Her laughter cracked the night like thunder breaking over sacred ground, its sound sharp as shattered calabash, foreign as blasphemy in a shrine. Such sounds had no place here, in these waters where countless souls had been swallowed, where the only voices were the whispers of waves and the keening of lost spirits carried on seabirds' wings.

Onwuka's breath snagged in his throat like cloth on thorns. The fog of despair that had shrouded him—born of endless days without earth beneath his feet, without food to fill his belly, without even the smallest ember of hope—burned away like morning mist. He had drifted through uncounted nights, his flesh punished by the sea's cruel hands, his mind wandering between surrender and that stubborn defiance his mother had always said would be either his shield or his doom. But now, every part of him thrummed with the kind of fear their ancestors had known when they first saw strange ships on the horizon—a fear older than memory, deeper than bone.

Perhaps, he thought, this was nothing but another fever dream, another trick of his failing mind.

His fingers clutched the raft's edge like a man clutching his last prayer, knuckles bleached bone-white under the water spirit's cold gaze. His heart thundered in his chest, in his ears, a talking drum beating out ancient warnings:

Run, child of the land. Flee this thing that wears beauty like a mask. Hide from these waters that hunger for your soul.

But where does a man run when the whole world has become a trap? When every direction leads to the same endless blue grave?

The ocean stretched around him like a curse without end, mirroring the star-scattered sky until he could no longer tell up from down. The stars watched with the same indifference they had shown to generations of his people in chains, their light cold and constant as truth. Below, the water threw their reflection back at him until he felt suspended between twin voids, caught between yesterday and tomorrow, between life and death, between the world he knew and the one that now reached for him with webbed fingers and ancient hunger.

Then, from the water, she rose.

She began as nothing more than a whisper in the water, a thought taking shape in the midnight sea. Then she became shadow, unfolding like expensive cloth at a bride-price ceremony, dark and fluid against the moon-blessed waters. Finally, she revealed herself—each movement measured and purposeful—as though she commanded time itself to bend to her will.

Her beauty was a curse made flesh, the kind our grandmothers warned would steal more than just a man's breath. It was the beauty of a cobra's dance, of lightning splitting the baobab tree. Her hair flowed like twisted locs of darkness, thick as ancestral wisdom, alive with its own intentions. It moved around her like the tentacles of some deep-sea spirit, weaving patterns that spoke in languages lost to all but the oldest creatures of the deep. Her skin bore the blessing of moonlight, but there was something wrong in its perfection—too flawless, too pristine, like the inside of a cowrie shell before it's used for divination.

But those eyes—those eyes held power enough to trap souls. And they trapped Onwuka.

These were eyes that had watched empires crumble to dust, eyes that had seen a thousand thousand ships break against rocks and time. He had seen such eyes only once before—in the face of the oldest priestess in his village, a woman so heavy with knowledge that she walked bent nearly double, as though wisdom itself were a physical weight upon her shoulders. These were eyes that had witnessed the world die and be born again, that had seen countless men like him come and go like waves against the shore.

His tongue lay thick and useless in his mouth, dry as sun-baked clay. Words rose and died in his throat like fish gasping on land. When finally he found his voice, it emerged small as a child's whisper during sacred rites.

"Who are you?"

She answered not with words but with movement, tilting her head in a gesture that wore the skin of humanity like an ill-fitting mask. The motion was wrong—too measured, too conscious, as though she were a spirit trying to remember how flesh should move. Amusement played across her features like moonlight on water, but beneath it lurked something darker, more ancient. This was not the simple hunger of flesh for flesh, but something far more terrible—the hunger of the void itself, of endless depths that yearned to be filled with souls and songs and stories.

They sing to lure. His mother's voice rose like smoke from a long-dead fire, a warning carried on the winds of memory. They make you forget your home, your mother's face, the very name the ancestors chose for you.

But she had not sung. Not since he had first heard her voice in the dark, a sound that had drawn him from the edge of oblivion, from the gnawing despair that had been his only company. She had not dragged him into the depths—had not claimed him as the stories said she would—but instead remained, watching him with those ancient eyes, patient as a hunter at a water hole.

Finding courage in the hollow of his chest where fear had made its home, Onwuka spoke again. This time, steadier. Stronger. "Are you here to kill me?"

Her smile rippled across her face like moonlight on disturbed water, there and gone, a secret half-told.

