The Dream and the Owl
That afternoon the sun hid behind thick clouds, and the forest genies were awake and chattering.
Deji lay on his bamboo bed—with woven-wool padding beneath his back—trying to nap. A strange dream tugged at him again: the same woman who often wandered his sleep, the one he could never forget.
This time, the dream felt different.
He stood barefoot in a vast white field, grass swaying like waves beneath a silver sky. The air shimmered with faint gold dust, carrying a scent he could not name—wild honey and rain.
Then she appeared, walking toward him from the far horizon—the woman from his dreams.
She was breathtaking. Her gown flowed like liquid light, silver threaded with blue, clinging and rippling as if alive. Her hair streamed long and dark, tipped with tiny pearls that glowed with their own soft fire. Her skin was luminous—neither mortal pale nor genie green, but a radiant bronze that seemed to pulse with warmth.
Her eyes were what held him—deep as the night sea, flecked with stars, calm and knowing. When she smiled, the wind itself seemed to sigh.
Deji’s throat tightened. “Who are you?” he asked.
Her lips curved, and her voice came like water through reeds—musical, yet heavy with something ancient.
“When the rivers turn red, the son of the wolf will awaken.”
The words echoed like thunder from beneath the earth.
Deji tried to reach her to ask what she meant, but as his hand stretched forward, the white field caught fire.
Flames erupted around him, racing through the grass in circles that closed tighter and tighter. He shouted, but his voice vanished in the roar. The woman stood still within the fire, her eyes filled with sorrow.
Then she whispered something else—too faint to hear—before the flames swallowed her.
Heat clawed at his lungs—
—and something soft brushed his face.
“Eri,” he mumbled, half-asleep. “Not again.”
The owl hooted, fluttering her wings impatiently until his eyes opened.
“C’mon, Eri—can I just sleep?” Deji groaned, rolling onto his side. “Go outside and play. Catch a squirrel for lunch.”
Eri tilted her head, one silver eye blinking, clearly unimpressed.
The dim light from the small window caught him fully—revealing a tall, lean young man of eighteen, skin the rich brown of wet earth, and eyes a dark amber that glowed like firelight when he was stirred. Thick dreadlocks fell to his shoulders, tied with tiny beads Zara had carved for him as a child. His chest and arms bore the quiet strength of forest labor—climbing, gathering herbs, hauling water. Around his waist he wore a wrap of deep-green bark cloth, and on his neck hung a leather charm shaped from the fang of a river beast—“to guard you from evil,” Zara had said.
As he stretched, Eri hopped to the bedpost, her feathers catching the pale light. Her plumage was a stormy grey speckled with white, with eyes the color of moonlit metal—beautiful and uncanny.
He had found her years ago, when he was only five. A storm had torn through the forest, and in the wreckage of a broken tree he had discovered a single egg, lying in a ruined nest. He had cupped it carefully in his small palms, whispering to it, warming it beneath his tunic all the way home.
Zara had laughed when he burst into the hut. “You can’t raise a spirit bird, Deji. They belong to the gods.”
But Deji would not give up. He kept the egg near Zara’s oven for days, turning it gently, singing to it. On the seventh morning, the shell cracked open—and a tiny ball of down blinked up at him.
Since that day, they were bound.
As Eri grew, Deji discovered something strange—when she flew high above the forest, sometimes he could see what she saw. The first time it happened, he had fainted in shock. The second time, he screamed with delight. By the third, he learned to slip behind her eyes at will, to borrow her sight, to become her.
“You didn’t find her—she found you,” Zara had told him. “A gift from the gods. Your other eyes.”
Now, years later, Eri still watched him with the same fierce affection…
From the courtyard came the steady clack of a pestle in a mortar. Then Zara’s voice: “Deji! Will you sleep until the next full moon? I need hands.”
“I’m coming, Ma,” he called, dragging himself from the bed.
Eri ruffled once and slipped through the small window into the bamboo dusk.
The moment Deji stepped into the narrow corridor, the air changed—ripe with the sweet bite of herbs. His stomach clenched in pleasant anticipation. “Marigold and ginger,” he murmured, grinning.
He pushed open the shrine door. Even in her fifties, Zara could have passed for thirty—were it not for the silver strands scattered through her long hair. Her skin held the kind of youth that didn’t fade. She was bent over a low table, mixing roots and leaves, her lips moving with low incantation.
“Mama, you should rest. You’re working too hard,” Deji said, kissing her forehead.
Zara set the pestle down and turned. Weariness rimmed her eyes, but they still gleamed as she smiled. “My beloved son, I am stronger than you think.”
“I know you’re strong. Rest anyway.”
