.
The current slowed.
A chamber opened before her—vast, immense, stretching out beneath the water like a dream carved from silence itself.
No walls enclosed it.
No ceiling pressed down.
Only floating figures—echoes of singers past, suspended in the space between sound and stillness.
Women with seaweed tangled in their hair.
Children with tongues forged from bell-metal, fragile and clear.
Men whose backs bore the cruel brands of chains, but whose eyes still held songs unbroken.
They circled slowly, humming low, their voices weaving a tapestry of sorrow and strength.
And in their midst stood a girl.
Young.
Bald.
Eyes silver as the moonlight touching the waves.
Skin like night kissed by salt.
She looked up as Echo entered.
"You are late," the girl said, voice not unkind, but threaded with sadness.
"Who are you?" Echo asked, voice steady despite the weight in her chest.
"I am what was left behind when they drowned the verses."
"I am what the ocean tried to forget."
"And the songs?" Echo's voice trembled.
The girl opened her arms wide.
From her body, a thousand glowing threads flew outward—each one shimmering with trapped sound.
Some twisted and frayed.
Some snapped, broken in the middle.
Some still pulsed faintly, waiting for the moment to be reclaimed.
"If you wish to bring them back," the girl said, "you must offer a song of your own."
Echo's heart tightened.
"What kind?" she whispered.
"One you never wanted to admit was yours."
The silence that followed was sharp—thick with expectation.
Echo closed her eyes, searching the depths of her soul.
She thought of all the songs she had silenced—not by force, but by fear.
The lullabies she had hidden.
The truths she had buried beneath shame.
And then, from her lips, a fragile whisper rose—
A lullaby she had heard the night her mother died.
Soft, uneven, imperfect.
She sang it not with practiced beauty, but with raw truth.
The chamber trembled.
The girl nodded.
The threads brightened, glowing stronger as they responded to the offering.
One thread—a thin, pale gold strand—unwound from the pillar of light and floated gently to Echo's palm.
As it touched her skin, a sound burst into her mind—
A woman aboard a slave ship, rocking her dead child, humming a melody to hold her sanity against the crushing despair.
Echo gasped, heart breaking at the pain and love carried in that simple song.
Another thread came—thicker, wild, angry.
The voice of a teenage boy, whipped for speaking his language, but who whispered it into the soil as his punishment, trusting the earth to keep it safe.
Each thread that reached out to her became part of her—memory rewritten into marrow, history woven into bone.
They wrapped around her wrists, ankles, chest.
She wept—
Not from sorrow, but from acknowledgment.
The chamber sang—not in joy, but in the solemn recognition of survival.
Above, on the surface of the river, Ola waited by the water's edge.
His eyes were closed, his breath slow and measured.
But then something shifted.
It was no longer the gentle lapping of water.
Not the simple song of wind through reeds.
It was song—
Drifting upward in many tongues, layered and intertwined like a choir of the forgotten.
He opened his eyes and fell to his knees.
And cried.
Because he recognized one of the voices—
His grandmother's chant, one she had refused to translate, carrying secrets only the heart could understand.
Now sung by thousands, a rising chorus reclaiming what had been lost.
When Echo finally rose from the river, the world itself seemed to pause.
The villagers, drawn by something primal and profound, gathered quietly at the shore.
No words passed between them.
Only eyes watching, hearts waiting.
She stepped onto the land, threads of glowing sound trailing from her hands—alive, shimmering, breathing.
"What… is that?" a child whispered, voice trembling with wonder and fear.
Echo did not answer.
Instead, she sang.
Only one line.
One verse.
A song never heard in Obade before, but somehow, remembered deep within every soul.
The elders bowed their heads.
The children lifted their hands toward the sky.
Ola took Echo's hand, trembling.
"You brought them back," he said, voice thick with awe.
"No," Echo replied softly.
"They were never gone.
They were just… waiting for us to listen."
The river's song had returned.
And with it, the pulse of a people.
The rhythm of survival.
The echo of those swallowed, now rising once more.