Without Baba, the compound felt like a drum with its skin loosened.
The rhythms of daily life continued—water to fetch, yams to pound, goats to chase away from tender plants—but everything sounded slightly off. Every decision took longer; every argument about herb use or ritual timing stretched, because the final word that usually cut through them was walking far away toward red stones and old ghosts.
Mama Ireti's absence left its own hole.
No dry comment from the corner to deflate someone's pride.
No eyes that could cut through three lies to the truth beneath.
Into that hollow, fear and restlessness flowed.
Some apprentices whispered that they should close the compound gates entirely and refuse to answer any more pleas from the village. Others argued they needed to show themselves more, to prove they still served.
Ifabola watched and listened and stayed mostly quiet.
Her lessons did not stop.
Fẹ́mi, now juggling his own expanded duties, still found time each day to sit with her under the mango tree or in the library, going over breath exercises, small charms, the theory of names.
"You cannot fight what you do not understand," he said. "Even if you hate it."
At night, she visited Kike's in‑between river, talking until her throat ached.
"Baba is walking on red ground," she reported one evening. "I don't know what he'll find, but he's trying, Kike. So you hold on, you hear? Don't you dare go strolling off with Dupe to some ancestor's fire yet."
Kike grinned sleepily.
"I like it here," she said, poking at the water with a toe. "Fish tickle my feet. Dupe says she'll tell me the story of how Sango stole pepper from the sun tomorrow."
"See? You have things to wait for," Ifabola said, though her own chest clenched at the thought of "tomorrow" stretching too long.
Dupe winked at her from the edge of the scene.
"Stop worrying so loudly," she said. "You're disturbing the river's nap."
Ifabola stuck out her tongue at her and woke with a small laugh despite herself.
Ajani did as the presence suggested.
At first, it was only talking.
He met with bitter men and women in corners of the market, at the back of the winehouse, behind the charcoal makers' sheds.
"They don't care about us," he said, voice low and urgent. "The queen protects her priest. The warriors protect their own. When the king died, did any of them come to comfort the widows in our quarter? They sat under trees and talked."
The resentments were already there.
He only gave them new words.
Soon they began to meet more formally.
Nights found a small group gathering in an abandoned hut near the outer fields—a space that smelled of mold and mouse droppings, its roof patchy but its walls intact enough to muffle voices.
They brought small offerings: calabashes of palm wine, a few coins, a goat one time when a man who had lost three sons insisted it was worth it.
Ajani placed the half‑circle stone in the center of the dirt floor.
Its grooves seemed deeper in the flickering lamplight.
"We are not praying," he told them. "We are…calling. To something that has already been chewing on us. Better to reach for its throat than wait for it to finish."
Most of them did not fully understand.
They understood their grief.
That was enough.
When they chanted, they did not use the full name. Ajani did not know it, and the presence did not yet give it. They spoke instead in riddles, in complaints, in wishes.
Let the ones who made these messes taste what we have tasted, Ajani thought, again and again, as their murmur filled the hut.
The stone grew warm.
A faint shimmer of dark smoke began to coil above it, only a finger's width high at first.
The presence, amused, listened.
Small doors, it mused. But many. I can work with this.
The night it truly opened, the sky over Ayetoro was clear.
No thunder.
No rain.
The air felt too still.
Ifabola lay between sleep and wakefulness, listening to the soft snores of her sister on the next mat—the other sister, the one still fully here. Kike's body lay in a different room, watched by a rotating group of women; Ifabola could not bear to look at her small, slack face just now.
Her bead lay under her tongue, warm and foreign.
She did not know why she had put it there; only that some instinct had stirred when she lay down, an urge to keep it closer than her palm.
Somewhere in the compound, a goat shifted and stamped.
Somewhere farther, in the abandoned hut at the edge of the fields, Ajani and his gathered few poured out their anger again.
Tonight, their voices were rougher, their words less controlled.
"Let them pay," one man sobbed. "Take their children like you took mine."
"Take the palace first," a woman hissed. "Let the queen feel what we feel."
Ajani's own frustration boiled.
Baba had left the village days ago.
No new death had yet carried the bloody letters, but something else gnawed at him—a sense that his efforts were still too small, too slow.
He wanted proof.
He wanted to see something fall.
He laid both hands on the half‑circle stone.
"Enough tasting," he muttered. "Show yourself. If you're as strong as you whisper, prove it."
The stone shuddered.
Cracks along its jagged edge glowed faintly red.
Smoke poured upward, thicker than before, coiling into a column the height of a man. Faces flickered in it—crying, laughing, screaming, silent. None held long.
Someone in the room gasped.
A few dropped to their knees.
Ajani stayed standing, though his legs shook.
