Chapter 2: The Song Below

First light was just creeping over the rooftops of Lagos when Ennamdi was already at the long-distance bus station, waiting. The place still carried the cold edge of the night. A long line snaked up to the ticket window—some hauling woven bags over their shoulders, others cradling shrieking babies—and the air was thick with diesel fumes and the charred sweetness of grilled corn.

Ennamdi stood at the edge of the crowd, head down, checking the charcoal-marked map tucked inside his backpack. It was wrapped in three layers of plastic film; the fold lines had long since worn white and fuzzy. The corners were curled, a few coordinates scribbled in pencil, one of them circled twice. He tucked the map back in and pulled his straps tight.

The shuttle pulled out with the sun already well up. He settled into a window seat, bag at his feet, and watched the grey-green scrubland scroll past in slow rewind. Market stalls lined the roadside, heaped with golden mangoes and fat bundles of cassava. A woman in the vendor's crowd balanced a great basket on her head, picking her way along the dusty shoulder. The bus rocked and jolled; somewhere in the middle seats a passenger dozed off, others muttered in low, tired conversation.

Ennamdi didn't sleep. He just kept staring out the window, fingers tracing lines on his knee without thinking—like he was sketching the strike and dip of a rock layer from memory.

At the Nigeria border, the checkpoint line was long and slow. Ennamdi got off, flashed his papers, climbed back on. He pulled out his notebook and checked the coordinate again—the survey point the exploration team had pinged last minute, tucked at the edge of an abandoned mine site just outside Accra.

A slip of paper was folded between the notebook pages. One line in cramped handwriting: "When you get there, find Mbara." He closed the book and gazed out into the open distance.

They hit the camp near high noon. The sun sat dead overhead, the ground radiating waves of heat that shimmered off the dirt. The team was set up in a row of corrugated-iron shacks; the metal sheets were so hot you couldn't touch them, and a few washed work uniforms hung out to dry in front, stiff and chalky. Two off-road trucks sat in the yard, caked in rust-brown mud from the last few days of work.

A young crew member was hosing his hands at the water barrel when he spotted Ennamdi and bellowed a shout through the nearest hut. Captain Mbara came out to meet him, grinning wide, all white teeth. "Kwame said you'd actually show up. I thought the man was pulling my leg. A trainee, on *this* ground?"

Ennamdi dropped his pack flat on the dirt. "I'm not touching the ground. I'm touching the rock. And rock doesn't lie." Mbara roared with laughter, clapped him hard on the shoulder. "Now *that's* what I like to hear. Get your stuff sorted, and I'll take you down to The Canyon this afternoon."

The afternoon sun was savage, no shade to speak of. The team followed a dried-up riverbed into The Canyon. The cobbles on the bed were so hot they squeaked and crackled underfoot. Both sides rose in ochre-red cliffs; the Sedimentary Layer stacked like pages in a thick book, some sections carved into deep, jagged gullies by decades of wind and rain. Ennamdi walked last, eyes never leaving the cliff face, head turning slowly as he read the stone.

At a collapsed section where the face had slumped away, he stopped. Crouched down, he pressed his fingertips to an outcrop of sandstone and closed his eyes for a moment. Faintly—almost not at all—he could hear a trickle of water, like some ancient river still running in the deep rock. He opened his eyes and pointed at the middle band of the cliff. "This layer. Early Cretaceous, I'd say. Around 120 million years."

The fossil-bearing layer is deeper. At least three more metres down."

The moment the words left his mouth, a cold snort came from behind. A middle-aged man in a crisp white shirt and a heavy gold watch strolled over from the trucks—Chidi, the Mining Group's representative. A cigar dangled between his fingers. He gave Ennamdi a once-over, voice dripping with polished sarcasm. "120 million? What's your proof? You closed your eyes and *felt* the rock?"

"Young man, I've seen too many speculators. Rattle off a few geology terms and think that's a career." Mbara frowned. "Mr. Chidi, he's properly trained in geology."

Chidi flicked ash off the cigar onto the dirt. "Trained? I've seen plenty of trained interns. I hold the core data for this whole mine site, and even *our* engineers won't commit to a specific age. And here you are, just blurt it out like you know."

Ennamdi didn't argue. He simply pulled the charcoal stick and notebook from his pack, crouched in front of the cliff face, and started sketching the bedding. He drew slow, deliberate, every line matching the dip angle and grain size of the rock in front of him. When he finished, he looked up, calm and level. "The core data tells you where you *did* drill. It can't tell you what's where you *didn't*."

"Below three metres, the Sedimentary Layer continues. There's a dark shale band—organic-rich. That's a fossil-concentration marker. If you want proof, put the drill down three metres and let's see what comes up."

Chidi stared at him for a few long seconds, then let out a sharp, disbelieving laugh. "Fine. Drill. And if you pull nothing out, that Internship ID of yours is staying here at the mine as a souvenir."

He turned on his heel and barked orders to the workers to rig up the drill rig. Mbara leaned close, dropping his voice to barely a whisper. "Kid, don't dig your own grave. They've put dozens of holes in this ground and came up empty every single time."

Ennamdi shook his head, steady. "They came up empty because they drilled too shallow. They're all looking at the cliff face, guessing. Nobody's gone *down*."

