Elara moved through the settlement with a careful quiet that was almost second nature, the worn soles of her boots tracing familiar paths across the rippling surface of the Great Wanderer’s back. Evening light pooled in low hollows, settling into a dusk somewhere between bruised purple and the rich ochre of the land-creature’s living skin. The air was full of warmth and cooking smoke, undercut by a faint, earthy musk that everyone had long stopped questioning. She paused near the cooking pots where her grandmother was stirring a simmering broth of spiced tubers and leafy stalks, and the old woman looked up with a faint smile.
“Pass me the salt, Elara,” her grandmother said, her voice steady, though her hands moved with a slower rhythm than they once had.
Elara nodded, pulling the small ceramic bowl from a woven pouch at her hip. She watched the stew swirl as the salt scattered, saw the shifting colours of the herbs dancing in the pot. Beyond them, children played among the settlement’s neat rows of woven-roof shelters, their voices rising and falling in easy laughter. Near the edge of the cooking circle, two Pathfinders set down their survey rods, their shoulders slumped after a day searching for safe routes.
She tried to join their peace. Yet her attention kept drifting down to the subtle vibrations under her feet. They pulsed through the ground in a strange, syncopated rhythm that had grown sharper in the past few days. She had always felt it, even as a child, but now it seemed to echo inside her chest.
“Grandmother,” she began, then hesitated.
“Speak, my girl,” her grandmother encouraged, breaking a piece of flatbread for her.
“Does the Wanderer… feel different to you lately?”
The older woman paused, as if tasting the question on her tongue. “It is the season,” she answered finally. “The old ways say it grows restless before the Blessing. But nothing beyond that.”
Elara nodded, pretending to be reassured. She studied the lines on her grandmother’s face, lines that carried decades of faith in their traditions. That faith seemed so unshakable, but the growing whispers inside Elara’s mind made her wonder if she was the only one hearing them. She moved to gather more firewood before the night chill. The ground pulsed again, a deep rolling breath. Then, as she stepped across a shallow depression in the Wanderer’s hide, she heard it.
A voice. Ancient, vast, folding around her thoughts like cool water: “Betrayal approaches, child. The debt grows too heavy.”
Elara’s grip on the kindling slipped, a branch falling to crack sharply against a stone. She jolted, heart hammering so hard it felt like it might break through her ribs. The villagers nearby barely turned their heads, too used to her quiet ways.
“Are you hurt?” her grandmother called over, frowning gently.
“No… I’m fine,” Elara answered, voice dry. She swallowed, fighting a rising nausea. That voice had been clear. No dream, no half-sleep fancy. It had spoken to her, as if she had always been meant to hear. She knelt, trying to steady her breath, letting her fingers press into the living soil beneath. Warmth, a soft pulse, as if something vast and restless slept just beneath the thin crust of earth. It felt aware of her, as she was aware of it.
She stood, scanning the gathering night. Lanterns had begun to wink into life, swinging gently on poles made from pale Wanderer-bone. The Pathfinders were heading towards the meeting circle, where the High Elder would soon speak. Her father and mother were among them, calm and oblivious. Elara felt separate from them in a way she could not name, as if some invisible barrier had settled between herself and everything familiar. She tried to shake it off, busying herself with helping serve the evening meal. But when her grandmother laid a warm, steady hand on her wrist, Elara flinched at the sudden contact.
“You are jumpy tonight,” her grandmother observed.
“I… maybe I’m tired,” Elara admitted, and that was partly true.
Her grandmother’s eyes softened. “Rest, then. You have always been too quick to see shadows, my girl. Let the elders worry about the Blessing.”
Elara managed a nod, but dread still pulsed through her chest. She knew she could not dismiss what she had heard.
Later, after helping wash the cooking pots, she lingered outside their small shelter. The night was clearer now, the twin moons half-risen over the vast, rolling skin of the Wanderer. Pale light touched the ridges and hollows, making the ground seem to breathe under her feet.
Another whisper reached her, sharper this time, drawn through the deepest pulse of the land-creature’s veins. “They feed me lies. They feed me kin. Soon, I will shake them free.”
Her knees weakened. She grabbed the edge of a low support beam, heart pounding.
Kin.
They were feeding it people? Their own people? The old stories of offerings and Blessings had always been cloaked in ritual words, but she had never pictured this — that the Wanderer itself knew, and resented.