"You called," the presence said. This time the voice was not only in his head; it vibrated in the air, rustling the thatch overhead.
"We did," Ajani said hoarsely. "We are tired of being eaten. We want teeth of our own."
The smoke pulsed.
And so you shall have them, it purred. But teeth grow best in mouths already used to biting. Let us begin with something…simple.
It stretched.
Threads of dark vapor unfurled from the column, snaking along the hut's roof, down the walls, seeping under the door.
"Where are you going?" one of the group whispered, fear finally breaking through anger's haze.
To answer a question, the presence said. To show you how quickly doors open when called from two sides.
Ajani frowned.
"Two sides?"
But the smoke was already moving.
In the Ifatedo compound, Ifabola jerked upright.
The bead under her tongue burned suddenly, as if fresh from a fire.
She spat it into her hand, gasping.
It glowed faintly, pulsing in time with her racing heart.
Her palm mark answered, heat flaring.
Around her, the other children slept on, oblivious.
She swung her legs off the mat, feet cold on the floor.
Something pressed at the edges of the room—not as a brute force like the night Dupe died, but like fingers testing a seam.
The air over Kike's still body in the other room rippled.
Ifabola didn't hesitate.
She clutched the bead in her left hand, opened her right, and dove inward.
The river met her like a familiar dream.
She crashed into its shallow edge, water splashing up her legs.
"Kike!" she shouted.
Her sister appeared almost at once, as if she'd been standing just off‑stage, waiting.
"Oh, good," Kike said. "I was about to go see Dupe. She says there's another story—"
"No time," Ifabola panted, grabbing her shoulders. "Something's coming."
The river's current quickened.
Dupe materialized a few paces away, eyes narrowed.
"I feel it," she muttered. "Like when a crocodile slides into water and pretends to be a log."
The sky above them darkened.
On the far bank—the one Ifabola had always avoided looking at too closely—something uncurled.
It did not stride forward.
It simply was, and its presence pushed the air toward them.
Little door, it said, voice echoing from all directions at once. You are not in your house tonight. You came to mine.
Ifabola swallowed.
The messenger had called this the halfway river. She had always thought of it as hers and Kike's place, with Dupe as chaperone.
Now she understood her mistake.
"Go away," she said, hating how thin her voice sounded. "You can't have her."
She owes me a breath, the presence replied. The old woman stole it back. Debts must balance. Your father taught you that, did he not?
Dupe stepped forward, planting herself between the sisters and the far bank.
"Take mine instead," she snapped. "I have more years in my bones. Hers barely taste the world."
You are already mine, the hunger said lazily. You walked out of the ground with my letters on your palm. I am simply letting you stroll by the river for a while so the child does not drown in loneliness.
Dupe flinched.
Ifabola's stomach lurched.
"Then take me," she said, stepping around Dupe. Her voice shook, but she forced the words out. "Leave her. Leave them. I'm already marked. You keep sniffing at me anyway."
Kike yelped. "No!"
Dupe grabbed for Ifabola's arm, but her hand passed through as if the girl were half smoke.
The presence's attention sharpened.
Tempting, it said.
The river shivered.
Behind Ifabola, the water parted, revealing not sand but another surface—a slow‑spinning whirl of blue and green light, like a shallow pool catching moonlight.
From its center, a different presence rose.
Cool.
Vast.
Familiar in a way that made Ifabola's chest ache with sudden, aching relief.
The messenger's voice hissed at the hunger from somewhere unseen.
You overreach, it said. This path is not fully yours.
"What is that?" Kike whispered, eyes wide.
Ifabola knew.
Not the name, not fully.
But she knew the feel.
Every time she had sat by the real river, toes in the mud, listening to water gossip over stones, that sense had been there—gentle but powerful, amused but watchful.
Now it stood before her, taking on a shape her mind could understand: a woman made of water and light, her hair streaming like currents, her eyes deep as mid‑stream pools.
"Daughter of my priests," the river‑lady said, voice like rain on leaves, "you do not offer your life lightly."
Ifabola's knees shook.
"He wants hers," she said, nodding at Kike. "And he says Dupe already owes him. Someone has to pay."
"That is not how all debts work," the river‑lady replied. Her gaze slid toward the far bank.
You sniff at what crosses me too boldly, she told the hunger. You take drowned ones and those who fall in far from home. I have let some go. I will not let you drag this one under without a fight.
You were never part of the first bargain, the hunger said, voice cooling. Do not pretend this is your table.
"Everything that touches my water touches my table," she snapped. "Including that stone your priest threw into me years ago."
Ifabola blinked.
"The altar pieces," she whispered.
The river‑lady's mouth twitched.
"They scratched me on the way down," she said. "I do not forget who throws sharp things in my path."
The hunger rumbled, annoyed.
