The tide Breaker
1480 Words
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Chapter 4: The Tide Breaks
I pulled my hands back like I’d been burned.
The Bloodline wasn’t quiet anymore.
And neither was I.
The wall in my room was wet. Not from rain. Not from a leak. The paint bubbled and peeled where my palms had been, and cold water trickled down in thin streams, pooling on my floor. My room was on the second floor. There was no pipe here. No source.
It was me.
I sat on my bed and stared at my hands. They looked normal. No glow, no veins of blue light, nothing from Nollywood. Just scraped knuckles and chipped nail polish. But I could feel it now. The pull. Constant. Like the lagoon was calling me on a phone I couldn’t hang up.
I didn’t sleep the rest of the night.
By 6 AM I was dressed and out the door. Mum was already gone to work. I left a note: _Gone to Kazeem’s. Don’t worry._ She would worry anyway.
Kazeem opened the door before I knocked. He looked tired, like he hadn’t slept either.
“You felt it,” he said.
I walked past him into his room. It was smaller than mine, with one mattress, one table, and walls covered in old maps of Lagos. Red circles marked places along the coast and canals.
“It’s getting worse,” I said. “I woke up with water coming out of my wall.”
Kazeem nodded. “The Bloodline’s waking up in you faster than I thought. The lagoon called you last night. Did you answer?”
“I didn’t say anything,” I said. “But I heard them. Dozens of voices. Saying my name.”
“That’s the old ones,” Kazeem said quietly. “The first Bloodline. The ones who died in the 1983 flood. They’re restless. And they’re looking for you.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re strong enough to hear them without going mad. And because something’s coming.”
Before I could ask what, his phone buzzed. He checked it, and his face went flat.
“Bar Beach,” he said. “Drifters. More than ten. People are dying.”
I stood up. “Then let’s go.”
Kazeem stopped me at the door. “Ada, if we go, there’s no going back. This will be a fight. If you lose control, I’ll have to stop you. You know that, right?”
I met his eyes. “I know. But I’m not losing control.”
We took a bike to Bar Beach. The ride was silent. The city was already moving, people heading to work, okada drivers shouting, hawkers selling pure water. Nobody knew what was happening three kilometers away.
Bar Beach smelled wrong. Like rotten fish and old blood. The sky was gray even though it was 8 AM.
And the water was wrong.
It was moving against the tide. Pulling back from the shore, then slamming forward, over and over. And in the middle of it, the drifters moved.
There were twelve of them. Maybe more. Tall, thin, skin like wet concrete. They didn’t walk. They flowed. Where they passed, the sand turned black and wet, and small crabs died.
People were running. Screaming. But some were already on the ground. Still.
Kazeem cursed. “Too many. We can’t fight them all.”
“Then we don’t fight them all,” I said. “We stop the water.”
“Ada—”
“If I cut off their water, they can’t move. They’re made of it. They need it.”
Kazeem looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “You can’t control that much water. Not yet.”
“Watch me.”
I stepped forward.
The lagoon was loud in my head now. Not voices. A sound. A low, constant hum, like a generator that never turns off. It was calling me.
I raised my hands.
The water answered.
It rose from the beach, from the gutters, from the puddles in the road. It pulled away from the drifters, leaving them stranded on dry sand for half a second.
They screamed.
“Do it!” Kazeem shouted.
I pushed.
The water formed a wall between the drifters and the people. It was huge. Twenty feet high. Shaking with the force of it. My nose bled. My head felt like it was splitting open.
“Hold it!” Kazeem said, and I heard the fear in his voice.
I held it.
For thirty seconds.
The drifters slammed against the wall, trying to break through. Each hit sent pain through my skull like a hammer.
One got through.
It came at me fast, water stretching behind it like a tail.
Kazeem moved. His knife flashed, and he cut through the water binding its leg. It collapsed, but it wasn’t dead.
It reached for me.
I didn’t think. I grabbed its wrist.
And I felt it.
Everything.
Its pain. Its hunger. Its memory of drowning in 1983, of clawing at the surface, of giving up.
It was a man once. His name was Tunde. He had a daughter.
“Stop,” I whispered.
The drifter stopped.
For one second, the empty holes where its eyes should be looked human.
Then it dissolved.
Not into water. Into light.
The other drifters stopped.
They all looked at me.
And they knelt.
The water around them calmed. The tide went back to normal. The screaming stopped.
People on the beach stopped running. They stared.
Kazeem was staring too. “Ada… what did you do?”
“I talked to them,” I said. My voice shook. “They weren’t monsters. They were trapped.”
“How?”
“Because nobody ever told them they could be free.”
The drifters dissolved one by one. Not into monsters. Into light. Into rain. The sky opened up, and it started to rain. Clean rain. The kind that washes everything.
People cheered. I didn’t hear them.
I fell to my knees.
Kazeem was at my side immediately. “Don’t pass out on me now.”
“I’m fine,” I said. But I wasn’t. I was empty. Like someone had drained me and filled me back up with something quiet.
“You did it,” Kazeem said. “You saved them. You saved everyone here.”
“No,” I said. “I listened.”
He helped me stand.
The rain kept falling.
For the next three days, Lagos was different.
The flood alerts stopped. The water in the canals ran clear. People on the street greeted each other like they remembered how.
Mum noticed first. “You seem lighter,” she said at dinner. “What happened?”
I looked at Kazeem, who was sitting across from me pretending to be my tutor again.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just finished a tough exam.”
She nodded and didn’t push.
At night, I still heard the lagoon. But it wasn’t calling me anymore. It was thanking me.
On the fourth night, I went back to Bar Beach alone.
The water was calm. The stars were out.
Kazeem was there before me, sitting on the sand.
“You came,” he said.
“I had to see it,” I said. “To make sure it was real.”
“It’s real,” he said. “You changed it. You changed all of it.”
I sat next to him. We didn’t talk for a long time.
Finally, I asked, “What happens now?”
“Now,” Kazeem said, “you decide.”
“Decide what?”
“If you want to keep hiding. Or if you want to help the others.”
“Others?”
“The ones waking up. Like you. Like me. There are more, Ada. All over Lagos. All over Nigeria. They’re scared. They think they’re cursed.”
“And I can tell them they’re not?”
“You can show them,” Kazeem said.
I looked out at the water. It was still. Peaceful.
I thought about my mum. About the flood alerts that wouldn’t come anymore. About the kids who wouldn’t drown in the next rain.
“Okay,” I said.
Kazeem smiled. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I said. “But I’m doing it my way. No more hiding. No more secrets. If people are scared, they’ll learn why they shouldn’t be.”
Kazeem stood up and offered me his hand.
I took it.
The water at our feet rippled, but it didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.
We walked back toward the city together.
Behind us, the lagoon stayed calm.
For the first time in years, Lagos slept well.
And I slept too.
No dreams. No voices.
Just quiet.
The kind of quiet that comes after a storm.
The kind of quiet that means you survived.
The end.
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- Writer