She glanced back through the open shelter door, where her grandmother was already dozing, wrapped in a faded wool blanket. The gentle snores sounded almost unbearably fragile. Elara stepped back outside, searching for any sign of someone else hearing what she heard. The settlement carried on as usual: a Pathfinder snuffed out a lamp, a mother hushed her child to sleep. No one seemed aware of the warning that rang so clearly through her bones.
She could not say it aloud. Not yet. The fear of rejection felt bigger than any monster beneath their feet. As she lay down at last on her woven mat, the rumbling continued, deep and resentful. Each tremor seemed to speak directly to her.
“Betrayal,” it murmured, like a heartbeat against her spine.
She closed her eyes, but sleep did not come easily. The voice rose again, impossible to silence. It tangled with her thoughts until she no longer knew where her own fears ended and the Wanderer’s fury began.
Beyond the settlement, the ground shifted once, an almost imperceptible sigh that made a line of distant lanterns sway. The Blessing was coming. And with it, a truth that no one wanted to hear.
The night of the Blessing arrived with a hush that seemed to squeeze the air out of the settlement. Lanterns burned with steady, unnatural brightness around the ceremonial circle, casting long, uneasy shadows that swayed over the pale ridges of the Wanderer’s skin. Beneath their feet, the vast creature shuddered with a slow, arrhythmic tremor, as if unsettled by the people gathered upon it.
Elara stood just outside the circle, close enough to see the ceremonial robes they had draped around Lyra’s slender frame. Lyra had been chosen to go through the fissure this time. Kin, the Wanderer had said. Lyra’s hair had been arranged with polished river-stones, each one gleaming with borrowed firelight. They were meant to mark her as chosen, but tonight they looked more like chains.
Lyra’s steps were hesitant, the Pathfinders guiding her forward with hands that were gentle enough to preserve the illusion of sacred duty, but firm enough to keep her from fleeing. Her eyes found Elara’s for the briefest moment, wide and silent with a terrible knowledge. Elara swallowed hard. She had known Lyra since they were children who shared winter fires and games of painted stones. The thought of her going into the fissure, of feeding the Wanderer, made something sour twist in her stomach.
A hush fell as High Elder Borin stepped into the ring of light. The gleaming bone staff in his grip caught the lantern-flames, an extension of his absolute authority. His robes, traced with ochre lines representing the “Ways of the Wanderer”, seemed too heavy for his narrow shoulders. Yet there was nothing uncertain in his posture.
He raised his voice, slow and measured. “We stand tonight as our forebears did, in respect of the Wanderer’s gift. For its strength, we repay. For its patience, we honour. For its endless journey, we offer gratitude.”
Elara felt each phrase settle on the gathered villagers like a weight. These were words drilled into every child, words she had repeated by rote until they were nothing more than ritual. But tonight, they scraped against the rawness of the truth she carried.
Borin turned to Lyra, voice gentler, but no less commanding. “You have been chosen, child of our people, to complete the cycle of gratitude. You shall become one with the Wanderer, and by your gift, we shall continue.”
Lyra trembled, her voice catching. “I… I am ready,” she managed, but her shoulders betrayed her, curling in on themselves with a dread that made Elara’s chest ache.
Elara’s feet itched to move. To run to Lyra, to pull her back. But her throat felt clamped shut. All she could do was stand, listening to the Wanderer’s distant heartbeat, each beat stained with a growing fury.
The chanting began, the deep hum of communal voices rolling across the creature’s back like a tide. Some villagers had tears on their faces. Others chanted with the desperate confidence of those who needed to believe. The fissure yawned open at the far end of the circle, a glowing wound in the Wanderer’s hide, edged with a faint bioluminescence. Warm air gusted from it, carrying a strange, herbal scent, as if the Wanderer tried to soothe its own pain.
Elara’s pulse roared in her ears.
Then, cutting through the chanting, a voice as massive as the earth itself: “They give me the weak… the dying… they starve me with their pity. They lie.”
It tore through her mind so sharply she gasped, pressing a hand to her temple. Nobody else reacted.
Lyra moved closer to the fissure, guided step by step by two Pathfinders. Her knees buckled once, but they held her upright.
“Not enough,” the Wanderer thundered inside Elara’s skull. “They cheat. They cheat me.”
The ground heaved underfoot, a hard, punishing lurch that knocked several people off balance. The chanting faltered. For a breath, there was silence, broken only by Lyra’s terrified sob.
High Elder Borin’s voice boomed again, strained but unyielding. “Hold your courage! The Wanderer tests our resolve!”
