Adanna
Ikechukwu Henry
Ikechukwu Henry
The smell of roasted yam does not fade easily. It lingers on Adanna’s tongue even now, though there is no fire, no family gathered around the wooden bench, no mother bent over the mortar pressing peppers into paste. The memory clings. Her mouth refuses to release it even while her body lays flat against the hard ground, a weight pressing on her chest and a sharp pull on her arm dragging her into motion. She does not understand what has happened, but the taste of yam and palm oil—sweet, smoky, ordinary—becomes her lifeline, something she tries to hold in place so she does not vanish entirely.
Her eyes open wide to catch details she wishes would vanish instead. A body twisting in the fire’s glow, the roof of a hut licked with flames, sparks flying off into the sky - as if the stars themselves are breaking apart. Somewhere close, a man shouts a name. She does not know if it is the name of his wife, his child, or if he is calling for help. She wants to answer, but her arm jerks again and she falls forward. Her hand gropes instinctively toward the ground but her fingers close on emptiness. She scrapes her knees. The man dragging her does not stop.
She recognizes him. His face is lean and the scar on his temple jagged. His eyes do not meet hers. They look through her as though she is not a girl but something less; a load to be moved. She searches his face for the smallest sign of recognition, but she finds none.
Her throat aches to speak, to shout his name, demanding that he look at her properly, but no sound comes. She imagines her voice buried under the crash of the fire, under the screams breaking and folding in the air. Her mind rebels against what her body already knows: the world she lived in is splitting apart.
Then the cold touches her. A rough circle of iron forced against her neck, the snap of it shutting like a door that would never open again. The sound cuts into her chest; louder than her heart beat and the cries around her. Her body reacts before her thoughts do, pulling away. She hears others gasping as their own necks are enclosed. Some struggle harder, thrashing, only to be struck down with whips. She stays still; numbness spreading from her stomach to the rest of her body.
The weight of the chain pulls again, dragging her forward into the line of bodies. She does not look at other’s faces. She stares at the ground where her bare feet shuffle against stones, toes pressing into the soil as though the earth might still claim her.
They walk but no one tells them where they are going.
The sun presses down as they move, rising and falling over hills she has never traveled. Her mouth dries out. She feels her tongue thickening. Her body aches from each tug of the chain, the skin on her neck rubbing raw, but worse than the pain is the fear of forgetting. Over and over. She is terrified of the blankness that waits if she forgets.
Beside her, chained only an arm’s length away, walks an older woman. Her hair is flecked with gray, her steps slow but steady. At first the woman’s gaze stays lowered, her lips pressed shut, but one evening when they are left to lie on the ground under the open sky, the woman shifts closer to Adanna. She does not ask her name; instead, she speaks with a low rasp in her voice.
“They think they are taking us from Ala,” the woman says, her voice breaking like twigs underfoot. “They think they are cutting us away from her soil. But they do not know her reach.”
Adanna blinks at her. The woman’s words settle strangely inside her chest, half riddle, half comfort. Adanna wants to ask what she means, but her lips don’t move.
The woman continues, her eyes on the dark horizon. “They lead us to water but the sea is older than they are and it remembers more than they do. It remembers the names of all who are born and all who die.” She pauses, breath slow. “Even if we forget, the water will not.”
Adanna stares at her. The words are unfamiliar yet recognizable, like a story half-remembered from her grandmother’s tales. She holds them carefully, as if they might slip from her mind. The air thickens with moisture. She notices it first on her skin, the sweat not drying, the heaviness that clings to her arms. Then she smells it. A sharp scent unlike anything from the rivers of her home. It cuts through her weariness and unsettles her stomach. Salt.
Her steps falter. The woman beside her is called Nneka. She heard one of the others call her name. Nneka keeps moving without pause. Adanna watches her face, sees no fear, only a kind of resolve. Adanna looks ahead again. She feels the sharpness of the salt smell lodge itself in her nose, marking the approach of something she has never seen but always feared.
They walk until the trees thin. The ground beneath their feet changes. And then they see it.
The water spreads beyond sight, moving restlessly; rising and falling with a roar that drowns the voices around her. Adanna’s body stiffens. She feels her knees weaken as though they might not hold her. It is not a river. It is not a stream. It is the end of everything she has known, a great mouth that swallows.
