Binti: The Night Masquerade

by Nnedi Okorafor

  I turned to Goldie. “And you Khoush, who don’t you look down upon? The Himba create technology that allows your whole community to thrive and you repay us by behaving as if we’re your slaves. Because what? What makes Khoush superior to Himba? Tell me! Then your egos are bruised when one of us befriends and brings a Meduse as a show of peace. So you try to assassinate it, knowing that it’s one of the ultimate forms of disrespect to the Himba, knowing that this will bring war from the Meduse! You took their chief’s stinger, just to show you had the power to do it, and you complain when they retaliate.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “I incite the deep culture of the Himba.” I looked intensely at both King Goldie and the Meduse chief. “Neither of you know of it and that is okay. The Himba Council members were to do this, but I think they’re afraid. I think they’re hiding. I’m not. And I’m a collective within myself, so I can.

  “Meduse tradition is one of honor. Khoush tradition is one of respect. I am master harmonizer of the Osemba Himba.” I raised my hands, the currents swirling into balls in both hands like blue suns. I held one toward Goldie. “The one who represents the Khoush.” I held a hand toward the Meduse chief. “The one who represents the Meduse.” I steadied myself. I pulled from deep within me, from the earth beneath my feet, from what I could reach beyond the Earth above. Because I was a master harmonizer and my path was through mathematics, I took what came and felt it as numbers, absorbed it as math, and when I spoke, I breathed it out. “Please,” I said, the words coming from my mouth cool in my throat, pouring over my tongue and lips. I was doing it; I was speaking the words to power. I was uttering deep culture. “End this,” I said, my voice full and steady. “End this now.”

  As soon as the words had left my lips, my throat began to burn. Lightning flashed, immediately followed by the crash of thunder. The noise didn’t shake me, the threat of lightning would never scare me again. I felt it still within me, though it was dissipating now. From my feet and through the top of my head, through the tips of my writhing okuoko. I felt as if I were both sinking and levitating. Draining and spouting. That is the deep culture. Never in a thousand years would I have believed it would move through me. Never. If Dele were here to see, he would be on his knees in amazement, I thought. But he wasn’t. None of the council was here.

  “Okay, Binti,” Goldie said, his voice soft and his face slack with awe as he gazed at me. He nodded. “I … I agree to the truce.”

  The Meduse chief breathed out a great puff of its gas and so did his two comrades and Okwu. Several of the Meduse hovering near the ship did the same. Then the chief spoke to me in Meduse. “I will listen to the Binti. She is right. This fight is useless.”

  “The war between Khoush and Meduse ends,” I said, bringing my hands together. Immediately, both balls of current extinguished, sending a ripple of energy through me that made me stumble back as it all stopped. I coughed, tasting blood in my mouth. Above, the storm having blown itself out, the sky began to clear, sunrise’s light.

  I smiled as the Khoush king and Meduse chief both went back to their people.

  “Well done,” Okwu said in Otjihimba.

  I nodded to him. It was so quiet now, the wind having died down to a strong breeze and the lightning and its thunder retreating into the sky. I looked around for Mwinyi and didn’t quickly see him. I looked up at the sky, a large sliver of sun shining through the dissipating clouds.

  “Thank the Seven,” I said, my voice rough. “Thank Them for giving me all I needed to do it.” I laughed.

  When I brought my gaze back down, my eyes fell on a very strange sight. For the third time, I was seeing it: the Night Masquerade. Again, during the day. It stood on the dirt road that led to my home. The road I’d walked down when I’d left home in the dark of early morning. No smoke billowed from its head this time. In the silence, I could hear its drumbeat as it danced, kicking up dust as it shook its raffia hips and raised its long arms. I knew only one person who danced like that.

  “Dele?” I whispered, squinting.

  I jumped when I heard the shots. At first, I was so focused on the Night Masquerade that I thought they were sharp drumbeats. Then I felt a powerful zap in my okuoko as vibration shivered into my forehand, face, and neck. My eyes watered with the pain and when I turned toward the Meduse ships, I saw a ball of fire smash into the Meduse chief.

