“But I had to come home, too. I need it all, you, school, space. I wanted to go on my pilgrimage in order to align myself . . . but it wasn’t my path.” I paused, to gather my thoughts. “Okwu is my friend . . . yes, fine, my partner. So I also wanted to show it my home. I guess I wanted to open things up here, too. Harmonize the Khoush, Meduse, and Himba”—I motioned to Mwinyi—“and now the Enyi Zinariya, too.” I turned back to the fire. “This is why I called this gathering. There’s been terror and death and destruction, but I want to pull harmony out of that now. We can.” I looked at each of their frowning faces. “Dele,” I said, looking straight at him. He jumped a little, surprised. “You know me better than everyone here. You know my heart. You know how much I love everyone and how much I will give to protect and make everyone happy. Hear what I am about to ask.”
I pointed in the direction of the lake and said, “Right now as we speak, the Meduse wait in the lake.”
Every single council member gasped.
“Binti, no!” Dele exclaimed. “That can’t be true!”
“Eh!” one of the elders I didn’t know exclaimed. “At this moment?”
“Yes,” I said. “There’s a ship hiding in the water. Maybe more than one.” I let my words sink in. Dele continued staring at me with wide eyes as the others whispered among themselves.
“Your people are not the type to survive war,” Okwu said from behind me in Otjihimba.
I heard Mwinyi chuckle.
“The Khoush tried to kill a Meduse, despite the pact, despite Okwu being a peaceful ambassador who’d come to Khoushland in peace,” I said. “Oomza Uni gained permission from both the Khoush government and Meduse chief for Okwu to come here. And the Khoush burned my home, k-killing my family when they could not find and kill me, an honorary Meduse. The Meduse have reason to start war. And the Khoush want it, too. And they will fight over Osemba and Khoushland will burn and broil again. Unless we Himba meet with both sides and stop them.” Then I asked what I hadn’t even told Mwinyi or Okwu about because they weren’t Himba and thus could never understand. “Please, call on the Himba deep culture.”
“No!” Titi suddenly shouted.
“Please,” I said, barely able to believe what I was doing, what I was saying. A year and half ago, I could never have imagined I’d be right here in this moment. Deep culture goes deeper than what it is, it goes deeper than culture, it crosses over. It communes with the mathematics that dwell within all things and only the collective of Himba Councils could evoke it.
“We will not! Who are you to ask that?” Titi snarled, disgusted. She took a deep breath, composing herself. When she spoke again, she was much calmer. “This isn’t our fight, Binti. We pack up and go to the pilgrimage grounds and wait there until the Khoush and Meduse exhaust or kill themselves. We bring all our astrolabe supplies, all of our valuables, we go nomad as we were so long ago and we stay together, until this is over!”
“I’ve . . . I’ve seen the Night Masquerade,” I admitted. “Again. In the day. Don’t you have to listen to me?”
Silence, as everyone turned to look at Chief Kapika, as if waiting for him to say something. Chief Kapika only shook his head, refusing to speak on this subject. Again, I heard Mwinyi chuckling behind me. He seemed to be enjoying this more than everyone else here. “These people don’t understand anything,” he muttered.
In the silence, Dele suddenly got up and came to me. He stood over me and looked down. “Get up, Binti.” When I did, he roughly grabbed my shoulder. “Come on.”
Mwinyi was already up. “Where are you taking her?” he demanded. “I’m coming too.” Okwu also floated to us.
“Stay here,” Dele said, holding up a hand. “Talk to them. Say what you can. She’s safe. I just need to speak with her.”
“Binti?” Mwinyi asked, looking at me. “Alright?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. And I can call Okwu if I need help, I said with my eyes. As if he understood, he nodded and stepped back.
Then Dele was pushing me toward the Osemba House back entrance. I glanced behind me at Okwu and Mwinyi, but Mwinyi was facing the still shocked and confused-looking council and saying, “My name is Mwinyi and I’m from the desert and I guess I’m representing the Enyi Zinariya. From what I know . . .”
Then we were inside and Dele was leading me to the Sacred Well in the center of the dome. “What is wrong with you?” he asked. He looked down at me. When had he gotten so much taller?
