Part one: “OBIDI: THE CHILD WHO REMEMBERED BEFORE TIME”

PART ONE: THE DAY THE SKY STOOD STILL

They say it happened just after midnight—when the air had stilled, and not even the crickets dared to chirp. It was the kind of silence that wrapped itself around your bones and squeezed until you felt the dread leak through your skin like sweat. That night, something was born in Odu Village—something that wasn’t meant to belong to this world.

Mma Awele’s screams shattered the stillness like a bottle hurled against stone. They were sharp, slicing through the quiet of the night and waking the entire village. The pregnant widow had gone into labor—alone, in her creaky wooden hut on the outskirts of the forest where no one dared to live. But it was more than the screams. It was the way the ground trembled. The way the shadows danced where no light was cast.

The elders would later say it was the earth protesting. That it knew what was about to emerge.

“Hurry! Call Mama Ifeoma! The midwife!”

But Mama Ifeoma never made it to the hut. Her legs gave way halfway down the narrow trail, her eyes rolled into her head, and she collapsed—foam bubbling from her lips as she muttered in a language even the ancestors wouldn’t claim.

Back in the hut, the child came out effortlessly. There was no final push, no tearing, no blood. The baby simply slid out, like it had decided for itself it was time. He did not cry immediately. He opened his eyes—dark, bottomless pools that reflected not the world, but something behind it.

And then he spoke.

“I have returned,” the baby said.

Mma Awele’s mouth fell open in horror. Her fingers trembled as she reached toward the newborn. But before she could touch him, the door burst open with a deafening BANG. A gust of wind rushed in, toppling calabashes and blowing out the oil lamp. All that remained was darkness—and his voice.

“You have all forgotten. But I remember everything. I gave birth to this village before time, and now you birth me anew.”

The room shook again.

Mma Awele’s scream this time was not of pain—but of terror.

---

Word of what happened spread fast. But no one wanted to believe it. That a baby spoke? That he never cried, just spoke? Nonsense. Witchcraft. Drunken tales.

But Mma Awele wouldn’t speak. She stared into space, lips cracked, eyes glazed. She refused to feed the baby. Not because she couldn’t—but because he wouldn’t stop suckling. He latched on for hours, draining her like a leech with no end.

And he never grew full.

The baby, now called “Obidi,” meaning “The Heart,” never cried. He just watched. Anyone who dared peek into Awele’s hut swore they saw his lips moving when no one was talking. A village boy who laughed at the tale and snuck to the window came back the next morning with his tongue missing—his eyes wide open like he had seen God and gone mad.

But the elders said nothing. They remembered the stories. The Forbidden Ones. The Great Forgetting. They remembered the last time Odu had been reduced to ashes—long before written history.

And now, Obidi had returned.

To remember what they had all agreed to forget.

---

By the end of the week, three goats had disappeared from their ropes without a sound. A mother of twins woke to find one of her children missing, and in its place was a lump of salt.

Screams became nightly hymns in Odu. Women whispered prayers into the wind. Men sharpened charms and knives.

But nothing could touch the baby.

Obidi began to change. His eyes would glow faintly at dusk. His skin shimmered like wet wood under moonlight. He never blinked. And always—always—he sucked.

The village held a meeting. They demanded the child be taken to the river shrine, that the goddess Nnem be consulted.

But Awele, now skin and bones, refused.

“He is mine,” she rasped. “And I am his.”

No one dared argue. Not after they saw the sigils carved into her flesh—patterns that weren’t there the day before.

They decided to send the hunter, Chuka, into the hut that night. To take the child.

He never came out.

What came out instead was the baby.

Walking.

Alone.

And he was smiling.