“Do you want it?” she asked again.
I sighed loudly and shook my head. “Priestess Ariya, I don’t understand any of this. If the edan is Zinariya technology, why does the outer metal kill Meduse? I’m part Meduse now, so why doesn’t my edan kill me? I don’t understand what is happening to me, why my edan fell apart, what that ball is, why it matters, why I’m here! I came here to go on pilgrimage; I’m not even there. I’m here. I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going!” I stared at her with wide eyes, breathing heavily. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t tree.
I was seeing all the Khoush in the dining room on the Third Fish. Dead. Chests burst open by the stingers of Meduse. Moojh-ha ki-bira, the “great wave.” The flow of death like water I’d fallen into that in some twisted way gave me a new life. I leaned to the side, pressing my hand to my chest. Angry tears stung my eyes. How could Okwu have been a part of this slaughter? Why did the Seven allow this to happen? Yet, drowning in the waters of death gave me new life. Not drowning in it, carried by it.
“Shallow breaths, increased heart rate, you’re having a panic attack,” my astrolabe in my pocket announced in its stiff female voice. “I suggest you drop into mathematical meditation.” I wanted to smash it to bits.
The priestess did nothing but watch me. The owl puffed out its throat and hooted three times. Soft and peaceful. My eyes wide as I stared into the owl’s, I inhaled a deep breath, filling my lungs to full capacity. When I exhaled, the owl hooted softly again and the sound calmed me more. Then it hooted again, leaning down and bringing its neck low near its feathery legs, as it held my eyes. Soon the panic attack passed.
“Do you want it?” Ariya asked a fourth time.
The voice came from deep in me, but it was familiar. I’d been hearing it since I left home, ignoring its steady matter-of-fact low voice: “You did not succeed your father. No man will marry you. Selfish girl. Failed girl.” I was supposed to be these things in order to be. I had not taken my place within the collective. This had left me feeling exposed and foundationless, even as I pursued my dreams. Now here I was about to make another choice that would further ensure I could never go back.
I shut my eyes and thought of Dele, who’d been my friend but had looked at me like a pariah when we’d last spoken. His judgment and rejection had stung me in a way I’d not been prepared for and reminded me that I’d made my choice. And my choice had been to come home. Dele has always seen things so simply, I thought. Even when they’re infinitely complex. He’s not a harmonizer. I opened my eyes and looked at Ariya.
“What will it . . . do?” I breathed.
“Connect you to an entire people and a memory. And allow you to solve your edan.”
“I’ll be a desert person,” I moaned. I blinked, wanting to kick myself. “I’m sorry. I meant to say Enyi Zinariya. Himba people see you as savages. I’ve already been changed by the Meduse. Now I’ll never . . .”
“What will you be?” she asked. “Maybe it is not up to you.”
I looked at my hands, wanting to bring them to my face and inhale the scent of the otjize covering them. I wanted to go home. I wanted to chase crabs near the lake until the sun set and then turn around to look at the Root and admire the glow of the bioluminescent plants that grew near the roof. I wanted to argue with my sisters in the living room. I wanted to walk into the village square with my best friend Dele to buy olives. I wanted to sit in my father’s shop and construct an astrolabe so sophisticated, my father would clap arthritis-free hands with delight. I wanted to play math games with my mother where sometimes she’d win and sometimes I’d win. I wanted to go home.
More tears rolled down my face as I realized I’d left my jar of otjize in my grandmother’s cave with my other things. I flared my nostrils and squinted in an attempt to prevent any more tears from falling. It worked. I steadied. I was clear now. I wanted to go home, but I wanted to solve the edan more. Everything comes with a sacrifice. I wiped my face with my hand and looked at my otjize-stained palm. “Okay,” I whispered. I straightened my back. “What’s the owl for?” I asked in a strained voice.
“I’m no mathematical harmonizer, but Mwinyi told me what treeing feels like, what it does.” She paused. “I suggest you do that when I start. From the start. Do it while you are calm.”