  I didn’t hear Meduse voices in my head, I heard a collective shriek. Then I knew it more than saw it, for the armor Okwu had created on Oomza Uni was clear and fit over its body perfectly. Every single Meduse, outside and on their ships, was encased in this armor. Including the chief, who floated back upright, flanked by two of its commanders. Then the Meduse ship began smoothly flying into a battle formation, its movements rippling and fluid like water … this was army-scale moojh-ha ki-bira. I turned to the Khoush just in time to see one of their sky whale ships explode. More Khoush soldiers on the ground fled.

  A rough hand grabbed my right arm and I whipped around to meet the twitchy eyes of General Kuw. “You’re coming with us!” he roared.

  I looked at my arm, his strong hands digging into my flesh, and then everything around me became a hot blue. I balled the fist of my left hand and smashed it into his face. My fist connected with his teeth and nose and I felt what must have been several of my fingers snap with the strength of it. I brought my fist back and punched him again and he stumbled to the side, letting me go. “Argh!” he grunted, pressing his hand to his face. But even then, he’d brought up his weapon from inside his uniform. So they’d come to this meeting armed, I thought, staring at him. Then he brought up his other hand and spread his fingers just in time for a blue ball to explode over the shield he’d activated. I turned to see Okwu flying toward General Kuw and the two went tumbling in the sand.

  Pain radiated from my hand now and I stood there for a moment, stunned more by my actions than the state of my mangled fingers. I’d never hit anyone in my entire life. Shuddering with adrenaline, I held my hand up. My middle and index fingers had broken completely enough to show jagged bones. I looked around, dazed. General Kuw was fleeing toward the Khoush ships. Okwu was fighting off barrages of fire bullets with its shield.

  It was a strange moment as both the Khoush and Meduse fled toward their armies, leaving me standing there alone. Mwinyi had rushed off while I had been talking to do something I had no time to consider now. Okwu was being pushed back toward the Meduse ships as the Khoush shot at him. I heard Mwinyi yell from nearby and saw Okwu dodge several fire bullets to rush toward me. It came from both sides at once, as the Khoush and the Meduse threw aside what their leaders had just agreed on—the truce.

  Who had shot at the Meduse chief to start it all? I will never know. What I did know was that I’d seen the face of the Khoush king when the Meduse chief was shot and it was a face of astonishment and despair. He didn’t know; he hadn’t wanted this. The rest was reaction. And in their reaction, they all forgot about me. They forgot I was standing there, between their sides as they shot at each other.

  Red fire balls and blue searing waves of light flew past me, filling the air. The smell of smoke, incineration, the very air around me began to burn. Rakumi, who was standing where my brother’s garden had been, fell as her head was blown clean off. The sound of fireballs zipping past my ears. I coughed and stumbled. Then I felt something punch me in the chest, then my left leg, and then I don’t know. I don’t know. I screamed. I was flying. The pain bloomed all around me, within me. Now I was moaning, rolling in the dry dirt.

  Okwu was on me and everything became blue and muffled. Binti, I heard it say to me. Hold on. Okwu pressed us both to the ground as the world around us exploded. I felt Okwu shudder as something smashed near it and burst into flames. Then it was as if the fight itself began to rise. I saw it happening and at first thought I was falling. But no, it was the ships of the Khoush and Meduse. They were taking the fight to the skies and probably into space.

  Just as quickly
as it began, it was over. At least, on Himba soil. Not over, elsewhere. I could hear the battle raging high above and something huge crashed to the ground nearby. I could not tell, for Okwu was still holding me inside its body. As Okwu lifted off me, I felt myself fading. I could actually hear my blood draining into the desert sand beneath me. My back stung in a distant way. My chest was wet and cool, open. My legs, whether they were just torn up or actually torn off, were gone.

  Limply, I raised my arm and let it drop to my nose. I sniffed the otjize on it and it smelled like home. I heard Mwinyi calling me as he fell to his knees beside me. He was shaking and shaking, his eyes wild. His beautiful bushy hair covered with dust and sand. But I was smelling home. I closed my eyes.

  Death is always news.

  Chapter 6

  Girl

  Mwinyi was screaming.

