Chapter 1: The First Arrival
There we were, facing a large fleet of ships escorted by warships, the only thing separating us was the water in front of us. We expected them to move through, but for some time they stopped.
We stood at the edge of that narrow passage we had broken open with our own hands, the same passage that had carried us out into open water once before and back in again. Now it was about to carry something else entirely into our world.
The silence stretched. Minutes passed and the ships did not move, did not retreat, did not advance. Just sat there on the horizon like something deciding how to speak. Dele said nothing. I said nothing. There was nothing to say to a fleet of ships except wait and see what they wanted.
Then, coming at the sides of the ships, were tiny little things compared to the huge size of the ships themselves. Just like a big hen who allows her little chicks to come forward, the smaller boats detached and began moving toward us, slow and deliberate, the way something approaches when it is not yet sure if it is welcome.
As they drew closer, as Nigerians that we are, we decided that even though we were scared, we would play tough. Like people having a large army behind them. Two men, a worn wooden boat, and a hammer that had once cracked open a wall of ice. That was the full extent of our army, and we stood there anyway, because what else does a man do when the world finally comes looking for him.
We asked who they were and demanded they state their business. We were told that they were the international body sent by the top nations to investigate what we had posted.
The first thing I asked for, before we let them through, was a cable and power bank to charge my phone. Typical proud Nigerian. My phone had been dead for weeks, not a single percent left, not even a flicker when I pressed the button. And I was not about to negotiate the future of an undiscovered land without it. Dele looked at me like I had lost my mind. I had not. Priorities are priorities.
Eventually, we let them through.
And as children will rush toward food the moment it is served, especially their favourite meal, they rushed in as fast as the narrow passage could let them. Boat after boat pressed forward, faster than that opening should have comfortably allowed, each one carrying people who looked at the ice wall around them with the same wide-eyed disbelief Dele and I must have worn the first time we broke through it.
We let them rush. There was nothing else to do but follow behind, watching strangers move through the same gap we had once carved with a hammer and two screwdrivers, now wide enough in spirit if not in size for an entire delegation to pour through. We followed them all the way back to shore.
By the time we reached the beach, the same beach where Dele had once dropped face down into the sand after months at sea, the same beach where I had pressed my hands into warm ground and prayed, it was already filling with strangers.
Tents going up. Equipment being unloaded. Voices in languages neither of us recognised mixing with the sound of the waves.
Scientists had come for research. Soldiers had come to protect them from whatever this place might hold. Lawyers had come for the legal proceedings that everyone already knew would eventually follow.
Me, I did not care much about any of it at first. I had been handed something to charge. That was what mattered most to me in that exact moment. Let the world bring its scientists and its soldiers and its cameras. Give me my phone back first.
That was when I met him.
Dr. Aleksander Nowak. A young Polish scientist. He introduced himself and told me he had studied Earth and Planetary Sciences. His accent was thick. Very Polish. I had heard that accent in movies before, and hearing it in real life was almost exactly how I imagined it would sound.
He spoke to me, but his eyes kept looking around like a man searching for his missing sock on a Monday morning before work. He shook my hand before he even finished introducing himself, looked past me, then turned and looked at the forest behind him, and the strange golden light coming off the sand further down the coast.
I understood immediately that this was not a man who had come for politics. He had come for answers.
Soon, like a shared piece of cloth torn and handed out to many different people, all the nations dispersed to different areas and sides of the land. Each delegation pulled toward a different mystery, a different secret this place had been guarding long before we ever broke through that wall of ice.
Drones were already in the air. The land already calling them.
