The Night Masquerade (Binti, #3)(7)

“Can … can you harmonize with them? Ask them why they do it?” I asked, coming back to the fire.

“Never bothered. I doubt they know why they do it, really. It’s how they were programmed by science, I guess.”

“Well, maybe,” I said. “But I’m sure they rationalize it somehow.”

“True. I’ll ask one someday.”

I sat down at my spot and as I did, he moved his hands before him and then asked, “How are you feeling?”

“Who wants to know?” I asked.

“Your grandmother.”

“Why doesn’t she ask me?”

He cocked his head and laughed. Then moved his hands again. Moments later, my world began to expand and I shrieked. The words came at me like a cluster of beasts zooming from the depths of the desert. I thought they were going to smash into me, so I raised my hands to protect myself. Bright like sunshine the words read, “ARE YOU ALRIGHT?”

“Okay,” I whispered, still hiding behind my raised hands. “Tell her I am okay.”

The words receded, but my world did not stop expanding. I touched the ground, grasping cool sand with my fists and digging my feet into it. I felt better.

“Ariya says don’t try to use the zinariya except with me,” Mwinyi said. “Give it about a week. You have to ease into it or it’ll make you really ill. Focus on what’s ahead more than what’s behind, for now.”

I nodded, rubbing my temples.

“Do you want to hear how I learned I was a harmonizer?” he asked, after a moment.

I nodded, digging my fingers and toes deeper into the sand. Anything to take my mind from the terrible feeling of leaving the Earth.

“When I was about eight years old—”

I gasped. “I was eight when I found my edan!” I said. “Is that when you—”

“Binti, I’m telling you the story of it. Just listen.”

“Sorry,” I said, wishing everything would stop undulating.

“So, when I was eight, I walked out into the desert,” he said. “My family was used to me doing this. I never went far and I only went during the day, in the mornings. I would walk until I could not see or hear the village.”

I smiled and nodded, the thought taking my mind off my rippling world a bit. I, too, had loved to walk into the desert when I was growing up. Even though I was never supposed to. And doing so changed my life.

“This day, I was out there, listening to the breeze, watching a bird in the sky. I unrolled my mat and sat down on a patch of hardpan. It was a cloudy day, so the sun wasn’t harsh. They came from the other side of a sand dune behind me, or maybe I’d have seen them. I hadn’t heard them at all! They were that quiet. Or maybe it was something else.”

“What? What were ‘they’?” I asked. “Another tribe?”

He nodded. “But not of humans, of elephants.”

My mouth fell open. “I’ve never seen one, but I hear they hate human beings! The Khoush say they kill herdsmen and maul small villages on the outskirts of—”

“And they always kill every human being they come across, right?” he asked, laughing.

I pressed my lips together, frowning, and unsurely said, “Yes?”

“Because I’m actually a spirit,” he said.

I shivered at his words, thinking, Is he?

Mwinyi groaned. “Haven’t you learned anything from all this? What’d you think I was a few days ago? What did you think of all Enyi Zinariya?” I didn’t respond, so he did. “You thought we were savages. You were raised to believe that, even though your own father was one of us. You know why. And now I’m sitting here telling you how I learned I was a harmonizer and you’re so stuck on lies that you’d rather sit here wondering if I’m a spirit than question what you’ve been taught.”

I sighed, tiredly, rubbing my temples.

Mwinyi turned to me, looked me up and down, sucked his teeth, and continued, keeping his eyes on me as he spoke. Probably enjoying my discomfort with his gaze. “They rushed up to me,” he said. “The biggest one, a female who was leading the pack. She charged at me. When you see elephants coming at you as you sit in the middle of the desert … you submit. I was only eight years old and even I knew that. But as she came, I heard her charge, ‘Kill it! Kill it!’ I looked up and I answered her. ‘Why?!’ I shouted. She stopped so abruptly that the others ran into her. It was an incredible sight. Elephants were tumbling before me like boulders rolling down a sand dune. I will never forget the sight of it.

“When they all recovered, she spoke to me, again, ‘Who are you? How are you able to speak to us?’ And I told her. And I told her that I was alone and I was a child and I would never harm an elephant. The others quickly lost interest in me, but that one stayed. She and I spoke that day about tribe and communication. And for many years, we met there when the moon was full, as we agreed. A few times we met when I needed her advice, like when my mother was ill and when I quarreled with my brothers who were bigger and older than me.”

“What of your sisters?”

“I don’t have any,” he said. “I’m the youngest of six, all boys.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s strange.”

“What’s stranger is that I’m the only one who doesn’t look like he could crush stone with his bare hands,” he said, smiling ruefully. “Even Kam, who’s a year older than me, just won the village wrestling championship.”