The Weight Of Gold

He spent the rest of the day wandering the village like a ghost.

Everywhere he turned, life went on but without him. Children played with sticks that glowed like lightning bugs. Women pounded yam in mortars that sang back with each rhythm. Men tended fires that burned without wood. The drums throbbed steadily, calling names, summoning echoes but never his.

Even the wind had learned not to touch him.

He tried to help a child lift a basket his hand passed right through it.

He reached for a calabash of water only to see it vanish from his palm.

"You are not one of us," the wind seemed to hum with every step.

Iyi felt the shame clawing up his throat again. The same shame he knew from the streets of Lagos, the shame of watching a mother go hungry while he plotted new lies, the shame of counting stolen money with shaking hands. But this was deeper.

This was spiritual shame.

To be seen, and yet unseen.

To walk among gods and carry no name.

He found himself beneath the tallest tree in the village, its bark etched with symbols that pulsed softly in the twilight. Beneath it sat a bench shaped like a drum, cracked and old. He sat down, folding his arms, burying his face in his hands.

He didn't cry.

He just listened.

To the heartbeat of a place that had no use for him.

And that's when he heard the voice.

"You think kings are chosen by crowns?"

Iyi looked up.

A man stood before him. Tall. Barefoot. Cloaked in a robe of red palm fronds and golden thread. His eyes were veiled behind cowries, strung across his face like beads of rain. Around his neck hung a necklace of rusted keys and broken teeth.

He looked like someone torn from myth—yet he stood solid and still as stone.

"Who are you?" Iyi asked.

The man walked past him without answering and sat on a nearby rock, his hands resting gently on his knees.

"You think kings are chosen by crowns," he repeated. "But crowns only weigh the head down. Kings are chosen by silence."

Iyi watched him, unsure whether to speak or listen.

The man tilted his head. "You've been rejected."

"Yes."

"Do you know why?"

"Because I still carry hunger."

"No," the man said, amused. "Because you still think your pain is more important than your offering."

Iyi blinked.

The man continued. "You hold your wounds like currency. You want to trade them for power. But here, pain has no value unless it feeds others. That's why they turned you away."

"Then what do I give?" Iyi asked, frustrated. "I've already lost everything. My name. My money. My past."

The man turned toward him. Slowly. Deliberately.

"Give the part of you that won't let go of what you lost."

That silenced Iyi.

The man rose, brushing his palm frond cloak aside. "Follow me."

They walked in silence, passing through the edges of the village until they reached a clearing lined with stones. At its center sat a throne not golden, not grand. Just stone. Cracked. Weathered. Covered in moss.

It was empty.

And yet it hummed.

"This," said the man, "is where kings sit before they die. But before they do, they must witness."

"Witness what?"

"Everything they could not fix. Everything they built on lies. Everything they turned their face from. Only then are they ready to sit."

He turned to Iyi. "Sit."

"I'm not a king."

"No. But your hunger is. It rules you."

Iyi hesitated.

Then stepped forward.

As he lowered himself onto the stone, the world shifted.

The air turned thick. The sky above flickered.

He was no longer in the clearing.

He was in a Lagos apartment his own, but not as he remembered it. Empty bottles lay on the ground. A mattress without sheets. The sound of distant laughter outside.

His younger self walked in thin, hopeful, stupid with belief.

Behind him came a girl.

Ìfẹ́olúwa.

She was laughing. She touched his face.

Then the scene shifted.

She was gone. The mattress was empty. A knock came at the door. A man with blood on his shirt stumbled in.

Iyi remembered this.

He had turned him away. Closed the door.

The scene flickered again.

His mother at the roadside, selling food she couldn't afford to eat.

His friends in the cyber café, scamming and laughing.

The night he first dreamed of a house with tiles, gold bracelets, and silence.

Every lie. Every choice.

Every version of himself passed before his eyes like dancers in a masquerade.

Until there were too many.

And they began to circle him.

Mocking.

Clapping.

Chanting:

"King of Empty Bellies."

"Crowned in Silence."

"Worshipper of Self."

"Sponge of the Soul."

Iyi clutched the stone arms of the throne.

"I didn't know," he gasped.

"I only wanted to survive."

The cowrie-eyed man stepped into the vision, walking through the masquerade.

"But survival without offering becomes greed."

He reached into the vision and pulled a mask from one of the spirits placing it gently on Iyi's lap.

"Do you know what this is?"

Iyi stared at it.

The face was his.

But broken.

"What is it?" he whispered.

"The face of who you were when you still believed hunger was your enemy."

Iyi touched the mask.

It dissolved into ash.

The masquerade vanished.

And the clearing returned.

The cowrie-eyed man stood over him, a small smile on his lips.

"You have witnessed."

"Does that mean I belong?"

"No," he said. "But it means you know why you don't."

And then he walked away.

Not into the trees.

But into the stone itself.

As if he had never been there at all.

Iyi sat for a long time.

The stone no longer felt heavy.

His hunger no longer felt loud.

He was not yet part of them.

But now he understood what stood between.

And he was ready to cross it.