The drums were still beating when the boy vanished.
It was the New Yam Festival in Ilé-Ominira, the kind of night where firelight danced on mud walls and ancestral songs curled like smoke into the sky. Children chased one another barefoot, elders laughed over palm wine, and mothers clapped to the rhythm of women's songs. No one noticed the moment Adewale disappeared—not even his mother.
Yejide had just turned to adjust his wrapper, her voice stern but loving: "Stay close. Don't go near the forest." The boy nodded, his little face lit with excitement and mischief. But then the masquerade came—tall, masked, draped in raffia—and in the flurry of praise chants and squeals of fright, Adewale slipped away like a breath in the wind.
By the time the drums stuttered and stopped, his laughter was already gone.
Chief Adedayo shouted. Torches were lit. The elders ordered the forest searched. The festival turned into panic. They found no trail, no scream, no blood—only a small, carved pendant lying by the edge of the sacred grove. It was his.
Yejide fell to her knees, her voice caught between a wail and a prayer. "My son! My Adewale!" Her wrapper tore as she crawled through the dust, clawing the earth as if she could summon him from beneath it.
By dawn, silence had swallowed the village. Not even the birds sang.
That morning, the first rumors started:
The boy saw something he shouldn't have.
The gods have taken him.
He was sacrificed to protect the land.
Yejide never believed any of them. But the silence that followed would shape her grief, her madness, and the mystery that would haunt the village for fifteen long years.
Certainly. Here's an expanded continuation of Chapter One: The Night the Drums Fell Silent, diving deeper into the atmosphere, Yejide's unraveling, and the village's reaction:
By midday, the sun had turned cruel, drying up tears that refused to stop flowing. Yejide sat beneath the Ìrókò tree in the compound, rocking herself gently, muttering Adewale's name like a broken lullaby. Her gele hung crooked on her head, and her wrapper was caked with dust. No one could bring her inside—not even her own mother, who tried to whisper verses of comfort and strength in her ear.