The Night Masquerade (Binti, #3)(42)

“Take your sandals off,” I said to Mwinyi.

He quickly did so, looking around with awe at the blue dome. He was grinning again, something he’d been doing since we’d landed on Oomza Uni. He laughed to himself with glee when he set foot on the soft grass of President Haras’s office. “I can hear them here, too,” he said. He giggled.

“What is wrong with Mwinyi?” Okwu asked me in Meduse, as we walked toward President Haras.

“He can talk to living things,” I said. “And do something called ‘deep grounding.’ Plus, he’s never been on a different planet.”

“Will his happiness kill him?” Okwu asked.

“President Haras,” I said, ignoring both Okwu and Mwinyi, who was still giggling, and looked at the grass.

“Welcome back, Binti and Okwu,” it said in Otjihimba. It stood in the center of the dome and for a moment, it completely disappeared and then it was back. I was used to this, but Mwinyi was not and behind me, I heard him gasp. “Just in time for some rest and then the start of the next academic cycle. You will be staying for that?”

“Yes,” Okwu and I said.

“Good,” it said. “And my greatest welcome is to you, Mwinyi Njem of the Enyi Zinariya.”

“I am so happy to be here, President Haras,” Mwinyi said.

“You are also the first of your people to be here,” President Haras said. “The Zinariya have written research papers about your ancestors and speculated about your people in current times. From what I understand, a group of Zinariya students wants to reconnect with your people. It’s been a long time.”

When Mwinyi only stared at President Haras with his mouth hanging open, President Haras chuckled. “You are a harmonizer?”

“Yes, Mma,” he said. Then he frowned. “I’m sorry. I don’t know if … do I call you Oga? President? In my village, we have only men and women and some who are both, neither, or more, but all human. At least, since the Zinariya left us long ago.”

“What do you call Okwu?”

“I just go with what Binti says,” he said. “But in my head, I often call it ‘he.’”

Beside me, Okwu puffed out a burst of gas and I looked at my feet smiling.

Mwinyi looked at me and then Okwu, then shrugged.

“You may call me ‘Mma,’ if you like,” President Haras said.

Mwinyi nodded. “Thank you, Mma.”

“So,” President Haras said, turning and scuttling toward the far side of the dome. The three of us followed. President Haras always liked to walk in circles around the dome as it spoke. It looked up through the top of the high ceiling at New Fish, who hovered just above the building. “Things didn’t go as expected?”

We told it everything, me talking sometimes, other times Okwu and Mwinyi. President Haras clicked its forelegs and a few times seemed to completely disappear as it listened, but was mostly quiet and fully present physically. I couldn’t help crying when I talked about when the Root was burned and I was sure my family was dead. Mwinyi told President Haras about what he’d seen from afar when I stabbed the owl-like creature’s feather into my flesh to activate the zinariya. He’d said it was like something had erupted. “The ground shook enough for small cracks to open up around me and from where the Ariya’s cavern was, or at least near it. And there was a blast of blue-purple light,” he said. “But it rose and fell like water.”

When I’d come back to myself, the Ariya’s clothes had been on fire and I’d been horrified that I’d somehow called up current and lost control of it. What Mwinyi described was even stranger. When Okwu told of its killing of all those Khoush soldiers as my home burned with my family inside it, I felt a rush of hot fury and pleasure. My parents had not died, but the Root, a place dearer to Osemba Himbas than even the Osemba House, had been burned down out of Khoush spite. The Khoush did not get to walk away free from that. I knew my glee at hearing about the justified killing was part of my Meduse side and it bothered me … but not as much as it would have a few weeks ago. I let myself feel it.

As we told it all, we walked and walked the circle of the president’s office. Only as I told of my death and New Fish’s resurrection of me did President Haras stop walking to ask questions.

“But they agreed on the truce,” it said. “Why did they start warring?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Someone shot at the Meduse chief and then everything just exploded.”

“The Khoush are a terrible people,” Okwu said.

I frowned, looking at it. “The Meduse killed my friends in cold blood,” I said. “A ship full of unarmed students and professors who’d have been happy to talk things through and help get the stinger back. How different are the Meduse?”

“We acted out of duty, loyalty, and honor, Binti,” Okwu said.

I was shaking now, the tips of my okuoko quivering and against my back. I was seeing Heru again, his chest exploding. And not for the first time, I wondered if that stinger had been Okwu’s stinger. It could have been. At the time, I did not know Okwu very well. My memory could not identify it among the many Meduse committing moojh-ha ki-bira right before my eyes. Even when I was later stung in the Meduse ship, Okwu had been beside the chief, but I’d seen Okwu move very fast, it could have zipped behind me in that moment.