Treeing helped me clear my mind of worry and the strong light gave me what felt like my last view of Osemba.
* * *
The Root had stopped burning.
Now it was just a mound of char, much of the ash blown into the desert by the winds of the coming storm. Sunrise was close and all I could do was stand before the mound and stare. The only person who met us at the Root when we arrived was our camel Rakumi, who had, indeed, eaten all that remained of my brother’s garden. The Himba Council had promised to meet us here but it was nowhere in sight. Not even Dele.
“They’re just late,” I said.
Minutes passed and there still wasn’t a sign of them. So to add to my despair and worry, I looked at my home. The wind had blown so much away and revealed the remains—a black foundation of charred wood. The opening to the cellar must have been burned shut. Still holding the ball of current, my mind numb and empty, I stared and stared.
Across what was left of my home, I could see Okwu inspecting the remains of the tent my father had made it—which was nothing but a cracking mess formed from sand heated so hot by the explosion of Khoush weapons that it had become a yellow-black glass. Mwinyi was digging and knocking at the char at the base of the Root’s foundation.
“What are you doing?” I called.
“Looking,” he distractedly said, pressing both his hands to it now.
I clucked my tongue, irritated. What if he caused the entire thing to cave in? What would he reveal? I shivered. “Mwinyi!” I called. “Please stop doing—”
The thunder rumbled, this time louder, and it was blended with a deeper, more urgent purring. “Oh no,” I whispered. Slowly, I turned to the west, dust spraying squarely in my face. The Khoush were here. From Kokure in Khoushland? Further west? The skyline seemed to be crowded with sky whales. They flew smoothly, despite the high winds and charged air.
I spat out dust and blinked my eyes as Okwu joined me, positioning itself in front of me. “No,” I said, stepping aside. “This is for peace. If they shoot me, then—”
“You will be dead,” Okwu said, getting in front of me.
“Don’t be a fool, Binti,” Mwinyi said, joining us. He too moved in front of me. “If the Himba Council isn’t here . . .” He bit his lip. “Maybe they set us up.”
When the ships landed, the number of soldiers that poured out and the sheer amount of artillery that they unpacked was incredible. Within minutes, the expanse of desert was occupied with hundreds of waiting Khoush soldiers standing in formation, several of the sky whales had broken down into weaponized land shuttles, and there were long sticks with black hoops that extended into the sky whose function I didn’t know.
“I thought they’d just bring an envoy,” I muttered as three Khoush walked up to us.
“They have always been about show,” Okwu rumbled in Meduse.
“Translation, please,” Mwinyi said.
“They like to show power,” I told him in Otjihimba. “Okwu, shall I call them now?”
“You said sunrise,” Okwu said. “They will come.”
And sure enough, as the sun peeked over the horizon, before the three Khoush members got to us, they stopped and looked toward Osemba. I turned as well. The Meduse ships looked like they belonged in the water. Bulbous and glowing a deep purple blue, they looked like larger versions of the Meduse themselves. I briefly wondered if they were, for I’d been inside one a year ago and it had felt like being inside the body of a living thing, and stunk like one too. They silently landed, the ships’ okuoko whipped about and their bodies buffeted gently by the winds.
CHAPTER 5
Homegoing
I stood between the leaders of both sides.
I could barely look at Goldie, the Khoush’s king. I’d only seen his face on the news feeds and heard the Khoush who came into my father’s shop speak of him as the Honorable One. He was a tall stout man with pale skin that looked as if it never saw the sun. His garments were immaculately white, glowing and blowing in the dusty wind.
Flanking his left and right were his military commanders whom he’d introduced as his minister of defense, a plump tan-skinned woman named Lady who had severe eyes, and Commander of General Staff Kuw, a muscle-bound man with a shiny bald head who looked only a few years my senior. I recognized Kuw’s name. He was the one Okwu said had set the Root on fire. Even from where I stood, I could feel Okwu’s hatred for especially Kuw.
Scuttling behind them was the Khoush mayor of Kokure, Alhaji Truck Omaze. He nodded at me, flashing the same smile as when I’d stepped off the Third Fish days ago. Had he known of the plan to assassinate Okwu even back then at the launch port when things had so nearly gone wrong? If not at that point, he probably knew soon after we left for Osemba. I scowled back at him.
The Meduse chief came with two of its military heads, first-in-command Mbu and its second-in-command, named Nke Abuo. Unlike the clear-fleshed chief, Mbu and Nke Abuo looked blue and opaque like Okwu. Okwu stood between me and the Khoush.
I looked at both groups. Each seemed to be waiting for me to speak. I wanted to crawl into myself. I felt small. I opened my mouth and closed it. The Khoush king was looking at me like I was something useless. I glanced at the Meduse chief, whom I’d last seen while on a different planet, after I had saved everyone, after I’d been so brave. This was Earth, where I was just a Himba girl.