Those fathomless eyes traveled his body like hands, mapping every scar the sea had given him, every wound the salt had transformed into armor. She studied the places where violence had kissed his skin, where chains had left their bitter blessings. When he shifted under her gaze, she returned to his face with a hunger that was not entirely predatory.

She lowered herself until the boat's edge kissed her nose, leaving only those eyes visible above the water, studying him as if he were a puzzle written in the sand. Her head tilted like a curious bird's, comparing his legs to her own hidden form beneath the waves.

At twenty harvests, Onwuka knew the dance of courtship, the subtle language of desire that passed between young men and women at festivals. Before tragedy had painted his family with its dark colors, before Ifemma's death had turned their neighbors' hearts to stone, he had dreamed of making Nkoli his wife. The palm wine tapper's daughter had smiled at him once, sweet as fresh honey, before the village's rejection had soured all such hopes. He had seen enough maidens cast their eyes his way to recognize when one's heart turned toward his—and this creature, this daughter of the deep, was playing an ancient game with new rules.

But his mother's words surfaced again, sharp as broken shells: Their love is a net, my son. Their desire is a hook in flesh. Remember this when the water offers you its cold embrace.

The silence between them grew heavy as yam harvest, rich with meanings that had no words in any human tongue. The kind of silence that demanded truth as payment.

So he paid.

His story poured from him like libation to hungry spirits. He spoke of the great wooden beast that had swallowed him and his brothers, their bodies crushed together like millet in a grinding stone, sailing toward lands that existed only in nightmares. His voice cracked as he recalled the storm that had torn the world apart, the waves rising like dark gods to claim their due, the chorus of screams that still echoed in his dreams. He told her of home—his mother's compounds where wisdom flowed like spring water, his sister Ifemma's laughter that rang like market-day bells, the warnings about spirits who wore beauty like borrowed cloth but carried destruction in their hearts.

And she listened with the patience of the deep.

Though she kept her silence, her body spoke in ancient tongues—in the way water danced at her touch, in how the waves bent themselves to her will like subjects before a queen. When words failed him, she would hum, not quite song but something older, something that wrapped around his soul like his mother's healing herbs had once wrapped his childhood wounds.

Weakness crept back into his bones like evening shade, his body remembering its hunger. Days had passed since food had blessed his tongue, and his body felt the ache of it.

Then, as if reading his need, she moved.

In one fluid motion, she vanished beneath the waves, her tail flashing silver-blue like a shooting star falling into darkness. When she surfaced, she came bearing gifts—fish as long as a warrior's spear, their scales gleaming with moonlight's blessing. They thrashed in the boat like spirits possessed until the ocean's breath left their bodies.

She returned to her place, shy as a new bride, watching him from behind the boat's edge.

Onwuka stared at this miracle, remembering his own failed attempts to coax food from these same waters. For days he had begged the sea for sustenance, and now this creature simply commanded it to yield its bounty.

The old ways of cooking, of fire and proper preparation, seemed like distant dreams from another life. Raw flesh called to raw hunger, and he answered. His teeth found the fish's flesh, and his body sang with savage joy at each bite. His stomach, so long empty it had forgotten its purpose, roared back to life.

She watched his feast with delighted giggles, like a mother pleased to see her child eat well. When he finished, his mouth stained with the fish's life-blood, he cleansed himself with ocean water, an unwitting communion.

"Thank you," he offered, the words falling between them like precious stones. She ducked her head, playing at maiden's shyness, but her eyes—those ancient, knowing eyes—never left his face.

For the first time since the shipwreck, something like peace settled over him.

But peace, like market day, was never meant to last.

As the first fingers of dawn reached across the sky, painting the clouds in shades of gold and promise, the siren began her retreat. Each movement was measured, deliberate as a priestess performing sacred rites. The ocean reclaimed her inch by inch, like a jealous lover taking back what was always his, until only those ancient eyes remained above the waters—holding Onwuka's gaze like a promise.

Then, with one final gesture—her tail breaking the surface like a silver goddess's farewell—she surrendered herself to the deep.

But her song stayed behind, a ghost that refused to cross over. It echoed in the spaces between his heartbeats, hummed in his bones like fever-dreams, whispered in his blood like secrets too dangerous to speak aloud.

Onwuka sat in the fresh light of morning, his body heavy with exhaustion but his soul transformed, like iron that has passed through fire. The fish bones at his feet were proof enough—this had been no dream born of hunger and desperation.

She was as real as the salt in his wounds, as real as the chains that had brought him here, as real as his mother's warnings about spirits who wore beauty like borrowed clothes.

And she would return.

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