Mother used to say I am a child of the river. I never understood her. I thought I would be a child of the wind, like her. Like all the children of the wind, my mother could fly. When I was younger, I liked spying on her as she shifted into a body that was more suitable for flight. Her favourite form was the owl. I used to think she didn’t know I was watching but I was wrong. The air is home to invisible things and they constantly whisper to the children of the wind. These unseen air sprites reported me to my mother and one evening, while she sat sewing one of my torn school uniforms with a needle, she called me from my play with the other children in the compound.

“Maami, you called?” I said, peeking into the room.

“Come here.” She said and gestured at the floor beside her crossed feet.

I obeyed, puzzled. It was still in the early evening which meant the time had not come for the nightly tales by moonlight my mother liked to tell.

“Irapada, Irapada, Irapada,” Mother said. “How many times did I call you?”

“Three times, Maami.” I replied.

“The elders say what a child cannot see while standing, the elders can see while seated.” She said. “You have tried to see unusual things but you do not understand. Yet, you are fascinated by them. Is that not so?”

I did not really understand what she meant but I nodded anyway. Mother sighed and put the needle and uniform away.

“Come here, my child.” She said and reached down to draw me into her lap. “A mystery is a mystery because it chooses not to unravel itself. Do you understand?”

I nodded again.

“My child, I know you have been spying on me when I go off to fly. You do not have to be afraid.” She said.

“Are you . . . a witch?” I asked. I remembered the way the Christian Religious Studies instructor in my school had said all witches would burn in an unquenchable lake of fire for all of eternity. I did not want that for my mother.

She laughed at my question and pinched my nose.

“A witch? No, no. I am born of the wind, one of the Afefe. That is why I can fly.”

I blinked at her, suddenly filled with awe.

“Am I a child of the wind too?” I asked. “Can I turn into a bird and fly too?”

I flapped my hands like wings, making my mother burst into another fit of laughter.

“No, no, my dear child,” she said.

I frowned at her.

“So what am I then?” I asked.

“You are a child of the river, an Omi,” she replied.

“That doesn’t sound as interesting as being a child of the wind,” I said.

My mother stroked my head and smiled.

“The river is powerful too, my child. She gives life and takes it. She flows in her majesty from North to South. The river cannot be bound.”

I thought about her words for a while before asking the next question on my mind.

“What about my father? Was he a child of the wind or of the river?” I asked her.

Mother’s countenance changed. She got that faraway look in her eyes that always appeared when anyone mentioned my father. I had never met him and every time I tried to talk about him, she always changed the topic. But that day, she gave me an answer.

“Your father was different, my child. He was a child of fire. An Ina,” she said softly.

I blinked and looked up at her. I wanted to ask so many questions. Why had he left? Was it because of something I had done? What were the abilities of a child of fire? Could they also shapeshift? These questions and more ran through my mind but something in my mother’s eyes stopped me from asking.

“Go now, Irapada. Go back to your play.”

I left her embrace and walked to the door. When I got to the door, I stopped and looked back.

“When will I be able to use my . . . abilities, like you do?” I said.

“When the time comes, the river will call to you. Until then, you must wait.”

“And if I choose not to wait?”

Mother stared at me for a long time before replying.

“A bird cannot fly if its wings are not strong enough to support flight. If you try to use your abilities before you are ready, you will drown.”

• • • •

I am drowning.

The water fights me. It drags me below the surface every time I go up for air. I try to fight it but the water is much stronger than I am. From the depths, I can hear the mocking laughter of the water spirits.

“Never ever . . . have we seen . . . a drowning fish,” the sibilant voices say. I try to yell back to them, to tell them to shut up and help me, but that is a mistake. The water surges into my mouth and smothers me, tightening its grip around my throat. I cannot breathe. I feel myself go faint.

Regrets and unbidden thoughts swim to the surface of my mind. I wish I had listened to my mother. I wish I had asked her if I am really a child of the river. I wish, I wish, I wish . . .

I raise my tired eyes to the surface, trying to keep a memory of the sunlight with me, an impression of light for the dark days ahead. But the light is not bright enough. It has been refracted through layers of murky brown water.

I close my eyes and the river, sensing victory, wraps its tentacles around me and drags me to the depths.

