CHAPTER TEN: The Dust Speaks in Tongues
"Ẹni tí kò mọ orúkọ, kò ní mọ ibi tí ò ń lọ." He who does not know the name cannot know where he is going.
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Zainab awoke before dawn, her breath shallow, the notebook still beside her like a sleeping companion. The house held a heavy silence—not the oppressive kind, but the type that listens. She sat up slowly, aware of the weight in her chest. Not fear. Not grief. A knowing that refused to stay silent.
Downstairs, the kitchen was dark. She didn't bother turning on the light. She brewed tea the way her grandmother used to—without measuring, just instinct, just memory. As the steam curled into the air, it danced like incense, forming spirals before vanishing.
She sipped slowly, flipping through the notebook again. The script was thick and slanted, a mix of Yoruba prayer, warnings, and something else—something older. A pattern emerged. Dates, events, names. Then symbols. The spiral. The eye. The hand with five stars.
She copied them into her journal.
Midmorning, she walked through Iléṣà like someone retracing steps already etched into stone. At the shrine-heritage site she had visited before, she asked the keeper, an old woman with tribal marks and white beads, about the name Ayéròyá.
The woman blinked slowly, then looked up to the hills.
> "That is not a name for children. It is a journey that never forgets you. The river remembers every foot that steps in it."
Zainab shivered.
"What about Ajogun?"
> "Ah. You are carrying too many names in one body. Ajogun are not merely spirits—they are shadows of choices, made or unmade."
Zainab's head swam.
"Then what is Orí? Truly?"
The woman touched her own head gently. "Orí is the script your soul agreed to before you took flesh. And not all Orí can bear Ajogun's questions."
Zainab's hands trembled. The world was beginning to bend around truths she hadn't been taught, only remembered.
That evening, her mother finally entered her room without knocking. She stood silently for a while, then placed an old photograph on Zainab's table.
It was of her grandmother. Younger. Dressed in ceremonial clothing. Behind her, on the compound wall, was the symbol again—the eye in the spiral.
Zainab turned.
"Màámi… why do I see these things? Why do they call me by a name I don't remember being given?"
Her mother looked older in that moment, as though she had also heard the whispers but chosen silence.
> "Because some names are not given by parents. They are claimed by destiny. Your grandmother said you were born during a crossing. That you were named before the sun touched you."
Zainab felt like weeping again, but she didn't. Not now.
The dreams had returned, yes. But now the waking world had begun dreaming too. Her thoughts no longer belonged solely to her. And as she stared at the photo, the spiral behind her grandmother seemed to move.
Just a little.
But enough.
That night, she wrote in her own journal for the first time since returning home:
> "I am not searching for answers anymore. I am searching for the question that breaks me open."
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If your Orí chose the storm, is it still madness to follow the wind?