“Later,” she said briskly. “For now, fetch the Golden Ginger and the cowries. You remember where they grow?”
“Across the Sacred Lake,” he said.
The clouds thinned to a milky grey light as Deji slipped into the bamboo. Eri drifted like a ghost above him while the forest buzzed—whispers from leaf-sized genies, birdsong stitched through the canopy.
“Good afternoon, Deji,” a genie greeted, popping from a breath of cool air.
“Afternoon, Sheep-Head,” Deji puffed, still running.
A tiny butterfly-winged sprite appeared next, hands on hips. “Where are you off to? My babies are sleeping!”
“Sorry, Pumpkin-Fly,” he said, darting past. “I’ll be quiet.”
By the time he reached the Sacred Lake, the sun had pried open the clouds. The water exhaled a cold that prickled his skin. “Finally,” he said, breathless, and knelt by the shore to gather cowrie shells.
A voice, soft and close as water, brushed his ear.
“Careful. Pick the right ones. The wrong shells bite.”
He flinched and looked around. No one. Then the lake parted with a thin ripple, and a figure rose from the water to her hips. She was tall and beautiful, with eyes as wide as an owl’s and skin gleaming with fine scales that caught the light. Human—not human. The water clung to her like a gown.
“Be at peace,” she said. “Hello, Deji. What brings you?"
“H-How do you know my name?" he stammered.
She laughed, a sound like beads over stone. “Even a newborn genie knows the son of the powerful witch.”
“You know my mother?”
“Your mother is my friend.” She waded closer, hair like dark riverweed pouring to her ribs. “May I see the shells?”
Her fingers brushed his, and a winter breathed through him. His lungs forgot to work. He snatched his hand back, trembling.
He had seen many genies, all tiny and quick—but this individual was different. “Are you… Yemoja?" he whispered.
She let out another laugh, filled with delight. “Someone has been told stories.” She bowed her head, solemn now. “I am.”
Deji dropped to his knees, dreadlocks spilling forward. “Forgive me, Great One. I didn’t know—”
“Rise,” Yemoja said. “Listen.”
The lake stilled. For a breath, the world shrank with her voice.
“Evil will float upon the water,” she said. “In the darkest hour, the moon will turn to blood.”
“How—how can I be a warrior? How can I save the genies?” Deji asked, but Yemoja had already begun to fade into the glittering plane, her gaze sad and fond. The lake closed over her with a sigh.
Shaken, Deji took the path along the narrow cliff, careful of the loose stones. He told himself Yemoja must be joking. At the ridge he heard the far-off shout of the sea and laughter rising with the waves—girls swimming in the forbidden waters of Shaka Village.
“A little look won’t hurt, right, Eri?" he said. The owl fluffed and shook her head.
“Just a moment,” he promised and climbed.
At the top he found a hollow in the rock and settled, hidden from the shore. Faces bright as noon. Laughter stitched with surf. He had never played with anyone but the genies and Eri. Watching made his chest ache.
“Help me see,” he whispered.
Eri leapt skyward on quick, sure wings. Deji let himself slide—mind bending, breath slowing—until the world turned bright and huge. Through Eri’s eyes, the sea became a map. He drifted further and further over glittering water.
There. Far beyond the horizon—a speck, then a tooth, then the shadow of something floating in. Not a canoe. Not anything he knew.
He snapped back into himself with a jolt. “What was that?” he gasped. The memory of Yemoja’s words uncoiled in his stomach. He ran.
The forest had thickened into a nighttime glow by the time he reached home. Genies winked like embers between the bamboo culms. He burst into the hut, chest heaving. An oil lamp licked the corner with low gold; moonlight pooled on the floor like milk.
“Where have you been?” Zara’s voice, cool and steady. She was a shadow on her old mahogany chair until she leaned into the lamp and her eyes found him.
“I—Mama, I saw something on the sea. Something big. Strange.”
Zara’s silence was heavy as a drumbeat. “You went beyond the Sacred Lake,” she said at last. “You swore you would not.”
He dropped to his knees. “Forgive me. I went to clear my head after… after the goddess spoke to me.”
Zara’s head lifted. “Which goddess?”
“Yemoja,” he whispered. “At the lake. She spoke.”
Zara turned to the window. Moonlight washed her face. Softly she chanted:
Yemoja, Mama Ojo, seer of fate, rider of comets, dweller beneath the water world. I praise you, Mother Yemoja—calm like the tide, wrathful like the storm. Robed in cowries, hidden in oysters—my mother of gods.
“What did she tell you?” Zara asked.
“She said, ’Evil will float upon the water. In the darkest hour, the moon will turn to blood.”
