Spittle flies out of your mouth. Curse words that feel unnatural on your tongue, and there is no one to hear you, not on the long dusty stretch of road before you get to the tunnel leading to Settlement H.

You kick your truck’s tire, hard. Pain blooms in your toe despite your boots.

“Three minutes until sunstroke,” Tobi chimes from the watch on your wrist, his voice unusually tinny in the open air.

It takes remarkable restraint to not unstrap the watch and fling it into the quiet wilderness Abuja has become—a patchwork of deserted buildings heat-stricken beyond recognition. Perhaps the same heat will find you today. A strangled laugh squeezes your throat, and you wonder if your death will be enough of an I told you so to your mother. It may have to be, since five years working for Aunty Jemimah has only reinforced the thing she repeated in the days you struggled to pick a job.

“David please, working for your aunty will give us—you—more money, security, things people respect in the settlement now. Such an opportunity and you still distract yourself with these fantasies of becoming… an inventor. People want food now, not more machines.”

What about what I want? You’d longed to scream. But it is hard to scream at your only parent.

You curse some more and try to pull more of your sweater over your head in lieu of a sun shield. Still, the skin on your face feels warm, too warm to be safe. You groan and drop your hands, the sweater dropping back into place. Crouching low on to the hard, cracked ground, lips pressed in a thin line, the spanner is hot in your palms as you once more try to unscrew the nuts of the tyre.

“Who…the fuck…makes…something…this tight?”

Pants and groans between each word, your sentiment punctuated by the unwillingness of the nuts to turn and the tire to loosen. Once again, unsuccessful, as you have been for the past three minutes.

Of all days to get a flat tire, of course it would be on the day that Aunty Jemimah sends you out unaccompanied to a settlement. Every nerve in your body threatens to burst, and a headache forms behind your eyes. 

The food and plants cannot survive for long. The trucks are not built like the settlements’ greenhouses. They cannot withstand the sun, harsh and unforgiving in its assault. You wonder if you can withstand losing your job, if nepotism will be enough to keep you employed after losing food that takes close to a year to grow.

“Tobi, what should I do?”

“Do I look like a vulcanizer?” his voice responds. Should it sound so far away? You stumble into the back of the truck, but the heat has gripped and smothered your brain. It feels like you are going to throw up in the next minute.

Reds, yellows, browns and greens of tomatoes, mangoes, corn and watermelons muddle together like a watercolor painting. When your hand touches the side of the truck, it sizzles. You snatch your hand away quickly.

You slump to the floor, eyes closing. You just need to rest.

“Tobi, message Settlement H, that, that…”

You fall sideways and the wilderness swallows your consciousness.

-

You awake to a sharp headache and almost empty bus. Your vision swims when you bolt upright, wavy glimpses of a team of people carting bags and sacks of fruits off your truck. 

“Stop!”

You try to scream, but your voice is a squeak that hurts your throat. The haziness of your vision solidifies into two sets of eyes staring at you through thick black cloth masks that double their head sizes and make them look like lollipops. The one closest to the truck’s back door jumps out with the last of the sacks.

You are tired, so tired, and want to sleep your headache away.

The other figure approaches you. The part of the fabric covering where his mouth is twists. His footsteps are light and almost silent on the PVC floor of the bus, and when his arms encircle you and lift you from the floor, you do not have time to protest this robber’s embrace when your blackout comes.

The light that greets you the next time your eyes open is a soft yellow, washing your vision in a dream-like quality. Your tongue feels swollen and your head is light and pounds mutely. Combined with the fatigue in your limbs and heaviness of your eyelids, you know you have slept for too long. Tobi is silent under your sleeve. The lack of his presence unsettles you; he has been with you since you were thirteen, a gift from Uncle Amos when you started working for Aunty Jemimah.

You sit up slowly on the mattress and look around. Judging by the brown dirt walls around you, you are in a cave, and for a very brief second, you are excited. There are no caves in any settlement, the location of each chosen to avoid any “inconvenient” terrain. Then you see the crates from your truck, and memories flood back. Your body chills. In front of the crates, a man sits.

Short braids fall forward, obscuring his face. A graphic t-shirt is stretched across broad shoulders and big, veiny arms. A bulb spills yellow light above the doorway without a door. His fingers cradle a phone, a very old flip model from the looks of it.

“It’s not there,” he says, words clipped. “The entire shipment, useless.”