A groan rises from the chained people. Some fall to their knees. Others stare with wide, empty eyes. Adanna feels the sound press against her chest. A boat looms on the water; larger than any canoe she has ever seen, wooden and monstrous with tall poles stabbing the sky. She cannot understand how it floats, how it carries men across the endless water, but she knows it is the reason her village burned.
She begins to hear something within the waves. It’s confusing at first and her weary mind is breaking apart, but as the huge waves crash and fall, she begins to distinguish voices. They call not in words she recognizes but in a rhythm that feels familiar. She sees faces in the spray, her grandmother’s wrinkled cheeks, the children she once raced in the fields. She cannot tell if she is dreaming. She only knows that her chest tightens with the urge to answer them.
Nneka turns to her. For the first time their eyes lock. Nneka’s are calm, almost soft. She glances at the ship, then at the water, and then back at Adanna. Without speaking, she asks a question Adanna already understands.
Nneka steps forward, feet sinking into the wet sand. She walks slowly, deliberately. Shouts rise behind her. The captors do not understand this quiet resistance. They move closer, but others begin to follow her, stepping toward the waves.
Adanna feels the pull. It is not from the chain or from the men’s shouts. It is from the water itself, the roar that has become a call. She takes a step. The chill of the surf shocks her legs. She gasps, her body urging her to retreat, but she does not. Another step, and the water splashes against her face. The taste of it burns.
The water rises. The chain at her neck feels suddenly light, no longer a weight but a reminder of what she is about to shed. She breathes in sharply, then exhales. She feels the tug of it around her ankles, pulling with insistence. Behind her, the captors shout; their voices sharp, their feet pounding the sand. The Hollow Men—those who should have been brothers—wave their arms, confused, trying to herd bodies like stubborn animals. But the procession moves slowly, step after step, toward the water, toward something that feels both death and release.
Nneka is ahead, her back straight, her short grey hair lifted by the wind. She sings again, not softly now but in a voice carried by the waves. Adanna listens. The sound no longer feels like mourning. It sounds like summoning, like a bridge between the known and the unknown. She tastes the salt on her lips, her throat raw from thirst and the iron collar, and she feels the song spread through her ribs.
The first man falls. He plunges forward, the chain dragging others with him, the water swallowing their cries. The Ashy Men rush closer, their boots splashing into the shallows, shouting orders that scatter in the wind. They strike with the flat of their whips, they pull at the chain, but the bodies keep leaning forward, surrendering not to the men but to the pull of the sea.
Adanna’s chest tightens. She does not want to fall blindly. She wants to choose. Her body trembles between instinct and will. Her lungs scream for air, for safety, but her mind begins to shape something different: a picture of her mother sitting on the bench, grinding peppers, pausing to wipe sweat from her brow. She sees her father’s shoulders as he carried firewood, his laughter rising when she tried to help and dropped half the load. She sees her grandmother’s wrinkled hands, pointing at the sky, telling stories of spirits that lived in trees and water. These images come faster now, stitched together not by memory alone but by the salt on her tongue, as if the water pulls them from wherever they were hiding.
Nneka turns once more, catching Adanna’s eyes. Her lips move, forming words Adanna does not hear but understands. Come.
Adanna steps forward again. The cold shocks her thighs, the weight of her wrapper heavy with water. She lifts her chin high, as if to hold back fear. Her vision narrows to the line where the sky bends into the sea. She knows if she looks back, she will break so she does not.
The chain jerks violently, pulled by a captor straining to drag them toward the sand. Adanna stumbles, nearly falling. Her knees slam against the water, pain flaring, but she steadies herself, her hands clenching fists. For the first time since capture, anger floods her. A deep, steady anger, the kind that burns without showing flame. She pushes forward, letting the pull of the sea fight against the pull of the chain.
The man behind her collapses. His mouth opens in a scream cut short as the water crashes over him. His arm flails upward once, then disappears. The chain drags against her throat as his body sinks. She gasps, the salt rushing into her mouth, choking. For a moment panic seizes her. Her chest burns. Her body thrashes. She wants to rise, to breathe, to tear the iron from her skin.
Then she remembers Nneka’s words: The water remembers.
She lets herself sink to her knees. The sea surges higher, filling her ears, filling her nose. Her eyes close. In the darkness, behind her eyelids, she sees her grandmother again, clearer now, the folds of her wrapper bright, her eyes lit with pride. She sees her mother lifting her face from the mortar, smiling. She hears her father’s laugh, strong as the waves. The sounds overlap with the crash of water until they become one.
