THE BREATH OF THE IROKO TREE SPIRIT

The Breath of the Iroko Spirits

No one in Àgbọ̀nrin village dared to stand beneath the iroko tree at night.By day, it was only a giant—its roots coiled like sleeping serpents, its bark scarred by age, its crown spreading wide enough to shade half the square. Children played near it when the sun was high, and elders tied white cloths to its roots during festivals. But when dusk bled into night, the iroko changed. The air around it thickened. The leaves no longer rustled with the wind—they breathed.
The elders said the iroko was older than the village itself. Older than names. Its trunk was a doorway, and inside it lived the spirits of those who had died without farewell—hunters lost in the forest, mothers taken by childbirth, warriors who fell far from home. Their breath, the elders warned, drifted out after sunset, searching for ears that would listen.
Òlámidé listened anyway.
He was a young drummer, lean and restless, his fingers always aching for rhythm. Since his father’s death, sleep had abandoned him. At night, he heard whispers curling through his dreams—his name spoken in voices that sounded like leaves rubbing together. On the seventh night of the dry moon, he followed those whispers to the iroko.
The moon hung low, pale and watchful. As Òlámidé stepped into the tree’s shadow, the air turned cold. He smelled damp earth and old rain. Then he heard it—a slow, deep exhale, as though the forest itself had lungs.Hhhhhhaaa…
The bark shivered. From the roots, a pale mist rose, winding around his ankles, his knees, his chest. It was not smoke. It was breath.“Do not fear,” a voice murmured, layered with many others. Men. Women. Children. “You walk on our bones.”Òlámidé tried to run, but the roots tightened, gentle yet unyielding. His heart thundered louder than any drum he had ever played.“Why do you call me?” he asked, his voice trembling.The breath thickened, and images flooded his mind—Àgbọ̀nrin before huts, before paths, before fire. He saw ancestors dancing around the iroko, drumming on hollowed trunks, singing names into the soil so the land would remember them. He saw blood spilled unjustly, oaths broken, rituals forgotten.“You have forgotten the old rhythms,” the spirits said. “The drum no longer speaks for us.”Tears streamed down Òlámidé’s face. He remembered how the festivals had grown quiet, how the elders now argued instead of chanting, how the drumbeats had become shallow, hurried, empty.“What must I do?” he whispered.
The iroko inhaled again, deeper than before. Leaves rattled like bones.“Breathe us back into the world.”
The mist surged into Òlámidé’s chest. For a moment, he thought his lungs would burst. Then the pain turned into fire—songs, stories, names flooding his breath. When the roots released him, he collapsed to the ground, gasping, alive.
At dawn, Òlámidé returned to the village square with his father’s old drum. When he struck it, the sound was not loud—but it was deep. The rhythm rolled like thunder under the earth. Elders froze. Women dropped their calabashes. Children stopped running.The air changed.Those who listened felt chills along their spines, as if unseen mouths were breathing against their ears. Some wept without knowing why. Others remembered dreams they had buried long ago.That night, the village gathered beneath the iroko for the first time in generations. No one died. No one vanished. The spirits breathed gently, satisfied.
And to this day, when the wind sighs strangely around old trees, the elders say:
“Do not call it wind.
That is the breath of the iroko spirits—
and they are still listening.” 🌿