Anger rises in you, swift and hot.

“That was food for people! Do you how long it took us to grow them?”

A year, twice as long as it should, Aunty Jemimah’s voice says in your head, steely. You swallow and hug yourself.

The man’s head snaps upward. For a second, frustration contorts his face, then he rearranges his features. He snaps the phone closed and stuffs it in the pocket of his cargo shorts. His eyes are pale and hard and you lean back, their intensity pebbling your skin. How far can you lean and disappear into the wall?

“Good. You’re awake.” 

As he approaches, you rise slowly, having to steady your feet on the mattress. 

“We have a patch for your tire. You will soon be able to go,” he says, clasping hands covered in black oil behind his back. You suck in a breath. Your hands used to be like that. His clasped hands push his chest forward against his threadbare shirt and you hate the thrill it evokes in your stomach. Paired with his hands, he is everything you want, but can’t have.

“And what of the food you stole?”

The pinched brows of frustration return fleetingly. “What of it?”

 Any fleeting desire his chest ignited burns away. Useless, the word echoes in your mind. You cross your arms.

“If it’s so useless, give it back.”

He scoffs and walks away from you. At the room’s entrance, he pauses. 

“When you walk out of this room, take a right, then walk down, take your first right, climb the stairs, and you’ll see your truck. Try to go in any other direction and you’ll get lost, and nobody will come looking for you.”

He leaves you there, and you want to scream. 

Aunty Jemimah and your mother once told you the stories of bandits in the early days, vagrants living outside settlements who would hijack food shipments, until each settlement sent out soldiers to round them up. Everyone was said to have been captured and sentenced to a life of farming, servitude to the country’s new setup. Not unlike you, you thought at the time. While your mother smiled when telling the story, the ending always left a sour taste in your mouth. The bandits were trying to survive, same as the people in the settlements. 

Could this man be one of them? A glance around the cave reveals mechanical parts scattered around, like your own forgotten shop, which you have not visited in years.

Envy, hot, sticky, burns through you.

How dare this thief be free to be what you can’t? And without the Settlements’ benefits too, as your mother espoused?

How could he?

-

“What do you mean, you need another shipment?”

The heat in Aunty Jemimah’s eyes stings your face and you duck your gaze. As head of the Transportation sector, it will be her job to fire you. The thought of disappointing the woman who is godfather to everyone in your community fills your stomach with stones.

You think of the cave, the oil on the bandit’s hands. And you chest stings again at what you feel is unfair.

“Bandits stole it,” you say.

Maybe now you will see the consequence of doing whatever one wanted, and it will be enough to stop you from dreaming of your shop.

Aunty Jemimah blinks. Her thin, blade-like lips twist as she contemplates you. She is dressed in a flowing blue and purple boubou today, since she won’t be visiting the greenhouses to check on the plants ready for harvest. Her black head-tie stays put like a helmet as she cocks her head to the side. Then she sighs and rubs her forehead.

“I knew this would happen eventually,” she mutters. 

The slump of her shoulders makes you unable to look at her. Twice every year, once for your own settlement, there are food runs. Settlements exchange produce with one another, among other things.

It began over a hundred years ago, after the North became a playground for the sun gods, the heat burning and broiling everything that moved and making it impossible to walk outside without any sort of covering, until even those were not enough. Then the winds and dust came too. Sandstorms spun so high and fast, weathering everything not already devoured by the sun. In the South, water had its way, waves flooding towns, destroying buildings, and reclaiming the earth for themselves. 

When the first major flood came and wiped out nearly all the farms and trees, and barely anyone could eat roasted yam and palm oil again, The Vault was created. In a matter of months, agriculturists and volunteers went round the entire country, procuring every single edible plant and tree, storing their seeds in a steel-walled facility designed by engineers and biologists to preserve them for as long as possible. 

The Vault was created in Abuja, far enough from the North for the dust storms and heat to not drive you to death and madness, just curable delirium if you spent too long outside without a sun-shield. Far enough from the south too, to not become fish food when it drizzled or when the sea just felt like strolling onto land.

Soon, the Government made settlements to house the people who hadn’t been eaten by sun, dust or water. These settlements were spread across the middle of the country, fashioned as biodomes to cultivate specific types of crops, as the country’s natural crop distribution system had been decimated. The settlements had everything under domes whose mirrored surfaces captured the sun’s rays and filtered them to tolerable waves inside the domes.  