I drown.

• • • •

I wake from another dream of drowning. I blink and look around my room, trying to get my bearings. I recognize the room. It is my room, not the bottom of a river. I look down at my bed. As expected, it is thoroughly soaked. My body is covered by dead shrimps and tiny fishes. The smell of the river creatures is already beginning to spread around the room. I sigh and get out of bed, displacing some dead fish from the bed to the floor.

I switch on the lights and the room is washed in the sickly glow of the yellow bulb. I retrieve a broom and parker from a corner and get a disposal bag from under the bed. Then I start sweeping the dead shrimp into the parker and dumping them in the bag. I perform the task with the ease that comes with long practice.

Every week, for the last two years, I have had these strange dreams. Dreams where I am drowned by a vindictive river, with my silent screams echoed by the laughter of the river spirits. And when I wake, the sight is always the same. My body is always covered with little river creatures. This is one of the reasons why I don’t sleep over in other people’s homes. It’s also why I am still single. I cannot imagine bringing a girl home and waking to find ourselves in bed with dead fish.

I finish my unpleasant task and turn to look at the soaked bed. The river always brings itself to me as a dream. I have refused to go to it so it haunts me, following me even to this big city. As I have done several times, I wish there is someone I could meet for answers. When I was younger, I only had to run to my mother and unload my questions at her feet, but my mother left this world seven years ago. Before the dreams started. Before the river called me.

Sometimes, I dream about her too. I see her the exact way she had looked just before she flew away. She had bid me farewell through a dream. She was dressed in her best clothes, an iro and buba made of white lace material, and a majestic gele was wrapped around her head. She smiled at me and beckoned.

“Will you come with me?” she asked.

I shook my head and stepped backward.

“You have made the right decision, my son,” she said. “Where I go now is a place you are not prepared for.”

“Where are you going, Maami?”

“I am going home,” she replied. Then she spread out her arms wide but they weren’t arms anymore. They were wings, great white wings. The owl that was also my mother turned its large eyes in my direction and hooted once. In my head, I heard my mother’s voice.

Someday, we must all return home. The wind has called me home. When the river calls, you must answer.

And with that, the white owl flapped its wings and launched itself into the air. I watched my mother fly away, climbing higher and higher until she was nothing but a tiny white speck in the sky, becoming one with the wind.

• • • •

I glance at the digital clock on my bedside table and curse aloud. It’s six thirty already. If I don’t start preparing now, I will be late for work. I am a journalist for The Daily Report, one of the many small news agencies in this big city. The salary is just enough to pay my bills and stash away a little savings. When my mother was still with us, I also had to send her small amounts for her monthly upkeep.

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a journalist. That was the reason why I applied to study in a college of journalism and mass communication for four years. But the excitement has waned. The dreams always sap all of my energy out of me. They started when I graduated from the college two years ago and I have never had a week where I have been entirely happy. I once asked a co-worker, a reporter named Shola, if she believed a person can be haunted by spirits. She had given me a weird look and said, “Sure. That is actually very common.”

“Oh? What do you think people do to chase it away?” I had asked her.

“They pray about it,” she replied. I frowned and turned away. Prayer has never worked for me. I hadn’t really liked religion since my CRS teacher claimed people like me and my mother are doomed to burn in hell.

I hear the voices of the river spirits as I go through my day. While I sit at my desk, going through news briefs, I hear them in my head. When I go to the cafeteria during the lunch break, they whisper in my ears. When I am on the bus that ferries me home from work at night, they are still there, singing their mocking songs.

I wish they would just leave me alone. I wish they could understand that a person can move on, leaving places and things behind. But, of course, I cannot banish the voices with mere wishes.

Now, the river is calling me. Calling persistently. I do not want to answer. Maybe I am scared of drowning. Or maybe I still don’t think I am ready to become a real child of the river. What I do know is that I did not ask for this. I did not ask to be a child of any spirit. I could have been a normal baby boy when I was born. But the river spirit, for some reason, had marked me as its own.

Now, it is calling me back home.

• • • •

The elders say we are chosen at birth. They say not all of us are chosen. They say there is always a mark of some kind to let us know where we come from.

