The slave ship vanished beneath the waves, dragged into the ocean's hungry depths with its cargo of stolen souls. Dead wood dissolved into salt. Dead flesh became fish food. Dead hopes scattered like seafoam on the wind. But hope, like seafoam, had a way of reforming.

In the weather-beaten rowboat that creaked with every swell, Onwuka clung to the thin thread between life and drowning. In front of him lay the white doctor who had pulled him from the water, now slumped against the gunwale, each breath a rattling whisper. A healer, he claimed to be, though healing seemed a foreign thing in this wasteland of water. Onwuka did not know whether to trust him. He did not know if it mattered.

All around them, the Atlantic stretched endlessly, dark and pulsing, the waves like muscles flexing beneath its skin. Above, the night hung moonless, the stars stolen by clouds that moved like slave ships across the sky. Salt burned Onwuka's split lips, crept into the raw circles around his wrists where iron had bitten deep. The smell of blood and brine was thick, pressing into his nostrils like fingers.

But breath still moved through his lungs. For now, that was enough. That had to be enough.

His ragged breathing rose above the wind's moan, carrying him back to another night when darkness showed its teeth. Thunder had torn open the sky like a wound, and rain had fallen thick as palm wine, dense as the mist that had crept up from the river near his compound.

His mother's voice had cut through it all—Onwuka, hide!—before their door exploded inward in a spray of splinters.

The men had come like a flood, faceless in the storm. The air around them had reeked of desperation and gunpowder, fear and greed mixed into something inhumane. Their torches had hissed defiance at the rain, throwing shadows that danced like demons on mud walls. Someone had screamed then, a sound like a bird being broken. But it had not been his mother. She would not scream until later, when the night had swallowed everything whole.

Rough hands had wrenched him upward, dragging him through mud that sucked at his feet like hungry mouths. Pain exploded at the base of his skull, and then—

Blackness.

When consciousness had returned, his wrists and ankles wore iron. Salt air had crept into his lungs like poison, followed by the stench of human suffering—unwashed bodies packed tight as yams in a basket, urine pooling in corners, vomit coating the boards. The heat had been suffocating. The ship's wooden bones had creaked their endless song, accompanied by the soft, ceaseless weeping of women below deck.

That was how he had learned the price of leaving.

Forever.

A wave slammed against their tiny vessel, yanking Onwuka back to the present moment. His fingers had tightened around rough wood until splinters threatened to pierce skin. Beside him, the doctor released a sound like wind through dying leaves.

"You're awake," Onwuka said, his voice scratched raw by salt and screaming.

The white man's face was a map of suffering, pale skin traced with dried salt and sweat. His attempt to rise had failed like a bird with broken wings. "Not dead yet." A weak chuckle, almost self-mocking. "You?"

Onwuka did not answer.

The doctor shifted, each cough rattling through his chest like stones in a gourd. His ribs pressed against skin like fish bones beneath translucent scales. "Water," he begged.

Onwuka's eyes found their salvaged flask, where precious drops still clung to life. His hesitation lasted three heartbeats before he surrendered it. The doctor's fingers, weak as newborn grass, trembled too violently to hold it, so Onwuka guided it to cracked lips himself.

The white man drunk like a man emerging from desert sands, then collapsed back into himself, each breath a battle. "Thank you."

Onwuka said nothing.

Somehow, in the crashing waves beneath their boat, he heard his mother's voice.

If the water calls, do not answer.

She had said this to him once, long ago, when he was just a boy and the village river had tempted him with its cool, swirling currents. The spirits of the water were powerful, she had warned. If they wanted you, they would take you.

His mother had known what it was to be unwanted, living in the spaces between acceptance and exile. Village tongues had wagged freely about her—cursed woman, abandoned wife, raising a son in the shadow of shame. But her spine had been ironwood, her love for him fiercer than any judgment. She had worn their whispers like jewelry, turning accusations into armor.

Where was she now? Did her feet still trace the familiar paths of their compound, or had grief hollowed her out, leaving only a shell behind to catch the rain of sorrow? Had she performed the death rites, poured libations into earth that held no body?

Onwuka's jaw tightened until bone threatened to crack. He would not feed these waters. He would not let the spirits claim him as their own.

A corpse drifted past their boat—flesh swollen with seawater, limbs rigid as mangrove roots, skin bleached by salt and sun. Onwuka turned away, but the image burned itself behind his eyes.

