It had been three days since Onwuka had last seen her—three days since the fish had passed his cracked lips, since those ancient eyes had held his own, eyes that spoke of depths no human should know. Eyes that belonged to something older than the sea itself.

Now he sat in his boat, skin blistered and peeling from the merciless sun, his mouth as dry as palm fronds in harmattan. The silence pressed against him, heavy as a fishing net full of stones. It wasn't just the hunger that gnawed at his belly, but the solitude that ate at his mind. Sometimes he wondered if she had been nothing more than a mirage born of desperation, if the fish had been a gift from the Sea Goddess herself, choosing for her own inscrutable reasons to keep his heart beating a while longer.

But the bones remained—delicate as chalk powder, white as moonlight on water—undeniable proof of her existence.

Onwuka's callused thumb traced the ridge of a fishbone, his mind adrift on dark waters. He had never truly believed the old stories, had dismissed his mother's warnings about water spirits who could bless or curse with equal passion, who could pull a man down to the ocean floor with just a gentle touch. "Never take from the great waters what you cannot return threefold," she would say, her voice low and urgent. "Never speak to what dwells in the deep, for you cannot know its true nature."

But he hadn't called out to anything. Hadn't responded when the waters whispered his name. He had only shared his stories with the night, speaking his truths to what he thought was empty air. And something—someone—had chosen to listen.

His stomach clenched, a familiar serpent of hunger coiling tighter. He could wait no longer. The siren had not returned, and death would not pause for longing. With trembling fingers, he prepared his last length of fishing line, threading it with hands that remembered their purpose even as his mind wandered. The hook caught the wan sunlight as it arced into the depths, and Onwuka's prayers followed it down, down into the darkness where she perhaps waited.

As his hook danced with the depths, Onwuka watched the sea stretch before him, but his mind wandered inland, back to where red earth kissed the sky. Back to evenings when the air carried the sweet-sharp scent of plantains crackling over hot coals, when the earth released its secrets after the rains had blessed it. Back to when his world was full of voices instead of silence.

Back to Ifemma.

His sister had been born with lightning in her bones and thunder in her laugh. Too much spirit packed into a body that could barely contain it, like new palm wine threatening to burst its gourd. While other girls moved through the village like shadows at dusk, measuring their words like precious beads and placing their feet as carefully as priestesses approaching a shrine, Ifemma blazed. She laughed with her whole body, ran as if racing the wind itself, and faced life with the fearlessness of a lioness. The elders would gather under the ancient iroko tree, muttering that a woman should not carry herself as if she owned the ground beneath her feet, but their words rolled off Ifemma like water from a duck's back.

"If the gods wanted women to be silent," she would say, her smile bright as breaking dawn, "They would have made us without voices. But They gave us tongues that can sing and teeth that can bite."

Onwuka had envied her then—her easy defiance of the world's narrow paths, the way joy spilled from her like water from an overfull cup. She had never cowered before the whispers, never bent her neck when the village matrons clicked their tongues and warned, "A proper woman should be like the stream, finding her way around obstacles, not smashing through them like a bush pig." But Ifemma had been born a hurricane wrapped in human skin.

And on the night of the rain, her true nature showed itself.

The dry season had stretched on like a hunger pain, cracking the earth until it cried out in pain and bowing even the proudest iroko trees beneath its merciless hand. The air had hung heavy as a curse, unmoving as a stubborn elder, while the entire village dragged itself through days that felt endless. The river had retreated like a shy bride, and the wells offered only water that tasted of graves. The people had burned offerings to the ancestors, poured libations to the water spirits, but the sky remained sealed tight as a miser's fist.

Until that night.

Onwuka had been sitting in their compound, listening to his parents' voices weave worry into the darkness as they spoke of withering crops and the lean season that stalked the village like a hungry leopard. The palm oil lamp sputtered, painting their faces in gold and shadow, making them look like the ancestor masks that hung in the shrine. He had been drifting between waking and dreams when the first drop fell—a single tear from a sky that had forgotten how to weep.

Then another. And another. 

The sky cracked open like a ripe coconut, rain cascading down in sheets thick as a mother's blessing, drumming against the earth with the rhythm of ancient talking drums. The village erupted in movement—people spilling from their compounds with clay pots held high, rushing to catch heaven's gift before the spirits changed their minds.

And there, in the heart of the storm—Ifemma.

She had danced.

Not the careful, measured steps of harvest festival or the dignified movements of maiden's dance, but something wild and free. Her arms reached toward the sky like branches seeking light, her bare feet painting stories in the mud, her body moving to music only she could hear. She spun and leaped, her laughter rising above the storm's voice, challenging the sky to match her joy.

"The ancestors are singing!" she had cried out. "Do you hear them, brother? They are singing our names!"

He had stood in the doorway, watching her with a mixture of awe and fear coiling in his chest. "Come inside," he had called, but the wind caught his words and scattered them like kola nuts on market day.

She had turned to him then, rain streaming down her face, her wrapper clinging to her like a second skin. "Why?" she had asked, her voice full of wonder. "This is magic! This is the gods reaching down to touch us!"

But when morning came, bearing sun and whispers on its shoulders, the village saw it differently.

"That girl moves like one touched by spirits," they murmured behind closed doors. "Dancing in the storm as if she had summoned it herself, as if she wore juju around her ankles instead of beads."

"She courts disaster," an elder had warned, her face creased with disapproval. "Girls who dance with spirits often join them before their time."