  He looked down at her again and kept screaming and screaming and screaming. Her chest was smashed and burned open, bone, sinew, and flesh, red, yellow, and white. Her legs were each a mangle of meat. Her left arm had been blown off. Only her right arm, face, and tentacles were untouched.

  Mwinyi had been at what was left of the Root when it all fell apart. He’d turned and seen the Meduse chief and Khoush king both looking at Binti with awe and respect. He’d heard Binti laughing. He’d been proud. He’d seen the leaders walking away. Then he’d turned to what he’d come to see and it had all happened behind his back. By the time he reached her, she was gone.

  Okwu floated on Binti’s other side, its tentacles touching her torn-up arm and pulling back, touching and pulling back. It could feel the battle happening above, but it stayed with Binti, allowing the others to know that the one who’d become family through war had been killed. They fought harder and angrier because Okwu stayed, because Okwu felt.

  Mwinyi looked up, his mouth in an open wail. He was so numb that the sight of the raffia monster running wildly toward him did not startle him. It roared, shoved Mwinyi aside with long sticklike hands, and threw off its head of wooden faces. Mwinyi fell to the side and then stared back at the creature. Not creature, Night Masquerade. The Night Masquerade was mourning Binti.

  * * *

  Dele had forgotten all protocol. Last year he’d been initiated into the secret society through which the Night Masquerade spoke. He’d joined just after Binti had left. Learning the chants from the elder men, taking in the smoke from the burned branch of an Undying tree, and seeing the friends of the Seven had all helped him forget about Binti. Then he’d been tapped for grooming as the next Himba chief. He’d been so proud and felt strong, though he hated the scratchy beard he’d had to grow. Throughout, however, no matter how hard he’d worked to forget her, he’d sorely missed Binti.

  Days ago, during a meditation with the elders, the elders had all agreed that Binti should see the Night Masquerade. Chief Kapika had been the one in costume standing outside her window. Dele had hated this; Binti was a girl and she’d abandoned her own destiny. And the elders hadn’t even bothered telling him Chief Kapika had decided to show Binti the Night Masquerade again yesterday.

  However, last night during the Okuruwo meeting, Dele had had a change of heart about Binti. He’d listened to her speak, watched her closely, and realized she was the Binti he’d known all his life and she was amazing. The elders were the elders for a reason. Even in their own bias, they’d still been able to see and admit to each other what he couldn’t up to now … but the elders were deeply flawed, too. Hours ago, he’d joined them in a second meeting, this time in the quiet of the desert a mile from Osemba. Dele had thought they were just gathering to go to the Root as a group. When the elders had all agreed to forgo brokering a truce and to sacrifice Binti instead, Dele couldn’t believe it.

  And so, he’d stolen the Night Masquerade costume. The moment he put it on, he knew what he was to do. And because when a man wears a spiritual costume, he is not himself, Dele found it easy to go to the Root. And there he placed himself where she would see him, hoping she would be encouraged.

  And Binti had succeeded. He’d seen it even from where he stood on the road. She’d channeled deep culture! He’d felt the power of it shivering through the ground, into his feet, halfway up his legs like electricity, like current. Like almost all the other kids in Osemba, he didn’t know how to call up current. He’d only watched Binti do it over the years, glad the practice wasn’t his calling. Now, he was watching her do what only a handful had ever done in Himba history. And she used it to convince the leaders of the Khoush and Meduse people to stop fighting for good. She had truly been Osemba’s master harmonizer.

  Dele stared down at her face now. So beautiful, though the otjize on her face was partially rubbed off, her strange tentacles spread over the sand. Limp. It came from deep within his soul, the keening. He threw his head back and opened his mouth wide, tears dribbling from the sides of his eyes. The horror of it squeezed at his heart. He threw aside the leather gloves that made his hands long and sticklike and tore at the Night Masquerade costume, pulling at the raffia, tearing at the blue-and-red cloth.

  * * *

  Mwinyi stood up and walked away, his blue garments darkened with Binti’s blood and his eyes toward the sky. The fighting had moved toward Khoushland and that was best for them.

  “Okwu,” he called, hoarsely.

  “Yes,” the Meduse said, floating over to him.

