The compound of Koleoso crouched at the western edge of Ayetoro like a waiting storm.
High walls of packed earth ringed it, studded with spears and cow horns. Inside, huts clustered around a central courtyard where a great iroko tree grew, its branches hung with red and white cloth. Beneath that tree stood the shrine of Sango—god of thunder and lightning—a low building of clay painted with jagged streaks of white over red.
That morning, the shrine's doorway smoked.
Chief Ogunremi Koleoso stood bare‑chested before it, red wrappers tied tight around his waist, beads clicking softly at his ankles and wrists. Sweat slicked his dark skin though the sun was not yet fierce. Before him, on a flat stone, a young ram lay bound, its eyes bright with fear.
Around the courtyard, Koleoso warriors beat their drums.
Not the slow, steady drums of mourning the whole kingdom had heard the night before, but faster ones—sharp, insistent, like a heart that refused to rest. The rhythm crawled up Ogunremi's spine and settled at the base of his skull.
He needed this.
He needed thunder louder than the noise in his own mind.
Behind him, someone shifted. "Baba," a young voice whispered, "the clouds are not yet gathered."
"They will come," Ogunremi said.
He did not turn, but he knew who stood there: his eldest child, his daughter Ayọ̀kẹ́, wrapped in a short red cloth, her hair braided close to her skull. She was fourteen seasons old, already taller than some grown women, her arms corded from spear practice.
She should have been inside with the other youths, grinding grain or polishing weapons. But when thunder rolled without rain the night before, she had appeared at his side with her spear, eyes bright.
"You will learn what true thunder is," he had told her. "Not just the sky's noise, but the god behind it."
Now he felt her gaze on his back, steady and hungry.
One day, he thought, this compound will sit on her shoulders.
If the kingdom still stood by then.
He lifted his face toward the open sky.
It was clear. Too clear. A thin veil of high cloud, nothing more.
"O Sango," he called, voice ringing across the courtyard, "companion of lightning, breaker of stubborn trees, eater of lies—hear your son."
The drums quickened.
"I stood with this king you have taken," Ogunremi said. "My spear drank the blood of his enemies. My shield turned aside blades meant for his throat. Now he lies cold, with a stranger's name on his chest, and the one who wrote it walks free. If this is your doing, show your face. If it is not, show me the hand I must cut."
He took the sacrificial knife from the altar—a short, broad blade of polished iron—and pressed it to the ram's throat.
The animal jerked, bleated once, then fell still as red poured over the stone. The smell of hot blood rose into the morning air.
The drumbeat climbed, faster, harder.
Ogunremi lifted the bloodied knife high.
"Thunder does not tolerate insult," he shouted. "By this blood I call the storm. By this blood I ask for your judgment. If the one who killed our king hides among us, strike where I should strike. If not, send me the sign of the enemy."
He flung a handful of blood toward the sky.
For a heartbeat, nothing changed.
Then the air shivered.
A wind gusted through the compound, sudden and sharp. Dust twisted itself into a low whirlwind that danced around the iroko tree, making the red and white cloths snap like flags in battle. The drums faltered, then steadied.
Above them, the clear blue bruised.
Clouds should not grow so fast. Yet dark shapes boiled out of nowhere, spreading from a single point above the shrine. They rolled over one another like fighting rams, thickening, blackening, until the sun itself dimmed.
Ayọ̀kẹ́'s hand tightened on her spear.
"Baba…" she breathed.
"Hush," Ogunremi murmured.
The first crack of thunder split the sky.
It was not like the rumbling growl they often heard during rainy season. This was sharp and close, a whip of sound that made everyone flinch. A breath later, a spear of white‑red lightning ripped down—not to the altar, not to the waiting ram's body, but to the great iroko's trunk.
The tree shuddered.
Fire crawled briefly over the bark, then vanished, leaving behind a scorched mark.
The warriors gasped.
Ayọ̀kẹ́ stared.
Burned into the trunk, charred black against gray, was a single jagged line crossing another, then curling downward—a shape eerily like one of the letters that had been on the king's chest.
E.
Ogunremi's mouth went dry.
"Sango," he whispered, more to himself than to the onlookers. "Is this your answer?"
Another thunderclap boomed overhead, followed by rolling echoes that seemed to say something in a language only bones remembered.
He stepped closer to the tree. Heat still shimmered off the blackened mark. When he reached out to touch it, a tiny spark snapped against his fingertips.
Images slammed into his mind.
—A throne hall, centuries ago, lit by oil lamps and fear.
—A king kneeling before a faceless carving, begging for endless life.
—Blood on stone, on lips, on a word that writhed and grew teeth.
—Sango turning away in disgust as that word slipped into the world like a shadow given shape.
Ogunremi jerked his hand back, sucking in air. The vision vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving only the burning mark on the bark and the taste of iron on his tongue.
"Baba?" Ayọ̀kẹ́'s voice trembled, just a little. "What did you see?"
"An old foolishness," he said hoarsely. "One our fathers should have told more loudly."