Elara could no longer stand still. She surged forward, pushing through the stunned villagers, her breath tearing in her throat.
“Stop!” Her voice cracked and carried across the circle.
Borin turned, eyes narrowing in cold disbelief. “Child, stand down.”
Elara shook her head, tears burning at the corners of her eyes. “The Wanderer is angry! You’re starving it! You’re lying!”
Gasps rippled through the crowd. Lyra froze, hope flaring in her exhausted gaze.
Borin’s face darkened. “Silence. This is not your place.”
“The Wanderer told me,” Elara shouted, voice ragged with urgency. “You feed it the weak! That’s not what it wants! You’re killing us, Elder Borin!”
Murmurs rose around her, uncertain, afraid. The Pathfinders tightened their grip on Lyra, confusion flickering over their faces. Another tremor ripped through the ground, fiercer than before. The lanterns swung wildly, throwing shifting shadows across the people’s terrified faces. One of the Pathfinders fell to his knees, dragged down by the sudden motion.
Elara barely kept her balance, bracing against a low altar stone. The Wanderer’s voice flooded her again, even clearer:
“They feed me the broken… not the brave… not the strong. The debt grows. I will take what is owed.”
Her vision swam with panic. It meant to claim something far worse than Lyra now.
High Elder Borin straightened his staff, his knuckles white. “This is blasphemy,” he growled. “She is touched by madness. Restrain her!”
Two villagers moved towards Elara, but stopped as the ground convulsed once more. A fissure cracked open near Borin’s feet, searing with faint blue light. The High Elder stumbled back, shock written plainly across his lined face.
“They deny me. I will take a leader.” The Wanderer’s fury was an ocean inside her mind.
Lyra seized her moment, breaking free of the Pathfinders and stumbling towards Elara, eyes huge and wet. “Help me,” she gasped, voice raw from fear.
Elara pulled her close, steadying her. Together they backed away from the widening fissure, where Borin stood frozen, eyes locked on the splitting earth that threatened to swallow him whole. Villagers screamed and scattered, their faith buckling as the Wanderer made its rage unignorable.
Elara’s grandmother appeared through the chaos, her limp slowing her, but her voice steady. “Elara! What is happening?”
“Grandmother, it’s wrong,” Elara shouted over the din. “They’re feeding it the wrong people! It wants the willing! It wants the strong!”
Her grandmother stared, the weight of decades of tradition crumbling across her face.
“You… you hear it?”
“Yes! It’s angry!”
The older woman turned towards Borin, whose staff was trembling in his hands. “High Elder!” she called, louder than Elara had ever heard her speak. “Listen to the child!”
Borin’s face twisted with fury and panic. “No! You will damn us all with your superstitions!”
The Wanderer’s voice thundered again, deep enough to make Elara’s ribs vibrate:
“I will no longer carry liars.”
The fissure beneath Borin’s feet yawned wider. He tried to scramble away, but the ground quaked hard enough to send him sprawling, his staff rolling from his grip.
Lyra clung to Elara’s arm, shaking so badly she could barely stand. “What do we do?”
Elara forced herself to look at the gaping wound in the Wanderer’s hide, feeling its heat, its pain, its unfulfilled hunger.
“We have to stop pretending,” she said, voice steadying despite the fear clawing through her. “We have to tell everyone the truth. Before it shakes us off for good.”
Lyra nodded, swallowing tears, her body wracked with silent sobs. Around them, villagers began to gather in frightened clusters, eyes darting from Elder Borin to Elara, from the heaving fissures to the Wanderer’s dark, rolling skin. The Pathfinders had earlier dropped their ceremonial holds on Lyra, confusion battling with their loyalty.
Borin, breathing ragged, pulled himself upright. “I will not let you ruin this!” he rasped, reaching for his fallen staff.
Elara stepped forward, voice ringing clear. “If you force Lyra in, it will kill us all.”
The wind carried a long, mournful groan through the fissures. The Wanderer seemed to breathe it straight through their hearts, a warning as profound as a funeral bell.
Borin faltered. His eyes darted around the crowd, searching for support that no longer stood with him. “Fools,” he hissed.
Elara felt her grandmother’s hand on her shoulder. “Speak, child. They will listen.”
Drawing a ragged breath, Elara faced the villagers. “The Wanderer has been betrayed. It wants us to join willingly, not cast away our weakest to save ourselves. It knows. It sees. If we keep lying, it will destroy us.”
