The Night Masquerade (Binti, #3)(29)

Just as quickly as it began, it was over. At least, on Himba soil. Not over, elsewhere. I could hear the battle raging high above and something huge crashed to the ground nearby. I could not tell, for Okwu was still holding me inside its body. As Okwu lifted off me, I felt myself fading. I could actually hear my blood draining into the desert sand beneath me. My back stung in a distant way. My chest was wet and cool, open. My legs, whether they were just torn up or actually torn off, were gone.

Limply, I raised my arm and let it drop to my nose. I sniffed the otjize on it and it smelled like home. I heard Mwinyi calling me as he fell to his knees beside me. He was shaking and shaking, his eyes wild. His beautiful bushy hair covered with dust and sand. But I was smelling home. I closed my eyes.

Death is always news.





Chapter 6

Girl

Mwinyi was screaming.

He looked down at her again and kept screaming and screaming and screaming. Her chest was smashed and burned open, bone, sinew, and flesh, red, yellow, and white. Her legs were each a mangle of meat. Her left arm had been blown off. Only her right arm, face, and tentacles were untouched.

Mwinyi had been at what was left of the Root when it all fell apart. He’d turned and seen the Meduse chief and Khoush king both looking at Binti with awe and respect. He’d heard Binti laughing. He’d been proud. He’d seen the leaders walking away. Then he’d turned to what he’d come to see and it had all happened behind his back. By the time he reached her, she was gone.

Okwu floated on Binti’s other side, its tentacles touching her torn-up arm and pulling back, touching and pulling back. It could feel the battle happening above, but it stayed with Binti, allowing the others to know that the one who’d become family through war had been killed. They fought harder and angrier because Okwu stayed, because Okwu felt.

Mwinyi looked up, his mouth in an open wail. He was so numb that the sight of the raffia monster running wildly toward him did not startle him. It roared, shoved Mwinyi aside with long sticklike hands, and threw off its head of wooden faces. Mwinyi fell to the side and then stared back at the creature. Not creature, Night Masquerade. The Night Masquerade was mourning Binti.

*

Dele had forgotten all protocol. Last year he’d been initiated into the secret society through which the Night Masquerade spoke. He’d joined just after Binti had left. Learning the chants from the elder men, taking in the smoke from the burned branch of an Undying tree, and seeing the friends of the Seven had all helped him forget about Binti. Then he’d been tapped for grooming as the next Himba chief. He’d been so proud and felt strong, though he hated the scratchy beard he’d had to grow. Throughout, however, no matter how hard he’d worked to forget her, he’d sorely missed Binti.

Days ago, during a meditation with the elders, the elders had all agreed that Binti should see the Night Masquerade. Chief Kapika had been the one in costume standing outside her window. Dele had hated this; Binti was a girl and she’d abandoned her own destiny. And the elders hadn’t even bothered telling him Chief Kapika had decided to show Binti the Night Masquerade again yesterday.

However, last night during the Okuruwo meeting, Dele had had a change of heart about Binti. He’d listened to her speak, watched her closely, and realized she was the Binti he’d known all his life and she was amazing. The elders were the elders for a reason. Even in their own bias, they’d still been able to see and admit to each other what he couldn’t up to now … but the elders were deeply flawed, too. Hours ago, he’d joined them in a second meeting, this time in the quiet of the desert a mile from Osemba. Dele had thought they were just gathering to go to the Root as a group. When the elders had all agreed to forgo brokering a truce and to sacrifice Binti instead, Dele couldn’t believe it.

And so, he’d stolen the Night Masquerade costume. The moment he put it on, he knew what he was to do. And because when a man wears a spiritual costume, he is not himself, Dele found it easy to go to the Root. And there he placed himself where she would see him, hoping she would be encouraged.

And Binti had succeeded. He’d seen it even from where he stood on the road. She’d channeled deep culture! He’d felt the power of it shivering through the ground, into his feet, halfway up his legs like electricity, like current. Like almost all the other kids in Osemba, he didn’t know how to call up current. He’d only watched Binti do it over the years, glad the practice wasn’t his calling. Now, he was watching her do what only a handful had ever done in Himba history. And she used it to convince the leaders of the Khoush and Meduse people to stop fighting for good. She had truly been Osemba’s master harmonizer.

Dele stared down at her face now. So beautiful, though the otjize on her face was partially rubbed off, her strange tentacles spread over the sand. Limp. It came from deep within his soul, the keening. He threw his head back and opened his mouth wide, tears dribbling from the sides of his eyes. The horror of it squeezed at his heart. He threw aside the leather gloves that made his hands long and sticklike and tore at the Night Masquerade costume, pulling at the raffia, tearing at the blue-and-red cloth.

*

Mwinyi stood up and walked away, his blue garments darkened with Binti’s blood and his eyes toward the sky. The fighting had moved toward Khoushland and that was best for them.

“Okwu,” he called, hoarsely.

“Yes,” the Meduse said, floating over to him.