He turned to his watching warriors, who stared between the lightning mark and their chief.
"Sango has spoken," he said, letting the god's fury fill his own voice. "This is no ordinary witch's work. It is a debt from long ago, reaching for our time. A name that should never have been given breath again."
Murmurs rippled.
"Whose debt?" someone asked. "The king's line?"
"Perhaps." Ogunremi looked back at the mark. "Perhaps all kings'. But hear me: thunder will not stand aside while old hungers eat this land."
He raised his blood‑streaked hand, and the drums thundered in answer.
Ayọ̀kẹ́ watched him with fierce pride. Yet beneath it, a small knot of unease twisted in her belly. When the lightning had struck, for a heartbeat she had thought it would find not the tree, not the altar, but her.
At the same moment lightning carved its letter into the iroko tree, Ifabola nearly dropped her broom.
She had been sweeping the inner courtyard of the Ifatedo compound, watching dust dance in thin shafts of sunlight, when a crack of thunder slammed through her chest as much as her ears. The broomstick jumped in her hands.
Around her, people paused. A clay pot rattled on a shelf. Somewhere, a baby began to wail.
"Thunder?" one of the apprentices said, squinting up at the mostly clear sky. "But the clouds—"
Another boom cut him off, followed by the faintest patter of imaginary rain, as if drops were falling from a sky that hadn't yet remembered how to darken.
Ifabola's knees went weak.
For a heartbeat, the courtyard blurred. She saw—not her own compound, but another: warriors in red and white, a giant tree shuddering, a man with blood on his hands staring in shock at burned bark.
She blinked, and the image vanished.
Her mother's voice cut through the buzz in her head. "Into the house, you children. Thunder on a clear day? That is no play."
Ifabola stumbled into the nearest room with her sisters. The sound rolled over them again, deeper this time, like the closing of a great, unseen door.
She pressed her palms over her ears, but it did nothing. The thunder was not in the air; it was inside her bones.
We are listening, a presence seemed to say. We are not the only ones.
That evening, as the sky finally gathered real clouds and a light drizzle began to fall, Baba Adégbáyí called his household into the main courtyard.
Lamps flickered in sheltered corners, throwing soft light over the faces gathered there: witches in white, apprentices in plain cloth, younger children blinking sleep from their eyes. Rain tapped gently on the rooftops, a restless lullaby.
"We begin the great consultation tonight," Baba announced. His staff, planted in the hard earth, seemed to root itself deeper with each word. "For seven nights we will call on every friendly spirit and cautious god. We will read shells and bones, smoke and water. We will ask what walks among us wearing a king's blood as a mask."
A murmur swept through the group—part fear, part determination.
"This work is not for the very young," he continued. "Children will sleep in the inner rooms, doors barred. Apprentices above ten seasons may stay in the outer court, but they must not cross the chalk lines I will draw. The first night is always the noisiest; not all who answer our call come with good intentions."
His gaze swept over them all, then settled briefly on Ifabola.
Her stomach tightened.
"Obedience," he said, "is the strongest charm you can wear tonight. Do as you are told, no more, no less."
"Yes, Baba," voices chorused.
He nodded and began assigning tasks. Senior witches moved to prepare altars with palm fronds, chalk and cowries. Apprentices fetched jars of river water and bundles of dried herbs. Fẹ́mi carried a tray of small clay lamps, his face set with determined seriousness.
Ifabola hovered at the edge, wanting desperately to help, to do something other than sit and be protected. But each time she took a step forward, an adult hand or glance gently pushed her back.
"Come, Ifa‑mi," her mother said at last, taking her shoulder. "You heard your father. Into the inner room."
"If trouble is coming, shouldn't we all be in the courtyard?" Ifabola protested. "More eyes, more hands—"
"Sometimes too many hands only tangle the thread," her mother said. "Your work now is to keep still so your father's mind can rest on the spirits, not on whether his daughter has run into danger."
The truth of that pinned Ifabola's tongue.
She let herself be led into the sleeping room. Her sisters were already there, yawning, rubbing their eyes. Auntie Dupe sat by the door with a short stick across her knees, as if she meant to beat any trouble that dared knock.
"Lie down," her mother said. "If you cannot sleep, at least lie quietly and listen to your own heart instead of the drums."
She touched each child's forehead with chalk, then the center of the door. "May what walks outside see you not," she whispered, voice low.
The wooden bar slid into place again.
Ifabola lay on her mat, staring at the ceiling. The faint sound of activity in the courtyard reached her: chanting starting up, the crackle of a newly lit fire, Fẹ́mi's voice answering Baba's.
Rain thickened, drumming softly on the roof. Somewhere overhead, real thunder grumbled, distant this time, as if Sango had retreated to his own house to listen.
Minutes stretched long.
I am not a baby, she thought resentfully. I have already seen things tonight's spirits have not yet whispered.
Guilt followed quickly on the heels of pride.
And I still haven't told Baba.
Her palm tingled.
She opened her hand, staring at the faint chalk arc that refused to wash away fully, no matter how often she bathed. Tonight it glowed very softly, like a coal buried under ash.