Silence followed, taut as a bowstring. Only the dull pulsing of the Wanderer’s flesh broke it, each tremor like the countdown to an unthinkable end. A child began to cry somewhere near the back of the circle. The sound was brittle, cutting through the stunned quiet.
Borin’s staff slipped from his trembling fingers, clattering to the ground.
The Wanderer’s voice echoed one last time, quieter, but edged in finality:
“Choose, or be cast away.”
Elara reached for Lyra’s hand, gripping it tight, and stared into the ragged crowd. The truth was out. Whether they could live with it or not was no longer her burden alone.
Dawn crawled over the settlement like a wary guest, casting a thin, grey light across the torn ground. The embers of the ceremonial bonfire had burned themselves down to sullen orange flecks, leaving only smoke that clung to the air with a stubborn bitterness.
Elara stood near the edge of the ceremonial ring, her hair tangled and dusty, her eyes hollow from a night without sleep. Around her, the villagers moved like shadows, too shaken to speak above hushed murmurs. Some clutched one another, whispering prayers. Others simply watched the ground, as if expecting it to split apart at any moment. The Wanderer’s skin trembled with a low, constant vibration, the creature’s distress now impossible to ignore. Each ripple under their feet felt alive, frustrated, and waiting.
High Elder Borin sat near the fallen altar, hunched and pale. His staff lay broken in front of him, one end charred where it had caught against a fallen lantern. He refused to meet anyone’s gaze, as if shame alone might swallow him before the Wanderer could.
Elara felt a strange pity for him. He had built his life around protecting their ways, even if those ways had been a lie. Now, stripped of his authority, he looked like nothing more than a frightened old man.
Her grandmother came to stand beside her, leaning slightly on a walking stick someone had pressed into her hand. The older woman’s face looked drawn, but calm.
“Did it speak to you again?” she asked quietly.
Elara nodded. “It wants us to choose. And it won’t wait.”
Her grandmother’s eyes, soft but firm, met hers. “Then you must help them see. You are the only one it will listen to.”
A soft wind stirred the lingering smoke. In the shifting air, Elara could hear the Wanderer’s faint, grieving sigh — a sound so large yet so vulnerable it made her throat tighten.
Across the gathering space, Lyra emerged from a shelter, her ceremonial robes dirt-stained and rumpled. There was a brittle strength in her posture that hadn’t been there before, as though some vital piece of her had been reforged in the night’s terror. She approached Elara, pausing to acknowledge the grandmother with a quiet nod. “I want to help,” she said, voice still rough from panic and exhaustion.
Elara studied her. Lyra had always been kind, but never strong in the ways the Pathfinders valued. Yet standing there, refusing to flinch even with the ground quivering slightly beneath them, she looked steadier than anyone.
“You may have to,” Elara answered. “It still wants… someone. But not like before. It wants the willing.”
Lyra swallowed, a line of tension showing in her throat. “If that’s what saves us.”
“No,” Elara said, firmer than she expected. “If it wants the strong, the ones who can truly belong to it, then we have to choose that for ourselves — not be chosen by fear.”
Lyra’s expression cracked with a half-sob, half-laugh, a rush of fragile relief. “I trust you.”
Behind them, villagers had begun to gather, drawn by the tremors and the eerie calm of the morning. The Pathfinders stood uncertainly near Borin, no longer sure if they should defend him or turn away.
Elara stepped forward, raising her voice so everyone could hear.
“You all saw what happened,” she began. “You felt it. The Wanderer isn’t a silent beast under our feet. It is alive. And it has been cheated, again and again.”
Some villagers flinched, while others stared at her with raw hope.
“It is done with our lies,” she went on, her voice catching. “It will not carry us if we keep feeding it what we don’t value. It wants truth. It wants sacrifice — but the right kind. Not the sick. Not the unwilling. It wants us to choose.”
A harsh cough broke the silence — Borin, his shoulders twitching with shame and fury. “You will destroy everything,” he rasped. “Do you even understand what you ask? You would give it our strongest?”
Elara turned to him, and for a moment, all the fear she had felt was gone. “You would rather doom us than change.”
He tried to rise, but his leg gave out, and he slumped again. “I saved us. Every moon, I saved us.”
Elara’s grandmother moved to his side, gentle but unbending. “You spared your pride. You spared your power. You never saved us.”
Borin looked at the older woman with something close to grief in his eyes. Then he buried his face in his hands, defeated. A deep, rolling pulse came from below, heavier than before, strong enough to knock a pot from its hook. The ground flexed under them, a clear warning.
