The Weight of Gold
Chapter 78: The Burned Name
By S.A. Akinola
The sun had barely risen over the horizon, casting a faint amber glow over the village, when Iyi awoke to a restless stirring in the air. The morning was unusually still, as if the earth itself was holding its breath. The birds, usually exuberant in their morning symphony, had fallen strangely silent. Only a low hum remained—a vibration beneath the soil, as though something ancient was awakening beneath their feet.
Iyi sat upright on his straw mat, the hairs on his arms rising with the charge in the atmosphere. He had learned, long ago, to trust the invisible—energy, memory, and silence. Something was coming. Or perhaps something long buried had decided it was time to rise.
He washed quickly, dipped his hands in the bowl of fresh rainwater set by the door, and stepped outside.
The village was beginning to stir. Smoke curled lazily from thatched chimneys, carrying the warm scent of yam porridge and roasted groundnuts. Women's voices murmured in gentle rhythms as they pounded grain. Children darted through the dusty streets, laughing as they chased a homemade ball of rags.
But beneath the ordinary, something else moved.
A weight. A shadow. A memory.
Iyi's eyes were drawn to the old marketplace—the one that had once buzzed with traders from distant towns, where dancers twirled beneath hanging lanterns and drums once called spirits and men alike to attention. The space now stood quiet. Its wooden stalls had grayed with age, some reduced to skeletal frames. Faded banners from a forgotten festival fluttered with a weariness that mirrored the village's buried grief.
And there, at the center of the square, was the old fire pit. The one no one used anymore.
It had once been sacred.
It had once burned a name.
Many years ago, before Iyi had inherited the mantle of healer, a man had come to the village. His name was Ẹbùnọlá.
He had arrived with charm in his voice and honey in his promises. He spoke of progress, of wealth, of lifting the village out of obscurity. He offered tools, traded in rare spices, and whispered deals in the ears of elders desperate for relief from drought and dwindling harvests.
But with every promise he made, a truth was hidden. For every gift he gave, something sacred was quietly stolen.
Land was sold under false pretenses. Ritual grounds were desecrated. Families divided. Elders shamed into silence. By the time the village awoke to what was happening, it was too late. Trust had eroded like termite-eaten wood.
And then came the fire.
One night, during a gathering to cleanse the land and reclaim what had been tainted, the people assembled at the marketplace. They brought forward the scrolls of ancestral records, the ledgers of names etched by time.
One by one, each elder stepped forward.
And one by one, they cast a name into the flames.
Ẹbùnọlá.
Not just as a punishment—but as erasure.
To burn a name, in their tradition, was not mere censure. It was exile from memory. A spiritual severing.
But as Iyi had come to learn, erasure was never complete. The soul lingers in the places it once shaped.
Now, standing once more before the long-cooled fire pit, Iyi knelt slowly and laid a palm on the cracked stones. The heat was gone, but not the memory. Ashes, even long scattered, left fingerprints in the spirit.
A soft murmur behind him broke the silence. The villagers had begun to gather. Faces lined with age and sorrow, some young and curious, others tight with apprehension.
No one had spoken that name aloud in over twenty years.
He rose and turned to them. His voice, when it came, was not angry, but heavy with the truth that cannot be buried.
"The burned name," he said, "is not just a story of destruction. It is a reminder—of what happens when we forget ourselves. When we choose silence over truth. When fear strangles the voice of justice."
The villagers listened in silence. No one dared interrupt.
"This place," Iyi continued, gesturing to the marketplace, "was once alive. Now, it breathes with ghosts. But the spirits are not vengeful. They are waiting."
From his satchel, he withdrew a wooden plaque. It was small, worn from age and fire, the edges darkened by flame. But the name carved into it—faint and trembling—was still visible.
Ẹbùnọlá.
Gasps rippled through the crowd. Some averted their gaze. One woman crossed herself. A young boy whispered a question to his father, who shook his head and pressed a finger to the child's lips.
"This plaque was once cast into the flames," Iyi said. "But the fire did not destroy it. I found it years ago, buried beneath this pit, still carrying the mark of what was done."
A hush deeper than silence settled over the square.
Iyi lifted the plaque with both hands. "To burn a name is to declare that one's story no longer deserves to be remembered. But we know now that memory cannot be undone. Pain cannot be buried. It must be faced."
He walked slowly around the circle of villagers, inviting each person to touch the plaque if they wished. Some reached out reverently. Others only bowed their heads. A few wept silently.
When he returned to the fire pit, Iyi knelt and placed the plaque gently upon a bed of herbs: ewé àmúnútẹ́tẹ́, osun, and crushed sandalwood. Sacred plants for purification and remembrance.
He lit a new fire—not of rage, but of reconciliation.
The smoke that rose was thick at first, then blue and clean. It carried no stench of burning wood—only the scent of healing and rain.
Around the fire, the people began to sing.
At first, it was one elder woman—Ajike—whose voice cracked but did not falter. Then another joined. Then the youth. Then the men who had once kept silent. The chant swelled into a hymn of mourning and mercy. Not for Ẹbùnọlá alone, but for every choice made in fear, every truth silenced by shame.
They laid offerings: millet soaked in honey, cowries, handwritten notes folded into tiny boats of palm leaf. One by one, each person came forward to release their burden.
Iyi watched with tears in his eyes—not for the man whose name had burned, but for a village that had finally begun to forgive itself.
As twilight painted the sky in streaks of crimson and gold, the last of the offerings was placed, and the fire began to die. Only embers remained—glowing like ancestral eyes.
Iyi stood beside the fire pit long after the others had gone. He could feel the shift in the earth, the lifting of something that had pressed down on the village like a storm cloud for decades.
Not erasure. Not vengeance.
Transformation.
The burned name had become a prayer.
Later that night, beneath the great baobab tree, Iyi sat with the plaque beside him. It no longer carried the weight of curse, but of testimony.
Tunde approached quietly, his face lit with the glow of the small fire they had kindled.
"Master," he said, kneeling beside Iyi. "How do we carry the weight of names that hurt us?"
Iyi looked into the firelight for a long while, watching how the flames moved like memories—flickering, vanishing, returning again.
"We carry them with care," he said finally. "We do not clutch them with bitterness, nor cast them away in hatred. We carry them as teachers. As reminders."
"But what if we're afraid they'll define us?" Tunde asked, voice small.
"Then we write our own names louder," Iyi answered, placing a hand on the boy's shoulder. "We speak in love. We heal what we can. We plant trees that bear fruit even for those who do not know our stories."
Tunde nodded slowly, understanding growing behind his eyes like dawn.
"And what of the name we burned?" he asked.
Iyi smiled faintly. "It was not the name that harmed us, but the choices made behind it. The man is gone. But the lesson remains."
They sat together in silence, the stars thick above them, the wind humming through the baobab's branches like a lullaby from the ancestors.
Far off, a drumbeat echoed from a neighboring village. Life moved forward.
And in the stillness of the night, the village exhaled—lighter than it had in years.
The name once burned had been remembered, not to resurrect its shame, but to set its spirit free.