You would trade with me for this child? it asked. What do you offer?
"Not trade," she said. "Contest."
She turned to Ifabola.
"You offered your life," she said. "Keep the courage. Keep the willingness. But not yet. You are not ripe enough for such a seed." Her fingers—liquid and solid at once—brushed Ifabola's marked palm.
Cool shot up the girl's arm, settling around the burning curve like a sheath.
The mark sizzled, protesting.
The hunger hissed.
You meddle in my name, it snarled.
"I cover what you overreach," she replied. "If you want this child, you will have to bite through both of us. That will give us time to sharpen our own teeth."
She turned to Kike.
"You, small frog," she said, eyes softening. "You may come with me a while. Your body already lies quiet. Stay too long here and it will wither beyond use."
Terror spiked in Ifabola's chest.
"No," she whispered. "Please. She has to come back. Baba is—"
"Your father walks old roads," the river‑lady said. "If he returns, he will need not only living hands but strong spirits waiting. I can keep your sister safer than she is now, dangling between this bank and that one."
She paused.
"It will hurt when her body lets go," she warned gently. "For you. For your mother. But her path will not end. It will change."
"If she goes with you," the hunger said, "I will still take something."
Its gaze—if it had one—slid to Ajani far away, standing in the smoke‑filled hut, hands pressed to glowing stone.
There are other debts, it murmured. Other doors. I am not starving.
The river‑lady straightened.
"So we agree," she said. "This one is mine. You may gnaw on the folly of men elsewhere."
The hunger chuckled.
For now, it said. Little doors multiply. I can wait.
It recoiled from the riverbank, shrinking, gathering itself back into whatever depths it lurked.
The sky above the halfway river brightened slightly.
Kike clung to Ifabola, eyes huge.
"Do I have to go?" she asked.
Ifabola's throat closed.
She remembered her sister's limp body, the thin rise and fall of her chest. She remembered Dupe's grave, Mama Ireti's still hands.
She wanted to say, No. Stay. We'll fix it.
The river‑lady's gaze met hers.
No lies lived there, only clear, deep water.
Slowly, Ifabola nodded.
"Go," she whispered, voice breaking. "Go, frog. Learn all Dupe's stories before me. When I come, you can test if I remember them right."
Kike's lip wobbled.
"Promise you'll come?" she whispered.
"If I have to walk on Sango's lightning to get there, I will," Ifabola said.
Kike sniffed, then managed a small, wobbly smile.
She took Dupe's hand.
Dupe squeezed Ifabola's shoulder as she passed.
"Keep making trouble in the right direction," she said gruffly. "I'll save you a place by the big story fire."
Together, they stepped into the whirl of light.
For an instant, Ifabola saw Kike's form stretch, thin as a thread, then dissolve into the river‑lady's shimmering outline.
The world twisted.
She woke with a scream that scraped her throat raw.
Hands grabbed her—her mother's, Fẹ́mi's, three other women's. The room stank of sweat and lamp‑smoke.
Kike's small body lay on the mat beside her.
Still.
A keening sound filled the room.
It took Ifabola a moment to realize it came from her own chest.
"No," her mother whispered, clutching Kike's limp form. "No, no, no…"
"Ifa‑mi," Fẹ́mi gasped, shaking her shoulders. "What happened? Her breath just…stopped. One moment it was there, the next—"
"She's not gone," Ifabola sobbed. "She's just…on the other bank."
The adults stared at her through their own tears, not understanding.
Outside, in the abandoned hut, the column of smoke above Ajani's stone flared brightly, then flickered.
One of the men present collapsed, clutching his chest.
Another began to cough blood.
Ajani himself staggered, vision tunneling.
"What…did you do?" he choked at the presence.
It only laughed, the sound rustling the thatch.
You asked for proof, it said. Now look.
Across Ayetoro, three children woke screaming from dreams they would not remember, their hearts racing.
In the Ifatedo compound, a mother rocked a small, still body and cursed a world that took daughters and left holes.
On the halfway river, Kike sat beside Dupe and the river‑lady, kicking her feet in the water.
"Will 'Fabo be all right?" she asked.
"For a time," the goddess said. "Grief is a deep current. But she is learning to swim."
Dupe snorted.
"If she drowns," she said, "I will drag her back by the ear myself."
The goddess smiled.
"Your family is stubborn," she said to no one in particular. "Perhaps that is why the world has not cracked fully yet."
Back in Ayetoro, Ifabola pressed her burning palm to her chest, feeling both the ache of loss and a cool, new layer coiled around the mark—river power settling like a second skin.
The hunger had taken another price.
So had the river.
The war for Ayetoro had deepened.
And in the quiet space left by Kike's last breath, something else bloomed in Ifabola's chest—
Not just sorrow.
Resolve.