“Okay,” I said. “But what of the owl?”
“She’s not an owl,” Ariya said.
Initiative
“Drink this,” she said, handing me the clay cup.
It tasted both sweet and smoky, and as I swallowed the liquid it coated my throat and warmed my belly. She took the cup from me and set it on the ground beside her. We were sitting outside in the hot sun, not far from the lip of the underground cave. Here, I really noticed the soft whoosh of the air moving up and out of the cave. Above, the owl flew in wide circles.
Ariya handed me the long feather the owl had allowed her to pluck from its wing. When she’d taken it from the owl, it had flapped its wing right after she’d plucked it, as if it were in pain and trying to beat the pain away. When she handed it to me, I noticed that the end of the feather was needle sharp.
“She has no name,” Ariya now said. “But she’s the only animal alive from back when the Zinariya were among us. She used to live with the one that gave the zinariya to the first group of us. They had no clear leader and were all so connected that you couldn’t tell them apart, except for that particular one who was always with this creature. Today, she looks like a horned owl, but there are other days . . . when she does not. Anyway, when they left, she was given many things, including a task.”
I looked at the feather tip. In the sunlight, it glinted the tiniest bit; it was wet with something.
“Prick your fingertip with it,” she said. “Hard. Then hold it there.”
I bit my lip. I didn’t like doing harm to myself on purpose or accidentally.
“It has to be you who does it. Your choice. There are catalysts in the feather and they need to enter your bloodstream.”
“Okay,” I whispered. But before I did, I said, “Z = z2 + c.” It split and split and split in its lovely complex and convoluted way. Faster and faster, until I saw the coiling design in my mind and before me. Soon that became a current. A soft blue current that I harmonized with a second current I called up from the same equation. With my mind, I asked them to wrap around me, to protect me. And in the sunshine in the middle of the hinterland, as the priestess of the Desert People who were the Enyi Zinariya watched, I plunged the sharp tip of the feather into the flesh of my left thumb.
In the stories of the Seven, life originated from the rich red clay that had soaked up rains. Microorganisms were called into active being when one of the Seven willed it and the others became interested in what would happen. That clay was Mother, otjize. I was clay now. I was watching from afar, feeling nothing, but able to control. I held the feather to my finger. And then, from that place waving with equations, the blue currents braiding around each other connecting around me, my body acted without my command.
When I was five, I had asked my mother what it was like to give birth. She smiled and said that giving birth was the act of stepping back and letting your body take over. That childbirth was only one of thousands of things the body could do without the spirit. I remember asking, “If you step away from your body to give birth, then who is there doing the birthing?” I wondered this now, as my body acted.
I couldn’t see it happening, but I could distantly sense it—my body was pulling something, energy from the ground. From the earth, from deep. My body was touching the Mother, nudging her awake, and then telling her to come. The Seven are great, I thought. This was not my pilgrimage where I would have honored the Seven and entered the space only those who have earned the right could enter. I would probably never have that now. This was something else.
The Mother came.
I was treeing, but now I felt her fully. My entire body was alight. If I had not been treeing, what would have
been left of my sanity? How could those who could not tree ever go through this? The glow within me became a shine that engulfed me, one that took on the color of the currents I still circulated. For a moment, I glimpsed up at Ariya and met her wide surprised eyes. I was reminded of my teacher Professor Okpala back on Oomza Uni that day I saw . . .
Iridescent white lights drowned it all out, through a jellylike substance.
Then darkness.
Then I was there again . . .
. . . I was in space. Infinite blackness. Weightless. Flying, falling, ascending, traveling, through a planet’s ring of brittle metallic dust. It pelted my flesh like chips of glittery ice. I opened my mouth a bit to breathe, the dust hitting my lips. Could I breathe? Living breath bloomed in my chest from within me and I felt my lungs expand, filling with it. I relaxed.
“Who are you?” a voice asked. It spoke in the dialect of my family and it came from everywhere . . .
