CHAPTER SIXTEEN: The Ones Who Remember
"Kò sí ohun tí a kì í mọ̀, àfi ẹni tí kò nígbọ́ran."
There is nothing that cannot be known, except by the one who refuses to listen.
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The morning came with mist, even though the sun had risen. Iléṣà was warm, but Zainab felt cold under her skin. The name sat like salt in her mouth now: Ayéròyá. She had whispered it so many times it no longer sounded foreign. But it didn't feel familiar either. It felt… assigned.
And she needed answers.
She began with her aunt — Mama Ronke — the one who always wore Ankara and coconut oil like armor, the one who claimed to know everything and nothing at once.
They sat on opposite ends of the veranda, nursing cups of lukewarm Lipton. Zainab didn't waste time.
"Aunty… What does Ayéròyá mean?"
Mama Ronke didn't flinch, but her hand stilled over her cup. "Hmm. Where did you hear that one?"
Zainab shrugged. "It's in the notebooks. It's written too often for it to mean nothing."
Her aunt's eyes darted across the compound like she was looking for ghosts. Then she leaned closer.
"It's not a name people speak freely, Zainab. Not because it is evil. But because it belongs to a path."
"A path?" Zainab echoed.
"A path few return from unchanged," she said, eyes narrowing. "It is a name born from blood debts. From ancestors who touched fire and lived to tell the tale. It is not a title. It is a burden. And in some cases, a bell."
"A bell?"
Mama Ronke's voice lowered. "A bell that tells spirits someone has returned."
Returned from where?
Zainab didn't ask. She wasn't ready for the answer.
---
Later that day, she walked to the old market. Not to buy anything — just to move, to breathe something other than incense and dreams.
She stopped at a beading stall run by an elderly woman who had once known her grandmother. The woman squinted when Zainab greeted her.
"You look like Mosún, but your eyes are different. Yours… they see too far."
Zainab forced a smile. "My name is Zainab. Zainab Ayéròyá."
The woman dropped the bead string. Her lips moved in silent prayer. Then, like rain breaking through a dry cloud, she said, "So it has begun again."
Zainab leaned in. "What has?"
But the woman only shook her head. "You should ask the hills, child. Not the market. They hold the memory of names better than we do."
Zainab turned to leave, heart pounding. She passed a group of boys playing with cracked bottle caps. One of them turned to her, no older than nine, and said—
"You smell like saltwater and dust. Like someone who doesn't belong in just one time."
She didn't reply. She just kept walking.
---
That night, she returned to the family altar room. This time, she brought a mirror of her own — small, round, once used for applying eyeliner.
She placed it next to the old one in the calabash. Two reflections. Two faces.
One hers.
One almost hers — but not quite. The other face blinked a second too slow. Smiled when she didn't.
She covered it with a cloth and stepped back.
"Who was I before I was born?" she whispered.
The walls, as always, didn't answer.
But in her dreams, a woman made of smoke and blood whispered in a language Zainab almost understood:
"You are not your mother's first daughter. You are her return."
---
If the truth hides in mirrors and mouths afraid to speak, how long before silence becomes your only inheritance?