The village gathered beneath the cloak of twilight, shadows stretching long beneath the orange glow of firelight. Children clung to their mothers, and elders sat on carved wooden stools wrapped in shawls, their eyes locked on the stranger who had arrived with no name, only a carved wooden box cradled in both hands like a sacred offering. Smoke from the central flame coiled upward into the dusk, and the river, barely visible beyond the trees, whispered against its banks with a voice like memory.
No one spoke as the stranger knelt beside a flat stone at the fire's center and placed the box down with reverence. It was dark wood, aged and smooth, marked with faint etchings worn by time. Amaka stepped forward, drawn by something she could not name. Her heart pounded beneath her ribs, but her fingers remained steady. The carved symbols on the box twisting lines and arcs that seemed to shimmer in the firelight called to her as if they remembered her even when she did not remember them.
She glanced at the elders, received a single nod from Chief Nwoke, and took a breath.
Then, slowly, she opened the lid.
Gasps rippled through the crowd.
Inside, resting on black velvet like a relic from the gods, lay a small drum no larger than a dinner plate. Its skin was cracked at the edges, taut over a hollowed frame of dark wood polished smooth by generations of hands. Strange markings encircled the body symbols like those on the box, but older, fainter. The drum seemed to hum with silence, as though it had not been touched in a hundred years, yet remembered every beat ever played upon it.
But it was what lay beneath the drum that silenced even the river's murmurs.
Amaka lifted the drum carefully. Nestled in the velvet below was a folded parchment scroll, sealed with wax the color of old blood. Pressed into the wax was a sigil none of the villagers recognized a serpent coiled protectively around a crescent moon. The sight of it stirred something deep in Amaka's chest, something half-forgotten, as though her bones remembered an oath her mind could not.
The stranger reached for the scroll, his hands pale and calloused. He held it as though it might crumble in his grip, then broke the seal with his thumb and slowly unraveled the parchment. As the scroll unfurled, the wind shifted. The fire crackled louder, its flames dancing unnaturally high. Along the river's edge, unseen by all, the water shimmered as though stirred by invisible hands.
The stranger's voice, soft yet certain, broke the silence.
"The river speaks of a shadow rising,
an echo of darkness long forgotten.
The drum you hold is not just an instrument,
but a key… to the heart of the river's secret."
The words rang in the air like a bell struck underwater. As they were spoken, the ground beneath the villagers seemed to tense. Somewhere beyond the trees, the frogs fell silent. Then the river surged.
A wave rolled against the shore, though no wind blew. The fire leapt high into the night, and from the water came a haunting sound—a melody both strange and familiar. It was not music born of any human hand, but of the river itself: a song older than the village, older perhaps than memory. The sound curved through the trees and over the stones, wrapping itself around the villagers like smoke.
Amaka staggered back, clutching the drum to her chest. The stranger's eyes never left the river. His voice dropped, trembling now not with fear, but awe.
"The river remembers."
The melody rose soft drums, voices chanting in a language no longer spoken, flutes made from bone. It was a song of birth and loss, of war and silence, of treaties broken beneath starlight. Amaka closed her eyes, and in that moment, she saw a vision not a dream, not a memory, but something else entirely.
She saw a time before her people had settled the village. She saw the river running wild and wide, worshipped as a living being. She saw a council of drummers, cloaked in robes spun from river reeds and night sky, placing the same drum this drum into the ground, burying it beneath roots and salt, binding it with song and blood.
And then she saw fire red, devouring, endless. A shadow rose from the hills, and the river turned black.
Amaka fell to her knees, gasping. Around her, the villagers cried out, some in fear, some in awe. A child clung to his father. Chief Nwoke took a hesitant step toward the drum, but the stranger raised a hand to stop him.
"This drum," the stranger said, voice now grim, "was hidden to protect the river's secret. But something stirs now a darkness long sealed. And if it wakes…"
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to.
The villagers looked toward the river as one. The shimmering had stopped. The melody faded, leaving only the hush of water and wind. But the silence it left behind was louder than anything they had ever heard.
Amaka looked down at the drum. The skin no longer looked cracked it gleamed slightly, as if the river's song had awakened it. The symbols along its sides pulsed softly, faint as moonlight on water.
Chief Nwoke stepped forward again. "What does the river ask of us?"
The stranger's gaze moved across the circle of faces. "To remember. To prepare. The drum is not only a key it is a warning. And it chose her." His eyes rested on Amaka.
Amaka's throat tightened. She wanted to protest, to say she was just a weaver's daughter, not a guardian of secrets. But the drum pulsed again in her arms, and somewhere deep in the earth beneath her knees, she felt the river stirring.
She looked up at the stranger. "What comes next?"
He gave a solemn nod. "The river will show us. But it will not be gentle."
Above them, the fire snapped loudly. The flames, for a brief moment, turned blue.
And the river whispered a single word: "Soon."