Hera Oyomba By Otieno Jamboka Apr 2026

“The river does not have a before,” Hera replied. She stood, and the water dripped from her ankles like melted garnets. “Tell your father I will come at dawn. But he must bring me three things: a hair from a dead child, the tooth of a virgin, and the shadow of a liar.”

“Mother,” she said, “teach me to remember.”

Hera did not look up. “The river speaks to me. There is a difference.” HERA OYOMBA BY OTIENO JAMBOKA

“Woman,” he said, “they say you speak to the river.”

The chief laughed, a sound like stones grinding. “I think the river is a woman. And women forget.” “The river does not have a before,” Hera replied

Hera took the pouch. Inside: a strand of white hair (she knew it was her own, plucked from her sleeping head last night), a molar from a goat (the chief’s daughter had lost it laughing at a cripple), and a crumpled piece of cloth that held no shadow at all.

They called her a widow of two husbands, but that was a lie. The first husband had drowned in the river before the wedding night, dragged down by a crocodile with eyes like a prophet. The second had walked into the forest during a lunar eclipse and returned as a hyena that laughed at his own funeral. So Hera lived alone at the edge of the village, in a hut whose walls breathed in and out with the rhythm of forgotten songs. But he must bring me three things: a

The new chief—a girl of twelve years who had been hiding in a baobab tree during the flood—went to the hut and knelt.

The young man’s face did not change. He had been taught that history was a snake you stepped over on the way to the market.

By Otieno Jamboka