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đź“– Chapter 5: The Waters Begin to Stir / The Price of Knowing
The nightmares began the night she returned from Khayelitsha.
But they weren’t dreams. Not really.
They were memories — ones that weren’t hers, but lived inside her like echoes waiting for a trigger.
In one, a woman kneeled beside a muddy river. She wore red and white beads and whispered words into the water. Her voice was broken, but her eyes... her eyes were Oyena’s.
In another, the same woman screamed as men dragged her child away. Rain poured. Mud swallowed her footprints. The child didn’t cry — only stared, frozen.
> Oyena always woke up gasping.
At school, the change was obvious.
She was distracted. Distant.
Her test marks dropped. Teachers whispered.
Even her friends started avoiding her.
The final straw came during assembly.
Principal Vosloo was giving a speech about discipline.
Oyena blinked — and for a split second, the stage turned into a burning field.
She saw goats. Bones. Women in red. Her body seized.
She screamed — not from fear, but recognition.
The students laughed. Teachers didn’t.
She was taken to the sick bay, then sent home. Again.
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Martin lost it.
> “This can’t continue, Aurora! This isn’t you — this is insanity!”
Lawrence tried a softer approach.
> “Maybe you need a break from school, sweetheart. A proper mental evaluation...”
But Oyena didn’t answer them.
She was already packed.
> “I’m going back to Khayelitsha,” she said.
“Absolutely not,” Martin snapped.
“Then I’ll walk.”
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But she didn’t go to the same area.
Instead, she followed a new lead.
Tucked in the adoption file had been an old phone number. Disconnected. But with the area code, she traced it to a clinic in Gugulethu.
There, after hours of waiting and pretending to be doing a school project, she met a nurse named Zola who did remember Nomandla.
> “She wasn’t mad,” Zola said. “Just... unprotected.”
Zola shared how Nomandla had once come in with burns on her hands — spiritual work gone wrong. She spoke of visions, of ancestors, of being chosen. But no one helped her. Social workers didn’t believe her. They saw a mentally ill single woman and took the child.
> “She cried for you,” Zola whispered. “Even when she stopped speaking, she cried for you.”
Zola gave Oyena a name:
Babalwa Mkhize, a traditional healer who once mentored Nomandla.
> “If you really want to understand who you are,” Zola said, “go to Babalwa.”
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She found Babalwa’s homestead outside Stellenbosch — a small rondavel with symbols drawn in ash at the doorway.
Babalwa was old. Sharp. Her eyes pierced.
> “I’ve been waiting for you, Oyena.”
She told her the truth her parents had buried.
> “Your mother was gifted. You are too. But gifts unused become curses.”
“You’ve been half-dead, child. Floating between names. Between worlds.”
She showed Oyena a calabash her mother had left behind.
Inside: beads, hair, and a small scrap of cloth with the symbol of water painted on it.
> “This is your inheritance.”
Oyena held it — and everything hit at once.
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Visions flooded her — of her mother, of rivers, of rituals that pulsed through her blood.
She cried. She screamed.
She laughed through her tears.
The ancestors had never left.
She had just never heard them before.
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Back home, her silence said more than words.
She no longer played the role of Aurora.
She was Oyena — truly, finally, painfully.
Martin and Lawrence didn’t know what to do with her anymore.
She stopped eating meat.
Stopped answering to “Aurora.”
Started waking up at 3AM, lighting candles, humming in foreign tones.
> “She’s possessed,” Martin whispered one night.
But Oyena wasn’t possessed.
She was being found.
By her mother.
By her power.
By herself.
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