I fell out of the tree.
My okuoko were writhing. Then . . . rain? Wetness? Something was tearing. I was coughing, as I inhaled what my lungs could not tolerate. The gas was all around me, then it was not. I inhaled deeply, again, filling my lungs with air this time.
I opened my eyes wide. To the desert. And the smell of smoke. Ariya was feet away, her mouth open with shock, as she smacked at her garments. Smoke was rising all around her. She was putting out fire. Her clothes were burning. From my current? I wildly wondered. Did I lose control of it? Never in my life had I done such a thing.
I put a hand out to hold myself up. As a harmonizer, you saw numbers and equations in everything, circulating around you like the eye floaters you see on the surface of your eye if you pay too close attention. I was used to that. However, what I was seeing now was alien. Circles of various proportions from the size of a pea to that of a large tomato, and various colors all arranged in an order, all around me. They pulsed, becoming transparent and then solid, with each breath, with each movement, with each of my thoughts. Nevertheless, there was something far more urgent that I had to deal with.
“Okwu,” I said, staring at Ariya. My heart felt as if it were slashing up the inside of my chest. “My Meduse. Have they killed it? I have to go back.”
Ariya said nothing. I got up on shaky legs. “I have to go,” I said, tears filling my eyes. I turned and looked in the direction Mwinyi had brought me. From afar, I could see a glimpse of the village caves. I took a step when I noticed something falling out of the sky. It was red orange, like my otjize, and it was on fire. It came right at me and I would never be able to outrun it.
I turned to it. Let it slam into me and burn me to cinders, I thought. Let it. I watched the fireball hurl toward me. I submitted to my death, as I had submitted to it on the ship when the Meduse had killed everyone. I felt its heat bear down on me and a blast of wind blew past me that was so strong I stumbled and sat down hard on the ground. The pain of it shook me from my hysteria. I blinked away the sandy tears in my eyes. They’d mixed with my otjize, sweat and sand on my skin.
Ariya slowly came to me. “Calm yourself,” she harshly said. She was carrying her walking stick. When had she gotten that? And now, she was leaning on it. “Binti, you have to calm yourself.” The old woman looked toward the village then at me. “You have just been initiated,” she said. “I threw that fireball at you to snap you out of it.”
“You?”
“Hold your hands up,” she said. She held both her hands before her. “Like this. See them. Your will controls the controls. You make them come and go.”
I held my hands up and there were the colored circles again. This time right before my face and solid like hard honey candies. I slowly reached out to it, expecting my hand to pass right through. I tapped on it and I heard the light tick tick of my nail against thin hard material. I pressed it and the words Like this. See them. Your will controls the controls. You make them come and go scrolled out about a foot from my face in otjize red-orange loopy Otjihimba writing.
I touched the words and they faded away like incense smoke and I could softly hear Ariya speak those same words again.
“What is—”
“It’s zinariya,” Ariya said. “You’re now one of us.”
I pressed my hands to the sides of my head, as if I could stop that which I couldn’t stop. Just like the strange sensation of my okuoko when I first felt them, this was . . . this was beautiful. I felt the pain and glory of growth, was straining and shuddering with it. The stress of it caused a ringing in my eyes as I looked around, thinking hard. Then I was seeing the words. Binti? Why are you . . . is that you? Why are you . . . have they . . . Oh no, no, no, what have you done?
I sat there, a sob caught in my throat. Even in that moment of strangeness, the utter dismay so clear in his words made my heart sink. I felt a powerful regret and wished I had not had the zinariya activated. Anything to not inspire such disappointment in my father, after all I’d already done to him, to everyone, to myself. I fought for focus. “Papa!” I shouted. “What is happening? What happened?”
“He won’t hear you,” Ariya said. “You have to send.”
Astrolabe, I thought frantically. Like astrolabe. But more primitive. I couldn’t see him but I could “send” to him. I did it intuitively, imagining I was using the holographic mode of my astrolabe where it would project a page in the air, type onto it, and move things around. As I did so, I was vaguely aware of the fact that I was doing those hand movements the Enyi Zinariya were known for, like a madwoman. And at the moment, I was.