You were born in Settlement J, among fruit trees and greenhouses that only had harvests once a year. Which meant now, because of the bandits, settlement would have to settle for half of their usual yearly supply of fruits and vegetables.

Words pile on your tongue, you want to beg, joke, and pray that she won’t have to fire you. 

Yet, there is a little thrill. If she fires you, you will have time. Time to stain your hands with engine oil again, time to visit your shop, and feel the joy you know you deserve.

“Tell Bello to give you half of a total shipment. We’ll deal with this when you come back.”

Yay for nepotism, you think bitterly.

-

Your knees hurt from crouching so long and you mentally curse the pale-eyed man. It is nearly sunrise. What is taking him so long? Or have you misjudged, and he won’t rob you again? You hope you revved the truck’s engine loud enough to alert him to your presence.

You know it’s a bad idea. If the food gets stolen again, you won't just be fired, you'll never work anywhere again, and worse, you may be kicked out of the settlement. 

But I may invent again, like the pale-eyed man.

Tobi chirps. “Incoming message from Jemimah Sallau. Are you still on the road? Captain Zachary has not told me anything yet.”

Before you answer, you hear the crunch of feet on hard ground.

“Power down, Tobi,” you whisper.

The pale-eyed man is alone this time. You don’t care; you are simply grateful he has come before the pinks and purples and golds of the sunrise become the blue of morning. No cloth covers his face this time. His lips are full, almost too full, giving him a permanently pouty look. Paired with his pale eyes and a nose that looks like it has been broken numerous times, his dark face is arresting, if not beautiful.

From behind the tallest sack of mangoes, you watch through the window as he picks the lock on the truck. He hops onto the truck. Your boots squeak against the metal floor a little when you try to adjust your stance and you curse under your breath. You close your eyes. You pray he doesn’t see you like you can’t see him. You feel like an ostrich.

When footsteps start again, you release the breath you are holding and open your eyes to see the pale-eyed man moving between the rows of stacked boxes and sacks, checking the labels on each one. As he moves through them, his movements get more agitated, his chest rising and falling faster, his eyes getting harder, lips pressing tighter together. Then he turns abruptly and marches out.

You slide out of your hiding place and switch on the flashlight in your hand. Black light illuminates the fluorescent paint on the floor. You smile as you walk to the truck entrance. The man’s footsteps are clear beneath your light, leading into the rapidly brightening day, to a hole in the cracked brown ground behind a boulder.

You stop at the mouth of the hole. It is not the same entrance you came out of two days ago, and that makes you nervous. You can hear the pale-eyed man’s footsteps below, echoing off walls of rock. Your heart pounds. Hope that drove you here grows more flimsy by the second. 

You tuck your flashlight into your belt. You take a deep breath and jump down, praying that the man is too far away to hear the sound. Stones crunch beneath your booted feet in the enclosed space and you wince. The noise is too loud. You wait in your crouched landing position, but no one comes out of the shadows to attack you. The air smells dry and dusty. You have to struggle not to cough.

The fluorescent footprints are still there, leading you down the passageway you have landed in and veering into one of the many entrances/exits leading out of it. People sounds reach you from the holes. Laughter, footsteps slapping the ground, electricity buzzing, probably from the yellow bulbs that flicker to life as you pass by. You wonder how they can get power down here. Isn’t all electricity confined to the settlements?

The edges of the hole are rough on your palms, your movements awkward as you climb through. More bulbs flicker on, washing the space around you in yellow light.

It is the room of your captivity. 

The floor is littered with machine parts. Most of them are old and rusted, like the ones at the exhibits of old mechanic shops back home that are meant to show how the people in the settlements have evolved to where they are now. You lightly touch an old-fashioned sun-shield with your toe. It is simply a UV-treated glass mounted on wire frames which sit on the head like a crown. Your head aches for the UV attacks their heads must have endured before the helmet now in use.

“So you actually followed me.”

Your body jerks. You look up.

His hands are steepled beneath his chin, eyes hard. He leans back in his chair, crossing his arms behind his head. Different screwdriver and spanners and other sharp tools rest on the wooden table in front of him, and your finger pads itch to touch them. The corner of his lips tilt upward a little. And he places a gun on the table. 

Your stomach drops and tingles, and you fight your instinct to hug yourself. Now that you are here, in what is presumably his home, a space where you can be disposed of and no one will know, you question your decision to find this man again.

