In Elegosi, when the wind blew westward, the elders said it carried whispers from tomorrow. But no one listened anymore. Too many ears had been trained to hear the sound of machines, not the voices of ancestors.
Until one day, when the drums spoke.
They were not beaten by any hand, nor arranged by any festival master. Yet across the city—beneath the rumble of cars and behind the hum of air conditioners—the sound emerged: steady, ancient, undeniable.
It found Odogwu first.
He was seated beneath a tree planted in memory of Orie, his late father, when he heard it—a low, dignified rhythm, like a heart remembering it once knew how to hope.
He rose and whispered, "They are calling again."
Ngozi, who had walked with him since his fall and rise, looked up. "What is calling?"
Odogwu did not answer at first. He only closed his eyes and placed his hand on the ground. "Not what. Who."
The people of Oru gathered at the Center of Becoming—a hall Odogwu and his comrades had built not with bricks alone, but with broken dreams remade into hope.
He stood before them, his voice quiet like the beginning of rain.
"You know my story. I gave fifteen years to a place that once bore my sweat like gold. And when the drought came—after the great plague swept through the world—they dropped me like a cracked pot."
He paused.
"Do I blame them? No. You don't blame the night for being dark. You carry your own lamp."
He held up an object: a torn envelope—the one that had once carried his dismissal letter.
"But I also say this: I was not broken. I was released. They buried me, but they forgot I was a seed."
That evening, the drums grew louder.
Children stopped playing and turned their ears to the sky.
Old women in distant towns stirred their pots and said, "Something is rising."
Zuru, always skeptical, looked at Odogwu. "What do these drums mean?"
Odogwu replied, "They are not calling us to dance. They are calling us to remember."
"Remember what?"
"That we were never nothing. That what they abandoned was the very thing that would grow a forest."
He returned to the River Shrine behind the Oru headquarters. There, with Aisha, Ngozi, and Zuru by his side, he lit four calabashes filled with herbs from Amaedukwu, charcoal from Elegosi, feathers from the northern plains, and palm oil from a widow in Okrika.
They poured libations.
"Let every forgotten soul rise," Odogwu declared. "Let every name erased be sung again."
And when they struck the first drum—just one beat—the air shifted.
The drum echoed across Elegosi.
And in places where people had thought themselves forgotten—orphans, laid-off artisans, retired teachers, expelled students—they lifted their heads.
The drum had remembered them.
By the next day, a movement had begun.
They called it Ikwu-Oma — The Remembering.
Not a protest, not a march.
But a wave of becoming.
Each participant brought an object that symbolized their rejection: torn certificates, broken instruments, old business cards, cast-off uniforms.
And Odogwu, standing amidst them, said, "We will not burn these things. We will plant them."
They dug holes in the Field of Ashes, planted their symbols, and covered them with earth mixed with cassava peel and goat manure.
From those unlikely seeds, a garden bloomed within a month.
Wild.
Unruly.
Beautiful.
They called it The Garden of the Thrown Away.
Some said he had bewitched the city.
Others accused him of manipulating pain for applause.
But Odogwu never responded to critics.
As Orie used to say: "When the lion roars, the bush rat must decide if it wants to be brave or buried."
Months later, in a hall once used by the same corporation that dismissed him, Odogwu hosted a summit titled:
"Harvests from Abandonment: Rethinking What the World Leaves Behind."
The audience was full of the same executives who once refused him.
Some bowed their heads.
Others stood stiffly.
But all of them listened as Odogwu told stories—not just his—but of:
A potter whose shop was looted, now teaching therapy through clay.A man wrongfully imprisoned, now leading criminal justice reform.A grandmother whose grandchildren mocked her, now an elected senator through a grassroots campaign.
"These are not stories of comeback," he said. "They are stories of becoming. There is a difference. A comeback wants the old seat back. A becoming builds a new throne."
Later that night, as he sat beneath the mango tree again, Zuru asked him, "Do you still hear the drums?"
Odogwu smiled.
"They don't stop, Zuru. They just wait until you're ready to beat them yourself."
And in villages far from Elegosi, people began placing small drums in their homes.
Not to play.
But to remember.
To remind them that even when forgotten, abandoned, discarded…
They were never worthless.
They were simply seeds planted in a season misunderstood.
And now?
Now, the harvest had come.