The Night Masquerade (Binti, #3)(25)

“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 = ? 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.

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 Khoush land? Further west? The skyline seemed to be crowded with sky whales. They flew smoothly, despite the high winds and charged air.