Long before the mountain called her name, Amina was just a girl of Lembo — a village that clung to the earth like a forgotten drumbeat in the heart of the savanna. It was the kind of place where everyone knew when a child lost a tooth, when a goat gave birth, or when someone had a dream they couldn't explain.
Amina was born during the Harmattan, when dry wind from the Sahara swept red dust into every corner of life. Her mother used to say the wind gave Amina her stubbornness — and her silence. Even as a baby, she was watchful, always peering from under her blanket with wide, questioning eyes.
Now twelve, Amina was thoughtful and sharp, more comfortable listening than speaking. She loved the morning sounds of Lembo — the shriek of guinea fowl, the rhythm of pestles in mortar, the hiss of cassava frying. She loved helping Mami Sewa in the market stall, where the scent of dried fish and smoked pepper clung to everything like smoke.
Her favorite moments, though, were in the quiet: alone with her thoughts, her feet dangling into the slow-moving river, eyes drifting toward Mount Kpando in the distance.
From a young age, she noticed something odd: when others looked at the mountain, they looked away quickly. They crossed themselves. They spat on the ground. Even the bravest men of Lembo refused to build houses that faced it directly. Doors and windows were angled just so — never looking straight at the peak.
"Why?" Amina once asked her mother.
"It is not for us," Mami Sewa replied sharply, eyes narrowing. "We walk around it, not through it. We respect it, and we stay alive."
That was the end of it.
But questions bloomed in Amina's mind like baobab flowers after a storm.
The Village Beliefs
It was said that Mount Kpando was cursed — or blessed — depending on who you asked. Some believed it was home to ancestral spirits. Others whispered of old gods, long forgotten but never fully gone.
The older children dared one another to touch the red stones near the mountain's base — stones that shimmered strangely at dusk. Once, a boy named Samadu ventured too far and came back pale and shivering, unable to speak for three days. His mother said he had "seen something." But no one ever said what.
Baba Musa, the village storyteller, always ended his tales the same way: "The mountain remembers. The mountain repays."
Amina's World
At home, Amina's world was simple but full. She swept the yard every morning before sunrise, spread cassava to dry under the sun, fetched water from the river in a clay pot bigger than her head. Her hands were strong and calloused, her hair often twisted into neat rows by her mother on slow evenings.
But her mind wandered often — to stories, to maps she tried to sketch in the sand, to the world beyond the forest edge.
Her closest companion was her brother, Malik. He was full of heat — always planning, always dreaming aloud. While Amina memorized the birds by their songs, Malik spoke of Kumasi's tall buildings and noisy taxis, of machines that cooled rooms and radios that spoke in English and Twi.
"I'll go," he would say, staring out over the horizon. "One day soon. And I'll send for you."
Amina wanted to believe him. But she also felt something else — something she couldn't name. A kind of tension. As though the mountain itself had started listening more closely every time Malik spoke of leaving.
The Night It Changed
Then came the night of the fire gathering.
Baba Musa told the tale of Nene the Weaver, who once tried to cross the mountain to sell her cloth in the city. He described how the mountain confused her path, turning her back again and again until she could no longer remember her name. Some say she still wanders, her cloth trailing through the mist like a ghost.
The children laughed nervously. But Amina felt cold.
When the story ended, Malik scoffed loud enough for all to hear. "You people are ruled by fear. It's just rocks and trees."
But Baba Musa's voice rose, calm but firm: "Rocks and trees can remember, child. And they don't like being mocked."
That night, long after the fire had died and the village had gone quiet, Amina sat on the roof of their hut. The moon was a sharp white tooth. The mountain loomed, quiet but heavy.
And in her bones, she felt it.
Something was coming.