The Weight Of Gold

The roots of the baobab twisted behind him like a mouth slowly closing. Iyi stepped through the arch and felt something tear not skin, not cloth, but a thread within his chest, a tug of something old and familiar. He paused instinctively and placed a hand over his heart.

The charcoal handprint on his chest had vanished.

So had the pebble.

The air on the other side was cooler, sharper. It tasted of unripe fruit and wet stone. The golden hue of the market was gone, replaced by a softer twilight glow. Trees loomed overhead tall, narrow things with smooth, dark bark that seemed to hum faintly. The ground was soft and springy beneath his feet, covered in moss that sparked faintly with each step.

He was in another place now.

A second village.

He could tell because nothing here tried to sell him anything.

In fact, nothing here acknowledged him at all.

People moved like wind between the huts tall, elegant, cloaked in garments woven from riverweed and shadow. Their skin shimmered slightly, as if woven with threads of morning dew. And their eyes those eyes saw through him like smoke.

Iyi walked slowly, cautiously, his presence like a dropped stone in still water. Heads turned. Faces stiffened. Conversations halted.

Whispers began to crawl across the walls and wind.

"He still smells of Lagos."

"How did he pass the first gate?"

"Look at his feet he still carries dust from the coin-world."

He tried to speak, to greet them, to explain I was called, he wanted to say. I was invited by Agba Oye. The sponge led me. The river welcomed me.

But his voice had dried up again.

Words didn't hold weight here.

Intent did.

He kept moving, eyes scanning the strange village. Everything here pulsed with life, but not the kind he knew. Chickens didn't cluck. They glided silently across the moss. There were no fires yet meals were being cooked. Drums sat unmanned, yet soft rhythms rose from them, like echoes of an invisible ritual.

At the center of the village stood a long hut with a wide circular mouth, its entrance shaped like an open eye. Etched above it in deep grooves were the words:

WE GIVE TO BELONG.

He approached the doorway.

Two figures stepped forward.

They were twins mirror images of each other, tall and androgynous, with skin the color of storm clouds. One carried a staff topped with a bowl of white ash. The other bore a necklace of small gourds that chattered when he blinked.

The twin with the ash-staff blocked the entrance.

"You do not carry our scent," they said.

Iyi bowed his head respectfully. "I came from the market. I walked the road the baobab gave me."

The other twin circled him, frowning.

"Even the baobab forgets sometimes," he muttered.

"We are not like the market," said the first. "Here, entry is not earned by passing through. It is earned by reflection. By resonance. And you… you do not echo."

Iyi's chest tightened. "But I've washed. I've bathed in spirit water. I've shed my names, my garments. I left hunger behind."

A soft murmuring rippled through the village. More villagers had gathered, forming a wide circle around him, silent and staring.

An old woman with copper rings around her ankles stepped from the crowd. Her voice was weathered, like it had passed through many mouths before reaching his ears.

"You've bathed," she said, "but you have not bled."

Silence.

The twins stepped aside, allowing her forward.

"You've burned your past in water," she continued, circling Iyi, "but your soul still clings to gain. We see it in how you step. We see it in your shadow."

Iyi swallowed hard. "Then what must I do?"

She stopped in front of him. "You must give. Fully. Without promise. Without hope of return."

"Give… what?"

She held out a bowl. Empty. Carved from gourd and bound with red twine.

"Place your most precious truth inside," she said. "And let us judge its weight."

Iyi stared into the bowl. It was light. Hollow. But he felt it trembling in her hands.

His most precious truth?

He thought of his mother. Of the way her eyes looked the last time he left her with no money, no food, only a lie about a "big job" that never came.

He thought of the boy he scammed last year another hustler, really, but younger. Hungrier. He had taken what wasn't his because he could.

He thought of the night the enforcers came when he hid beneath the table while they beat his friend for a debt they had both incurred. He didn't speak up. He only listened.

He reached into himself.

A name rose.

Ìfẹ́olúwa.

The girl he'd left behind when the hunger became too much.

He held that name like fire. Then slowly, he whispered it into the bowl.

The villagers flinched not from the name, but from the echo it carried.

The bowl shimmered.

The old woman peered into it and frowned.

"This truth carries pain," she said. "But not offering."

"I came here to be cleansed," Iyi said. "Is that not offering enough?"

A murmur rippled again. The twins turned to each other, then back to him.

"You came," one said, "to be emptied. But you still wish to be filled."

"You came," the other echoed, "to heal. But still clutch the wound like a trophy."

A long silence followed.

Then the village spoke in unison.

"You are not one of us."

Iyi stood frozen, heart pounding. Rejected. Not punished. Not banished. Just... not accepted.

The old woman bowed her head.

"You may walk among us. But the rites will not respond. The drums will not know your name. The soil will not remember your footsteps."

She placed the bowl at his feet.

"When you learn to give as wind does freely, without end you may return."

And just like that, the villagers turned.

Conversation resumed.

The drums started again.

The spirits ignored him.

Iyi stood in the middle of it all.

Seen.

But invisible.