It is during one of Ita's trips ferrying passengers through River Atan that he picks her, sandwiched in a row, NYSC printed green on her shirt, fading into sparkling white.
He waits for her return.
-You dey cross?
The thud of her boot on his canoe wakes him. She stops, realizes she is his only passenger.
-I won't bite. He grins a line from a movie.
He asks for her name and she asks if he wants to marry her. When he says something about not having enough money, she laughs.
-Ene, my name is Ene.
He is a charmer, conversing with her effortlessly. Halfway across the water, they already know each other enough.
-why you fear de water?
Perhaps it is the silence that follows after she tells him about herself, growing up, the last of four siblings: how each died mysteriously, a minor accident here, a slight cold there... gone!; how the pattern followed, snatching life just before they hit 20. With her, her parents walked the ends of the earth, buying time from religious and spiritual houses. She's turned 22 but the fear never leaves.
Perhaps it is because she tells him, a fifteen-year-old stranger, her fears that he tells her
-I can see the future.
She looks, amused.
-Mr. Seer, tell me what you see. She opens her palm to him and they are both lost in laughter.
-It doesn't work like that.
Their voices dance with the wind. It drowns their sense to the sound of an engine turning a sharp bend at them. When they see the speeding boat, it is too late.
Crash!
It is Ene he sees last. Plunging into the water, he reaches for her.
They sink. Every attempt he makes to rise above water is crippled by the weight of her life hanging unto his; she who is double his size, who can't swim. He waits for some tortuous minutes till her grip on him loosens. When he finally finds land, he blacks out.
Ita wakes up with serious headache. Thud thud, the thick of her boot rapping against his canoe.
-you dey cross?
His heart does a double beat.
-I no go!
He paddles fast, widening the gap between them, leaving her startled, stranded ashore. He tastes her name on his tongue --ENE-- because in a time that was to be, he knew her; he held her laughter and couldn't save her.
