The Night Masquerade (Binti, #3)(13)

“A bird who has flown off the earth and then returns to land is still on the land,” it said. “Remove your shoes and listen.”

Phoom! The smoke from its head was copious now and when it finally cleared, the Night Masquerade was gone.

“Oh, thank the Seven,” I whispered. But its presence stayed with me and its words echoed in my mind. I looked down at my dusty sandals. I’d bought them on Oomza Uni in the local market. They were made from the secretions of a friendly spider that lived in swamps. When fresh, the webbing could be molded into anything. When it dried, it kept that shape for a thousand years, the seller told me.

I was considering taking them off when Mwinyi called, “Binti. Come here.”

He and Rakumi were on the other side of the house and as I jogged there, I felt faint. My family was in the cellar. Dead. Had they burned? Suffocated first? “We cannot get out,” my father had said. I stopped and realized that beside me were the charred remains of the sandstorm analyzer my brother had built and placed on the roof. The steel box with its optical particle counters looked like the discarded head of a primitive robot. He’d been so proud of that instrument and so had my mother.

As I ran around the side of the house, I stopped again. My mouth fell open. Then I shut it because I could taste the stench through my mouth just as much as I could smell it through my nose. There were bodies all over and vultures stood and were pecking at some of them. Khoush soldiers. Men and women. With their chests burst open. I twitched and I was back on the ship in the middle of space. The smell of blood and now decay. How is that possible? I thought, because my stunned senses were telling me I was alone on the Third Fish again and the Meduse had just performed moojh-ha ki-bira. It had just happened.

Happened.

No warning.

So many.

I saw stars. Red and blue and silver. Bursting before my eyes. My mouth was full of decay, as it hung open, trying to pull in air. Now I couldn’t breathe. None around me were breathing. I stumbled, gasping, and one of the vultures lazily spread its wings and hopped away.

I blinked and I was back at the remains of the home where I’d been born. The violence was here now. I’d brought it by leaving home and coming back home. I was hyperventilating now. What did my therapist Saidia Nwanyi say I should do when I can’t breathe? I thought. I put my hands behind my head, though doing so made me feel more exposed to the gruesome sight before me. There had to be fifteen, maybe even twenty bodies strewn about like fallen trees. “Five, five, five, five, five,” I chanted as I let myself tree. Each time the number left my lips, I was able to take in more breath. And with each breath, I came back to myself. The moment I could move, I fled.

When I reached the back of the house, I stepped onto a sheet of solid yellow glass. It cracked and shattered beneath my foot. I took another step and stopped, realizing this was the spot where Okwu’s tent had been. Mwinyi stood in the blackened center. Not far to the left was what remained of my brother’s garden, a charred skeleton of tomato bushes and ash. Rakumi sniffed the greener parts and began munching on a tomato bush.

“Did you see—”

“Yes,” he said, still looking at the cracking glass beneath him.

“I think Okwu did that,” I said.

“Maybe because the Khoush did this,” he stamped on the glass and his sandal went right through it, shards flying this way and that.

I shut my eyes and took deep breaths, holding myself shallowly in the tree, numbers and equations cartwheeling and floating around me. “This explosion would have killed anything it hit,” I said. “Unless Okwu wasn’t in the tent.”

“I don’t think they killed it,” Mwinyi said.

“Why?”

“Your family was hiding inside the Root when they set it on fire.” He paused to inspect my face. “They burned the Root because they couldn’t find you or … or Okwu.”

The idea hit me so hard that when I turned and ran off, I didn’t care about the possibility of glass cutting my feet through my sandals.

The road into town was dusty and my sandals kicked it up with every step. Even as I ran further and further from home, the air continued to smell of smoke. The Yennes’ house was still burning. The Mahangu building was blown to bits. The Omuzumbas’ house was still intact and I glimpsed someone on the balcony watching me run by. How many others were watching me run down the road? How many had fled the destruction?

A Khoush ship had just flown by, which meant they were still in the area. I didn’t care. I passed the remains of the souq, where it looked as if the market’s women and men had left everything behind in a rush. There were overturned tables and booth dividers and in some places crushed and rotten meat, vegetables, piles of grains, and crushed baskets. The smell of spices, snuff, and incense mixed with the stench of smoke here. I leapt over an overturned bench. Sweat was pouring down my face now, and my heart felt like it would smash through my chest.

I stopped at the lake and stood there. Its water was so serene that it looked like the glass burned into the sand where Okwu’s tent used to be. “So calm in all this chaos,” I said, breathing hard. The sweat was getting into my eyes, so I wiped my hand down my face. My hand came away red orange with otjize. I heard someone behind me.

“What … are … you doing?” Mwinyi asked, jogging up. He bent forward to catch his breath, putting his hands on his knees. “We don’t know if the Khoush are around here!”