The drill roared to life. The bit chewed into the rock, inch by inch, grinding and spitting dust. The dust kicked up in a brown cloud and the wind took it drifting away. Ennamdi backed into the shade, leaning against the cool cliff face, eyes locked on the drill string. Time ticked by, slow and heavy. The sun started to drop west, shadows stretching long across the canyon floor. The crew swapped the bit once, wiped it, and kept pushing down.

Ennamdi didn't move. He just watched the drill string turn and turn and turn, face set, like he was waiting for something that had to happen.

The sun hung low and slanted when the drill string finally coughed up a section of dark grey core, slick with wet mud clinging to its surface. A worker hosed it down, and through the spray a clear, jointed outline of bone surfaced along the rock. The camp went quiet for one sharp heartbeat, then the survey crew swarmed in. Mbara snatched the core up, held it against the light, and stared at it for what felt like ages before his voice came out a little unsteady: "This is... ribs? Dinosaur ribs?" Chidi's face went tight. He crossed the gap in two quick strides, took the core from Mbara's hands, and rubbed his thumb back and forth along the bone. He said nothing for a long, heavy moment. Ennamdi stood at the edge of the crowd, not stepping forward, just looking down and scratching another line into his notebook. Chidi turned on his heel and locked eyes on him: "How did you know?"

Ennamdi closed his notebook with a soft click. "The rock strata talk. Most people just don't understand the language."

By evening the camp had lit a fire, and the survey crew huddled around it cracking into grilled fish while someone off to the side hummed a local tune. Firelight painted every face in warm orange, and the whole mood was a few notches looser than it had been all day. Mbara ambled over with two cans of beer, popped the tab on one, and thrust it toward Ennamdi. "You made this old man look like a fool out there today. Mark my words, he'll be filing a report to head office the second his boots touch the ground. You'd watch your step."

Ennamdi took the beer but didn't drink it. "Losing face was never the point for me. What's buried down there in The Canyon is worth a hell of a lot more than his little mine."

Mbara arched a brow. "Oh? Hit me." Before Ennamdi could open his mouth, a young crewman jogged up, phone held high over his head. "Captain Mbaraa, call from the Accra Elder Council. They're asking for Mr. Ennamdi specifically."

Ennamdi blinked, then took the phone. A woman's voice filled the line, measured and low, carrying the kind of authority that didn't need to raise itself. "Ennamdi, this is Amina, speaking for the community Elder Council. Word has reached us that you've identified a fossil stratum in The Canyon. I want you at the Council Hall in the old quarter of Accra by tomorrow evening. The Council is to see you in person."

His grip tightened on the phone. "Understood. I'll be there." He hung up, handed the phone back to the young crewman, and let his gaze drift out to the black, heavy silhouette of The Canyon on the horizon. Mbara clapped a hand on his shoulder. "The Elder Council don't just waltz in on a whim, kid. I wouldn't be surprised if you're wide awake all night."

Ennamdi gave a small, half-smile and didn't answer. His eyes tracked the thin ribbon of smoke curling up above the fire, looping and twisting in the dusk like some old, quiet answer nobody was asking for.

Night deepened. The fire banked to a dull, smoldering glow, and the crew packed themselves into their tents one by one. Ennamdi didn't sleep. He sat alone at the fire's edge, opened his notebook, and let the day's Resonance data scroll through his mind again: that fossil layer sat impossibly deep, far beyond any standard deposition depth, as though some force had deliberately shoved it down. Chidi's word, "speculator," kept circling back. He shut the notebook and traced his fingertip across the cover.

From far off in The Canyon came a low, muffled thud, like a boulder rolling in the dark, or like the earth itself drawing a long breath. Ennamdi looked up. The Canyon's outline was extra still under the moonlight. During the daytime Resonance sweep he'd felt a wrong kind of tremor passing through the ground. Not an echo bouncing off strata. More like something alive was shifting. He hadn't told a soul.

At first light the next morning the survey team packed up and set the wheel heading home. Ennamdi pressed a hand-drawn cross-section into Mbara's hands. "This data's useful to you. Under The Canyon it's not just fossils. There's an aquifer running through the whole system." Mbara took it, flipped it over, and looked at him sideways. "Since when do you know hydrology?" Ennamdi shook his head. "I don't. The rock strata talk."

They rolled back to camp by early afternoon. Ennamdi scrubbed down in the shower and pulled on a clean shirt. Mbara drifted past, peered at him, and smirked. "Dressing up for the Elder Council?" Ennamdi didn't answer, but his mind was already turning the problem over: the Elders wouldn't summon a stranger out of nowhere. And the way Amina had spoken on the phone carried an undertone he couldn't quite name but somehow recognized, familiar in a way he couldn't explain.

Come evening he set out for the old quarter of Accra. The Council Hall was a rounded, domed structure built from pale limestone, torches burning at the entrance and casting long flickers on the stone. Amina was already waiting inside, and behind her stood three white-haired elders. When she spoke, her voice was softer than it had been on the phone. "Ennamdi, we've done our research. The fossil layer you've located in The Canyon, it's the Ancestral Grave Site."

The Council has one question for you: what exactly did you hear?"

Ennamdi stood on the threshold, moonlight pouring in from behind him and stretching his shadow long across the floor. He let the silence hold for a beat, then spoke, slow and low. "What I heard wasn't fossils. It was your ancestors, reminding me, there's something deeper still under The Canyon."