The sun became a merciless ancestor, one who forgotten the meaning of mercy. It commanded everything beneath its gaze—the endless expanse of sea, the withered flesh of the young man in the boat, even the air itself, which hung thick with salt and the weight of forgotten prayers.

Each dawn, it arose with savage brilliance, burning away the night's fleeting comfort. Each dusk, it abandoned the world to darkness, leaving only the stars to mock him with their cold indifference. His world shrunk to water and sky, nothing more.

Onwuka's mind lost count of the days since the last storm spat him out, like a spirit rejecting an inadequate offering. Salt hardened in his wounds, turning his skin into something other—neither fully alive nor truly dead. His lips, split like dried earth in drought season, formed words that even he could not hear. His voice become dust, scraped hollow by thirst.

The boat mourned beneath him, its tired bones shifting with each ocean swell. It was merely a rowboat, a pitiful remnant of the great vessel that had carried him and others in chains across these waters—men who had called out to ancestors whose voices had been drowned by the waves.

Death should have claimed him too. But it did not.

The water called. But he did not answer.

So he drifted, caught between worlds.

His fingers, now strange and foreign things, curled weakly around the boat's edge, nails split like ancient bark, skin peeling like shed snakeskin. In those first days, before thirst became a demon possessing his flesh, he had tried to catch fish. He had fashioned hooks from splinters of wood, binding them with threads pulled from his tattered clothes. But the fish had proven as elusive as rain in drought season.

Perhaps the ocean itself had denied him sustenance, or maybe the spirits of the deep had turned their faces from him.

Now, there was only hunger, a serpent coiling through his empty chambers, consuming what little strength remained.

Hunger and salt.

The salt had become his second skin, his unwanted lover. It claimed his mouth, branded his flesh, thickened the very air he breathed. It sealed his eyes shut when fever-dreams released him, mapped ancient rivers in his palms. It sang with the ocean's voice, a death-song promising peace in the depths below.

His cough emerged like crushed gravel, each breath a torch in his throat. His body had become a stranger's—bones wrapped in dried fish skin, his belly a gourd scraped hollow by spirits. He ran his tongue over his lips, tasting the bitter tang of salt and something else—something metallic, something wrong. Blood.

Would it be so bad, he wondered, to simply let go?

Would it be so bad to slip into the water, to let the waves cradle him, carry him down to where the drowned men lay with open mouths and empty eyes? Would his ancestors judge him for thinking such thoughts?

Such thoughts should have sent him scrambling for prayers, for protection. But his fear had dried up with his tears.

He let his eyes fall shut.

And in the darkness behind his lids, he was home.

The marketplace was alive with color and noise, the scent of roasted plantain thick in the air. Laughter rose in bursts, children darting between stalls, women with baskets balanced on their heads calling out to one another. His sister was beside him, her hands clapping together in time with a rhythm only she could hear. "Dance, Onwuka," she had said, her eyes bright. "The gods love those who dance."

He had laughed, shaking his head, but his feet had moved anyway, his body obeying a command older than words. The drums had been calling, and he had answered.

Ogoli—his mother had watched from a distance, her eyes heavy with knowing. That evening, as she braided wisdom into his sister's hair, she spoke of water spirits—those clever ones who wore beauty like a mask, who could turn a man's soul to sea foam with nothing but a song. Those ancient ones who had been waiting since before the first slave ship scarred the waves.

"They are not kind," she had warned, brushing his hair from his forehead. "They do not love as we do. Remember this truth, my son, when the water calls your name."

In some ways, Onwuka wondered if his mother had been a seer—how else could she have known he would one day be lost at sea? The villagers had called her a witch, though they had no proof. He had always dismissed their whispers, believing his mother was nothing more than a woman of wisdom. But in moments like this, when her warnings echoed too perfectly in his reality, even his certainty wavered.

The memory shifted like palm wine in a gourd, spilling into sweeter moments:

"Ah, but you should have seen him when he was small," Ogoli said, her laughter rich as palm oil. "This great hunter of ours once ran screaming from a chicken!"

"Mother!" Onwuka protested, but Ifemma—his younger sister was already clapping with delight, her eyes dancing with mischief.

"Tell me more, Mama," Ifemma begged, settling at their mother's feet. "Was it a very fierce chicken?"

"Fierce? Ha!" Ogoli's hands moved as she spoke, weaving the tale like she wove her market cloths. "It was the smallest thing you ever saw, barely bigger than my hand. But to hear your brother tell it—"

"I was four!" Onwuka cut in, fighting his own smile. "And that bird had devil-spirits in its eyes."

"Devil-spirits!" Ifemma collapsed in giggles. "Brother, you who now boasts of facing down leopards—"

"At least leopards are honest about their intentions," he said with dignity. "That chicken was plotting something wicked. I could tell."

"Yes," their mother agreed solemnly, though her eyes sparkled. "Very wicked. It might have pecked you to death."

"Or worse," Ifemma added, "it might have laid an egg at you!"

Their laughter had risen like smoke to the stars, sweet as roasted corn, warm as the evening air...

But now, in the cruel clarity of waking, their voices faded like morning mist. The boat remained, his prison of wood and salt. The endless expanse of sea and sky stretched before him, a tapestry woven by a mad god.

But something was different.

The air had changed. The water, once restless, was now eerily still, as if waiting. As if listening.

Then—

A sound unspooled itself across the water.

Soft at first, no more than the whisper of wind over water. Then clearer, a thread of melody weaving itself into the fabric of the night. It was like nothing he had ever heard, and yet, it was familiar.

A song.

Low, lilting, curling through the darkness like fingers against his skin. The language was unknown to him, but the meaning was clear. It was a song of longing, of sorrow, of something ancient and endless. It wrapped around his bones, seeped into his very marrow.

His heart, so long sluggish with despair, remembered how to race.

He turned.

And there she was.

Like moonlight poured into flesh, like water dreaming itself into woman, like every cautionary tale whispered over cooking fires made manifest in terrible splendor. She was everything his mother's stories had promised, everything they had failed to capture.

Her eyes were the oldest part of her, blue as the depths where light fears to swim, ancient as the first story ever told.

She did not speak. Words were beneath her.

The song continued, and though her lips didn't move, Onwuka knew it came from her.

A shiver ran through him, though the night was warm. His mother's warnings surfaced like drowning things, but they were weak, powerless against the tide of that melody.

The siren held him in her gaze, patient as death, hungry as the sea itself.

She was waiting for him to choose.

His cracked lips parted, questions burning on his tongue, but his voice had abandoned him to her mercy. His heart, that treacherous drum, beat its weak rebellion against his bones.

The song swelled, filled the space between them, wrapped around his throat like a noose.

And then—

She giggled.

The sound burst forth like bubbles breaking surface, her webbed fingers rising to cover her mouth in a twisted imitation of maiden shyness.

And the world tilted.

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