There are songs that do not need singers. Songs that dwell in silence. Songs that ripple beneath the soles of your feet, whispering through stone and dust like old lovers trying not to be forgotten.
Amaedukwu elders call them Abụ Ụzọ—Songs of the Path. They say if you listen closely enough, the ground will hum your ancestors' footsteps, each vibration a syllable, each silence a note.
Odogwu walked barefoot more often now. Not as a performance, but as communion. The earth had stories. Not loud ones. Gentle ones. The kind you only hear when your heart bows lower than your ears.
And lately, the stones had begun to sing again.
It started with the children.
At the House of First Remembering, they began gathering pebbles—small, rounded stones from the Oru Grove. Each child would sit cross-legged, cradle the stone, and listen.
They reported strange things.
"I heard a lullaby. It made me cry, but I don't know why."
"My stone said my real name isn't Kemi. It's Chidubem."
One boy said his stone told him the story of the first masquerade that danced without drums.
Zuru collected the pebbles and placed them in a ring at the center of the sanctuary.
By the seventh day, the ring glowed faintly.
The children named it Ntụrụndụ—the Circle of Whispering Stones.
Odogwu sat among them one evening, the sky soft with twilight, his hands cradling a black stone smooth as memory.
He closed his eyes.
He heard a voice—not his father's, not his own, but someone familiar.
It said:
"You have walked far, son of Orie. But there are still rivers in your bones. There are still songs you were born to return."
"The stones remember. But do you?"
"Do you remember the ache before ambition? The hunger before success? The silence before your first word?"
He opened his eyes and wept.
Not out of sorrow.
But because the stone had told the truth. And truth, when whispered gently, breaks you open like rain on thirsty yam ridges.
That night, the elders came uninvited.
Old women with cowrie-studded hair.
Hunters with leopard-tooth pendants.
Midwives with anklets that jingled like forgotten seasons.
They sat in the circle. Silent. Listening.
Then one by one, they began to sing.
But not in unison.
Each sang a different tune, a fragment, a memory. A lullaby. A dirge. A praise song. A plea.
The air thickened.
Even the trees outside leaned in.
And then the ground answered.
A low hum. A vibration. The ring of stones pulsed.
And the sanctuary shimmered, as though time had loosened its hold.
A voice rose from the earth:
"These are the songs the stones remember. The ones that were sung while the world was still learning how to speak."
"You who build with memory—listen well. For the next path lies beneath your feet."
The next morning, the children found their stones had cracked open.
Inside each one was a seed.
Not of any known tree.
These were memory seeds.
Each shimmered with stories untold.
Odogwu called the team.
"This," he said, "is our next Oru. We plant these seeds not just in soil, but in soul. And when they grow, they will be story trees."
Aisha smiled, eyes wet. "What fruit will they bear?"
Zuru answered, "Remembrance. And perhaps—resurrection."
The planting began under moonlight.
Each child chose where to plant.
One picked the edge of a cliff, saying, "So the wind can carry my grandmother's laughter."
Another chose a market square, declaring, "So people remember kindness even while haggling."
And one quiet girl named Ifeoma planted hers by the town's old prison.
"For justice," she said. "So no one forgets what silence costs."
Each seed was buried with a story.
Each plot marked not with stone, but with song.
And the next day, the first sapling bloomed—with bark that bore ancient symbols and leaves that whispered names.
But not everyone welcomed this blooming.
The Ụmụ Ọchịchị returned.
This time not with fire, but with words.
They launched a campaign of doubt.
"What science is this?" they asked. "Are they raising trees or cults?"
They lobbied governments, petitioned religious leaders, paid influencers to mock the project.
#StoneSingers trended online—with ridicule.
A cartoon of Odogwu hugging a talking yam went viral.
He smiled when he saw it.
"They laugh," he said. "Because they have not yet listened."
That night, he returned to the Whispering Ring.
The earth pulsed softly.
He lay down, ear pressed to the ground.
He whispered:
"Stones, tell me what to do. I am only a son trying to remember his father's footsteps."
In the silence that followed, he felt it.
A soft voice.
It said:
"Do nothing. Let them laugh. Let them mock. For when a stone sings, even the deaf will one day dance."
"What grows in silence cannot be uprooted by noise."
Weeks passed. Then months.
The seeds became trees.
The trees bore fruit.
The fruit glowed faintly and whispered memories when held.
Tourists came. But they left changed.
A woman from Paris held a fruit and cried for an aunt she had never met.
A boy from Johannesburg heard his great-grandfather's war song.
A professor from Accra quit his job, declaring, "Books are not enough. I must now teach with roots."
And the trees spread.
Seeds were taken to Cape Town. Zanzibar. Bamako. Tunis. Kigali.
Across the continent, people began planting stones.
And listening.
And remembering.
One evening, under a tree now taller than any building in Elegosi, Odogwu stood with Zuru.
"Do you hear it?" he asked.
Zuru nodded. "Yes. They're singing again. And this time, it's our names they carry."
Odogwu smiled. "Let them carry them far. Let the stones sing us into forever."
And the earth, soft and humming beneath their feet, agreed.