Chapter: 3
The road back to the village felt heavier than the journey to the shrine.
Even the air seemed to cling to Amira's skin like old grief. The mangroves no longer whispered. They watched. And the golden tide that had once guided her footsteps now remained distant, as though it, too, waited for something—her decision, perhaps, or her surrender.
Elias walked silently beside her. Every so often, he glanced at her hands—the way they shimmered faintly now, like sunlight trapped in glass.
They reached the village just as the evening sky began to bruise purple.
Mama Ireti's hut stood apart from the others, nestled beneath a crooked baobab tree that had refused to bear fruit since the war. No one visited her unless they had to. Children were warned not to stare into her eyes. Some said she hadn't spoken a word since the day her daughter drowned in the sacred lagoon.
But Amira wasn't here for rumors.
She was here for truth.
She approached the hut slowly. The air was thick with dried herbs, palm ashes, and the faint scent of rain. Before she could knock, the mat doorway parted.
Mama Ireti stood there—older than the soil, her back curved like a question mark, her eyes milky with time.
She said nothing. Just looked at Amira.
And then did something she hadn't done in twenty years.
She opened her mouth.
"Come in, child of Nnena," she rasped.
The villagers watching from afar gasped. Several crossed themselves.
Elias froze, but Amira stepped in.
The hut was dimly lit by a single gourd lamp. Bones hung from the ceiling. Dried lizards and herbs lined the walls. In the center sat a low stool and an old clay pot filled with ash.
"I know why you're here," Mama Ireti said, her voice like sand shifting in wind. "The shrine called to you. The past is unraveling."
Amira knelt. "Tell me everything. I need to understand the pact. The curse. The truth my grandmother hid."
Mama Ireti nodded slowly, then reached for a wooden staff carved with symbols Amira couldn't decipher.
"Many seasons ago, before your mother, before even I was born, this village faced ruin. The river had dried. The fish turned belly-up. The children fell ill. The elders gathered and summoned a spirit from beyond the tide—a guardian, they thought."
She paused.
"But it was not a guardian. It was something older. Hungrier."
Amira swallowed. "What did they do?"
"They offered it a pact," Mama Ireti whispered. "One girl every generation. Born under the third moon. Blood marked. Gifted. In exchange, the village would flourish. Crops would yield. Tides would obey."
Her eyes sharpened. "Your grandmother, Nnena… she was that girl. But she defied them. She refused to give herself."
"I saw it," Amira said. "In the vision. She offered herself instead of her child."
"And the spirit took her, but was never satisfied," Mama Ireti murmured. "You, Amira… you are the skipped generation. The unpaid debt."
Silence. Then Amira stood, trembling.
"So what do they want now?"
"They want you to return. To finish the bond." Mama Ireti leaned forward, her voice lowering. "Or to break it forever."
Amira's breath hitched. "How?"
"There is a ritual. Old. Forbidden. You must go to the heart of the tide on the night the sea opens. Face the spirit. Offer not blood… but truth."
Elias stepped forward. "And if she fails?"
"Then the sea will swallow us all."
That night, Amira stood by the lagoon's edge again, wind lashing her braids across her face, the moon high and round like an open eye.
The sea, they said, would open only once more.
And she would be waiting.
Not to surrender.
But to set the dead free.