Binti, The Complete Trilogy: Binti ; Home ; The Night Masquerade

by Nnedi Okorafor

  That night, we stayed in the Osemba House. Somehow, we’d been able to fit Okwu through the dome-shaped door that was wide but not nearly as wide as Okwu. The Meduse were huge but easily compressible, when they wanted to be. Iyad had been rude in his words, but correct, nonetheless. There really wasn’t much mass or weight to Meduse. Once inside, Okwu hovered weakly beside the well. It was quiet, glad to be near such pure water, its god. Mwinyi took a bucket of it out back and bathed with it. I can’t say that I didn’t have the urge to do the same, and this disturbed me.

  The elders and Dele could not deal with me being otjize-free. Thus, after Titi and the other women brought us food and blankets and promised to check on our camel, they left us. They would meet us in the morning. Out back, the Sacred Fire burned, small now and fueled by the bark of an Undying tree, so it would not go out, as long as no sky whale wind turbines blew dust on it. Titi brought me a jar of otjize and now I sat on a blanket facing the back door and Sacred Fire, contemplating the large jar on the mat before my crossed legs.

  Mwinyi sat beside me and picked up the jar. I let him open it and sniff the contents. “This one and the other I put on Okwu smells different from your own,” he said.

  I smiled. “Mine was made from clay I dug up on Oomza Uni.”

  He put the jar back down and turned to me. “Is it an insult if I said you look beautiful with it and without it?”

  I met his eyes for only a moment and then looked away, my heart fluttering.

  “I can see you more clearly now,” he said. “Now that I’ve seen you with it and without. The two make one.”

  “You’re not supposed to ever see me without otjize,” I said. “Only a Himba girl’s parents should ever see a Himba girl my age without her otjize. Not even a woman’s husband will—” I bit my lip and looked at the jar.

  “I know,” Mwinyi laughed. “But remember, I’m not Himba. Me seeing you with and without it just means I see you. Nothing demeaning.” He touched the long matted braid that grew from the middle of his red-brown bushy hair. It was so long that it reached his knees. “See this? The Enyi Zinariya call it tsani, a ‘ladder’ for the spirits. You start growing it at the age of ten. So it’s been seven years. A woman isn’t supposed to touch it and not even my mother has.” He hesitated for a moment and then held it out to me.

  I looked at it. “Are you sure?” I asked. “Why?”

  “Do you know the desert dogs we met didn’t think you were from Earth?” he said. “I think, maybe, I think you’re part of something, Binti.” His confident smile was faltering now. This was anything but easy for him. I looked at the rope of red-brown hair. Then I reached out and took it in my hands. It felt like my hair, except it wasn’t made firm with otjize.

  “There,” I said, putting it down. “Do you feel different?”

  “No,” he said. “But I am.” He smirked and then laughed.

  “What’s funny?” I asked.

  He grinned bigger than I’d seen him grin since we’d left his home. “Honestly, I’m not even sure if you’re a human being anymore, so maybe you don’t really count.”

  I laughed, gently shoving him away. We sat there for a moment, gazing at the Sacred Fire. I could feel the darkness of my family’s death trying to pull me down, and I scooted closer to Mwinyi. He turned to me and touched my okuoko and I didn’t push his hand away.

  “You shouldn’t allow that, Binti,” Okwu said from behind us.

  Mwinyi quickly let go and stood up. Then he knelt back down, brought his face to mine, and kissed me. When he pulled back, we looked into each other’s eyes smiling and . . .

  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 Otjihimba and it came and it came from everywhere.

  “Binti Ekeopara Zuzu Dambu Kaipka of Namib, that is my name,” I said.

  Pause.

  “There’s more,” the voice said.

  “That’s all,” I said, irritated. “That’s my name.”

  “No.”

  This was true but the truth of it made me flinch . . .

  . . . I fell out of the tree. From Mwinyi’s eyes. My gold ball was floating beside us. Rotating like a small planet. It dropped to my mat.

  “Where did you go?” he asked, leaning away from me. “Where was that?”