But this man cannot be a true bandit. In the stories, they were always ruthless, slitting the throats of truck drivers and stealing food to feed scavenging hungry people perpetually dressed in rags. And they were always gleeful in their victory and thieving. Yet, this man had been frustrated. And he had called the shipment useless.

“If this is the settlements’ new way of arresting us, then no wonder we’ve been able to survive this long.”

Despite the uncertainty and fear now coursing through you, you smile at his joke. “Don’t worry. As far as we’re concerned, you’re a myth now.”

The man is quiet, his closed jaw moving silently. His non-reaction sets your teeth on edge, and you cross your arms.

“What did you do with the shipment?”

He stares at long at you that you fidget with your shirt.

Before he can respond, footsteps sound behind you and a brown and blue blur streaks past you towards the man. The man pushes away from his desk and opens his arms. A small child clad in blue boxers jumps into his arms and screams.

“Uncle Walshak! Mummy said she wants to show you something!”

The man—Walshak—smiles, and his face is transformed as his eyes light up. The angular lines of his face soften as he swings the boy over his shoulders and stands. 

From his vantage point, the boy’s lips twist at the scattered tools, and you and Walshak laugh. You, because your mother used to make that face.

“Don’t worry, we don’t have any lesson today.”

The boy giggles and slaps a hand over his mouth. His big eyes shine with…something. Walshak walks past you like you are of no consequence, and it stings. Then he pauses at the entrance and his eyes bore into yours. He tilts his head ever so slightly and vanishes beyond the opening.

You may be a fool for coming back, yes. But you’re a fool who wants answers. He doesn’t match the bandits in the stories. What else doesn’t match?

You follow him.

-

It is stranger than the stories say, and bigger. Walshak and his nephew lead you out of the entrance to his workshop back into the corridor with the many holes and entrances that you can now guess lead to different rooms. He leads you past all of these. Different smells assail you as you pass: talcum powder, egusi soup, wet clay, black soap.

Living quarters, then. At the end of the corridor, he turns right into a widened room. White fluoroscent bulbs overhead illuminate a ground littered with slippers and shoes, small and big, green, yellow, blue, pink, all sorts of colors, painting a mosaic of its wearers. There is a large wooden door at the other end of it. The man pushes it open, and your heart slams in your chest.

Right there, in front of you, is something you have only ever read about in history books, or novelists romanticizing the times before the dust storms, sunstrokes and floods. 

A pool of water stretches wide, spanning a distance you would hate to run. The pool is ringed by short shrubs and plants of different colors, yellow, pink, purple, red, all vibrant in the fluorescent lamps stuck in the ceiling of the room/cave. By your extreme right is an opening in the ceiling of the cave. Sunlight pours through, adding more illumination to the cave.

People of different ages and sizes run around and in the pool. Children evade grasping parents, jumping in the water without warning, shrieking just before the water envelopes them. Others walk the edge, whispering to each other while giggling, or just standing and smiling at the scene. 

An underground oasis.

“This—”

You choke on your words and shake your head. The joy in the air is intoxicating, and you can’t help your smile. Turning left and right, your eyes cannot seem to focus on where to land.

You turn to Walshak, who has stopped a few feet away from you. His nephew chews on one of his uncle’s braids, his eyes solemn on you.

“How do you do it?”

How are you happy, is the true question that pricks your tongue.

Walshak smiles. He is truly beautiful when he smiles, all the sharp edges of his face softened by the light of his pale eyes. “Stories don’t always tell the truth.”

You turn back to the people and the pool, taking in their life, their joy and laughter. A frown overtakes your face. How is it different from the joy and laughter on the playground of the primary school you went to? 

You think of your mother, and her words, and what she thinks happiness is made by.

You can feel Walshak’s eyes on your face, and when you turn, his smile is gone, and his eyes are hard, but you can see a little bit of fear in them. You quickly smile, hoping it is reassuring. His nephew smiles back, gap teeth and all. Then he tugs his uncle’s hair, and leads him to the far end of the pool, to a wall that has white light shining from behind it. 

Of course, you follow.

-

As though it is not enough to be confronted with an underground oasis in one day, you round the corner of the wall, and are greeted by a small garden.

Calla lilies, yellow trumpets, ixora, orchids, and many others glow under UV lamps. It is like a mini fairy glade.

Walshak’s nephew slides off his shoulders and runs to a woman with a long peacock-patterned wrapper tied around her body. His mother presumably.