Zara listened without blinking. When he finished, she sat back, breath leaving her like a thread cut clean. For a long moment, only the lamp crackled.
“The revelation is true,” she said at last.
“Mama—what revelation?”
“The one Yemoja gave, long before you were born.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “I feared this day. I begged the gods to push it away. But now it is here. My son, the time has come to step into who you are.”
“I don’t understand.” His knees went weak. The room tilted.
Zara rose and set a cool hand on his shoulder. Power seemed to hum through her skin. “Be strong. Tonight, I will tell you what I can. May the gods of your father give you understanding.”
They went outside to the courtyard mat. Stars pricked the sky; the moon had climbed clear. Deji folded his legs before her.
“Yemoja is no mere genie,” Zara said. “She is a divine goddess. Your father and I were her devotees.”
She swallowed. “Months before you were born, your father—once a warlord of Shaka—was accused of bewitching the king and plotting treason. They killed him. They banished me to this forest to die.” A small, bitter smile appeared on her lips. “Instead, I found the gods.”
She stood and slipped into her chamber. When she returned, she carried a wrapped bundle. From it she withdrew a palm scroll, bound with a length of braided cowrie thread, and placed it in Deji’s hands.
“Read,” she said. “And listen.”
The moment he touched it, the scroll glowed faintly—warm, alive, as if it had been waiting for him. With trembling fingers, he unrolled it. Strange markings danced like flames across the parchment, yet he could read them as though they were etched into his soul. His lips moved, and the words spilled into the night:
When the moon turns to blood and the sea brings forth shadows, when iron canoes pierce the horizon and storms walk in men’s skin, the Watcher must rise. Son of the river, the eyes of the owl, the forest, and the gods have chosen you.
Deji’s voice faltered. At the back of the scroll, faint under the glow, was a map—lines and symbols he did not recognize. “Mama,” he whispered, “what is this map?”
Zara’s face hardened. “In time, you will know. Tonight, it is enough that you hold it.”
Fear filled Deji’s eyes. Zara reached across the mat and cupped his hand, her touch steady as a root. “Do not fear, my son. Be strong. At daybreak, you will leave this hut and begin your journey.”
“Journey?” Deji’s voice cracked.
“Yes. You will go to Shaka.”
Deji froze as though lightning had struck him. “Shaka? The village you have always forbidden me to set foot in?”
Zara’s gaze grew distant, her eyes shadowed by memory. “Yes… Shaka.”
Since childhood, he had heard her warnings: stay away from Shaka. Do not speak with its people. Do not even wander near their land. Zara had told him the stories countless times—how evil lived in the heart of Shaka, how they could not be trusted.
“Mama, you told me their people were wicked. That they betrayed you. That they—” He faltered, lowering his voice. “That they killed my father.”
Zara’s lips tightened. The memory was a wound she had never allowed to heal. “Your father was once their warlord, brave and loyal. He fought battles for the king and gave his blood to defend their land. And how did they repay him? They repaid him with lies, envy, and a false charge of witchcraft and treason. They murdered him, Deji, and cast me out to die alone in this forest.”
Her hand trembled for the first time as she brushed her hair from her face. Her voice thickened, equal parts grief and fury. “That is why I forbade you. That is why I swore you would never set foot in that cursed village. Their hearts are black with betrayal.”
Deji’s chest tightened. “Then why, Mama? Why now?”
“Because the prophecy is greater than my pain,” Zara said softly. “Evil is coming from the sea. Yemoja has spoken, and the scroll confirms it. Shaka must be warned—even if they once broke me. If the king does not know, the whole land will perish.”
She pressed a small gourd into his palm. “Carry this in your pocket. When the time comes, it will guide you.”
“But how will I know the way?” Deji asked, still confused.
“Fate and destiny will guide your feet. And the gourd will light your path.”
Deji’s questions crowded his tongue, but Zara raised a hand. “Enough, my son. Rest now. You have a long journey ahead when the sun returns.”
Her gaze lifted to the moon, her lips moving silently as if reading secrets from its pale face.
Deji rose quietly, went into the hut, and lay down on his bamboo bed. Sleep would not come. His mind churned with everything that had happened—the strange object on the sea, the goddess who had spoken to him, the prophecy glowing in his hands, and the truth about Shaka. For years, his mother had told him never to go near that village, never to trust those people. Yet now, his path leads directly into their hearts.
The thought weighed on him, heavy as stone. The meaning of the prophecy escaped him, but its shadow pressed against his chest until his mind grew cloudy. At last, despite his turmoil, his eyes closed, and he drifted into uneasy dreams.
