I wake to the hum of Accra at dawn, the sky just beginning to bloom with color. The tin roof radiates the heat of yesterday, and the air is thick with the smells of street food, sea breeze, and smoke from early cooking fires. It should feel like home. But the city hum carries a discordant note now. Something unseen stirs beneath it all, as though the rhythm of the world is slightly out of step.
The old baobab at the end of our street stands stoic as ever, its roots cracked into the sidewalk. As I pass it, its shadow breaks unnaturally—splintering like ripples on water across the cracked asphalt. When I blink, it returns to normal. Grandma once said broken shadows meant the ancestors were speaking. I shiver and glance up at the branches, half-expecting a face to appear in the leaves.
I return home and brew a cup of black ginger tea. The radio crackles as I tune through static, and for an instant, I hear a whisper, a single word laced with memory and foreboding: "Omu" or "Awu"—ancient syllables from a language older than the city. I jerk the dial, but the sound is gone. My fingers tremble.
Later, Mr. Owusu greets me from across the alley. He has a towel draped over his shoulder and a twinkle in his eye. "You look like you've seen something strange in the sky," he jokes. I try to laugh it off, but when a roll of thunder growls across the blue, cloudless sky, we both fall silent. "Sometimes," he says, voice quieter now, "the sky remembers things we forget."
I head out to Korle Lagoon at sunset. The air hangs thick with salt and haze. Vendors pack up, seagulls wheel overhead. I find a quiet stretch of embankment where water laps at stone. Fish splash, darting from unseen shadows beneath the surface.
The wind shifts. The radio in my bag hisses—then clears. A voice, faint and familiar, murmurs: "Child of dust and stars... awake." The voice is layered—both masculine and feminine, old and young. Then silence.
I rush home and light a candle under the mango tree. I pour millet wine onto the roots, whispering a prayer. The flame flickers sideways, though there's no wind. A shadow moves across the wall, though nothing passes in front of the flame.
As I lie on my mat that night, sleep eludes me. I feel watched—not by something malevolent, but by something ancient and waiting. In the darkness, voices speak in ancestral tongues. They chant my name in waves. My limbs grow heavy.
I see myself standing in the sky, constellations spiraling around me. A hawk wheels past, trailing light. The ground below is not earth but memory—a patchwork of lives, colors, and stories. A gap yawns in the stars, jagged and black.
A voice echoes: "Nyos was not the only threat."
I wake breathless. Outside, clouds roll in, silver-lit and unnatural. The rings on my fingers glow faintly, pulsing with warmth. I press my forehead to the window. The night watches back.