The Night Masquerade (Binti, #3)(18)

Daily, women from this side of Osemba came to collect water to drink, for the water here had a refreshing taste and settled upset stomachs in a way that the water pumped around town from the underground river did not. My mother would venture to this side of town once in a while and when she brought home the strange water, we’d all fight each other for our tiny cup of it that we’d sip after dinner. In the back, the outdoor meeting grounds faced the open desert.

“Let’s go around,” I said. “That’s where they’ll be.” I wasn’t sure how anyone would tolerate the three of us, tainted individuals by Himba standards, walking so close to the Sacred Well.

Okwu stopped for a moment and seemed to contemplate the building. When I turned to look at it, I laughed despite everything. “The Himba are a passive-aggressive people,” it said in Meduse.

I nodded. “We have ways of making our point strongly without saying a word.” It was only now, after being so close to a Meduse, that I gazed upon the Osemba House and realized it looked very much like a Meduse, the enemy of a people who treated the Himba like intelligent slaves. Everything is so complicated and connected, I thought. Everything. And nothing is coincidence, or so my mother used to always say. The space between my eyes stung. “Used to.” No longer. I walked faster.

Before I came around the side of the building, I heard the fire. The Sacred Fire was always burning, but only when an Okuruwo was called was it grown to this size. They all turned. They had all been waiting for us. Five old men, including Chief Kapika, two old women, including Titi—the woman who led the pilgrimage into the desert—and one young man.

I sighed, my eyes meeting the young man’s eyes. It was Dele, my best friend who’d stopped being my best friend when I snuck away to attend Oomza Uni. Who over the last year had decided to grow a beard and was tapped to become an apprentice to Chief Kapika. I had spoken to him just before the Enyi Zinariya came for me. He’d contacted my astrolabe. We’d spoken briefly and he’d looked at me with a pity so painful I’d been glad when the conversation was over. The last thing he’d said to me was, “I can’t help you, Binti.”

They all sat around the fire, the men wearing deep red kaftans and pants and the women wearing clothes similar to mine, a red wraparound skirt and a stiff red top. Both Titi and the other women had otjize rolled locks, braided into tessellating triangle patterns and extending down their backs. Dele’s head was shaven on both sides, the dense hair on top twisted into a thick braid that extended behind his head like a horn, stiff with a thin layer of otjize.

“Come,” Chief Kapika said.

Okwu’s voice came to me as if it were thrown. I don’t like fire, it said.

I approached the Himba Council. It won’t hurt you if you don’t get too close, I responded. Stay behind me. I glanced at Mwinyi and he gave me a brief nod. I led the way, Mwinyi behind me and Okwu behind him. I still wore my pilgrimage outfit that my mother had bought me. Fine, fine clothes for one of the finest moments in my life. But now the red skirt was caked with sand and my stiff top was dirty with my own sweat and old otjize. And my family was dead.

They sat around the Sacred Fire, Dele on the other side, beside Chief Kapika and another man, the two women on both sides of me, Titi to my right. I took a seat in the space made for me, completing the circle, and Mwinyi and Okwu settled behind me.

I lowered my head. “I’m honored that the Himba Council has answered my call for this … Okuruwo,” I said, speaking the word a bit too loudly as I pushed it from my lips. “Thank you.”

“The council recognizes its daughter,” all of them responded. Except Dele, who said nothing. But he was not here as an elder, so he could not speak as one.

“Binti,” Chief Kapika began. “You left us like a thief in the night, abandoning your family—”

“I didn’t ‘abandon’ my family,” I insisted.

“You gathered us here tonight, small woman,” Titi snapped at me. “Don’t interrupt an elder.”

I fought my indignation and the others waited to see if I could control myself. I exhaled a long breath and lowered my eyes.

“You abandoned your family,” Chief Kapika repeated. “Like a thief in the night. For your own needs. Nearly died for your decision and were forced to accept a partnering with the Meduse in order to survive.” He paused, looking at the others. “But blood is thicker than … water. Like a good Himba, you came home. But you brought the enemy of a people who sees us as less than they are. And when the Khoush came for it, they came for us, too. Now there is war in our homes and around our lands again. Instigated by the actions of one of our own, you. Your lineage here is dead and you’ve bonded with the savage other part of your bloodline … why shouldn’t we simply run you out of Osemba?”

I looked up sharply. Angry. “Because the Himba do not turn their own out. We go inward. We protect what is ours by embracing it,” I said. “Even when one’s bloodline is … dead.” I paused, the rage and the sight of the roaring fire making me feel more powerful. I stood up before the Sacred Fire. “I left because I wanted more,” I said. “I was not leaving my family, my people, or my culture. I wanted to add to it all. I was born to go to that school and when I got there, even after everything that happened, that became even clearer. I fit right into Oomza Uni.