05/12/2025
Far beyond the last compound of Orunme, past the yam fields and the thorn bushes, there stood a forest that people did not like to enter.
It was not the thickest forest. It was not the darkest. But it was the one that listened.
Even the birds kept quiet in certain parts of it.
In a clearing hidden between tall trees, beside a stone half-buried in the earth, a shape knelt as if in prayer.
It was a woman—almost.
She had the body of a tall, strong female, but her legs bent slightly backward at the knees, like those of a gazelle. Her skin was smooth and dark, but on her arms and thighs soft fur grew in short patches that shimmered when the light shifted. Her hair was long and black, braided into cords that fell down her back, woven with tiny bones and small metal rings that chimed faintly when she moved.
And there were the horns.
Long, curved, rising from just above her temples, branching slightly at the tips like the antlers of a deer. They were not grotesque; they looked almost regal, polished by time and weather into something that might have been carved by a careful hand.
Her eyes were the color of coals left overnight in a dying fire—dark, but still faintly burning.
Her name was Naya.
She had lived longer than she remembered. Time, to her kind, was not a path but a lake—something to swim in, to sink under, to rise from again. She had been called many things by many tongues: demon, guardian, beast, protector, curse.
To her, none of those words mattered.
What mattered was the vow.
Long ago—before the churches came, before the radios and concrete and electricity—her people had struck a pact with the spirits that sat above the clouds. They were to watch over certain human children, the ones born under particular signs, the ones whose futures bent the world in small but important ways.
Not kings. Not warriors.
Sometimes the child of a farmer.
Sometimes the daughter of a widow.
Sometimes a girl in a blue house, at the very edge of a village that pretended not to know.
Kemi was one of those children.
From the moment her first cry tore through the air, Naya had felt her. Felt the pull of destiny wrap itself around that sound like a chain of invisible gold.
She had watched from outside the house as the villagers spread their rumors like cheap oil. She had watched from the shadows of trees as Amara went to and from the market, the baby strapped to her back, both of them too tired for their age.
She had hovered, unseen, by the window of the small nursery as Kemi lay awake at night, her young eyes searching the darkness, never afraid.
And she had hummed to her.
Soft songs in a language that had no name anymore. When the world was new, the mountains had sung that language. Now only the Horned Ones knew it.
Every night, as the child reached her hands toward nothing, Naya would raise her own invisible fingers and let Kemi grasp at the air between them.
The bond grew.
Quietly.
Deeply.
Dangerously.
On the morning Amara finally decided to seek a nanny, Naya felt it like a tremor in her bones.
She was perched on a branch overlooking the village, hidden by leaves that did not rustle when she moved. Below, Amara walked along the narrow path that led toward the house of an old neighbor, hope and shame warring in her eyes.
Naya watched the way the woman’s shoulders drooped, how her steps dragged.
Humans were fragile things. Their lives were brief, their hearts easily broken, their minds always trying to make sense of what could not be understood.
The Horned Ones had been told, long ago, to stay away as much as possible. To guard unseen. To interfere only when the threat was larger than the fear they would cause by revealing themselves.
But here was the truth Naya had learned over many lifetimes:
You cannot watch over a burning house from a safe distance forever.
Sometimes, you must walk through the door.
She waited until Amara had spoken with three different women, all of whom shook their heads.
“I am busy.”
“My own grandchildren keep me full.”
“The pay is too small…”
“Your baby is… strange.”
That last one hurt the most.
Amara hid her flinch, thanked them politely, and walked away with her chin raised a little too high. Pride is a thin blanket against cold reality.
By the time she returned home, her eyes burned with unshed tears.
Naya followed, keeping to the shadows, moving from wall to tree to rooftop with a grace no human muscle could match. Her hooves made no sound when they touched the earth. Her breath did not stir the air.
She stood outside the low fence that marked the edge of Amara’s compound, listening to the clink of pots, the rustle of cloth, the soft whimper of a tired young mother.
This is enough, she told herself.
Enough waiting.
Enough watching.
If the world feared her kind, let the world fear. The child’s safety mattered more.
She took a breath.
Her horns receded slowly, dissolving into the air like mist. The fur on her arms and legs slipped beneath her skin. Her legs straightened, her hooves reshaped themselves, bones twisting and re-forming with the muffled crunch of old wood under pressure.
It was not painful.
It was worse.
It was uncomfortable in a way that belonged to the spirit, not the body—as if she had been born a song and forced to become a whisper.
Her ears rounded, her eyes dimmed to a deep human brown, and the glow faded, hiding itself behind pupils that looked ordinary and harmless.
The horns were gone.
The beast had learned how to wear the shape of a woman.
Her name, in that shape, would still be Naya. But no one would hear it the same way again.
She stepped forward and knocked gently on the wooden gate.