When Onwuka shared their words, Ifemma had thrown back her head and laughed, the sound bright as breaking dawn. "Let them speak," she had said, wisdom sitting lightly on her young shoulders. "The world was not built for women who whisper—it was made for those who sing."

Now, adrift on endless waters with nothing but sky above and mystery below, Onwuka yearned for her courage.

Longed for that fearless spirit, that fire that could warm even the coldest night.

Ifemma would not have cowered before these waters. She would have stood at the boat's edge, arms spread wide like an eagle's wings, daring the ocean to show its true face, demanding it speak its true name.

And suddenly, like sunrise breaking through storm clouds, understanding dawned—

What if his sister had known a truth he had been too afraid to grasp? What if the sea was not a force to bow before, but a power to speak with, to dance with, to know? What if, instead of waiting like a beggar at a chief's door for the siren's return—he called out to her himself?

Hours bled into one another, the sun dragging itself across the sky with the indifference of a well-fed god. The hunger grew keener, no longer gnawing but tearing at his insides with teeth sharp as broken shells. Still, the waters kept their secrets.

And then—

The water beneath him changed.

Not the gentle, rolling waves of the open sea, but something else, something massive. The air grew thick as palm wine, crackling with an energy that raised the hair on his neck and made his teeth ache. His small boat pitched and rolled as a shadow spread beneath the surface, like spilled ink in clear water, growing, stretching, until the blue was swallowed whole.

Onwuka's breath caught in his throat. His hands tightened around the boat's edges, his fingers digging into the damp wood. The shadow didn't just move—it rose, as if the bottom of the ocean had decided to reach for the sky.

First came the ridges, massive spines that breached the surface like the bones of a forgotten mountain rising from its watery grave. The sea churned around them, thick and dark, as if the ocean itself tried to flee what it had hidden for so long. Then emerged the body—a form that should not exist in any world Onwuka knew, its flesh the grey-green of bodies lost to the deep, its surface writhing with patterns that shifted and pulsed with something alive beneath it.

And the mouth—ancestors, have mercy, that mouth.

A void ringed with teeth upon teeth upon teeth, spiraling inward like the pattern of a snail's shell, if snails were born of nightmares and fed on lost souls. Where eyes should have been, there were only hollows—deep, lightless pits that seemed to pull at the very air, drinking in everything they touched like holes.

There was no time for thought, no time for prayer.

The beast exhaled, and the sound shook the world—the voice of the ocean itself waking from dreams of darkness. The water began to spiral, drawing his small boat toward that endless gaping hole, toward the darkness that waited within. Everything his mother had warned him about, every story he had dismissed as superstition, suddenly seemed like pale shadows of the truth.

He scrambled for the oar, hands slick with sweat. His body remembered what his mind could not grasp, arms pulling against the water with strength born of terror. But it was like trying to outrun a tornado—the creature's mass created its own tide, its own gravity.

It lunged—a mountain of flesh and fury rising from the deep.

The boat shattered like a clay pot in market square, wood splintering with a sound that could wake ancestors. The massive maw closed around the stern, rending planks that had weathered a thousand storms as easily as tearing through banana leaves. Onwuka found himself airborne, the impact stealing his breath like a thief in the night.

Sky and sea merged into one endless blue.

Then—the waters claimed him.

Cold. Endless. Absolute.

The weight of his body pulled him down like chains of iron, salt burning his fresh wounds like ground pepper. His lungs cried out, desperate as a child separated from its mother. He fought against the deep, arms cutting through water thick as soup, but the current dragged him further from the light, from air, from life itself.

Above him, the beast's shadow eclipsed the sun, its mouth still beckoning, still hungry—a void that could swallow whole villages and still yearn for more.

Onwuka had always known the sea might claim him one day. He had made peace with the common deaths of fishermen—drowning in storm-tossed waves, withering from thirst beneath an indifferent sun, wasting away on endless waters that cared nothing for the brief lives of men.

But not like this.

Not in the belly of this abomination, this monster that should have remained in the stories his mother whispered on dark nights, when thunder spoke and lightning wrote warnings across the sky.

The water churned around him as the creature moved, each motion creating currents strong enough to reshape coastlines. He searched for escape, but in every direction lay only death.

The mouth gaped wider.

Those endless rows of teeth caught what little light reached these depths, gleaming like bitter promises.

This, then, was the end.

His body surrendered, strength flowing from him like water from a broken gourd. The ocean had devoured greater souls—warriors who had led armies, kings who had built empires, fishermen whose names were still whispered in reverent tones at village gatherings. Who was he to deny it his due?

He released his last breath, watching it rise in silver beads toward a surface he would never see again.

The beast surged forward.

And then—

A sound.

Not thunder, not storm, but something else entirely. A vibration that moved through him like udu drums at harvest festival, splitting the waters.

A song.

Distant yet familiar as his own heartbeat.

Coming from under him.

Onwuka's eyes flew open. The beast paused, ancient certainty wavering before something older still. One moment. One precious moment.

Hands found him—strong as iron, smooth as river stones. A force powerful as the harmattan winds, ancient as the red earth itself, pulled him upward, away from death's teeth, away from the hungry dark.

Before consciousness fled like a startled bird, he caught a glimpse: skin pale as moonlight on water, locs floating free as water hyacinth, and those eyes—her eyes—dark as the spaces between stars, watching him as reality slipped away like sand through his fingers.

Onwuka's body broke the surface with a gasp that shattered the silence.

And then—nothing

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