The Weight Of Gold

The morning air in Ayẹ̀pẹ̀gba was not warm like Lagos, nor cold like mountaintops. It was honest cutting through illusion, unsweetened by memory. Iyi woke beneath a tree with leaves shaped like cowries, a light mist clinging to his arms. He didn't remember falling asleep, but when he sat up, something inside him felt rearranged.

The stone throne was gone.

The cowrie-eyed man was nowhere to be found.

But the echo of his words lingered: "You know why you don't belong."

Iyi stood, slowly brushing the dew from his legs. The moss underfoot pulsed with color—soft purples and earth-tones—as if reacting to his steps. Ahead, the village narrowed into a new path—a narrow corridor between walls of woven reeds. Birds with mirrors for eyes perched overhead, watching him pass without making a sound.

A carved sign stood at the end of the path.

Burned into its wood were five simple words:

"TO ENTER, YOU MUST GIVE."

Iyi had no sponge. No satchel. No cloth. He carried nothing now, not even shame.

Still, he stepped forward.

The village beyond the gate was smaller—maybe a dozen huts in all, built in a crescent around a central platform made of polished stone. From a distance, it looked peaceful. Serene. Children danced in a slow spiral, women hummed while weaving baskets of wind, and old men carved names into the air with long feathers dipped in ash.

But the moment Iyi stepped over the boundary, the spiral stopped.

The music died.

A boy no older than ten stepped forward. He wore a necklace made entirely of feathers and snail shells, his skin glittering faintly in the twilight light.

"What have you brought to give?" the boy asked, his voice high but steady.

Iyi opened his hands. "Nothing," he said. "Only myself."

The boy tilted his head, unconvinced. "Yourself is not enough. Yourself is always seeking."

"I was told to give freely. Without hope of return."

The boy nodded. "Good. Then give something that costs you nothing—but reveals everything."

Iyi blinked. "What do you mean?"

The boy stepped aside and motioned to a stone bowl placed on a low pedestal at the village center.

"Everyone who lives here has given," the boy explained. "Their laughter. Their secrets. Their names. A moment of silence they kept hidden. Something given without pride."

Iyi approached the bowl. It glowed faintly. Inside it were strange things:

A lock of white hair braided with charcoal thread.

A folded drawing of a house with no doors.

A scream trapped inside a clear marble, swirling violently but without sound.

A note written in salt.

He stood above it, unsure.

"What can I give that is mine and not mine?" he asked aloud.

An elder seated near the fire lifted her head.

"Give what you're afraid to forget," she said.

Another voice added, "Give what you never dared offer anyone."

He thought of Ìfẹ́olúwa again—her laughter, her hands, her silence when he left without a word.

He thought of his first prayer as a child: Make me full. Just once. Just for one day.

He thought of how many names he'd used online to cheat and lie, none of them his, none of them home.

And then he reached up—into his own mouth.

The gesture surprised even him. But he reached in and pulled something out:

A single word.

It looked like steam. Whisper-light. Faintly glowing. The word "Enough."

Not said in bitterness, but in truth.

It floated above his palm like a memory made visible.

He placed it gently into the bowl.

The mist above the village shifted. A bell rang—not one struck, but one remembered. The children resumed their spiral. The music returned, slower, deeper.

The boy with the feather necklace smiled.

"You may stay."

Iyi let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

A woman in a green wrapper approached and pressed something soft into his hand: a folded cloth, soaked in camphor and coconut oil. A gift.

But he knew—it wasn't a reward.

It was balance.

"Here," she said gently, "we only give what we no longer need, but wish others to carry."

"What is this?"

"My anger," she said with a smile. "She's yours now."

Iyi blinked, then laughed—softly, uncertainly. "Thank you?"

"Use it to warm your feet when you doubt," she replied.

He took it. Bowed.

As the villagers returned to their day, Iyi noticed a mural painted across one of the walls. It showed a man walking into a river, his body covered in words. He entered with a frown but on the other side, he emerged silent, smiling, and blank.

Above the mural were these words:

"True wealth is not what you have but what no longer owns you."

Later, as the sun set or whatever passed for sunset in this dream-place Iyi sat beside the fire with the elder who had spoken before. She wore a crown of broken combs and a robe of handwoven silence.

"Not all who pass through here stay," she said.

"I don't plan to stay."

She smiled. "Good. That means you've begun."

He frowned. "Begun what?"

"To give from emptiness."

He was silent for a moment.

Then asked, "What is this place really?"

She stirred the fire with a long spoon carved from ebony. The flames danced like old friends.

"This is the Second Village," she said. "The place between hunger and knowing. The space where offerings outweigh ambition. Here, we do not teach with stories. We teach with surrender."

"Surrender to what?"

"To what's left of you after everything else has burned away."

Iyi looked into the flames.

He saw images ripple inside: the streets of Lagos at dusk, a loaf of bread in a window, a mother's call, a sponge glowing beneath water, a river that wept.

He whispered, "What comes after this?"

The elder looked at him.

"Only those who step over the beggar will find out."