In the old village of Umudara, where red earth clung to bare feet and the iroko tree stood older than memory, people never believed the wind could carry messages, but a village girl proved them wrong.
The Village Girl
When harmattan blew softly, it meant the ancestors were calm. When the wind howled at night, elders would mutter, “Something unseen is walking.”
In that village lived a quiet girl named Adaugo.
She was not the most beautiful. She was not the richest. But she listened. She listened more than she spoke.
Her father was a palm wine tapper. Her mother sold smoked fish at Eke market. They were not people of titles. They were people of survival.
One evening, after returning from the stream, Adaugo sat alone behind their hut. The sky was heavy with approaching rain. Then the wind rose suddenly.
It circled her.
Not the usual village breeze.
This wind moved like it knew her name.
“Adaugo.”
She froze.
Nobody was there.
Again, softer this time.
“Adaugo.”
Her chest tightened. But instead of running, she spoke.
“I am here.”
The wind slowed.
From that day, whenever trouble was about to visit Umudara, Adaugo would feel it first. The wind would whisper warnings. A coming sickness. A failed harvest. A quarrel that would divide families.
At first she kept quiet.
But when she warned her mother not to attend a distant funeral because the road would not be safe, and robbers later attacked that path, whispers began in the village.
“How does that village girl know?”
Some called it a blessing.
Others called it witchcraft.
In villages, fear grows faster than maize.
The chief priest, Dibia Okoye, summoned her.
Inside the shrine hut, the air smelled of chalk and old sacrifice. Cowries hung from the rafters.
“Who speaks to you?” he asked.
Adaugo did not shake.
“The wind,” she said.
He studied her.
“Do you call it?”
“No.”
“Does it demand anything?”
“No.”
Silence.
Outside, thunder rolled.
The priest performed divination that night. When he returned at dawn, his face had changed.
“The ancestors have chosen her as a listener,” he announced to the elders. “She is not possessed. She is protected.”
Some villagers felt relief.
Others felt threatened.
Because when truth begins to speak, secrets lose comfort.
A wealthy farmer named Nnanna grew uneasy. The wind had warned Adaugo about poisoned yams meant to discredit a rival family. She had quietly told the elders. The plot was exposed.
Nnanna’s pride burned.
One night, he spread a rumor.
“She meets spirits at the forest edge.”
“She brings misfortune.”
“She must be cleansed.”
Fear returned.
Soon the same people she had protected began to avoid her.
Even children stopped greeting her.
Her mother wept quietly.
“Maybe we should leave this village,” she said.
But Adaugo, the village girl, shook her head.
“The wind has not told me to leave.”
Then came the season of drought.
Three months. No rain.
Crops cracked in the fields.
Goats died.
The river thinned to mud.
The elders gathered again.
Sacrifices were made.
Nothing changed.
Finally, the priest turned to Adaugo.
“What does the wind say?”
She walked alone to the iroko tree at sunset.
The village watched from a distance.
The sky was dry and merciless.
Then the wind rose again, stronger than before.
It wrapped around her like a cloth.
And she heard clearly:
“Truth was rejected. Restore what was broken.”
She understood.
She returned and faced the elders.
“Nnanna must confess what he buried in the western farm.”
Gasps filled the air.
Under pressure, the farmer denied it.
But when young men dug where she pointed, they found charms and bones meant to block rainfall in order to ruin neighboring farms and buy their land cheaply.
The village shook with anger.
Nnanna fell to his knees.
He confessed.
He was banished.
That same night, clouds gathered.
Rain fell heavy and loud against zinc roofs.
People danced barefoot in the mud.
From that day, nobody mocked the girl who listened.
But Adaugo never became proud.
When asked how she heard what others could not, she would say,
“The wind speaks to everyone. But noise fills most ears.”
And so in Umudara, elders still teach:
When you silence truth out of fear, drought will teach you respect.