The town crier raised his staff.
"People of Ayetoro," he shouted, voice carrying across the square, "keep silent and listen to the words of the palace!"
Silence deepened. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
"It is with heavy sorrow," he began, "that I announce the death of our beloved king—the man of power and wisdom who has ruled us in peace for many years."
For a heartbeat, no one moved.
Then the wail rose.
A woman near Ifabola clapped her hands over her head. "Ah! My God! This is very bad, very bad!"
Another woman dropped to her knees. "That man was a great man. He ruled us in peace. How can this happen?"
Cries and murmurs spread like wildfire. Some people covered their faces. Others clutched at their neighbors. Children, frightened by the sudden grief, began to cry without understanding why.
Ifabola stared at the town crier, her small fingers digging into her mother's wrapper.
The man beat his gong once more, forcing the noise to quieten. "The burial rites will begin tonight," he continued, voice shaking slightly. "They will last for seven days and seven nights. By order of the palace, everyone must be in their homes before midnight. No one is to wander the streets after dark until the rites are complete."
He lowered his staff. "I have delivered my message."
He stepped down from the platform and disappeared into the restless crowd, leaving behind a market changed. Where laughter had been, there was now only fear and confusion.
"What killed him?" someone shouted.
"Was it sickness?"
"No, I saw him just three days ago, strong as an iroko tree."
"Maybe it was poison."
"Or a curse. It must be a curse."
Rumor, like smoke, slipped through the people.
By the time Ifabola and her mother reached the Ifatedo compound, the story had already grown wings. Men sat in tight circles, speaking in low, urgent tones. Women moved about the courtyards like shadows, their faces drawn. Children were dragged indoors and warned not to stray.
The normal rhythm of the compound—pounding yam, women laughing over stories, the splash of water from the river—had become sharp, hurried, as though everyone were walking on ground that might break open at any moment.
In the inner shrine, Baba Adégbáyí knelt before the opon‑Ifa board, his cowries spread before him like scattered bones. The dim light of oil lamps cast long fingers across walls painted with symbols of river and star.
Ifabola's older brother, Fẹ́mi, stood just outside the doorway, watching their father with wide eyes. He was twelve, caught halfway between boy and man, his jaw clenched with questions he dared not ask.
Ifabola ran toward him. "Brother, what is happening? Why is everyone crying? Why is Baba calling the spirits in the middle of the day?"
Before Fẹ́mi could answer, a distant drumbeat rolled over the village—slow, heavy, like a heart beginning to fail.
"The royal drum," he whispered. "They are telling all the spirits that the king has died."
"But why?" Ifabola asked. "Did he fall? Was he old?"
Fẹ́mi swallowed. He had gone to the palace with Baba Adégbáyí not long after the town crier's announcement, carrying his father's divination bag. He had seen something he could not easily forget.
"It was not an ordinary death, Ifabola," he said at last.
He glanced back into the shrine, then lowered his voice to a trembling whisper.
"They found him on his bed, eyes open, as if he had seen something terrible. There was no wound, no sickness, no mark of struggle. Only one thing."
"What thing?" she breathed.
"A word," Fẹ́mi said. "Written on his chest in his own blood. A name, they think. Four letters."
He spelled it in the dust with his toe: E J E H.
Ifabola stared at the letters. She could not read yet, but something about them made her skin prickle, as if a cold hand had brushed her spine.
"What does it mean?" she asked.
Fẹ́mi shook his head. "No one knows. But the elders are afraid. They say any power that can take the king's life without leaving a trace must be older and darker than anything we have seen. Baba says the spirits themselves are troubled."
Inside the shrine, Baba Adégbáyí's chanting rose and fell, faster now, like waves beating against the riverbank. The cowries clicked and tumbled. A gust of wind whispered through the compound, carrying with it the faint scent of rain though the sky outside was clear.
Ifabola shivered.
Somewhere deep inside her, in a place she could not yet name, something stirred in answer.
Fẹ́mi touched her arm. "Come. Mama says we must stay close to the house. People are saying this death will not end with the king. They fear it is only the beginning."
"Beginning of what?" Ifabola asked.
He looked at her then, his eyes suddenly older than his years.