Her eyes open wide to catch details she wishes would vanish instead. A body twisting in the fire’s glow, the roof of a hut licked with flames, sparks flying off into the sky - as if the stars themselves are breaking apart. Somewhere close, a man shouts a name. She does not know if it is the name of his wife, his child, or if he is calling for help. She wants to answer, but her arm jerks again and she falls forward. Her hand gropes instinctively toward the ground but her fingers close on emptiness. She scrapes her knees. The man dragging her does not stop.
She recognizes him. His face is lean and the scar on his temple jagged. His eyes do not meet hers. They look through her as though she is not a girl but something less; a load to be moved. She searches his face for the smallest sign of recognition, but she finds none.
Her throat aches to speak, to shout his name, demanding that he look at her properly, but no sound comes. She imagines her voice buried under the crash of the fire, under the screams breaking and folding in the air. Her mind rebels against what her body already knows: the world she lived in is splitting apart.
Then the cold touches her. A rough circle of iron forced against her neck, the snap of it shutting like a door that would never open again. The sound cuts into her chest; louder than her heart beat and the cries around her. Her body reacts before her thoughts do, pulling away. She hears others gasping as their own necks are enclosed. Some struggle harder, thrashing, only to be struck down with whips. She stays still; numbness spreading from her stomach to the rest of her body.
The weight of the chain pulls again, dragging her forward into the line of bodies. She does not look at other’s faces. She stares at the ground where her bare feet shuffle against stones, toes pressing into the soil as though the earth might still claim her.
They walk but no one tells them where they are going.
The sun presses down as they move, rising and falling over hills she has never traveled. Her mouth dries out. She feels her tongue thickening. Her body aches from each tug of the chain, the skin on her neck rubbing raw, but worse than the pain is the fear of forgetting. Over and over. She is terrified of the blankness that waits if she forgets.
Beside her, chained only an arm’s length away, walks an older woman. Her hair is flecked with gray, her steps slow but steady. At first the woman’s gaze stays lowered, her lips pressed shut, but one evening when they are left to lie on the ground under the open sky, the woman shifts closer to Adanna. She does not ask her name; instead, she speaks with a low rasp in her voice.
“They think they are taking us from Ala,” the woman says, her voice breaking like twigs underfoot. “They think they are cutting us away from her soil. But they do not know her reach.”
Adanna blinks at her. The woman’s words settle strangely inside her chest, half riddle, half comfort. Adanna wants to ask what she means, but her lips don’t move.
The woman continues, her eyes on the dark horizon. “They lead us to water but the sea is older than they are and it remembers more than they do. It remembers the names of all who are born and all who die.” She pauses, breath slow. “Even if we forget, the water will not.”
Adanna stares at her. The words are unfamiliar yet recognizable, like a story half-remembered from her grandmother’s tales. She holds them carefully, as if they might slip from her mind. The air thickens with moisture. She notices it first on her skin, the sweat not drying, the heaviness that clings to her arms. Then she smells it. A sharp scent unlike anything from the rivers of her home. It cuts through her weariness and unsettles her stomach. Salt.
Her steps falter. The woman beside her is called Nneka. She heard one of the others call her name. Nneka keeps moving without pause. Adanna watches her face, sees no fear, only a kind of resolve. Adanna looks ahead again. She feels the sharpness of the salt smell lodge itself in her nose, marking the approach of something she has never seen but always feared.
They walk until the trees thin. The ground beneath their feet changes. And then they see it.
The water spreads beyond sight, moving restlessly; rising and falling with a roar that drowns the voices around her. Adanna’s body stiffens. She feels her knees weaken as though they might not hold her. It is not a river. It is not a stream. It is the end of everything she has known, a great mouth that swallows.
A groan rises from the chained people. Some fall to their knees. Others stare with wide, empty eyes. Adanna feels the sound press against her chest. A boat looms on the water; larger than any canoe she has ever seen, wooden and monstrous with tall poles stabbing the sky. She cannot understand how it floats, how it carries men across the endless water, but she knows it is the reason her village burned.