Of course, the elders are right. My mother said when I was born, it rained through the night and the river rose so high it flooded our town. When a child of the wind is born, gusts of wind will attack the house and rip away the roof. For a child of the earth, it is an earthquake. Children of fire are the most dangerous to have in any household because at their birth, fire will consume the house and whoever is trapped in it. The children of fire, also known as the Ina, are considered unlucky.

My father was an Ina. While I was growing, I asked my mother about his whereabouts but she always evaded my questions. I later got the impression that even she did not know where he was. Like smoke in the wind, he seemed to have drifted off the face of the earth.

I know he is not dead, though. I don’t know how I know but I do. Somewhere, his lifefire still burns. Sometimes, I think he can help me with my dreams but what would a child of fire know about the river? I still think he left because of me. Maybe he hated me for being a child of the river. It is known that water and fire are enemies. I guess I will never know exactly why he left. That is just another one of the questions in my head that I will never get an answer to.

• • • •

They come at night. Their voices are louder now. It echoes off the walls of my room. The light bulb is off so the room is dark. I can hear them moving around, surrounding my bed. I want to cry out but my lips refuse to open. It feels like I am having one of my dreams but this is too real to be a dream.

“If you will not come . . . to the river . . . the river will come . . . to you . . .”

Somewhere, a drum starts beating. The river spirits are chanting. The drum—no, drums—get louder.

“A son of the river . . . must return home . . . you cannot escape . . . your fate . . .”

I shut my eyes and try to make myself believe that somehow this isn’t real but I can feel tentacles wrapping themselves around my body and lifting me from the bed.

“Come home . . .”

The tentacles let me go suddenly. I fall, but not onto my bed. I fall into the river.

Immediately, I start drowning. The river doesn’t let me reach the surface this time. I fight with every bit of strength I have left but the river’s laughter echoes in my head.

Foolish child. You are home now. There is no escape from me now.

I close my eyes and I see my mother. She is alternating between a white owl and a beautiful woman in white lace. I can see my father too—a tall dark-skinned man in an agbada. His face is wreathed in smoke so I cannot make out his features but flames dance on his skin. I can see other people too, unfamiliar faces that I somehow recognize to be my relatives. I see boys covered in mud, girls with fire in their hair, men who float in the air, women with rivers flowing from their eyes. These are all the people who are like me.

“Let go, Irapada.” My mother’s voice echoes across the gap between this world and the next.

“Listen to your mother, boy,” my father says, his voice rumbling like thunder.

“Give the river what it wants,” one of the girls with fire in her hair says.

“Very soon, you will forget this ever happened,” a boy with clumps of earth on his face quips.

I open my eyes. I am still in the river but something has changed. I can feel a warmness in my chest. I realize that I am not drowning anymore. I am breathing underwater. I try to turn my head but I cannot. I try to raise my hands but they do not seem to exist.

Realization dawns fast. I have shifted into a creature of the river. I am a fish.

Your doubts delayed your transformation.

I know the river is right. I have been drowning because of my doubts and fears. I have always been a fish but I was also scared of the river. That is why I never heeded its call.

If you do not give yourself to me, you cannot know true peace.

I think of having the dreams of drowning every week for the rest of my life and shudder. I think of the river spirits waiting hungrily in the depths. I think of my mother’s last words to me. I must surrender to the river. I must let it into my being. I must be its vessel.

But what if my fears surface again? What if I start doubting? That means the river will rip me apart. I will cease to exist.

What is your decision, child?

I will myself to morph back into my human form. I don’t know exactly how I am transforming but I can feel it working. I flex my fingers just to make sure. Then I look down at the river’s dark depths.

“I will give myself to you,” I say.

Immediately, I feel the river revolving all around me. I close my eyes and summon the image of my family again. My mother, my faceless father, my cousins, all of them. If I still have any doubt in my mind, the river will reject me. I will probably be found washed ashore after some days and maybe I will take up a small corner of the front pages of the newspapers. Journalist at The Daily Report found dead in hometown. No name, no picture, just another mysterious death in a country where mysterious deaths are a daily occurrence.

I try to let it all go—my doubt, my fear, my loneliness, my hopes, everything. The river fills me. The river takes it all, washes it away.

For the last time, I drown.