I lowered my head, pressing my edan to my belly. Just as Okwu told me. I could hear others behind me. They could have stung me a thousand times.
“You know what they have taken from me,” the chief asked.
“Yes,” I said, keeping my head down.
“My stinger is my people’s power,” it said. “They took it from us. That’s an act of war.”
“My way will get your stinger back,” I quickly said. Then I braced myself for the rough stab in the back. I felt the sharpness press against the nape of my neck. I bit my lower lip to keep from screaming.
“Tell your plan,” Okwu said.
I spoke fast. “The pilot gets us cleared to land, then I leave the ship with one of you to negotiate with Oomza Uni to get the stinger back… peacefully.”
“That will take our element of surprise,” the chief said. “You know nothing about strategy.”
“If you attack, you will kill many, but then they will kill you. All of you,” I said. “Ahh,” I hissed as the stinger pointed at my neck was pressed harder against my flesh. “Please, I’m just…”
“Chief, Binti doesn’t know how to speak,” Okwu said. “Binti is uncivilized. Forgive it. It is young, a girl.”
“How can we trust it?” the Meduse beside the chief asked Okwu.
“What would I do?” I asked, my face squeezed with pain. “Run?” I wiped tears from my face. I wiped and wiped, but they kept coming. The nightmare kept happening.
“You people are good at hiding,” another Meduse sneered. “especially the females like you.” Several of the Meduse, including the chief, shook their tentacles and vibrated their domes in a clear display of laughter.
“Let Binti put down the edan,” Okwu said.
I stared at Okwu, astonished. “What?”
“Put it down,” it said. “You will be completely vulnerable. How can you be our ambassador, if you need that to stay safe from us.”
“It’s what allows me to hear you!” I shrieked. And it was all I had.
The chief whipped up one of its tentacles and every single Meduse in that enormous room stopped moving. They stopped as if the very currents of time stopped. Everything stopped as it does when things get so cold that they become ice. I looked around and when none of them moved, slowly, carefully I dragged myself inches forward and turned to see the Meduse behind me. Its stinger was up, at the height of where my neck had been. I looked at Okwu, who said nothing. Then at the chief. I lowered my eyes. Then I ventured another look, keeping my head low.
“Choose,” the chief said.
My shield. My translator. I tried to flex the muscles in my hands. I was greeted with sharp intense pain. It had been over three days. We were five hours from Oomza Uni. I tried again. I screamed. The edan pulsed a bright blue deep within its black and gray crevices, lighting up its loops and swirls. Like one of the bioluminescent snails that invaded the edges of my home’s lake.
When my left index finger pulled away from the edan, I couldn’t hold the tears back. The edan’s blue-white glow blurred before my eyes. My joints popped and the muscles spasmed. Then my middle finger and pinky pulled away. I bit my lip so hard that I tasted blood. I took several quick breaths and then flexed every single one of my fingers at the same time. All of my joints went CRACK! I heard a thousand wasps in my head. My body went numb. The edan fell from my hands. Right before my eyes, I saw it and I wanted to laugh. The blue current I’d conjured danced before me, the definition of harmony made from chaos.
There was a soft pap as the edan hit the floor, rolled twice, then stopped. I had just killed myself. My head grew heavy… and all went black.
The Meduse were right. I could not have represented them if I was holding the edan. This was Oomza Uni. Someone there would know everything there was to know about the edan and thus its toxicity to the Meduse. No one at Oomza Uni would have really believed I was their ambassador unless I let go.
Death. When I left my home, I died. I had not prayed to the Seven before I left. I didn’t think it was time. I had not gone on my pilgrimage like a proper woman. I was sure I’d return to my village as a full woman to do that. I had left my family. I thought I could return to them when I’d done what I needed to do.
Now I could never go back. The Meduse. The Meduse are not what we humans think. They are truth. They are clarity. They are decisive. There are sharp lines and edges. They understand honor and dishonor. I had to earn their honor and the only way to do that was by dying a second time.
I felt the stinger plunge into my spine just before I blacked out and just after I’d conjured up the wild line of current that I guided to the edan. It was a terrible pain. Then I left. I left them, I left that ship. I could hear the ship singing its half-word song and I knew it was singing to me. My last thought was to my family, and I hoped it reached them.
Home. I smelled the earth at the border of the desert just before it rained, during Fertile Season. The place right behind the Root, where I dug up the clay I used for my otjize and chased the geckos who were too fragile to survive a mile away in the desert. I opened my eyes; I was on my bed in my room, naked except for my wrapped skirt. The rest of my body was smooth with a thick layer of otjize. I flared my nostrils and inhaled the smell of me. Home…
I sat up and something rolled off my chest. It landed in my crotch and I grabbed it. The edan. It was cool in my hand and all dull blue as it had been for years before. I reached behind and felt my back. The spot where the stinger had stabbed me was sore and I could feel something rough and scabby there. It too was covered with otjize. My astrolabe sat on the curve of the window and I checked my map and stared outside for a very long time. I grunted, slowly standing up. My foot hit something on the floor. My jar. I put the edan down and picked it up, grasping it with both hands. The jar was more than half-empty. I laughed, dressed and stared out the window again. We were landing on Oomza Uni in an hour and the view was spectacular.
They did not come. Not to tell me what to do or when to do it. So I strapped myself in the black landing chair beside the window and stared at the incredible sight expanding before my eyes. There were two suns, one that was very small and one that was large but comfortably far away. Hours of sunshine on all parts of the planet were far more than hours of dark, but there were few deserts on Oomza Uni.
I used my astrolabe in binocular vision to see things up close. Oomza Uni, such a small planet compared to Earth. Only one-third water, its lands were every shade of the rainbow—some parts blue, green, white, purple, red, white, black, orange. And some areas were smooth, others jagged with peaks that touched the clouds. And the area we were hurtling toward was orange, but interrupted by patches of the dense green of large forests of trees, small lakes, and the hard gray-blue forests of tall skyscrapers.
My ears popped as we entered the atmosphere. The sky started to turn a light pinkish color, then red orange. I was looking out from within a fireball. We were inside the air that was being ripped apart as we entered the atmosphere. There wasn’t much shaking or vibrating, but I could see the heat generated by the ship. The ship would shed its skin the day after we arrived as it readjusted to gravity.
We descended from the sky and zoomed between monstrously beautiful structures that made the skyscrapers of Earth look miniscule. I laughed wildly as we descended lower and lower. Down, down we fell. No military ships came to shoot us out of the sky. We landed and, moments after smiling with excitement, I wondered if they would kill the pilot now that he was useless? I had not negotiated that with the Meduse. I ripped off my safety belt and jumped up and then fell to the floor. My legs felt like weights.