Whispers of the Night

They say that when night falls in Aroko-Ife, the dark listens more closely than the living.

And if you dare whistle, it answers. Layi, the hunter from

the neighboring village of Odo-Irin, heard this warning a hundred times on his journey—but

stubbornness sat in his bones like iron. After sharing gourds of palm wine with

the elders, he staggered toward the vast forest with his bow hanging loosely in one hand

and an unsteady grin plastered across his face. “Whistling is forbidden,” one old man had

told him, voice hoarse. “At night, it calls what should never wake.”

Layi had laughed in his face. Now, under the moon’s thin,