“I call it ola edo,” she said. “Means ‘hard to find, hard to grow’.” She laughed, “And not very pretty. Okay, time for you to rest, Binti. Tomorrow is your day.”
As I had in the Third Fish’s breathing chamber, I slept well here.
The Ariya
The Ariya’s cave was a mile from the cave village in the center of a dried lake.
“Something used to live in it, back when this was a lake,” Mwinyi said as we walked. “Maybe even dug the hole in the rock, itself.”
“How do you know?” I said, looking at the ground as we walked. At some point, the smooth limestone had become craggy, making it hard to walk. I had to concentrate on not tripping over jutting rock.
“It’s in the Collective,” he said, glancing at me. “That’s the Enyi Zinariya’s memory that we all can touch.”
I nodded.
“But no one knows exactly what kind of creature it was,” he said. He waved his hands before him.
“Did you just tell her we’re close?” I asked.
He looked sharply at me, frowning. “How’d you—”
“I’m not a fool,” I said.
He grunted.
I laughed and pointed up ahead. “Plus, I see something just up there. A hole or something.”
To call it a hole was to put it lightly. The opening in the hard ground was the size of a house. When we stepped up to it, I noticed two things. The first was that there was a large bird circling directly above the opening. The second was that rough stone steps were carved into the stone walls of the hole wound all the way to the bottom.
We descended the steps, Mwinyi going first. I ran my hand along the abrasive wall as I recited soft equations in my head. I called up a soft current and the mild friction from the current and my hand running over the coarse stone was pleasant beneath my fingertips. The deep cavern’s walls were lined with books, so many books. The location of the sun must have been directly above, for the strong light of midday pleasantly flooded into the space. However, along with the light, bioluminescent vines grew in and lit the darker corners.
She stood in the shadows, beside a shelf of books, her arms crossed over her chest. “You haven’t changed a bit,” she said. Nearly a decade later, her bushy crown of hair a little grayer, her face a little wiser, and I still would know this woman anywhere. Could old women grow taller over the years?
“Hello, Mma,” I said, looking up at her. I used the Himba term of respect because I didn’t know what else to use.
“Binti,” she said, pulling me into a tight hug. “Welcome to my home.”
“Thank you for inviting me,” I said.
She gave Mwinyi a tight hug, as well. “Thanks for bringing her. How was the walk?”
“As expected,” he said.
“Come back for her at sundown.”
“Ugh,” I blurted, slumping. It was morning and I hadn’t expected this to be an all-day thing. Though maybe I should have; springing things like this on me seemed to be the Enyi Zinariya way.
Mwinyi nodded, winked at me, and left.
She turned back to me. “Don’t you know how to go with the flow yet?” she asked. “Adjust.”
“I just didn’t think that . . .”
“You saw the Night Masquerade,” she said. “That’s no small thing. Why expect what you expect?” Before I could answer, she said, “Come and sit down.”
I took one more glance at Mwinyi, who was now near the top of the stairs, and followed the old woman.
We moved deeper into the cave and sat on a large round blue rug. It was cool and dark here, the air smelling sweet with incense. The place reminded me of a Seventh Temple, mostly empty and quiet. But she didn’t remind me of a Seven priestess at all. She wasn’t demure, she didn’t cover her head with an orange scarf, she wore no otjize, and she got straight to the point. “Why do you think you saw the Night Masquerade?” she asked. “You’re not a man.”
“Is it even real?” I asked.
“Don’t answer a question with a question. Why do you think you saw it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Remember when we first met?”
“Yes.”
“Why were you out there?”
“I found that place, I liked it,” I said. “I wasn’t supposed to be out there, I know.”
“And look where it got you.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you hadn’t found the edan, would you have questioned and grown? Would you have gone? And even if you would have, would you be alive now?”
It came suddenly in that way that it had been for so many months. The rage. I felt it prick me like a needle in my back and my okuoko twitched. I took a deep breath, trying to calm it. “It doesn’t matter,” I muttered, my nostrils flaring.
“Why?”
Another wave of rage washed through my body and I angrily reached into my pocket, glad to have a reason to move. I felt my okuoko wildly writhing on my head and Ariya’s eyes went to them, calmly watching their motion. No matter, I thought, bringing out the small pouch. I leaned forward, breathing heavily through my flared nostrils, and wildly dumped it all out before her onto the carpet. The sound of tumbling metal pieces echoed and then came a thunk as the golden grooved center fell out. I motioned to it with my hands to emphasize it all. “Because I broke it!” I shouted, my voice cracking. “I broke it! I’m a harmonizer and I de-harmonized an edan!” My voice echoed around and up the cavern. Then silence.
I should have treed to calm myself. This was Ariya, priestess of the Enyi Zinariya, I’d just met her, and here I was behaving like a barbarian. “I know,” I added. “I’m unclean. This was why I came home. For cleansing through my pilgrimage. But I didn’t go . . . I’m here instead . . .” I trailed off and just watched her stare at the pieces and the golden center. What felt like minutes passed, giving me time to calm down. My okuoko grew still. The rest of my body relaxed. And my edan was still broken. I broke it, I thought.
