Bloodline of Lagos

Stall 13*

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*Chapter 2: Stall 13*

*∼5000 words*

The Market changed when we moved.

It always does, the man in the suit told me later. The Market is alive. It shifts to show you what you want most, and what you’re most afraid of losing.

Stalls shifted. Lights changed color. The smell of eucalyptus was gone, replaced by the smell of rain on hot tar. That smell took me back to primary school, running home when it started to rain, my sandals slapping the wet ground.

We stopped at Stall 47.

It didn’t look like a stall. It looked like my old living room. The same blue curtains Mum used to hang before the rainy season. The same small wooden table with the chipped edge where Femi carved his name when he was seven. The same picture on the wall – a crooked frame holding a photo of us at the beach, me holding Femi on my shoulders, both of us squinting at the sun.

Inside was a boy. Maybe 12. Sitting on the floor, hugging his knees. He looked up when we came in, and his eyes went wide.

“Kemi?” he said.

“Femi?”

My little brother. Dead for three years. Drowned in the canal behind our house during the August flood. I was supposed to be watching him. I was on my phone instead.

I dropped the red umbrella.

It hit the dirt floor with a soft thud and stayed open, like it was waiting.

Femi ran to me and hugged me. He felt real. Warm. His hair smelled like the mango soap Mum used to buy from the woman by the bus stop. His arms were thin but strong, the way they were the last time I saw him.

“I knew you’d come,” he said. “I’ve been waiting.”

I held him tight and cried for the first time since the funeral. Not the quiet tears I cried at night when Mum was asleep. Real, ugly crying. The kind that makes your nose run and your chest ache.

“I’m sorry,” I said. Over and over. “I’m so sorry, Femi. I should have been watching you.”

He pulled back and wiped my tears with his thumb, just like he used to do when I was the one crying. “It wasn’t your fault, Kemi. Mama said so. Daddy said so. Stop carrying it.”

The man in the suit cleared his throat. “Kemi. You need to understand.”

I didn’t let go of Femi. “What?”

“This isn’t him,” the man said. His blank face didn’t change. “This is a memory. A good one. But it can’t leave the Market. If you take him, the Market takes something from you.”

Femi pulled back and looked at me. His eyes were too bright, too clear. The Femi I remembered had tired eyes. The kind kids get when they don’t sleep well during harmattan. “Is it true?”

I didn’t know what to say. My brain was split in two. One half wanted to grab him and run out of the Market and never look back. The other half knew it was wrong. Femi was dead. I’d seen the body. I’d been at the burial.

“What does it take?” I asked. My voice was hoarse.

The man didn’t answer. The Market did.

The ground shook. Stalls vanished. The purple lights turned red, like emergency lights. The sound of the drums got faster, urgent, like a warning.

A voice boomed from everywhere and nowhere. It wasn’t the man’s voice. It was older. Deeper. Like the Market itself was speaking.

_THE PRICE IS YOUR VOICE._

I went cold.

If I gave my voice, I couldn’t sing at church again. I couldn’t tell Mum I loved her. I couldn’t call Femi’s name. I couldn’t scream if I was scared. My voice was the one thing I used to make people listen to me.

Femi looked at me and smiled. That small, sad smile he used to give me when I was upset. “Don’t do it,” he said. “I don’t want that.”

“But I miss you,” I said. Tears were falling again, fast and hot. “Every day I miss you. The house is too quiet without you. Mum doesn’t cook jollof anymore. She says it reminds her of you.”

“I know,” he said. He reached out and touched my cheek. His hand was warm. Too warm. “But I’m not gone. Not really. I’m in the songs you sing. I’m in the way you laugh when you’re happy. I’m in you.”

Tears fell down my face. I wanted to believe him. I needed to believe him.

The Market waited. The red lights pulsed like a heartbeat.

I thought about Mum. About how she’d looked at me last week when I came home late from work. Tired, worried, but still trying to smile. If I lost my voice, I couldn’t comfort her anymore. I couldn’t tell her it was going to be okay, even when it wasn’t.