Papa, I sent. What has happened? What happened to Okwu? Where are you? I am in the hinterland.
His answer came immediately. Why did you allow this? You used to be such a beautiful girl. His words hit me like a slap and I felt it slip through my body and for a moment, I forgot everything. I rubbed my forehead then ran a finger over my okuoko. Mine, I thought. These are mine. I raised my hands and wrote, Papa, I’m fine. Please, what is happening?
There was a long pause before the words came. And when they came, I sat back down on the ground and the words moved down with me. The Khoush came and there was a fight with Okwu. It took many, but they may have killed it. Now the Meduse are coming. We can’t get out. The Khoush have set fire to the Root. We cannot get out. But the walls will protect us. The Root is the root. We will be okay. Stay where you are.
Papa! I sent. I sent again and again, but he did not respond. My words wouldn’t even melt away. They wouldn’t go! I shuddered with rage and then grabbed some sand and threw it, screaming, tears flying from my eyes. I stared out into the desert for a long moment. I stared and stared. Sand and sky, sky and sand. I tried to reach Okwu. Again, nothing.
I dropped into meditation, the numbers flew like water, the controls faded but did not disappear, the okuoko on my head writhed. I stood up. “I’m going home,” I told Ariya. She only nodded, her attention on the figure coming up the desert. It was Mwinyi and he was leading a camel. “You’ll go with him,” Ariya said.
“The Enyi Zinariya won’t come with us?” I asked.
She only looked at me. Then she said, “We’d come if there was a fight to fight.”
I didn’t ask her what she meant. Above, the owl circled.
* * *
When Mwinyi and I climbed onto the camel and got moving, the owl followed us overhead for several miles. Then it turned back. It returned to Ariya, I assumed. Its job was complete. I was Himba, a master harmonizer. Then I was also Meduse, anger vibrating in my okuoko. Now I was also Enyi Zinariya, of the Desert People gifted with alien technology. I was worlds. What was home? Where was home? Was home on fire? I considered these things as Mwinyi and I rode. But not for very long. Mwinyi had brought my satchel and now I reached into it. I worked my fingers into the pouch to touch the metal pieces of my still broken edan. I grasped the grooved golden ball. It was warm.
There was no fight to fight, Ariya had said. We’ll see, I thought, grasping the huge camel’s thick coarse fur. We will see.
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About the Author
Photograph by Anyaugo Okorafor-Mbachu
NNEDI OKORAFOR was born in the United States to two Igbo (Nigerian) immigrant parents. She holds a Ph.D. in English and is an associate professor of creative writing, currently teaching at the University at Buffalo. She has been the winner of many awards for her short stories and young adult books, including the Wole Soyinka Africa Prize for Literature, the Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa, Le Prix Imaginales (Best Translated Novel), the Carl Brandon Parallax Award, the Black Excellence Award for Outstanding Achievement in Literature, and the Strange Horizons Readers Choice Award for Nonfiction. She has also been a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, Essence Magazine Literary Award, Tiptree Award, a British Science Fiction Association Award (Best Novel), and the Theodore Sturgeon Award. She was also a nominee for the NAACP Imagine Award, among others. Nnedi’s stories are inspired by her Nigerian heritage, her many trips there, and her travels around the world. Her first published adult novel, Who Fears Death, won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and her first novella for Tor.com, Binti, won the Nebula and Hugo Awards for Best Novella. Nnedi lives in Illinois with her daughter, Anyaugo, and family.
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Also by Nnedi Okorafor
Binti
Who Fears Death
Kabu-Kabu
Lagoon
The Book of Phoenix
YOUNGER READERS
Zahrah the Windseeker (as Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu)
The Shadow Speaker (as Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu)
Akata Witch
The Girl with the Magic Hands
Long Juju Man
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