SCENE START
SETTING: The Palace courtyard. The sky is the color of a bruised plum. A massive, supernatural heat radiates from the ground, causing the very stones to crack. The air is thick with the sound of a thousand hammers striking anvils in unison.
CHARACTERS:
OJUOLA: Barefoot, her royal robes tattered, clutching her remaining children.
WEMIMO: Now half-transformed; her legs move with the stiff, clanking sound of rusted gears.
OBA ADEREMI: Broken, sitting on the floor of his own porch.
AJAKA: No longer disguised. He is a towering figure of molten iron and red light, holding a massive blacksmith's hammer.
THE SPIRIT OF OGUNWUMI: A translucent figure of white fire standing beside him.
BABA JIDE: The only one sitting calmly, eating a piece of charred meat.
[ACT 1]
(The courtyard is littered with the "statues" of the merchant AJEGBAMI and his sons. They have been turned completely into cold, unmoving iron, their faces frozen in expressions of eternal greed.)
WEMIMO: (Choking, her voice metallic) Sister... help me... I cannot feel my heart. It feels like... like a lead weight in my chest.
OJUOLA: (Looking at the sky) There is no help. The sun has gone out, and the God has come home.
AJAKA: (His voice is a vibration that makes the palace walls crumble) THIRTY-THREE YEARS. I walked the forests of the dead. I tasted the salt of the earth. Every day, I heard the blood of Ogunwumi crying from the roots of the Iroko tree.
OBA ADEREMI: Lord of War, take me! I am the King! I take the responsibility for the sins of my house!
AJAKA: You are a King of dust. You were a husband to a murderer and a father to shadows. You are not worth the strike of my hammer.
(The SPIRIT OF OGUNWUMI steps forward. She looks exactly as she did the day she died humble and kind but her eyes are twin stars.)
OGUNWUMI: (Voice like a soft breeze) Shola... Wemi... I would have given you my life to save yours. But you took it anyway. You didn't just kill me; you killed the truth.
OJUOLA: (Falling to her knees) We were beautiful! We deserved the world! Why should you, the soot-girl, have a God while we had only men?
OGUNWUMI: Beauty is the skin of the world, sister. The truth is the bone. You traded your bones for beads. Now, the beads will crush you.