The scent was the first thing people noticed.
Not strong or perfumed, but clean—soft, earthy, like rain after a dry season. It drifted through the village air in the early hours before sunrise, wrapping itself around thatched rooftops, slipping through windows, and greeting even the most stubborn sleepers with something familiar yet unplaceable. It wasn't the scent of wealth, or power, or something meant to impress. It was the scent of care. Of intention. Of home.
Each morning before the village stirred, before the first child yawned beneath mosquito nets and the first firewood cracked into light, the healing hut was already awake.
Inside, Tunde worked with quiet purpose. By the flicker of oil lamp and the soft rhythms of birdcall, he laid out the day's offerings. His hands moved with the instinct of someone no longer questioning his place in the world. Soap bars, cut fresh from molds. Balms, stirred and cooled. Herbs, bundled tightly in palm wraps. Each item handled like it contained not just remedy, but remembrance.
He still knelt first thing each day.
Just beyond the woven curtain that divided the preparation space from the shopfront, in a small alcove of woven grass and smooth stone, sat the altar. Simple, unadorned. Upon it, the carved bowl held fresh water collected from the river before dawn—cool, clear, and still. And in its center floated the fourth sponge, now softened with time, a pale fragment of Iyi's legacy.
Tunde knelt before it, touched the water with two fingers, then pressed them to his chest. His whispered prayer was the same each morning:
"Let me cleanse without pride. Give without fear. Walk as one who carries light."
Not a ritual of superstition, but one of grounding. To remind himself that what he gave must always come from the quiet place, not the loud one. From stillness, not from show.
By mid-morning, the scent would have done its work.
People came. Some with aching joints. Others with coughs that stole their children's sleep. Some with nothing visible at all—just heaviness beneath the eyes, silence where joy should live.
The shopfront had changed since the day it first opened.
Once a bare table under a woven roof, it now held color and memory. Tunde, with help from the village carpenters, had added shelves carved from local iroko wood. A hand-dyed cloth, gifted by the weavers, draped across the counter. Rows of soaps in gentle hues—white like river foam, pink like dried hibiscus, golden from turmeric, charcoal black like night.
Each soap bore no logo, no mark of brand. Only small paper tags handwritten in simple ink: Calm. Root. Strength. Joy.
Behind them stood small clay jars—balms, tinctures, salves. Each mixed with oils and prayers, each named not for ingredients, but for feeling: Relief. Breath. Stillness. Unseen Hands.
Villagers brought offerings instead of money. Bananas. Palm kernels. Pieces of smoked fish. Dried cassava cakes. A fresh yam. Sometimes stories.
A girl once gave him her beaded anklet. A boy once left a carved stone with a sun on it. One old man brought an empty gourd, saying, "I have nothing left, but I want to give something anyway."
Tunde took every gift with the same reverence. Placed each one behind the counter. Some he returned to the community when others came in need. Nothing was wasted.
And always, the sign hung above the entrance, slightly crooked from the day he nailed it with shaking hands:
Ọmọ Iyi Soap & Healing
All Are Welcome. Give As You Have Received.
People called him that now—Ọmọ Iyi. Not because they thought he was Iyi's son, not by blood. But by something older. A shared fire. A borrowed light.
He had become a keeper—not of soap, but of balance. He knew who needed healing before they spoke. He read the tilt of their shoulders, the weight in their gait, the tremor in their sighs.
He never turned anyone away. And yet, no one took advantage.
Because the space did not invite greed.
It invited honor.
Children gathered at his stall, not just for balm or soap, but for the stories he told. He spoke of the river that remembered, the tree that sang in silence, and the sponge that had glowed in a dying fire. Stories passed from Iyi, yes—but also shaped by his own hands now, his own questions, his own answers.
One child—Amira—came daily with her younger brother in tow. She never spoke, not since the fire that had taken their home and left her with a burn across her shoulder. But she listened. And when Tunde told the story of the sponge that floated without sinking, her eyes would widen and her lips tremble, as if the sponge carried her name too.
One evening, after most had gone, she stayed behind and pointed to her shoulder. Tunde nodded gently, handed her a balm named Restoration, and placed a new wrap over her scar. She didn't need words.
She needed presence.
And that, Tunde had learned, was the truest medicine.
But not all visitors came for healing.
One morning, near the end of harvest season, a car rolled into the village—foreign, too clean, its engine too loud. The kind of sound that did not belong to dust roads or mango trees.
From it stepped a woman in a crisp white linen blouse, sunglasses too large for her small face, and shoes that did not bend at the toes.
She didn't greet anyone as she entered the hut. Her eyes scanned the jars, the soaps, the cloths on the wall.
"You're the boy?" she asked, voice clipped.
Tunde stood slowly. "Yes."
"I'm from a wellness company. We've heard of your products. People in Lagos speak of a healer boy whose soaps calm panic attacks and stop rashes in a day. We want to help you scale. Branding, packaging, international distribution. You could be on shelves across the continent. Think—'Ọmọ Iyi Healing' in bold, glossy boxes."
Tunde listened patiently.
She continued. "We'd send a team. Help with production. You wouldn't even have to do it all yourself anymore."
He smiled, but it was not the kind of smile she understood.
"I don't sell miracles in bottles," he said gently.
"But this could be big," she insisted. "Bigger than this place."
He looked around his small stall. The sleeping mat in the corner. The jar of beans left by a widow. The drawing of a sponge with wings, gifted by a child. The altar behind the curtain.
"It already is."
She stared, uncomprehending.
Moments later, she left, frustrated. The car kicked dust into the air and vanished down the hill.
The village exhaled.
And Tunde returned to work.
That night, under the orange haze of the moon, the elders came to his fire.
Not as overseers. Not as investors. As kin.
They sat around the fire, passing roasted maize and warm palm wine. They spoke not of business, but of stories—of when Iyi cured a woman who hadn't spoken in a year by placing her hand in the river. Of the sponge that had floated for days without sinking. Of the stall that had become more than a shop—it had become a shrine, a gathering place, a heart.
"You are doing well, Ọmọ Iyi," said Baba Okon, the village's oldest voice. "But tell me—how will you know when it is time to walk your own road?"
Tunde didn't answer immediately.
He looked into the fire, saw the faces of every person he had ever helped flickering in the flame. He thought of Iyi's footprints, long faded from the road, but never erased.
He finally spoke.
"When the water in the bowl stills," he said. "When the sponge no longer floats. When the call to stay becomes the call to go."
The elder nodded. "And when that day comes?"
Tunde smiled softly. "I will leave something behind too."
The next morning, a girl arrived—her ankle twisted, her feet dusty. She limped to the hut, face pinched with pain.
Tunde greeted her like he greeted everyone—with kindness, with presence. He didn't ask how it happened. He asked where it hurt. And when she winced as he touched the swollen joint, he hummed a quiet song—a lullaby Iyi once sang beneath the baobab tree.
As he wrapped her foot in cool leaves and bandage, she whispered, "Are you magic?"
Tunde laughed, low and gentle. "No. But love is. And this village gave it to me."
She stayed beside him for a while. And when she left, her limp was softer, her breath steadier.
That evening, as the sun painted the sky in ember and fire, Tunde stood behind the stall and looked to the horizon.
The world was wide. The world was waiting.
But for now, he had work to do.
Inside, the sponge still floated—light, soft, alive.
And so, the healing continued.