“What’s . . .” I froze when I looked into his dark eyes. They were glistening with tears. I’d known Dele practically all my life. Even when we were small children, I’d never seen Dele cry. Never.
“You saved yourself before,” he said. “Do you want to die now?”
“If we don’t do something, we’ll all die,” I said. “The Khoush had to have detected when the Meduse came. They let them so they can attack from the ground. They’re flying about looking for the Meduse now. There’s not time for us to get out of here before it starts. Not with our things. We’ll die in that desert if we leave now.”
“The Night Masquerade has shown itself to you, a girl, twice! And the second time, it couldn’t even wait for the night! You need to stop! You bring chaos,” he said. “I shouldn’t . . . s—” He looked away.
I stepped back from him. Staring. I knew what he’d meant to say, “I shouldn’t even be speaking to you.” I should have been dead to him already, for traditionally a woman who ran away from home was useless. And one who saw the Night Masquerade no longer existed. I was a ghost to him, a spirit.
“They have taught you well,” I said. “Rigid. Have you dug a shelter beside an Undying tree where you will take all your wives and children and hide deep inside until the war passes? Will they use the red clay of the shelter’s wall to make themselves beautiful for you while you pass the time speaking natural mathematics to the Seven? Big man you are now with your beard and apprentice status.”
“You mock your own people now,” he said.
“I’m trying to save it!”
“If you hadn’t left in the first place, this wouldn’t be happening,” he snapped.
“I had to leave,” I said. “Dele, I’m not . . . I’m not meant to stay here. You know it. You’ve always known it. I was always going out into the desert. You know? Because it’s huge, it’s vast. When I look back, the desert and space, they feel similar.”
“Well, I was always meant to go inward, into what makes us us,” he said. “And that’s just as vast. And doing that will make me the next chief, not get us destroyed.”
His words were like a punch in the chest and suddenly I felt breathless. War was coming as we stood here arguing. Who knew what Mwinyi and Okwu were saying to the elders. And the one who knew me even before I was fully me harbored such a dislike of me that it seemed he would have been happier if I’d died on the Third Fish last year.
“Let me do my part to fix this, Dele,” I begged him. “The elders can convince the Khoush to come. I know how to call the Meduse to come. Then, the Himba Council can use Himba deep culture to get them to make peace with the Meduse.”
Dele seemed to think about this, walking away from me toward the Sacred Well. He leaned against the stone wellhead and looked down into it. He turned to me. “You can call them? How?”
I didn’t look away. I was what I was and I was many things now. I touched my okuoko. “With these.”
“Your hair?”
“They’re not hair anymore.”
“So it’s true,” he said. “You’ve become the wife of a Meduse.”
I frowned. “I’m no one’s wife.”
“You came home and you came with it,” he said. “It stayed at the home of your family. It’s been intimate with you enough that your body has changed.”
“Okwu didn’t do this,” I said. “I don’t even know which of—”
�
�The Meduse are a hive-minded people,” he said. “What one does, they all do. If you use those to communicate with Okwu, you’re communicating with the others, too.”
“No,” I said. “Only Okwu. And in a distant way, the Meduse chief. You don’t understand.”
“I’ve heard some of the story of what you went through from your father. Okwu would have killed you on that ship, but on Oomza University, it’s your closest companion. You’ve become Okwu’s wife.”
I dismissively waved a hand at him. “Just help me, Dele. Just go talk to them. They’ll hear you.”
“Did you really see the Night Masquerade?”
I nodded.
“Twice?”
I nodded again. “Second time was on the road outside the Root.”
“Earlier today?”
“Yes.”
“During the day?”
“Yes.”
“Unbelievable. Kai!” he exclaimed, striding away from me. Then he stopped and came back.
“What?” I softly asked as he walked up to me. I flinched as he reached forward and took one of my okuoko and lightly pressed it. My hand shot out before I realized I was going to do it and slapped his hand away. “Stop!” I said.
He looked at the otjize on his hand and then at my okuoko, whose transparent blue now showed a bit. He sniffed my otjize and then gazed at me for several moments. He eyed me as he rubbed his short beard with the otjize on his fingers, then he turned and walked away.