  “You saw it too?”

  “It’s different when it’s human master harmonizers,” Okwu said from behind us.

  “I know that place,” Mwinyi said. “That’s the ring of Saturn.”

  I frowned, “How do you know? I thought you said you’d never left Earth.”

  “I haven’t, but the Zinariya have,” he said. “And they gave us the zinariya. I’ve looked at their memories of space travel; Saturn and Jupiter have always been my favorites. Why are you seeing Saturn’s ring? Flying through it like a bird?”

  “It’s something the edan keeps showing me,” I said. “Even after it fell apart. Maybe I’m meant to go there.”

  “Never seen a Himba constantly called to leave home,” Mwinyi said more to himself than me. He kissed me again, and this time I leaned forward and took his face in my hands and kissed him back. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close and for a while, we lost ourselves in each other. Dele and I had shared kisses a few times when we were younger, but his strong traditional beliefs made him begin to keep his distance as we grew older. And when my friend Eba had asked me to sneak away with her behind the bushes as some of the girls liked to do, I had laughed and said, “No thank you.”

  Now, I was overwhelmed. There were no taboos or hesitations in the way. And when I pulled my lips from Mwinyi’s, his arms still around me, I didn’t look into his eyes. “I feel like I’m falling,” I breathed. He kissed me one more time and let go. I was leaning on my elbows on the mat, my body throbbing and my mind a swirl of so much, when he stood up.

  “I need to go into the desert,” he said. “I’ll be back.” I held up a hand and he took it. “You should remove your sandals and stand outside in the sand,” he added. “It’ll ground you and that way, you won’t feel so much like you’re falling. Because you’re not.”

  “That’s what the Night Masquerade said to me.”

  “It spoke?”

  I hesitated then nodded. “It said, ‘Death is always news. A bird who has flown off the earth and then returns to land is still on the land. Remove your shoes and listen.’”

  Mwinyi clucked his tongue as he wrapped his braid around his finger. “I repeat, maybe you should take your sandals off and go stand outside,” he said.

  I went back to looking at the jar of otjize after he left. I picked it up and put it back down. I sighed, unsure. I picked it up and stood up. “Okwu, are you alright?” I said.

  “I would tell you if I were not,” it said, puffing out enough gas to envelope itself.

  I coughed. “I’m going to stand outside near the fire for a bit.”

  “I will be here listening to the waters below,” Okwu said.

  The night was cool, but the fire made the area around it warm, even at its decreased size. Its light reached out into the open desert, but where it did not reach was blackness. It reminded me of when I looked out the window while traveling in the Third Fish. Though that blankness was much deeper.

  I put the otjize beside me and raised my hands. “Are you alright?” I typed. Then I pushed the red words off into the desert. They fled as if blown by a powerful invisible wind, scaling and disappe
aring over a nearby sand dune in the direction Mwinyi had gone. A moment later, “Yes. Get some rest. Don’t test the zinariya,” came back to me in his green letters. Then I heard the strange whispers and it seemed as if I saw a planet peeking over the horizon. I looked down, closing my eyes until the whispering stopped. When I opened them, the planet was gone.

  Despite Mwinyi’s warning, I considered testing my tolerance of distant zinariya. I needed to reach my grandmother and tell her what happened. It needed to be me, not Mwinyi. But if I tried and my still fresh mind reacted badly to the attempt again, with Mwinyi gone I only had the injured Okwu to help me. Okwu needed rest. No, I thought. I’ll tell my grandmother when I have some good news. I’ll try after sunrise. Another sunrise in a world where my family was dead. I felt the hot embers in my chest begin to burn. Quickly pushing the pain away, I thought to Okwu, Can you hear me? My okuoko wriggled gently on the sides of my face and against my shoulders. He was close, so my effort did not have to be much.

  Yes.

  I sighed, bringing the golden ball from my pocket. I no longer thought of it as an edan; I saw it more like a little planet. No reason. It was just what was. And I was floating around it, untethered, homeless. I allowed myself to tree and then called up and ran a current over it and watched it rise before my eyes on the electric blue current, slowly rotating. I reached up and took it in my hands, running the pads of my fingers over its fingerprint-like surface.