She wondered, not for the first time, if the messenger would come again.
As if in answer, a different sound threaded itself through the rain and muffled chants—a low, slow beat, not from their courtyard drums but from somewhere farther away, outside the compound walls.
Gù… gù… gù…
The rhythm tugged at her bones. It was not the palace's royal drum this time, nor the sharp thunder drums of Koleoso. This was older, emptier, as if someone were beating on a hollow gourd at the bottom of a well.
Auntie Dupe shifted by the door, head cocked. "Do you children hear that?"
Her sisters murmured sleepily, not quite awake.
"Yes," Ifabola whispered.
Dupe frowned. "It is not from here. Maybe some fool youths still dancing for the dead king." She shook her head. "Close your ears, jàre. Not every song is yours."
Ifabola tried.
She really did.
But the drumbeat crawled under her skin.
Gù… gù… gù…
Her heartbeat began to match it, slower than normal, heavy.
Her eyelids drooped.
The room blurred.
She felt herself sliding—not through a light‑door this time, but as if the floor had tilted and she was gently rolling downhill, away from her mat, her sisters, the safety of four earthen walls.
She did not move outward.
She moved inward.
Down.
She stood again on a surface marked with symbols.
But this was not the great, open place she had seen before with the faceless messenger. The space around her was tighter, close, like the inside of a narrow house. The symbols here were uglier somehow—sharper angles, cramped circles, lines that knotted around themselves.
The air smelled of stale blood and smoke gone sour.
The drumbeat was louder here.
Gù… gù… gù…
Ahead of her, a doorway of darkness yawned.
Not light this time. Not even shadow. Just a place where everything stopped—a cut in the world.
She should have been afraid. Instead, a strange numbness wrapped around her thoughts, soft as rotten cloth.
Step forward, something whispered. You have already begun.
Her feet tingled, as if they belonged to someone else.
Before she could move, a hand closed around her wrist.
Not a real hand. Not flesh.
But the weight on her spirit was unmistakable.
Not yet, a familiar voice said sharply, close to her ear though no one stood there. The messenger's tone had lost its gentle curiosity; now it burned like a whip. This door is not for living feet.
The numbness shattered.
Fear surged in to replace it.
The darkness beyond the doorway pulsed once, like a vast, sleeping thing annoyed at being denied a meal.
You meddle, a different presence rumbled. It did not sound male or female, kind or cruel—only hungry. She is marked. She hears my call. You cannot keep her forever.
For an instant, the letters burned in the nothingness:
E J E H
Ifabola's lungs forgot how to work.
She is not yours, the messenger snapped. The bargain was made with kings, not with children.
Silence trembled.
Then the drumbeat faltered, like a heart skipping.
Debts spread, the hungry voice purred. When a king breaks his promise, his people pay. When a father reaches too deep, his child is pulled with him. The path is open. I am patient.
Cold closed over Ifabola's ankles, as if unseen water lapped there.
The messenger's grip on her wrist tightened painfully.
Wake, it hissed.
The world tore.
She jerked upright on her mat with a strangled gasp.
The room was still dark, lit only by a thin line of lamplight under the door. Rain pattered gently. Her sisters slept on, undisturbed. Auntie Dupe snored softly, the stick loose in her hand.
But Ifabola's heart raced, too fast and too hard. Sweat soaked her wrapper. Her right wrist ached as if someone had squeezed it until the bones threatened to crack.
She looked down.
Where the white cloth had been tied, the skin was reddened—not from any rope, but from a crescent‑shaped mark, as if invisible fingers had clamped there.
Her palm burned.
She turned it over.
The faint chalk arc now glowed brighter, no longer shy. It had been joined by another line, crossing it near the top, forming the beginning of a shape she almost recognized.
Her breath came shallow. She closed her fist over the mark, pressing hard, as if pressure could push it back into nothing.
Outside, the chants in the courtyard rose, fierce and insistent. A flare of light shone under the door as someone passed with a lamp. For a moment she wondered if Baba or the others had felt what she had just escaped.
The bargain was made with kings, not with children…
What bargain? Which king? The dead one, or some long‑forgotten ruler? And what had her father reached too deep for?
Her mind whirled.
She wanted to run to Baba, to blurt out everything. The messenger, the letters in water, the not‑door, the hungry voice. To thrust her burning palm at him and demand he fix it.
But another image rose in her mind: Baba sitting under the baobab, every gaze on him, every fear pointed his way. His shoulders already bent under the weight of a frightened kingdom.
Not yet, the messenger had said before. His ears are full of many voices already.
She pressed her hand to her mouth to stop a sob.
"I am only small," she whispered into her own skin.
The drums outside swelled like a wave.
In the courtyard, unseen, cowries tumbled across wooden boards. Smoke curled into shapes that made elders curse and cross themselves. Somewhere, a goat cried out once and stopped.
In the heart of the sleeping room, a priest's daughter curled around a burning secret, listening to the storm of magic and hunger gathering just beyond her door.