“Maybe they found someone better.”
“No,” Felicia snapped. “Something is wrong.”
And she was right.
Something was shifting, but not in the way she expected.
The truth about Caro was that she could not lift a finger for house chores. Soma did every task in the house. Caro could not cook the simplest meal or do other housework, and her suitors quickly discovered it.
On a visit to one of them, she cooked a meal that almost choked the man, and that ended the relationship.
One evening, as Soma prepared dinner, Baba Akutu called her to sit.
“I have a question for you,” he said.
She wiped her hands and faced him.
“Yes?”
“If your life could change tomorrow,” he began slowly, “what would you want it to become?”
Soma stared at him.
The question felt too big, too sudden.
“I… I don’t know,” she admitted. “I have never had the chance to think that far.”
He nodded thoughtfully.
“Then it is time you start.”
She hesitated, then asked the question that had been growing inside her.
“Who are you, Baba Akutu?”
Silence filled the room.
For the first time since she met him, he did not answer immediately. Instead, he leaned back slightly, studying her face carefully, as if measuring something, as if confirming something.
And then, finally, he spoke.
“Soon,” he said quietly, “you will understand everything.”
Soma’s heart skipped, because something in his tone had changed. It was no longer vague.
It was certain.
And in that moment, she felt it strongly.
The life she thought she had been forced into was about to reveal a truth no one in Zima Town was prepared for.
Not even Felicia.
The change did not come like thunder.
It came quietly, like a secret finally getting tired of hiding.
Three weeks after the marriage, Baba Akutu woke Soma before sunrise.
“Get ready,” he said calmly. “We are traveling.”
Soma blinked, still half asleep.
“Traveling? Where?”
“You will see.”