She begins to hear something within the waves. It’s confusing at first and her weary mind is breaking apart, but as the huge waves crash and fall, she begins to distinguish voices. They call not in words she recognizes but in a rhythm that feels familiar. She sees faces in the spray, her grandmother’s wrinkled cheeks, the children she once raced in the fields. She cannot tell if she is dreaming. She only knows that her chest tightens with the urge to answer them.
Nneka turns to her. For the first time their eyes lock. Nneka’s are calm, almost soft. She glances at the ship, then at the water, and then back at Adanna. Without speaking, she asks a question Adanna already understands.
Nneka steps forward, feet sinking into the wet sand. She walks slowly, deliberately. Shouts rise behind her. The captors do not understand this quiet resistance. They move closer, but others begin to follow her, stepping toward the waves.
Adanna feels the pull. It is not from the chain or from the men’s shouts. It is from the water itself, the roar that has become a call. She takes a step. The chill of the surf shocks her legs. She gasps, her body urging her to retreat, but she does not. Another step, and the water splashes against her face. The taste of it burns.
The water rises. The chain at her neck feels suddenly light, no longer a weight but a reminder of what she is about to shed. She breathes in sharply, then exhales. She feels the tug of it around her ankles, pulling with insistence. Behind her, the captors shout; their voices sharp, their feet pounding the sand. The Hollow Men—those who should have been brothers—wave their arms, confused, trying to herd bodies like stubborn animals. But the procession moves slowly, step after step, toward the water, toward something that feels both death and release.
Nneka is ahead, her back straight, her short grey hair lifted by the wind. She sings again, not softly now but in a voice carried by the waves. Adanna listens. The sound no longer feels like mourning. It sounds like summoning, like a bridge between the known and the unknown. She tastes the salt on her lips, her throat raw from thirst and the iron collar, and she feels the song spread through her ribs.
The first man falls. He plunges forward, the chain dragging others with him, the water swallowing their cries. The Ashy Men rush closer, their boots splashing into the shallows, shouting orders that scatter in the wind. They strike with the flat of their whips, they pull at the chain, but the bodies keep leaning forward, surrendering not to the men but to the pull of the sea.
Adanna’s chest tightens. She does not want to fall blindly. She wants to choose. Her body trembles between instinct and will. Her lungs scream for air, for safety, but her mind begins to shape something different: a picture of her mother sitting on the bench, grinding peppers, pausing to wipe sweat from her brow. She sees her father’s shoulders as he carried firewood, his laughter rising when she tried to help and dropped half the load. She sees her grandmother’s wrinkled hands, pointing at the sky, telling stories of spirits that lived in trees and water. These images come faster now, stitched together not by memory alone but by the salt on her tongue, as if the water pulls them from wherever they were hiding.
Nneka turns once more, catching Adanna’s eyes. Her lips move, forming words Adanna does not hear but understands. Come.
Adanna steps forward again. The cold shocks her thighs, the weight of her wrapper heavy with water. She lifts her chin high, as if to hold back fear. Her vision narrows to the line where the sky bends into the sea. She knows if she looks back, she will break so she does not.
The chain jerks violently, pulled by a captor straining to drag them toward the sand. Adanna stumbles, nearly falling. Her knees slam against the water, pain flaring, but she steadies herself, her hands clenching fists. For the first time since capture, anger floods her. A deep, steady anger, the kind that burns without showing flame. She pushes forward, letting the pull of the sea fight against the pull of the chain.
The man behind her collapses. His mouth opens in a scream cut short as the water crashes over him. His arm flails upward once, then disappears. The chain drags against her throat as his body sinks. She gasps, the salt rushing into her mouth, choking. For a moment panic seizes her. Her chest burns. Her body thrashes. She wants to rise, to breathe, to tear the iron from her skin.
Then she remembers Nneka’s words: The water remembers.
She lets herself sink to her knees. The sea surges higher, filling her ears, filling her nose. Her eyes close. In the darkness, behind her eyelids, she sees her grandmother again, clearer now, the folds of her wrapper bright, her eyes lit with pride. She sees her mother lifting her face from the mortar, smiling. She hears her father’s laugh, strong as the waves. The sounds overlap with the crash of water until they become one.
Ikechukwu Henry's Writings tackle the issues of Environmental and climatic crisis, mental health, queerness and family dramas, and speculation of otherworldly. When not writing, he can be found sourcing out latest magazines to submit to or growing his large following on X. He lives in a country that threatens to swallow him whole and tweets at @Ikechukwuhenry_ on X.