I stepped over to the wellhead and looked down into the water. Down into the darkness that was nothing like the darkness of space. Not as complete. Not as foreign. When I heard shouting and then rumbling loud enough to shake the building, I turned and strode outside. “No, no, no, no!” I muttered. We’d run out of time.
The Khoush sky whales, each the size of two houses, landed in the desert, close enough to whip dust into the air that nearly put out the Sacred Fire. The Khoush knew exactly where they were landing. The Khoush had no respect for my people. Each ship was covered with blue and white solar tiles with giant wind turbines under each wing. They’d always reminded me of beetles with the skin of lizards. And though they moved smoothly through the sky like water beetles in water, they landed in such a way that everyone in the area would know it.
As two of the elders scrambled to stand before the fire and hold open their garments to protect it, Dele, Chief Kapika, and Titi gathered together to meet whoever alighted from the sky whales. I ran to Okwu and Mwinyi.
Okwu, hide! I shouted through my okuoko. It turned to me. You should—
Okwu flew at me just as I heard a sharp zip! Then Okwu’s okuoko and then its dome was covering me. I felt every part of my body tense up. There was weight but not much, but also a sense of being enveloped and gently held, hugged. Protected. Okwu’s flesh smelled like pepper seed, spicy and hot. I could see everything right through it, tinted a blue. Chief Kapika and Dele were running at the sky whales, waving their hands, shouting, putting themselves in the space between Okwu, Mwinyi, and me and the sky whales. Then Okwu was releasing its gas all around us and the shocked look of Mwinyi, the laboring smoky fire, and a few of the elders who’d turned our way disappeared. I instinctively held my breath.
Seconds passed and I leaned back, my own okuoko writhing on my head. I could feel the vibration of Okwu’s body and then a hardness against my arm. Its stinger. White and sharp. And a thought came to me heavy with relief. If Okwu was protecting me, then it was not killing Khoush. I felt Okwu shudder and I was expelled. I tumbled onto the sand and without looking at myself, I knew most of my otjize had been sucked off. The night air felt cool on my bare flesh.
I looked back at Okwu and saw that several of its okuoko were hanging by a thread or shot off, its blue color looking lighter in the firelight. Maybe pink. Red? I wondered. Then I was sure. Okwu was spattered with blood. My blood? I thought, but I didn’t look at myself because Okwu lowered to the ground. I’d never seen a Meduse touch the ground. “Okwu!” I exclaimed, scrambling to it on my knees. Okwu now lay to the side, like a deflated balloon. I gently touched its dome, tears squeezing from my eyes, barely able to breathe. Okwu’s dome felt tough like the bladders of water that women carried to and from the lake. Cool beneath my touch. “What’s the matter?” I shouted. “What’s the matter?”
“They shot it,” Mwinyi was saying as he came and knelt beside me.
“Why didn’t you use your shield?” I asked.
“You’d . . . have . . . died if I did,” it said, its voice deeper and rougher than ever. It made my head hurt.
Mwinyi placed a hand on Okwu’s dome as he stared intensely at it. Okwu’s flesh twitched at his touch, but then calmed. I looked behind us and gasped. There had to be at least a hundred Khoush soldiers; men and women standing stiffly in tight desert pants and tops, the women in black and the men in white. Two Khoush men and one Khoush woman, all also in army gear, stood speaking with Chief Kapika, Titi, and Dele, the others standing eagerly behind them.
“It is in pain,” Mwinyi said. “It won’t speak to me.”
I couldn’t think. Mama, Papa, my siblings, family dead. Zinariya crippling me. The Night Masquerade’s ominous appearance. War was here. I could barely take in enough breath to keep from passing out. My heart felt as if it would burst through my chest. Heru’s chest burst open and his blood on my face was warm. I wanted to throw myself over Okwu and scream and wail. Submit. I looked at Okwu, then back at the Khoush and the elders, then back at Okwu. I frowned, reaching into my pocket and touching the gold ball. My hand brushed against my jar of otjize. I was about to let myself tree for clarity. Then to myself, I said, “No.”
Mwinyi looked at me questioningly.