“When did you do this?” Walshak asks. His eyes cannot settle, nor can his swivelling head.

The woman laughs. “This is what we’re doing every time he hides from lessons with you.”

She pats the boy’s head. “He wanted to surprise you with it.”

For the first time, Walshak is completely unguarded. Not calculating, not intimidating or self-assured. Surprise shines from his eyes, surprise and weariness. 

You recognize that weariness. It is the same weariness Aunty Jemimah had when she caught you preparing an application to study engineering as a second degree. Behind her back, behind her help, you were trying to be happy, to do something that made space for you to fill your life with personal, selfish joy. Walshak and Jemimah do not have time for that. They are too busy taking care of others. 

The same way your mother was taking care of you, the way she knew how.

Walshak’s shoulder is warm beneath the hand you extend for comfort. Neither of you move for a few moments, simply content to breathe in the floral air. Several children run around, plucking buds and blooms, slipping through the fingers of exasperated-looking adults with very sharp-looking shears.

You turn to him.

“If you have farms and all this, why steal from my truck? And why do it again so soon?”

At least this time, you get a small smile for your efforts.

“There’s a soup my mother used to talk about, that her mother taught her how to make. It’s been a while since she had it, and she doesn’t…”

The unspoken words hang between the two of you. She doesn’t have much time left to have the soup. You want to squeeze his shoulder, reassure him.

“What’s the name of the plant?” you ask instead.

-

It takes weeks of research to find the name of the plant, specifically, a name that someone at the greenhouse will recognize. It also takes the same amount of time for your aunt to forgive your “lies”. 

“At least they still got food,” she said, and that was that.

But you will not be going on any food run for the next six months. Where you would have once panicked at the money you would lose, you are calm. The food runs, this job, the settlements, aren’t all there is. 

The thought of visiting the oasis periodically fills you with an unfamiliar warmth, one that you usually only feel when working on your university application.

Despite your suspension, you are her favorite nephew, which means you can interrupt her while she is taking inventory of the greenhouse.

“Aunty, there’s a discontinued plant that I want to grow.”

The scratching of her pen stops. Her purple painted lips are turned down in a frown when she looks up at you. The farmer narrating his plot’s statistics to her is clearly irritated with the interruption, folding his arms tightly.

“Should I ask why?” Aunty Jemimah asks.

For once, you are grateful that you blush so easily, and that she thinks she knows you too well. Her lips lift in a knowing smile and she chuckles.

“Of course it’s because of somebody.”

She waves you towards the front of the greenhouse, to the attendant seated at the desk.

“Tell Fola what you want. She’ll find it for you.”

-

It takes forty days before you are sure the plant can travel. You have to wait till night-time to sneak out of the dome. It takes nearly two hours after parking your bike to find the hole without the help of the fluorescent footprints.

But then you are in Walshak’s cave. He is braiding his hair in front of a mirror, and stops when you clear your throat. He smiles at you in the mirror and your heart skips a beat. 

“So, have you finally come with a squad to arrest me?”

He stands and walks to you. One half of his hair is in braids that hang to his chest, while the other sticks up in a combed-out afro. For some reason, he is shirtless, and the sight of his lean stomach in the soft yellow light overhead makes your mouth dry. 

Instead of trying to say something that you know would come out awkward, you shove the potted plant from behind you into his chest.

Pu’uklem. No English name that you knew of, but it doesn’t matter. Not in the face of Walshak’s surprise, his mouth open, and fingers moving slowly to stroke the leaves.

His smile is teary, and you want to hug him, but don’t know if you can. 

He cradles the pot in his arms, his biceps bulging.

“Why?” he asks.

“Just because you aren’t doing what you should, doesn’t mean you can’t have what you want.”

The words feel like heresy, and you dread the conversation you will have with your mother.

The stories of the bandits preach otherwise. Ultimately, all must integrate or suffer, as the bandits and their communities were always painted to be hungry and destitute.  

For a very long time, the settlements have been presented as your only choice. And is that true choice, when only one thing is painted as safe and agreeable? 

You look down at your sun shield. In the soft glow of the cave, the helmet feels almost useless. It is the thing, or the lack of it, that led to your meeting this man. You stretch it out to him.

“Keep it. I’ll collect it when next I come.”

His fingers brush yours as he reaches for it. 

His smile is soft, unsure, so different from the man who stole from you, and it matches yours.