I thought about church. About the choir. About how singing was the only time I felt like Kemi, not “Femi’s sister who let him drown”.

I picked up the red umbrella and closed it.

The click was loud in the sudden quiet.

“I choose to remember,” I said.

The Market roared.

The stall, Femi, the man in the suit, all of it started to fade. Colors bled together. The smell of mango soap disappeared, replaced by the smell of dust and old paper.

Femi hugged me one last time. His arms were solid, real, and then they weren’t. “I love you, Kemi.”

“I love you too, Femi.”

Then he was gone.

The stall was gone.

I was standing in an empty space. The purple lights were gone. The drums were gone. It was just me, the man in the suit, and the red umbrella.

“You did well,” the man said.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My throat felt raw, like I’d been screaming.

“The Market tests everyone,” he said. “Some people give up their voice. Some give up their memories. Some give up their name. They leave with what they think they want, and they regret it for the rest of their lives.”

“What happens to them?” I asked. My voice sounded small.

“They become part of the Market,” he said. “Stall keepers. Echoes. They sell what they lost to other people, hoping to feel it again.”

I looked at the red umbrella. It was closed now, ordinary. Just a red umbrella with a wooden handle. “Why me? Why did it bring me here?”

The man smiled. For the first time, his face had something on it. Not a smile, exactly. More like recognition. “Because you have something the Market needs. And you have something the Market can’t take.”

“What?”

“Your choice.” He tapped his chest. “Everyone who comes here wants to undo the past. Most of them would give anything for it. But you chose to live with the pain. That’s rare.”

I didn’t feel special. I felt tired. Empty. Like I’d run a marathon and forgotten why I started.

“Can I go home now?” I asked.

The man nodded. “The Market is done with you for now. But it remembers you, Kemi. And it will call again.”

“How do I stop it from calling?”

“You don’t,” he said. “You can only choose what you do when it calls.”

He gestured, and the ground opened up. Not a hole. A doorway. Stairs leading down into darkness. At the bottom, I could see the faint glow of streetlights. My street.

“Go,” he said. “Before the Market changes its mind.”

I didn’t argue. I started down the stairs.

Halfway down, I stopped and turned back. “What’s your name?”

The man tilted his head. “Names don’t matter in the Market. But you can call me Keeper.”

“Keeper,” I repeated.

He nodded. “Sleep well, Kemi. You’ll need it.”

I walked down the rest of the stairs.

When I reached the bottom, I was back in my room.

2:01 AM.

The red umbrella was gone.

My phone buzzed.

A message from Mum: _Can’t sleep. Can we talk tomorrow? I miss hearing your voice._

I cried. But I didn’t answer with words.

I sang.

Low and off-key, the lullaby she used to sing. The one the thing in Stall 13 had tried to use against me. My voice shook, but it was there. Mine.

Outside, the rain started again.

And this time, I didn’t run from it.

I stood at the window and listened. The rain hit the roof, hit the ground, hit the leaves of the mango tree outside. It sounded like drums. Like a heartbeat.

For the first time in three years, I didn’t hear Femi’s voice calling me from the canal.

I heard my own.

And it was enough.

The next morning, I woke up late.

Mum was in the kitchen, making akara. The smell filled the whole flat. She looked up when I came in, and her eyes were red, but she was smiling.

“You sang last night,” she said.

I nodded. “Couldn’t sleep.”

She pulled me into a hug. She smelled like palm oil and morning. “I missed that,” she said.

I hugged her back. “Me too.”

We didn’t talk about Femi. Not directly. But we didn’t need to. He was there, in the way she handed me the akara without asking if I wanted pepper. In the way I sat at the table and ate, even though my stomach was still tight from the night before.

After breakfast, I went to my room and looked for the red umbrella.

It wasn’t there.

But on my bedside table was a small, smooth stone. Red, like the umbrella. I didn’t remember putting it there.

I picked it up. It was warm.

On the back of my door, someone had written in chalk: _Stall 48 is open._

I didn’t know what that meant.

But I knew the Market wasn’t done with me.

And for the first time, I wasn’t scared.

I was ready.