  Behind them, the only Himba Council member to show up continued to scream and scream, his voice rolling across the now empty desert.

  “I think we should take her into space,” Mwinyi told Okwu. “That’s where she belongs. Not here.”

  “How?” Okwu asked. “The launch port is that way, where the fighting is happening. I don’t think…”

  “Not from the launch port,” Mwinyi said, shaking his head.

  “A Meduse ship?” Okwu suggested. “They will understand. We set our dead free in space too.”

  “No,” he said firmly. “I have a better plan.” He paused, shutting his eyes as despair tried to take him again. “I … I know exactly where to take her, too. Will you come?”

  “Yes,” it said.

  “They would never have listened to us,” Dele sobbed from behind them. He was holding Binti’s only remaining hand.

  “Is that why you left her to die?” Mwinyi snapped.

  “I didn’t,” Dele said. “I tried. I didn’t agree with the rest of them. But I am just an apprentice; I wasn’t even supposed to be speaking. But I did. ‘We don’t abandon our own,’ I said. They said she was no longer one of us and then I was told to be quiet. And none … none of them believed they could really evoke deep culture. They didn’t believe in … they had no hope. The chief said the Khoush would never listen to the Himba because they don’t respect us.” He squeezed his eyes shut at this as if in physical pain.

  “But they respected Binti,” Mwinyi said. “The Khoush and Meduse. Then they forgot about her.”

  Dele looked at Binti and started to sob again.

  “Come,” Mwinyi snapped. “If you want to do something that would have pleased her, come. Okwu, come.”

  Mwinyi walked to the wooden foundation of the Root without looking to see if they were following. With each step he took, he saw more. It was breathtaking, never had he experienced anything like this before. He could see where they were, through his feet. All it had taken was for the one he had come to love so much in a matter of days to get torn apart by two irrational peoples.

  He stopped at the place where he’d kicked off his sandals. They lay there like the ripped-off wings of a sand beetle. Okwu hovered on one side of him and Dele stood on the other as they looked down at the charred remains of the Root. Mwinyi breathed a sigh of relief. With his feet he could see much. The zinariya had shown him relatives who had this ability in the past. It was called “deep grounding” and it always kicked in when one “walked far enough.”

  He held his hands up for a moment, preparing to send word through the zinariya, but then he noticed
that already coming in all around him were messages from the Ariya, Binti’s grandmother, his parents, his brothers, several of his friends, people. The Enyi Zinariya knew what had happened somehow. He had not sent word himself. How did they know already?

  “Just stand beside me,” Mwinyi said to Okwu and Dele. How could he explain? So he did not. The storm had awakened it and though the storm had passed, he could still feel it vibrating through his exposed feet. The Root’s foundation had been made on the dead root of an Undying tree. At least, they’d thought it had been dead. The inside of one of the roots had been hollowed out and made into the house’s cellar.

  Like Binti, Mwinyi was also a master harmonizer. And his ability was communication in a different way; he could speak to those who were alive. So just as he’d been able to speak with Okwu in a way that allowed him to locate where it had been hurt and where it was best to slather the otjize, he’d been able to speak to the living Undying tree that was the Root’s foundation.

  Dele looked back at Binti’s body, lying there alone, and then at her friend, the desert savage named Mwinyi. His bushy hair was a strange red brown, freed like a dust storm and full of dust like … a dust storm. His skin was dark like Binti’s, but where he’d never seen Binti’s skin tone as a marker of being uncivilized, everything about Mwinyi said savage. And so when Mwinyi bent down and placed his hands on the dense charred wood and the ground began to shudder, Dele shouted, “Stop it! What are you doing?” because whatever it was had to be wrong.

  Okwu watched Mwinyi closely. The human reminded it so much of Binti. Harmonizers are the same, Okwu thought. And from a distance, it felt many others of its kind agree with it. It stayed there and waited.

  Chapter 7

  The Root

  A tree with strong roots laughs at storms.

  Mwinyi could not remember who said this but he’d heard it often as a child. Never did he imagine the proverb was so literally true. The ground was shuddering as he held his hand to the foundation and repeated over and over, “Let go, please. Let go, let go. Please.”