I grabbed the jar of otjize in my pocket. Okwu’s insides were slathered with a lot of it already. “Mwinyi, put this where Okwu’s been injured,” I said. I paused and then added, “Use all of it.”
I stood up.
As I walked toward them all, they could have shot me. They’d just tried. I was too angry to care. The Khoush soldiers stood like statues as I approached. In rows, before their sky whales, the darkness of the desert extending behind them, the stars above. My sandals dug into the sand. My red skirt lapped at my legs and my red top was wet with sweat. No otjize. I was naked.
“Binti,” one of the Khoush men said.
“I don’t know who you are,” I said, standing beside Dele. He was staring at me like I was a creature from outer space. All of them were.
“Qalb Leader Iyad,” he said. “And these are my co-leaders, Qalb Leader Durrah.” The tall woman with the thin braid hanging to her knees nodded at me. “And Qalb Leader Yabani.” The intense-looking man with an equally long black braid inhaled noisily, flaring his nostrils at me as if he’d smelled something foul. All of them had light brown skin, darkened from its typical Khoush tone by the sun.
“We’ve told them of your suggestion,” Chief Kapika quickly said. “That you offer to convince the Meduse to attend a meeting to make peace.” He gave me a slight nod and I felt a rush of relief, despite all that had just happened. The Himba Council would be there too.
“We will take the idea to General Kuw and he will take it to the king of Khoushland,” Iyad said, looking down his nose at me. “But the Meduse massacred a ship full of our most gifted minds, unarmed students and professors. And all that was left was . . . you. Can you really convince those savages to come and have a rational discussion?”
I don’t know when I started shaking, but when I spoke, my voice was vibrating like an Undying tree during a thunderstorm. “You just tried to kill me,” I blurted.
Yabani laughed.
“That was an accident,” Iyad said. “We thought you were a Meduse.”
I felt Dele take my arm. “Breathe,” he said into my ear.
I yanked my arm away. I could feel my okuoko writhing wildly now. Without otjize what
must I have looked like? “You shot my friend,” I growled. “It’s the third time you people have tried to kill it since we arrived here! You agreed to the pact through Oomza Uni knowing you were lying right through your teeth.”
“I doubt one dead Meduse is a pact destroyer after they killed a ship full of our smartest and finest,” Iyad snapped. “They’re barely flesh, anyway.”
My vision blurred with fury. “Khoush scholars attacked the Meduse chief, took its stinger, and put it on display in a museum!” I stepped right up to Iyad’s face. I am not tall. Nor am I roped with muscle. I barely came to this man’s chin and I had to look up to meet his eyes, but he was scared. I saw it in his face. I smelled it wafting from his naked skin. He was terrified of me. I’d seen the Night Masquerade twice, I was Meduse, I was Enyi Zinariya, I was Himba, and I had no home.
“I am Binti Ekeopara Zuzu Dambu Kaipka Meduse Enyi Zinariya of Osemba, master harmonizer,” I said. I let myself tree and though I felt calmer, my rage stayed and I was glad. I called up a current and held up my hands to show it connecting to my index fingers like soft lightning. I swirled my fingers and the current coiled into a ball hovering before Iyad’s eyes. “I do not want to see my homeland and people destroyed by a stale ancient irrational fight between people who have no real reason to hate each other. When the sun rises, come as you’ve agreed, to the Root that you reduced to char and ash, where my family lies dead. The Meduse will be there and you both will bury this idiocy once and for all.” With the help and power of us Himba, I thought, angrily. Because neither of you is reasonable enough to do it on your own.
I didn’t wait for his answer. I pulled in my current, turned, and walked back to Okwu and Mwinyi.
* * *
The Khoush left. I didn’t see them go, but I heard their sky whales take off and felt the dust they blew over us.
Okwu did not die. My otjize saved him. Both the otjize Mwinyi slathered on its wounds and the otjize Okwu had sucked off my skin and okuoko when it had enveloped me. Mwinyi, his fingers coated with what was left of my otjize, wouldn’t stop looking at me.
Binti, The Complete Trilogy: Binti ; Home ; The Night Masquerade Page 26