“Unclean? No,” Ariya finally said, shaking her head. “That part of you that is Meduse now, you just need to get that under control.”
In one sentence, she explained something that had been bothering me for a year. That’s all it was. The random anger and wanting to be violent, that was just Meduse genetics in me. Nothing is wrong with me? I thought. Not unclean? It’s just . . . a new part of me I need to learn to control? I’d come all this way to go on my pilgrimage because I’d thought my body was trying to tell me something was wrong with it. I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself, but I’d thought I’d broken myself because of the choices I’d made, because of my actions, because I’d left my home to go to Oomza Uni. Because of guilt. The relief I felt was so all encompassing that I wanted to lie down on the rug and just sleep.
Ariya slowly got up, her knees creaking. She dusted off her long blue dress. “Sometimes, the obvious is too obvious,” she muttered, walking away. Then over her shoulder, she said, “Stay there.”
I watched her ascend the stairs and when she reached the top, she walked off.
I lay on my back and sighed. “Just Meduse DNA,” I muttered. “Or whatever it is they have for genetic code. That’s all.” I laughed, sitting up on my elbows. My eyes fell on the disassembled edan still lying on the rug. I stopped laughing.
* * *
She was gone for what might have been an hour. I’d dozed off right on that round blue rug, lulled by the cool darkness and incense. The sound of her sandals at the top of the stairs woke me. She stepped onto the first stair, paused, and then quickly descended. The moment her upper body came into sight, I saw the creature. Was I seeing what I was seeing? When she reached the bottom of the stairs, I stood up. It was an almost involuntary action. But what else was one to do when a great woman came down the stairs with a great owl perched on her arm?
The owl was about two feet tall
with white and tan feathers, a black bill, a rounded frowning bushy eyebrowed face, and wide yellow eyes. At the top of its head were brown and black feathers that looked like horns. Ariya’s arm was protected by a brown leather armband, but that was all the protection she had. The owl could pluck out her eyes, slash her with its long white talons, slap her with its massive powerful wings if it wanted to. Instead, it stared at me with such intensity that I wondered if I should sit back down.
“If it’s waiting outside, then it is right,” she said. “It was right there when I came out. Help me.”
I assisted as she slowly sat down with the owl perched on her arm. I sat across from them and gazed at the enormous bird.
“Is it heavy?” I asked
“Birds who spend most of their lives in the sky can’t be heavy,” she said. “No, this one is light as . . . a feather.”
“Oh,” I said.
“In my forty-five years as priestess, I have not done this,” she said. “Not even once.”
Suddenly, I felt cold. Very very cold. With dismay. Deep down, I knew. From the moment my grandmother told me about the Zinariya, I’d known, really. Change was constant. Change was my destiny. Growth.
“Why?” I still asked.
“Because it’s the only way you can fix it and you have to fix it, so you can use it to do what it needs to do.” The owl hadn’t taken its eyes off of me. “Do you know what zinariya means in the old language?”
I shook my head.
“It means ‘gold.’ That’s the name we gave them because we couldn’t speak their true name with our mouths and because that is what they were made of. Gold. Golden people. Their bodies, their ship, everything about them was gold. They came to the desert because they needed to rest and refuel and they loved the color of the sand . . . gold. Your edan is Zinariya technology; I knew this when I met you. I just thought, since it allowed you to find it, you could solve it without . . . without—”
“Needing to be activated.”
She nodded. “No one who was not one of us has ever known about the zinariya and those who marry out or leave, they’re so ashamed of being Enyi Zinariya that they don’t tell their families.”
“Like my father,” I said. “It’s like having some genetic disease, in a way. If Himba or Khoush knew of it, they’d . . .”
Ariya smiled. “Oh, they know, someone in those clans knows enough to build toxic ideas against us right into their cultures. That’s really why we are so outcast, untouchable to them. To Himba and Khoush we are the savage ‘Desert People,’ not the Enyi Zinariya. No one wants our blood in their line. Anyway, the Collective knows the names and faces of all your siblings and their children.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling a little better. “Well, that is good.”
“But that’s all.”
We stared at each other for a moment.
“Do you want to do this?” she asked.
“Do I need to?”
“Hmm. You’re still ashamed of what you are.”
“No,” I said. “I’m Himba and proud of that.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Not your grandmother. She is Enyi Zinariya. And we are a matriarchal clan, so your father is, too.”
“No,” I snapped. “Papa is Himba.” I could feel the sting of my own nearsightedness. It was irritating and pushing me off-balance in a way that made it hard for me to think. My confusion evoked a flash of Meduse anger.
“Do you want it?” she asked.
I opened my mouth to answer, but I didn’t speak it because what I’d have spoken was stupid. It was wrong. But it was the truth, too. If I went through with this, I was taking another step outside what it was to be Himba, away from myself, away from my family. I wanted to hide from the owl’s unwavering gaze.
“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.
Binti, The Complete Trilogy: Binti ; Home ; The Night Masquerade Page 19
