The village no longer whispered—they *wailed*.
Each night brought new reckonings.
Children heard singing from the yam barns, voices too old and too sad to be living. Pregnant women woke with bruises on their bellies in the shape of fingers. The goats refused to eat, and the hens laid eggs filled with black water.
But it wasn't just curses. It was *reminders*.
Adamma's spirit had stirred more than ghosts—it had awakened memory.
Old Mazi Ikenna, nearly blind, confessed by the fire: "We sold them. For mirrors. For gin. For salt. We offered the strongest ones to the men with ships, and told their mothers they'd wandered into the forest."
He wept as he spoke, but the ancestors did not care for tears.
By morning, he was gone. His hut empty. But his bones were found at the village border—laid out in perfect ritual formation.
And beside them? Carved in the sand:
*"Balance."*
***
Mma Oluchi, now called *Ezenwanyi*—the spirit woman—gathered the young girls under her roof.
"You must learn what was lost," she said, braiding Adamma's final red beads into each girl's hair. "So it won't be taken again."
She taught them names of herbs once forbidden. Songs that made the air bend. She showed them how to speak with flame and how to listen to wind.
The village men watched with fear. The power was shifting. Returning.
One night, a man called Azu tried to stop them—threw burning coals at the compound, shouted for God and fire. But when he turned to run, the earth opened and swallowed him whole.
No one cried.
***
The Dibia Ofo knelt beside the old shrine, now crumbled. He lit seven candles and spoke to the bones beneath.
"I was silent when they screamed," he said. "I watched them bury secrets and I kept the rhythm of their lies."
The flames turned blue. The air froze.
And then came the voice.
Not Adamma.
Older.
Deeper.
Angrier.
*"Then you will remember what pain feels like."*
That night, Ofo's tongue swelled. His hands blistered with old scars not his own. Visions came—slaves taken, tied, marked. Girls bleeding in the dark. Mothers clawing at ship decks as their daughters were dragged below.
And Ofo screamed until morning.
The next day, he taught the children what he saw.
And that was the first day no one died.
***
The wind settled.
For now.
But the villagers knew: this peace was earned, not gifted.
Because the dust still watched. And the daughters beneath it?
They had names now.
And they were waiting.
—