Three days passed. Adamma did not speak.
She sat beneath the old baobab tree in silence, eyes wide, lips unmoving. The villagers gathered in uneasy circles, watching her from afar. Even the children—usually bold—kept their distance. They said her skin shimmered in the moonlight. That she spoke to shadows when no one listened.
Only Mma Oluchi dared approach.
She knelt beside her daughter, placing a calabash of palm water at her feet. "I see you, Ada m," she whispered. "But do you still see me?"
Adamma blinked. "I see… everything."
Her voice was layered now—hers, and something older. "I saw Nneka, buried alive in 1711 for refusing the chief's bed. I saw the first twins drowned by the river. I heard the screams of women taken by white sails."
Mma Oluchi bowed her head. "The ancestors speak through you now."
Behind them, elders argued. Some wanted to send Adamma away. Others believed she was chosen. But fear ruled them all.
That night, a goat was found slaughtered at the edge of the village, its blood used to paint symbols no one could read—except Adamma.
"It says: *Return the buried. Feed the dust.*"
They ignored her.
The next night, the village well ran dry—though the river flowed nearby.
On the third, the sky rained ash.
Panic set in.
The chief, a once-proud man named *ObaDike*, summoned the dibia and elders. "If this is witchcraft, we'll burn it out. If it's the gods, we'll silence them."
But Dibia Ofo's eyes were sunken. "You cannot silence what you buried."
Adamma stood at the meeting.
"They are not here for me. They are here for *us*," she said, pointing at the council. "You built this village on unmarked graves. You traded daughters for power. You desecrated the soil. Now the soil remembers."
Mma Oluchi begged them to listen.
Oba Dike laughed.
That night, he was found dead. Not stabbed. Not poisoned. Just… empty. Skin like husk. Eyes missing.
In his hand, clenched tight, was a single red kola nut.
The villagers awoke to a message scrawled across his compound wall:
*"The dust will have its due."*
—