  I picked up the jar of otjize, unscrewed the lid, and dug my index and middle fingers into it. I spread it on my body.

  CHAPTER 4

  Homecoming

  The first class I took at Oomza Uni was Treeing 101. It started the equivalent of seven Earth days after I’d reached Oomza Uni alive and become a hero. It was one of several first-year student classes from all specialties—from Weapons to Math to Organics to Travel, and more. I placed out of it that first day. The class was conducted in one of the large fields between Math, Weapons, and Organics Cities. The dry yellow grasses there had been cut low but still were occupied by hopping ntu ntu bugs, their brilliant orange-pink pigmentation eye-catching in the sunlight. All the students sat in a huge circle to listen to the instructor Professor Osisi, who looked like a tall wide tree with fanlike leaves bigger than my head.

  We were all dazzled as Professor Osisi called up ten thick currents at once as it told us about the class. After what felt like a half-hour of talking (I was still adjusting to the faster cycle on Oomza Uni), we were split into smaller groups of about six, in which teaching assistants had us each step forward and tree in front of our groups. In my group were two Meduse-like people, someone who looked like a crab made of diamonds, and three blue humanoid types who kept touching my okuoko and humming in a way that seemed a lot like laughter to me. None of us spoke similar languages, though all of us spoke in sound.

  “My name is Assistant Sagar,” our teacher said, a sleek hairless foxlike person with eyes on its snout who stood on two legs at my height. When it spoke, it touched something near its throat and though I understood it, I also heard other voices speaking at the same time, probably in languages the others could understand. I smiled, delighted. The way people on Oomza Uni were so diverse and everyone handled that as if it were normal continued to surprise me. It was so unlike Earth, where wars were fought over and because of differences and most couldn’t relate to anyone unless they were similar.

  “This is a placement test,” Sagar said. “You will step up and face the group and tree as well as you can.”

  “What if we can’t really do it well?” the one who looked like a giant crab made of diamonds asked. It was beside me and clearly agitated as each of its legs kept stamping on the grass, sending ntu ntu bugs leaping this way and that. I grinned again. I could understand it, too! Whatever Sagar was using to communicate with all of us, it connected our group as well. I turned to the group closest to me, which was a few feet away; all I heard were grunts, humming, and a “pop pop pop.”

  Not one individual in my group could tree with difficulty, let alone with ease. When I took my turn, Sagar said, “Good. At least there’s one. And you might be the only one in the entire class today.” I was. In a class of over two hundred new students, I was the only one who could tree. This would not have been the case if all the other students on my ship hadn’t been wiped out; Heru could tree as well as I could. This added to the other reasons students mostly kept their distance from me. In that group, where we’d all stayed close to each other as we waited to be tested, as soon as I got up there, did what I could do, and then moved aside for someone else to try, I knew I was apart again.

  After the last two students took their turns, I looked at the sky above. I’d once read about a phenomenon that happened in the colder parts of Earth when oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere collided with electrically charged particles released from the sun. The resulting swirls of green lights were beautiful and strange and though I never wanted to go to a part of Earth where there was snow and intense cold, I’d been curious what these lights would look like. As I stood away from my fellow students I realized that, with so many trying to descend into mathematical trance and call up current, the air had charged. The odd pinkish orange bright sky swirled with green-blue lights. I could even feel the charged air on my skin. I’d stood there for minutes looking up and reveling in the feeling of so much possibility and newness.

  Now, in the Osemba House, I awoke feeling like I did that day on Oomza Uni—the hairs on my hands standing on end, the feeling of energy all around me. I opened my eyes and sat straight up. Mwinyi was nearby on his mat and he stirred but didn’t awaken. Then I heard it, a rumble from far away and a low haunted howling.

  I got up and walked out the back door. Okwu was already there, floating easily before the fire. Its okuoko that were intact looked fully healed and the ones that had hanging tips were shorter, the tips having fallen off. But at least they were blue again.

