The Night Masquerade (Binti, #3)(23)

“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 disappearing 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.