"Of a war you cannot see," he said quietly, "between those who command the thunder, those who rule the river… and whoever wrote that name in blood."
He led her away as the drums pounded on and the sun slid lower in the sky. All across Ayetoro, doors and hearts began to close against the coming night.
Ifabola, daughter of the great priest, did not yet know it, but the path that Ifa had been opening for her since her birth had just begun to glow beneath her feet.
And nothing in Ayetoro would ever be the same again.
The rest of that day moved strangely, as if time itself had forgotten how to walk and was now stumbling.
Servants from the palace came to the Ifatedo compound with baskets of kola nuts, white cloth and palm oil—gifts that were not gifts, but summons. The king might be dead, yet the kingdom still needed guidance, and when Ayetoro was afraid, it turned its face toward Baba Adégbáyí.
Ifabola watched from the corner of the courtyard as her father received the messengers. He had washed off the white chalk from his forehead, but his eyes looked as though he had not slept in many days, even though only a few hours had passed.
"The palace asks that you lead the first night of rites, Baba Ifa," one of the messengers said, head bowed. "They say the drums will not rest until your voice rises with them."
"I hear the palace," Baba replied. His voice was calm, but Ifabola heard something heavy beneath it. "Tell the queen‑mother I will come before sunset."
The messengers left, and the compound seemed to hold its breath around him.
He turned to his wife. "Prepare what is needed. White cloth, chalk, palm fronds, the long staff of divination. Fẹ́mi will accompany me as usual." His gaze slid to Ifabola then, softening. "The little one will remain here."
Ifabola stepped forward at once. "Baba, I want to come. I will be quiet. I will not touch anything."
He smiled, but it was a tired smile. "This is not a night for children, ọmọ mi. The spirits will be thick like harmattan dust. Obedience is also a kind of strength."
Her lower lip trembled, but she swallowed her protest. "Yes, Baba."
When he walked past her, he rested his hand briefly on her head, fingers warm against her hair. A faint warmth ran down her spine, as if something unseen stirred in response to his touch.
As the compound burst into activity—women tying bundles, apprentices grinding herbs, Fẹ́mi polishing the carved staff—Ifabola sat on a low stool beside the doorway, watching.
Snatches of conversation floated around her like broken shells on the shore.
"They say his crown did not fall from his head until they touched him."
"No mark, no wound… only that word."
"What kind of power writes with a man's own blood?"
"Will there be war? If the king died by strange hands, the neighboring kingdoms will think us weak."
"And who will sit on the throne now? The princes are still young."
Her mother moved from group to group, giving instructions, her calm face hiding her fear. When she passed Ifabola, she paused long enough to bend and tie a strip of white cloth around the girl's wrist.
"For protection," she murmured. "Do not take it off, no matter what you hear tonight."
"If the spirits are our friends, why do I need protection?" Ifabola asked.
"Because even friends can be dangerous when they are angry," her mother replied, and hurried away.
By the time the sun leaned toward the west, the first of the royal drums had begun to speak. Their deep voices rolled over Ayetoro in slow, measured beats that seemed to enter the bones and settle there. Every few heartbeats, a sharper drum answered, like a voice crying out between sobs.
Baba Adégbáyí dressed for the rites in a spotless white wrapper, his chest adorned with strings of sacred beads. Fẹ́mi wore simpler white cloth and carried the divination bag. Together, father and son stepped through the gate as the people of Ifatedo bowed their heads.
"Guard the compound," Baba told his wife. "No stranger is to enter after dark. Lock the small gate near the river. Tonight will not be an ordinary night."
His gaze flicked briefly to Ifabola again, as if he wanted to say more, but instead he only nodded once and turned away.
Ifabola watched until the bend in the path swallowed them. The drums from the palace beat on, calling, calling.
She felt very small.
Dusk drew itself over Ayetoro like a dark blue cloth. The smells of cooking fires and evening meals were fainter than usual; many families ate in silence. Even the goats seemed quieter, as if some animal knowing told them that this was a night to hide their voices.
Inside the Ifatedo compound, lamps were lit earlier than normal. Women spread white cloth over the altars. Apprentices checked that every doorway had been marked with chalk and palm leaves. The air smelled of herbs, palm oil and the cold metallic scent of river water carried in from outside.
