The Night Masquerade (Binti, #3)(27)

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.