The Weight Of Gold

The coins had shimmered in his hands just moments ago.

Iyi sat on the edge of the low stone platform, legs dangling, gold heavy in his pocket. Around him, the Second Village was beginning to pulse again—soft lights in hanging gourds blinked awake like sleepy eyes. Vendors whose faces remained in shadow began to set out strange wares: feathers that hummed, woven belts that slithered like snakes, dried tongues on string.

No one called out prices.

No one spoke.

They only watched.

Iyi remembered the old woman at the gate, her blind eyes milky and her hand extended like a question he failed to answer. He had passed her without a word, without a coin, without a glance. And the gate had closed behind him with a thud that made his spirit lurch.

Now he understood. That wasn't just a village gate. It was a test.

He reached into his pocket again and pulled out the coins. Thick. Glimmering. Not Naira, not dollars—these had no faces on them, no denomination. Just etchings that moved when you weren't looking. He counted them. One. Two. Three.

But as he turned the third one over, something changed.

It twitched in his palm. He blinked.

The coin let out a soft hiss and cracked down the center.

Iyi stood abruptly, breath catching. The coin split in two like dry bread and crumbled into gray dust. He looked down at his hands. The dust coated his fingers, fine and silent as ash.

He opened his pouch.

The rest were dissolving—quietly, unceremoniously. Gold to dust. Promise to nothing.

"No," he whispered.

The village watched him in silence.

He turned to the nearest figure, a tall man wrapped in a purple shawl, face entirely obscured by an old hat made of palm fronds. "What's happening?" Iyi demanded. "Where's my money?"

The figure did not respond.

Iyi grabbed his shoulder—but the fabric slipped through his fingers like air. The figure wasn't there. Or maybe it was. In this place, nothing obeyed the laws he knew.

Something moved behind him.

A girl with white eyes and no feet hovered inches above the red sand. Her hands were cupped, holding something invisible. She extended them toward him.

"No, no, I already paid," Iyi said. "I gave everything. That job. That scam. That man nearly killed me for this."

The girl said nothing. Her mouth opened slowly.

And from it came the sound of wind through dry reeds.

Iyi backed away. Dust poured from his pouch now, draining onto the earth. The villagers began to gather—not with menace, but with something worse.

Pity.

"You carried false gold," a voice rasped from somewhere behind the veil of silence.

Iyi spun. Standing near the central fire pit was an old man with a crooked back, his beard made of braided red thread.

"False?" Iyi asked. "It was given to me. I earned it."

"You earned silence. You paid no one. You passed the gate with empty hands. You fed no mouths, healed no hearts."

"I had nothing!" Iyi shouted. "I was hungry!"

"So was she," the old man said, nodding toward the ghostly girl.

The girl opened her hands. Inside them was a coin—real this time. It did not shine. It glowed. A soft, pulsing amber, like a buried ember. Iyi reached toward it.

It passed through his hand like smoke.

He gasped.

"That coin is hers. You did not give it. You did not offer it," the old man said.

"I was told there'd be wealth," Iyi murmured. "Power. That the spirits would grant it if I bathed. If I walked through the door."

"Spirits do not reward thieves," the old man said.

Iyi turned away.

The fire pit burst into blue flames.

The villagers parted. From the flames, a figure emerged.

He knew her.

The woman with the sponge.

She wore the same wrapper, the same gele folded like wings around her face. But her eyes now burned gold. Her skin glistened as though rubbed with palm oil and lightning. In one hand, she held the sponge that had once been left at his door.

It was bleeding.

"I gave you the key," she said softly. "But you used it as a weapon."

"I was desperate," Iyi said, voice cracking. "You don't understand what Lagos is. What hunger is."

"Hunger is not an excuse. It is a teacher. But you ignored the lesson."

She stepped forward. The sponge pulsed. Dripped.

Iyi looked down at his palms. The dust was now climbing his arms—crawling like ants, rising, dissolving his sleeves, his skin tingling.

"No. Please," he whispered. "Don't take it all."

"We take nothing," the woman said. "You simply brought nothing real."

With that, the sponge fell from her hand and struck the ground with a heavy thud.

It didn't bounce.

It didn't roll.

It bled.

Thick, red liquid oozed across the dust. And from that liquid came whispers—a low chanting, calling a name not his.

Not Iyi.

Not the one he remembered.

"I don't understand," Iyi said, trembling. "Who am I?"

"That is the right question," the woman said. "And now the right price must be paid."

He fell to his knees. The dust rose in a slow cyclone around him.

Memories began to peel away. The sound of his mother laughing in the kitchen—gone. The scent of hot pepper soup—faded. His brother's voice, his own name on his grandmother's tongue, the night he first learned to lie—all slipping.

"I didn't mean to lose it," he said.

"But you traded it."

A final coin appeared before him.

It did not glow.

It was black.

It had no etching.

Only a reflection.

His own face—hollow-eyed, mouth open in silent scream.

He picked it up. It was cold.

And then—everything stopped.

The village vanished.

The dust stilled.

The wind died.

And Iyi stood alone in a room he had never seen before.

A small hut with mirrors for walls.

Each mirror showed a different version of him.

One was dressed in white, eyes blazing, power humming through his veins.

Another—thin, feral, crouched in Lagos gutters, gnawing on stale bread.

Another—dead. A toe tag on his foot. A number where his name should be.

He dropped the coin.

The mirrors cracked.

And the voice of Agba Oye returned, not in front of him—but within.

"Now you know. Gold is not the final form of hunger. It is the beginning."

Iyi closed his eyes.

When he opened them, he was back in Lagos.

But nothing was the same.

The ground was dry.

The streetlights blinked red and blue.

And in his pocket—only dust.