Ifabola's mother moved her children—Ifabola and her two younger sisters—into the inner room they all shared.
"You will sleep here," she said. "Do not open the door for anyone except me or your father. Do you hear?"
"Yes, Mama," they chorused.
She knelt before Ifabola, taking her face in both hands. "Your ears are sharp, child. Tonight you may hear drums, cries, maybe even voices that do not belong to any human throat. Do not answer them. Do not speak their names. You will be safe if you are silent."
"But what if they call my name?" Ifabola asked, thinking of the way the river sometimes seemed to murmur when she sat by it.
Her mother hesitated for a heartbeat. "Then remember this: you are my daughter and Baba Ifa's daughter. The blood of both thunder and river listens to you. You are not food for wandering spirits. Hold on to that."
She touched a thumb dipped in white chalk to the girl's forehead, then stood. "Try to sleep."
The door closed; the wooden bar slid into place with a dull thud.
Her sisters curled together on their mat and, young enough to be easily tired by the heavy day, drifted toward sleep. Ifabola lay apart, staring at the ceiling. Faint lines of light pressed through the cracks in the walls, where lamps burned in the courtyard. Beyond them, the drums from the palace called, slow and steady as a heartbeat.
Gù… gù… gù…
They were joined now by other sounds: distant chants, the high ululation of women, the hollow boom of a single great drum that spoke only during the burial of kings.
Ifabola's eyes stung. She pressed the heel of her palms against them, but the pressure only seemed to bring pictures instead of tears: her father's tired face, the letters Fẹ́mi had drawn in the dust, red instead of brown, glistening like wet oil on the king's chest.
EJEH.
She whispered the shape of the word without sound, only with the movement of her lips. It felt wrong, as if her mouth was not meant for it.
The drums went on. Her sisters sighed in their sleep.
Slowly, without quite remembering when it began, Ifabola felt herself drifting. The shadows in the corners of the room grew thicker, then thinned, then thickened again. One of the patches of light on the wall stretched itself into a long white path, running from the doorway to the far corner where the roof met the floor.
Curiosity nudged her.
She sat up.
The room was softer than real, the lamps outside dimmer, the drums a muted throb. She looked down at herself and found she was wearing her white festival cloth instead of the wrapper she had worn to market. The strip of white tied around her wrist shone faintly, pulsing like a slow heartbeat.
"Ifabola…"
The voice was hardly more than a breath, but it curled around her name the way water curls around a stone.
She turned toward the corner where the white path ended.
There, where only rough mud wall should have been, a thin doorway of pale light had appeared. It was narrow, barely wide enough for her to pass through, and beyond it she saw only a soft mist, shifting and glittering like smoke touched by moonlight.
Her mother's warning rang in her mind: Do not open the door for anyone except me or your father.
But this door was already open.
"Ifabola…"
The second call was a little stronger, a little closer. It did not sound angry. It sounded… curious. Almost like she herself sounded when she saw something new.
"Who are you?" she asked, though she could not tell if she spoke aloud or only in her thoughts.
"Come and see."
Her heart beat fast, but there was no fear in it, only a fierce, bright interest. She rose from her mat, bare feet silent. Her sisters did not stir.
When she placed her hand against the rim of the light‑door, it felt cool, like touching the surface of still water at dawn. The white cloth on her wrist grew warmer, as if protesting, but it did not burn.
She stepped through.
On the other side, there was no room, no ceiling, no mat. She stood on a wide, flat surface strewn with patterns that looked like the ones on Baba's divination board—lines and broken curves, circles and crosses, symbols for paths and rivers and crossroads.
Above her there was no sky, only a great swirling darkness pricked with a thousand tiny lights, like stars reflected in deep, deep water. The air smelled of rain, smoke and the coolness of clay just after it has been shaped.
In front of her, the patterns on the ground glowed faintly, forming a long path of light that wound ahead and disappeared into a soft, silvery mist.
At the edge of the path, a figure waited.
It was not a man or a woman, not exactly. It was taller than Baba, robed in shifting colors—now white, now blue, now the reddish brown of Ayetoro's earth. Where its face should have been there was only shadow, yet when it turned toward her, she felt the same sensation she had when her father looked at her with full attention: as if nothing else in the world existed for that moment.