  “I thought you didn’t like the fire,” I said.

  “I’ve grown used to it now.”

  Warm wind blew off the desert and from afar I could see a flash of lightning.

  “It’s still far,” Okwu said.

  “But it’s coming,” I said. “It doesn’t rain much here. But I hope it’ll arrive after sunrise.” I paused and then asked, “Will your chief agree to a truce?”

  Okwu didn’t answer for a long time and I began to wish I hadn’t asked.

  “Meduse aren’t the problem,” Okwu finally said. “Your council must succeed. And I think you need to be careful.”

  * * *

  We left the Osemba House with about an hour until dawn. It was windy and the overcast sky made it even darker, and thus easier to see the occasional flash of lightning in the distance. I shut the door behind me and when I turned, I was shocked that I actually had a reason to smile.

  “Oh!” I exclaimed as we left the Osemba House. “You’re glowing.”

  Okwu, who’d regained most of its strength, vibrated its dome. “I took from your lake,” it said. “Those snails.”

  “The clusterwinks?” I asked, gently touching its softly glowing blue dome. The bioluminescent snails lived in the lake and happened to be spawning when we arrived. Okwu had been covered with them when it had emerged from the lake yesterday.

  “Yes,” it said. “When Meduse spend a lot of time with such things, we absorb their genetic coding and make it our own.”

  “Is Binti going to start glowing too?” Mwinyi asked. I frowned at him as he snickered.

  Okwu’s dome vibrated, but it said nothing.

  Okwu’s glow came in handy. The overcast sky, blowing dust, and the Osemba-wide blackout left the streets darker than normal. With my astrolabe broken, I had nothing to help light the way. Even the glow from bioluminescent flowers on some of the homes and buildings was muted. We walked close to each other, this time completely alone and unwatched as we
journeyed across Osemba back to the Root.

  With each step I took through my hometown, I wondered what I was walking toward, purposely bringing myself closer to. I’d needed to reconnect with my family after I’d left the way I did and with all that went on to happen, but realistically, it was my own insecurities that brought me running home so soon. When the Meduse anger had come forth, I’d immediately assumed something was wrong with me instead of realizing that it was simply a new change to which I had to adjust. I’d thought something was wrong with me because my family thought something was wrong with me. And now my childish actions had brought death and war. What had I started? Whatever it was, I had to finish it.

  The wind blew harder and I was glad for the layer of otjize I’d put on my skin and rolled over my okuoko. As we passed the group of Undying trees, Mwinyi and I pressed our hands to our ears and Okwu rushed up the road so fast that I lost sight of it. Mwinyi and I stopped, completely in the dark.

  “Okwu!” I called. But the noise drowned out my voice. I called it through my okuoko. Far up the road between two homes, it stopped.

  Just come, I heard it say in my mind. I cannot be near those evil trees.

  I looked at Mwinyi.

  “I have an idea,” I quickly said, trying not to look at the trees yards away that were vibrating so fast that they looked like a blur. I relaxed as I focused on the powerful gusty wind and raised my hands and typed through the zinariya as I spoke the words. The equation “w = ½ r A v3” floated in red before me, then it began to blow toward Okwu like a flag attached to an invisible pole in front of me. As I watched it, I raised my hands and called up a bright ball of current.

  The dusty road, vibrating trees, the storefront across the street, and the people looking out the window from the home beside it were all illuminated by my light. Mwinyi and I took one look at the Undying trees and quickly moved on. Even when we caught up to Okwu, I continued to use my light. And in this way, as we reached the part of Osemba near my home where the Khoush had taken out their anger when they couldn’t find Okwu and me, we saw that several of the half-destroyed homes had caved in or toppled because of the wind. This last block of homes and buildings looked like the old images of Khoushland cities and towns during the Khoush-Meduse wars decades ago. Pockmarked walls, blasted homes, crumbled buildings. Sandstone wasn’t made to survive war, and stone buildings, like the Root, could be exploded to rubble and even burned.