The Bear walked around it and then entered through an opening I hadn’t noticed before.
“The Bear isn’t going to know what silk is, Binti,” Haifa said, following the Bear inside.
“Ancient Meduse used to carry these,” Okwu said, following Haifa. “We called them tinana, ‘in-body outside-home’.”
I stood there for a moment, then grabbed my satchel and went inside. The tent’s ground was spongy and I paused, immediately reminded of the Meduse ship. I put my satchel down beside me and sat down. I looked up at the sky, which I could see right through the membrane more clearly than with my naked eye.
“Some sleep then we head back to the shuttle before the sun comes up,” Haifa said. “Binti, no arguing.”
“I’m not.” I turned to gaze at the fire, which was still raging.
“Well, just in case, you better start treeing or something, because if you freak out again, we will all definitely die out here,” Haifa said.
Okwu was hovering before my satchel. “What are you doing,” I asked, twisting to look up at it. Then my satchel twitched and right before my eyes, not four feet from my face, Okwu brought out its stinger. Now I was screaming for a second time in less than 24 earth hours, and I did it so loudly that I tasted blood in my throat. I stared at its stinger in horror as I rolled over and scrambled on my hands and knees to the other side of the tent. The Bear joined me there, hairs on her body shuddering against my arm. Haifa was on her feet, fists raised.
“I am protecting you, Binti,” Okwu said. Its stinger was still out. White as a giant tooth, sharp because it was not only stinger, but also giant knife. My satchel kept twitching and Okwu leaned toward it.
“Maybe something crawled into it from outside,” Okwu said.
“Do you have to have that… that thing out?” I asked. I let myself climb into the tree, grasping at the soothing equation of f(x) = f(-x).
My satchel twitched again, this time enough to move the entire thing. “Binti,” Haifa said. “You saw Zerlin, correct?”
“And two of her friends, yes… I did,” I said. “In Math City, just outside the building my professor’s office is in.”
“Were any of them near your satchel? At any time? Even for a second?”
I thought about it. The clarity of the tree made it easy to play it all back. “Yes, sort of. Zerlin. She came up next to me, when I was trying to put out my skirt. Come to think of it, I thought she was trying to steal my satchel.”
Suddenly, Haifa raised her voice in a battle cry. She ran at my satchel, grabbed it and ran then leaped out of the tent. She tumbled and threw the satchel toward the fire. It landed just far enough to not burst into flame.
I ran out. “My otjize’s in there.” Still treeing, I was calm enough to take it all in. Okwu and the Bear came out, too.
“Yeah, well, I still should have thrown it right in the fire because something else is in there, too,” Haifa said, still breathing hard. “Alghaza… invaders. Burrowing Oomza insects who when they get in your dorm room will turn everything upside down when they can’t find a way out of the room immediately. Zerlin probably put them in there. It’s something students like to do to new students. She deserves to be hit with many shoes.”
I blinked with surprise. Then I burst out laughing. Back home, “deserving to be hit with many shoes” was an expression I only heard the elders use.
My satchel twitched violently and then in the firelight, a rip appeared in the side. They were large like scarab beetles and even in the firelight I could see that they were a bright metallic green with golden legs. Six of them emerged from my satchel, all in a line. They moved, then stopped, moved then stopped, all in unison, as if hearing and dancing to some sort of music. Their insectile feet ground on the sand loudly enough to hear from where I stood as they emerged from my satchel one by one.
Crunch crunch crunch… crunch crunch crunch… crunch crunch crunch. When the last insect came out, on the third crunch, it hooked its leg to my satchel and with incredible strength for an insect of this size, flipped my satchel over a yard away.
“What’ll they do now?” Haifa said. “I saw someone’s dorm room infested with these and they went right to turning the place upside down. What if there’s nothing to turn upside down?”
The bugs began to trudge around the fire in a strange procession. For over five minutes, they crunch crunch crunch stopped crunch crunch crunch stopped. Okwu lost interest and went back into the tent where it hovered low, resting.
“Are they going to do that all night?” Haifa groaned. Then eventually she went back into the tent, too. The Bear and I stayed and watched. The Bear, like me, was a mathematics student and I knew she saw it, too. The insects walked and stopped in a series of three walks to one stop. They stayed an exact distance from each other. And they moved around the fire that was so precise that after a while there was a deepening groove of circular perfection.
Then, just like that one of them opened its wings and slowly, very very noisily flew off into the darkness beyond the firelight. The noise was so loud that I could still hear it when another decided to do the same thing. “Haifa, Okwu, look!” Then another one slowly flew off. And another. The last one walked a full circle around the fire and then it too flew off. Judging from the buzzing noise, the others had waited for the last one to join them. Then gradually, their noise faded into the darkness along with their shiny bodies.
“So that’s what alghaza do when out in the open!” Haifa said, looking up off into the darkness of the desert.
“A bird can’t fly in a cage?” I said. It was one of my ex-best friend Dele’s favorite quotes. The Bear and I looked at the night sky for a little longer and when nothing else buzzed or glinted in the firelight, we went into the tent. I fell asleep minutes after drinking a cup of capture station water. I slept deep and I slept well. The desert always has the answers.
I woke to the sound of my astrolabe buzzing softly from inside my satchel. I opened my eyes to the first sun shining through the sheer material of the Bear’s tent. I was resting my head on my satchel and the sound was annoying. “Quiet,” I whispered. “I’m up.” My astrolabe stopped buzzing.
Feet away, the Bear stood, snoring softly and beside her Haifa was sprawled out, also deep in sleep. I wiped my eyes and rolled onto my back and stretched. Something was on my toe. I gasped when I looked. A sand-colored small bat-like creature with a wide head that reminded me of a camel was looking back at me. In its strange mouth, it carried a golden alghaza eggshell it must have fished from my satchel. It snapped it up as it eyed me, its furry body warm on my toe. I grinned, slowly sitting up. “You’re an usu ogu!”
Taking care not to move my leg, I slowly reached into my satchel and brought out my jar of otjize. The creature cocked its head; it didn’t seem to fear me at all, which was no surprise. Usu ogu were said to be quite intelligent and this one clearly understood that none of us were a threat… or maybe that eggshell was just that delicious. I opened the jar and dipped a finger inside. I brought my edan from my pocket and rubbed the bit of otjize on the point of the edan with the spiral that always reminded me of a fingerprint. Slow circular motions. I dropped into mathematical trance, a cold stone in cold water; I climbed into the tree, splitting and multiplying. I aimed my blue current into the edan and on its own, it connected with the usu ogu.