The Weight of Gold
Chapter 76: The Apprentice
By S.A. Akinola
The first light of dawn filtered softly through the woven mat walls of the small hut on the village's edge. Birds called in low, rhythmic notes, announcing the birth of another day. Inside, Iyi sat cross-legged, his palms turned upward on his knees, his breath slow and purposeful. The ritual of waking was not merely physical—it was spiritual, a communion with the world around him.
The air was cool and fresh, laced with the scent of dew-kissed leaves and the quiet steam rising from earth freshly turned by last night's rain. Thin tendrils of smoke curled from a carved bowl of burning àṣẹ wood, the incense of remembrance. Iyi reached for a bundle of dried herbs hanging above the fire and whispered a short prayer in his mother tongue, a language older than even the village itself.
Today was different.
Today, he would welcome his first apprentice.
Months had passed since the whispers began—of the healer who could quiet not only wounds but grief, who listened to the wind and carried the light of the sponge. They called him the last of the old ways, the one who never turned away a widow, a child, or the madman raving at the edge of the forest. He had not sought fame. It had found him.
But now, age had begun to press at his joints, and he understood the truth his elders had taught him: If you do not pass on the light, it will dim even in your own hands.
A soft knock broke the quiet.
Iyi rose slowly, his frame tall but lean, his movement still graceful despite the years. He opened the wooden door, its hinges creaking like a memory. A boy stood there—nervous, dusty, and young.
"I am Tunde," the boy said quietly. His voice trembled with restraint. "I want to learn. To help. To carry the light."
His eyes, though shadowed with road-dust and uncertainty, held a fire. Not arrogance, but yearning. Hunger for something more than survival.
Iyi studied him for a long moment. In that gaze, he saw an echo of himself—of the orphan boy once taken in by a midwife who spoke with spirits and walked between worlds.
"Come inside," Iyi said, voice soft but clear. "The journey is not easy. It asks much of those who walk it."
Tunde nodded. His sandals were worn thin. His bag, barely holding its seams, contained only two shirts, a sliver of dry yam, and a faded pendant bearing his father's name. He stepped into the dim warmth of the hut.
Inside, the room pulsed with quiet life. Bundles of herbs hung from the rafters, their scents mingling into something earthy and sharp. Earthen pots lined the walls, each etched with ancient symbols—some for healing, some for protection. In the center, atop a carved wooden pedestal, rested the light sponge—a glowing orb of woven fibers imbued with ancestral energy.
Tunde stared at it, entranced.
In the days that followed, Iyi began the deliberate, sacred work of teaching. It started with silence.
"Before you speak," Iyi told him on the first morning, "learn to listen."
They walked barefoot through the fields at dawn. Iyi pointed to the way birds scattered when the wind shifted, how ants changed their line when the soil warned of coming rain. Tunde stumbled over roots, startled at the buzz of bees or the rustle of a hidden snake. He was used to noise, to chaos. This world of quiet demanded something else.
Later, they gathered herbs in the hills—ogun leaves, yinrin roots, esu bark—each with its purpose and story. Iyi spoke the names like prayers. Tunde repeated them, clumsy but eager. His hands, unused to precision, fumbled the delicate tools. More than once, he spilled mixtures or burned salves.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled one night, smoke in his eyes from the fire.
Iyi said nothing at first, only handed him a wet cloth.
"Healing is a dance," he said at last, as the flames danced between them. "It requires balance—between action and stillness, between knowing and humility."
Tunde dreamed of spirits.
One night, he awoke gasping, swearing he'd heard a woman's voice calling from beneath the floor. Another time, a dark figure stood in the corner of the hut, whispering riddles he could not remember upon waking.
Iyi listened carefully. "They are watching," he said. "But not all who watch are enemies."
He gave Tunde a woven bracelet of riverstone and bone. "For grounding," he said. "And for memory. Not all visions are dreams."
The village, too, became a classroom.
Tunde sat in on births, watching Iyi soothe pain with chants and oils. He helped bury an elder who passed quietly in his sleep, learning the words to send the spirit onward. He observed how Iyi greeted the madman—Kelechi—with the same gentleness he offered the chief.
During festivals, they served from a shaded tent, applying balms to dancers' feet and placing protective sigils on children's wrists. Tunde began to see the healer not just as a medic, but as a keeper of rhythm—the pulse of the people.
Still, not all lessons came easily.
One afternoon, Iyi sent him alone into the northern woods to find ọ̀sùn root. The trees whispered harshly there, and shadows moved oddly between trunks. Tunde, heart pounding, found the plant but was chased by what he swore was a spirit with three eyes and a cracked mouth. He arrived breathless and scraped.
Iyi cleaned his wounds without a word. Only after did he say, "The forest tests courage. And the spirit world respects those who do not run."
Then came the river.
It was late afternoon. The air shimmered with the heat of sun-baked stones. The river lay quiet, a ribbon of glass between green hills. Iyi knelt by the bank, motioning for Tunde to join him.
"This is where I received my calling," he said. "And where you may hear yours."
Tunde dipped his hands into the clear water. It was colder than he expected. It tugged at him—not violently, but with insistence.
"Let it teach you," Iyi murmured. "About surrender. About trust."
Tunde closed his eyes.
Suddenly he saw his mother—her hands rough from farming, her eyes tired but fierce. She stood waist-deep in the same river, singing a lullaby he hadn't heard since childhood. Behind her stood others—figures bathed in golden light, silent and still.
He wept.
When he opened his eyes, Iyi said nothing. He simply placed a hand on Tunde's shoulder. The boy did not speak of what he saw for many days. But something had shifted.
Weeks passed. Tunde no longer flinched at the hiss of boiling oils. His hands moved with rhythm, not hesitation. He began rising before Iyi, preparing morning infusions without prompting.
Then one evening, as the villagers gathered around the central fire for stories and songs, a woman limped forward. Elder Kemi, whose knees had long betrayed her, now carried a pain in her chest she couldn't name.
Iyi stepped aside.
Tunde froze.
"She trusts you," Iyi said. "Trust yourself."
Hands trembling, Tunde knelt. He spoke the cleansing chant, fumbled slightly on the third verse, but pressed onward. He applied the salve he had mixed that morning, its scent sharp with ori and sekan leaves. His hands rested gently over her heart.
Minutes passed.
When the elder opened her eyes, she smiled. "I feel… light," she whispered.
The circle erupted in quiet claps, murmurs of wonder. Someone began to sing.
Tunde stood, blinking away tears. Iyi nodded, eyes shining with pride.
"You have taken the first step," he said. "But the road is long. And the light you carry must be tended. It can falter as easily as it shines."
That night, under the wide branches of the baobab tree, the two sat in silence. The stars hung low, like listening ancestors. Wind rustled the leaves above them with a sound like breath.
Iyi reached into his robe and pulled out a small pouch. From it, he retrieved a single bead—deep blue with gold flecks.
"This was given to me when I healed my first," he said, placing it in Tunde's palm. "It does not carry power. Only memory. But memory, my son, is a kind of power."
Tunde closed his fingers over it. His face glowed in the starlight, no longer just a boy. Something in him had awakened.
"Will I ever be ready?" he asked.
"No," Iyi replied. "But you will always be becoming. That is enough."
And so, the master and apprentice sat beneath the old tree, the weight of generations above and around them. The night pressed close but did not feel heavy. It felt like a cloak of promise.
The village, their village, slumbered peacefully beyond the fields.
And within that stillness, a new light had begun to burn.
A quiet flame.
Tended by two hands.
Lit for the world.