"You came," the figure said. The voice was the same one that had called her, but clearer, like a stream freed from stones.
"Who are you?" Ifabola asked again. Her own voice sounded very small here.
"I am a messenger," it replied. "A small hand of a greater hand. I speak when I am allowed to speak."
"Allowed by who?"
"By those who shaped the world before your kings were kings." The figure tilted its head slightly. "You stand where few living children have stood, ọmọ Ifa. The path is open to you."
Ifabola drew herself up as straight as she could. "My mother said I must not answer strange voices."
The figure let out a sound that might have been a chuckle or a sigh. "Your mother is wise. Many voices here would eat your name and wear it as a mask. But I am not one of them."
"How do I know?"
"Because if I were, you would be lost already," it said simply. "Instead, you stand, and your father's chalk burns like fire on your forehead, and the cloth on your wrist fights me even now."
Only then did she notice: the chalk mark Mama had drawn glowed faintly when the figure spoke, and the strip of cloth around her wrist had grown hot, as if warning her.
"You should not be here long," the messenger continued. "The gate that let you in was opened for others, not for you. But since you have come, I must tell you what has been placed upon you."
Fear pricked her at last. "Placed upon me?"
"The blood‑written name that sits now on your king's cold chest," the figure said softly. "It is not finished with Ayetoro. It is not finished with your house. It has been waiting a long, long time for a path to walk… and it smells that path in you."
Cold rushed through Ifabola, from her scalp down to her toes.
"In me? I am only small."
"Even a small calabash can carry poison or medicine," the messenger said. "You are the child of river and thunder. Doors open around you even when you sleep. That is why I have been allowed to speak to you now."
"What is EJEH?" she whispered, barely able to form the letters.
The swirling darkness above them seemed to thicken at the sound of the name. Somewhere in the unseen distance, something answered—a long, low rumble, like thunder heard from very far away.
The figure's robes shifted to a darker shade. "That is not a name a child should speak, and yet it was written in a king's blood. Remember this much, little one: it is older than your kingdom, older than the peace your people enjoy, older even than some of the gods you know. It is a hunger given shape."
Ifabola swallowed hard. "Will it eat Ayetoro?"
"That depends," the messenger replied. "On choices not yet made, on paths not yet walked. On you, and on those who hold spears and staffs around you." It paused. "You must tell no one of this meeting—not yet. Not even your father. His ears are full of many voices already."
"But what should I do?" Her voice shook. "How can I fight something like that? I am not a warrior."
"Not yet," the messenger agreed. "For now, you must only live. Watch. Listen. Do not let your heart grow hard with fear, for fear feeds what waits. When the time is right, paths will cross: thunder, river, blood and name. You will know. Until then…"
Its voice trailed off. The lights above flickered.
"They are closing the gate," it said. "The rites are beginning in truth. You must go back, or you will be lost between beats of the drum."
The glowing path beneath Ifabola's feet began to fade.
"Wait!" she cried. "Will I see you again?"
"When the shells fall in a certain pattern and the river runs red in a dream," the messenger replied, already distant. "Walk well, Ifabola of Ayetoro."
The world folded.
She woke with a jerk, breath sharp in her throat.
The room was dark except for a strip of lamplight beneath the door. Her sisters still slept, small and warm bundles on their mat. Sweat clung to her skin. The chalk on her forehead had smeared onto the mat, and the strip of cloth around her wrist felt cool once more.
Outside, the drums thundered louder than ever.
For a moment she lay there trembling, wondering if it had all been a dream. Then she glanced at the floor near her mat and saw faint white lines there, as if someone had traced the edge of a long path with chalk and then tried to wipe it away in a hurry.
Her heart beat faster.
Do not tell anyone, the messenger had said. Not yet.
Ifabola pulled her knees to her chest and hugged them, listening to the pulse of the drums and the distant wail of women mourning their king.
Somewhere beyond the compound walls, by the palace where her father now stood chanting over a dead man's body, the blood‑written name EJEH lay waiting to be washed away.
But in the dimness of the children's room, another truth curled like smoke around a small girl's heart:
The name was not finished.
And somehow, in ways she could not yet understand, it had already begun to follow her.