“The Himba Council haven’t arrived yet,” Mwinyi said, stepping up beside me.
“We’re not going to wait much longer,” King Goldie said, giving the Meduse chief a hard look.
“Neither will we,” the chief rumbled in Meduse.
“It said, ‘Neither will we,’” Okwu translated to Mwinyi.
We were all quiet. I glanced at the mound of char; Meduse rage and indignation flooded into me so suddenly that I twitched. The Khoush king was right here, before me. I spoke. “Do you know who I am?”
Goldie smirked and I felt angrier. “Of course I do. You’re more dignified and well-spoken than I expected.” He chuckled. “And at least I can hear you clearly. Himba women and girls are so soft-spoken.”
“Do you know what that mound is?” I asked.
Above, thunder rumbled and I felt even stronger. Before he responded, I let myself tree. My mind cleared and I thanked the Seven for that because of what King Goldie of the Khoush said next.
“Your family harbored the enemy,” he said, his smirk dropping completely. “They suffered the consequences.” He motioned to where the Root had been. “If it were up to me, that would be a hole in the ground.”
I felt my okuoko begin to writhe on my head and slap at my neck and back, but I held steady, equations circulating around my head. The golden ball in my pocket was warm and rotating. I took a deep, deep breath, imagining the air filling my toes all the way up my body as my therapist had taught me. Then, as she also taught me, I stepped back from all of them, looking every single one of them in the eye, ending with Goldie. But Goldie didn’t even notice.
He turned to his commander of general staff and said, “The Himba are a cowardly people.”
Kuw nodded. “They hide when they get scared. Like intelligent, innovative desert foxes.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but then closed it. I pressed my lips shut, shaking with anger as I looked around. Where was the council? I met Mwinyi’s eyes and he mouthed, “Just wait. They’ll come.” But every second was sending the plan closer to failure. Above, the storm churned in the sky, the thunder crashing now, lightning flashing. I called up a current to calm myself and let it linger around each of my hands. The feeling of the current and the way it drew from the lightning above without drawing the lightning down made me feel powerful. I stood up straighter.
“I will not speak to the Khoush,” the Meduse chief said to Okwu. “This is not how we agreed things would go.” Then to me, it said, “Binti, where are the men of your
council?”
Goldie had completely turned his back on me to speak with his commander and minister of defense. “I only gave this a chance because of my relationship to the president of Oomza Uni. A meeting of men and instead, only this foolish Himba girl is here. We should—”
It was the phrase “foolish Himba girl.” That’s what did it. In that phrase was condescension, a mockery of my high standing at Oomza Uni, a spitting on my family and the Himba as a whole. And where was the council? I didn’t care. My family was dead. Everyone kept dying in the ship. I saw Heru’s chest burst open again and I felt my okuoko writhing as every part of my being filled with rage. Doors deep within me flew open. All of them. All at the same time. My body waved forward, then backward, as I felt the current I was holding expand. Lightning flashed above and something in me decided to do something I’d never done: grab it.
I fell out of the tree. Then POW! the current I’d drawn poured into me.
I awoke. I knew something very, very important. I knew that everything depended on that moment. I wasn’t sure exactly how, but the destiny of my people was temporarily in my hands.
And so, I screamed, “I’m the one who called this meeting! This was my idea!” I faced King Goldie, my eyes wide and wild. He’d whirled around, gawking at me now. Current surrounded me in an electric blue spiral that felt warm on my skin and protective. At the same time, I spoke these words through my okuoko to the Meduse chief in my roughest Meduse. My hands moved as if owned by a part of myself that had its own intent and soon I was pushing those same words into the desert. When I did this, my world remained as it was . . . because it was already expanded.
The words returned to me as if whispered from afar. Not in text, but in sound. “You tell them, Binti.” It was my grandmother’s voice. With my peripheral vision, I saw Mwinyi suddenly turn and run toward the Root.
“I’m not crazy,” I said, addressing all. I faced King Goldie as I spoke. “I’m not small. I’m not foolish.” I paused for a moment. “Do any of you even remember why you started fighting? The Meduse tried to drain the lakes? The Khoush massacred a tribe of peaceful Meduse explorers? The Khoushland chief’s daughter was kidnapped? If I ask each of you the reason, you’ll cite different stories from so long ago that the grandchildren of the grandchildren of any possible witnesses are long dead.” I turned to the chief. “What do you want with these lands? Your god is water, maybe there was water when this war began, but this part of the Earth is parched of it now. In my town, the trees had to tell us where to find water so we wouldn’t die. Khoushland is mostly desert, while seventy-one percent of the Earth is water! Why not go there? There aren’t many humans who live on the oceans. You can frolic in those waters with no trouble. But you’d rather fight and die and kill for a drop of water in a dry land.”
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.
Binti, The Complete Trilogy: Binti ; Home ; The Night Masquerade Page 28