The doctor watched the body's slow procession across the waves, his gaze heavy with something beyond horror. "I never believed in Hell before." His voice was barely a whisper "Now I think—perhaps we are in it."

Onwuka did not tell him that hell was not some faraway land of endless torment, not the fiery pit the white men in the village preached about. It was the insides of a slave ship, where bodies pressed together like fish in a net, where you learned to recognize death's approach by the changing rhythm of another's breath. Hell was waking up to a life you did not choose, where even your name was stolen from you.

No, he did not say this.

Instead, his eyes searched the horizon where water met sky in an endless embrace of blue.

"We have to keep rowing," he said.

The doctor's laugh had been empty as a dried calabash. "And where do you suppose we go?"

Before an answer could form, the wind shifted like a dancer changing direction. Waves risen, muscled and purposeful. The sea moved with the sudden intensity of a woman in labor. And then stilled.

"Another storm?"

"I hope not." The doctor's chuckle held no mirth. "I don't think we can handle another one of those."

The silence that followed was thick as palm oil, but necessity had a way of making even enemies speak. The doctor—James, he said his name was—broke it first, words spilling out between rattling coughs.

"I had a practice in Liverpool," he offered, voice scraping against his throat. "Treated the wealthy, mostly. Until—" His words had trailed off.

"Until?" Onwuka had prompted, surprising himself with his curiosity.

"Until I couldn't anymore. Made a mistake. A wealthy man's wife..." James closed his eyes against the memory. "She died under my care. Her husband made sure I would never practice there again."

The boat rocked gently, as if cradling their confessions.

"So you chose this instead?"

"Chose?" James laughed. "No, not chose. Fled. Took the first ship that would have me. Told myself I could help—treat the sick, ease suffering." His hands trembled as he spoke. "But you can't ease suffering when you're part of what causes it."

"And yet you did nothing to stop it."

"No." The word fell between them like a stone. "I didn't. What good would belief do against iron and greed?"

Onwuka said nothing, but his silence spoke volumes. The sea listened to their words, carrying them away on waves that knew no direction but forward.

But the change came without warning, like death often did. One moment the wind was a whisper, the next a scream. The sea rose up beneath them like a beast waking from ancient slumber, waves tall as palm trees, black as obsidian in the starless night.

"Row!" Onwuka had shouted above the storm's voice, his words torn away by the wind. "Row!"

James tried, his weakened arms strained against the water's fury. But it was like fighting a god with twigs. A wave caught them broadside, massive and merciless. The world turned upside down, water and sky trading places in a dizzying dance.

The cold hit like a thousand knives. Salt water rushed into Onwuka's mouth, bitter as betrayal. He kicked hard, breaking the surface with a gasp that tore at his lungs. Through the curtain of rain, he saw James—pale face even paler in the darkness, arms flailing weakly against the current.

Their eyes met across the chaos. James's mouth had opened, perhaps to speak, perhaps to scream. But the sea was waiting for just such a moment. A wave took him, pushing him under. Onwuka watched, horror turning his blood to ice, as the doctor sunk deeper into the dark water. James's hand reached up one last time, fingers spread like starfish, before the ocean claimed him completely.

Tears mixed with rain and seawater blurred Onwuka's vision. They tasted the same—salt was salt, whether it came from grief or the sea. The overturned boat bobbed nearby like a corpse, mocking him with its presence.

If the water calls, do not answer.

His mother's voice echoed in his head, stronger than the storm's howl. With desperate strength born of terror and determination, he fought his way to the boat. His fingers found purchase on the slick wood, muscles screaming as he had pulled and pushed, trying to right the vessel. The sea had fought him for every inch, jealous of its prize.

Finally, the boat had turned, water cascading from its belly like a second rainfall. Onwuka not allowed himself to think of James as he hauled himself over the side, his body shaking with cold and exhaustion. He collapsed in the bottom of the boat, where ankle-deep water had sloshed with every rise and fall of the waves.

The storm had raged on, indifferent to the life it had taken, indifferent to the one that remained. Onwuka curled into himself, making his body small against the vastness of the ocean. His lips moved in prayer—not to the Christian god of the slave ships, but to the water goddess, the water spirit his mother had taught him to fear and respect.

Please, he had begged silently, let me live. Let me see my mother again. Let me tell her I did not answer when the water called.

Above him, the clouds had continued their war with the sea, and somewhere below, James's body had drifted ever deeper into the darkness, joining the countless others who had made the ocean their final home.

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