woven in time

Chapter 6: Mama Sinmi’s Eyes

The morning after the forest, nothing felt real.

Kehinde walked me home just before sunrise, and we didn't say much. Our shoes were caked with red earth, and there were scratches on our arms the forest didn’t give us.

The pain in my wrist was still there—sharp, pulsing, like something beneath my skin had woken up and was trying to get out.

At the gate to my house, Kehinde stopped.

“I need to find someone,” he said, voice tight. “Someone who might remember.”

“Who?”

He hesitated. “The woman who brought me to Agbede. She’s not my real mother.”

I blinked. “Wait—what?”

“My foster mum—she raised me, but… I was found. Brought here after something happened in another town. They never told me what. Just said I was lucky to be alive.”

“Kehinde…”

He looked down. “My first memory is fire. And running. And then—nothing. Until I woke up in a strange house with a woman who said I was ‘blessed but not safe.’”

There was something in his voice—fear and shame—but also clarity. Like a part of him had been waiting to say those words for years.

“I want to find the woman who first saw me. She lives near the edge of town. They call her Mama Sinmi.”

---

Mama Sinmi lived in a crumbling house surrounded by orange trees and silence. Her compound smelled like palm oil and dry herbs, the scent of old things still clinging to life.

She was waiting on her porch when we arrived.

Short, wrinkled, her eyes cloudy but aware. A white wrapper tied around her chest, and a faded comb stuck into her greying afro.

“You finally brought her,” she said, staring straight at me.

I stopped cold. “Me?”

She nodded. “The girl with the other half of the moon.”

I felt Kehinde stiffen beside me.

Mama Sinmi rose slowly and pointed to a wooden stool. “Sit. Both of you. There’s no time for long greetings. The red moon waits for no child.”

---

Inside her house, the air was thick with smoke and silence. Calabashes hung from the ceiling. Old scrolls lined the shelves. On the wall, painted in faded ink, was a symbol I’d seen in my dream—a circle divided by two crescent moons, back to back.

She poured water into a clay bowl and began to hum. Her fingers moved over the surface, stirring it gently until the water shimmered like glass.

Then she looked up, her eyes wide and distant.

“You were separated,” she said softly. “Long ago. Two halves of a prophecy the world feared would return. The moon split you, the storm scattered you. But the door never forgot.”

“What door?” I whispered.

“The one that holds what you truly are,” she said. “The one that sleeps beneath Òkè Aparo. The one the first twins sealed with their lives.”

I swallowed hard. “And if it opens?”

Mama Sinmi leaned closer. “Then the war starts again. And this time, no one survives it.”

---

Kehinde's voice was low. “Why me? Why us?”

She reached out and touched his wrist.

“Because you were chosen, Kehinde. Before you even took your first breath. And Ayotunde—she is the key. The gate responds to her. She opens… you awaken.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

But Mama Sinmi only smiled a sad, tired smile.

“It means the gods are watching. And so are the enemies they locked away.”

---

When we left her house, the wind had changed.

And so had we.

The town of Agbede still looked the same—but I could feel it.

Something beneath the soil had started to shift.

The past wasn’t done with us.

And neither was the door.