“Time is short,” Elara whispered, more to herself than anyone.
She took Lyra’s hand, guiding her back into the circle. The Pathfinders watched without moving, their loyalty cracked open by yesterday night’s chaos.
“People of the settlement,” Elara called, “the Wanderer has asked us to belong. Truly belong. We have to give it a piece of ourselves, freely, or it will cast us away.”
A terrified murmur rose, and a woman near the back called out, “What does that even mean? Who would volunteer?”
Lyra’s eyes glistened. “I will,” she said, voice small but solid. “But I won’t be pushed. I choose.”
Elara squeezed her fingers.
Others stared, then slowly, one after another, stepped forward. A young fisherman. A woman who wove the strongest ropes. A hunter with a scarred cheek. People who had never been weak, never useless, but who understood that their survival was tied to something greater than themselves.
Elara watched them with a heartbreak so sharp she thought she might drown in it. She had started this, and now it was costing them everything — yet there was no other way.
A gentle quake rippled through the ground, lighter, almost encouraging. She turned to Lyra, voice trembling. “It still wants you, but you’re not alone.”
Lyra nodded, tears streaming freely now. “Then let me go to it. Let me… become part of it.”
The Pathfinders opened a path towards the fissure. The glow within had softened, pulsing like a heartbeat that was not entirely alien.
Elara felt her grandmother’s hand on her shoulder again. “I am proud of you,” she said simply.
A sob burst through Elara’s lips, unstoppable.
Lyra stepped forward, pausing only to look back. “If this is my path,” she said, voice strong, “I go with open eyes.”
The others — the fisherman, the hunter, the rope-maker — followed, forming a line that was not forced, but chosen.
The Wanderer thrummed under their feet, deep and resonant.
“Belong,” it breathed through Elara’s mind, calmer, steadier.
One by one, the volunteers approached the fissure, laying a hand against the warm, pulsing wall of living flesh before they stepped forward into its glow. No cries came from within, no screams. The Wanderer’s skin rippled, as if drawing them into itself gently, respectfully.
Elara watched, swallowing grief like fire. This was not a sacrifice of blood, but a transformation — and still, it burned.
At last Lyra reached the edge, looking at Elara with a gratitude so fierce it felt like a blade. “Thank you,” she said. Then she stepped through.
The glow around the fissure slowly dimmed, closing behind them, sealing like a healed wound. The tremors eased, settling into a steady, peaceful rhythm.
High Elder Borin wept silently, unable to look up.
The villagers stood in stunned quiet, eyes wide, breaths unsteady. The night had torn them apart, but dawn had put them back together — differently, painfully, but alive.
Elara turned, scanning the faces, searching for signs of understanding. Some looked at her with awe. Others with terror. But no one could deny that the Wanderer was calm, for the first time in many cycles.
Her grandmother stepped to her side, voice gentle. “You did what I could not. You listened.”
Elara leaned against her, exhausted, tears running unchecked. “I don’t know if it was right.”
“It was truth,” the old woman replied. “That will have to be enough.”
The Wanderer gave one last sigh, a sound that was neither grief nor triumph, but a quiet, living acceptance. Above them, the sun finally broke free of the horizon, casting its first clean light across the settlement. It revealed a changed place: a people who could no longer hide behind half-remembered chants or twisted traditions.
Elara looked towards the eastern ridge, where the skin of the Wanderer glowed faintly with new colour, as though something inside it had been reborn. The creature shifted under their feet, slow and deliberate. The settlement swayed but did not break.
“Come,” her grandmother murmured. “Help me make tea. There will be much to say.”
Elara nodded, taking her grandmother’s hand. The world felt heavy with loss, but also lighter in a way she did not yet have words for.
As they walked back towards the cluster of shelters, Elara felt the Wanderer’s presence settle inside her mind — no longer a furious roar, but a steady, patient drum. A reminder that what lived beneath them was alive, aware, and willing to bear them onward… if they were willing to bear its truth in return. For the first time, Elara felt that she truly belonged.
Ikechukwu Henry is an Igbo Nigerian writer whose writings tackle the issues of environmental and climatic crises, family dynamics, queerness and speculative otherworldliness. He was fifth place in Christian Speculative Fiction Prize, shortlisted for The Oriire Folktale Prize and has stories published in, but not limited to, Brittle Paper, The Kalahari Review, Lampblack Magazine and others. When not writing, he can be found searching for the next magazine to submit to.
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