“Oh,” my father peeped, turning to walk backward as Okwu and I followed. “I really enjoy the way you speak our language. Did my daughter teach you?”
“Yes,” Okwu said. “She is a good teacher.”
“She’s a true master harmonizer,” my father said, turning around.
I bit my lip and said nothing.
When we rounded the corner into the back, I was glad to have something to change the subject. “You can credit me for this,” my father said, turning to us with his arms out. Okwu thrummed with pleasure from deep in its dome.
“Oh, Papa,” I said, laughing. “This is amazing.”
Okwu moved past him to the large transparent tent. It touched the flap and a doorway sized just larger than Okwu’s body opened, lavender gas billowing out. Okwu floated inside, the flap closing behind it.
“I’m a master harmonizer too,” Papa said, looking at me and winking. “And a good researcher. Once I knew the components, it was easy to build a machine that creates their breathing gas. It’s similar to the gas produced in some of the spouts near the Khoushland volcanoes.”
“This was all your idea?” I asked, grinning.
“Of course,” he said. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend… even if it’s a monster.”
“Okwu isn’t a monster, Papa.”
“It nearly killed you on that ship and it nearly killed us all at the launch port.” When I opened my mouth to protest, he held up a hand. “It’s the job of the master harmonizer to make peace and friendship, to harmonize. For you to befriend that thing, you’ve done well.”
I gave him a tight hug. “Thank you.”
Okwu didn’t come out, except to thank my father and say, “I am very comfortable in here. You are Binti’s father.”
My bedroom was the same as when I’d left it. My table was messy with astrolabe parts, bits of wire, and sandstone dust; my closet was closed and my bed was made. There was a package on my bed wrapped in thin red cloth. I smiled. Only my mother would wrap a gift with such care, and always with red cloth. I turned it over, rubbing a hand across the smooth coolness of it, and set it back on my bed. I’d open it later, when things were quiet.
I went to my travel pod and brought out the dress I’d bought in Oomza Uni on a rare occasion where I’d gone shopping. Long and flowing, its design was vaguely Khoush, but mostly something else, and it was sky blue, a color Himba rarely wore. I put it on. When I came downstairs to join everyone in the meeting room, I immediately regretted wearing it. Stupid stupid, stupid, I thought, looking around. I’ve been away too long. Feeling the burn of everyone’s stares, I made a beeline for my mother, who’d just gone into the kitchen.
Two of my mother’s older sisters stood over a huge pot full of boiling rice and another bubbling with bright yellow curried goat stew. My mother lifted the heavy lid of a pot full of red stew so she could dump in a large plate of roasted chicken wings. My stomach grumbled at the sight of it all. With all the delicious exotic foods I’d eaten and prepared in my dorm kitchen on Oomza Uni, nothing compared to a simple plate of spiced rice and spicy red stew with chicken.
“Mama,” I said, keeping my voice down so my aunties wouldn’t hear. “When do this season’s group of women leave for pilgrimage? I couldn’t calculate the time or access news of the leaves from off planet.” I chuckled nervously looking at my mother, whose eyebrows raised. The pilgrimage time was calculated through numbers based on the current composition of local clay and written on three large palm tree leaves. These leaves were passed from home to home over a month until all Himba knew.
“You want to go on your pilgrimage?” my mother asked.
I nodded. “I want to see everyone, of course, but this is why I came home, too.”
My mother and I said it simultaneously, “It’s time.” Then we both nodded. She reached out and carefully touched my okuoko. She took one in her hand and squeezed it. I winced.
“So they aren’t hair anymore,” she said.
“No.”
I glanced at my aunties’ turned backs. I knew they were listening, as they stirred what was in the pots.
“It did this to you?”
“They,” I said. “Not Okwu… I don’t think.” I paused, remembering the moment when the stinger was plunged into my back as I knelt before the Meduse chief trying to save my life, those Meduse and the lives of so many others on Oomza Uni. “Really, I don’t know if it was Okwu; I didn’t see.”
“They’re a hive mind,” she said. “So it doesn’t matter.” She was rubbing the otjize off to reveal the true transparent blue of them with darker blue dots on the tips. I held my breath, as she inspected me with a mother’s eye and hand. She whispered softly and I held still. My mother only used her mathematical sight to protect the family. Now she used it to look into me. Deep.
She’ll see everything, I thought. Seconds passed, her hand grasping my okuoko, her eyes boring into me, her lips whispering simple, but intuitively smooth equations that slipped away from my ears like oil from soap. I shifted from one foot to the other and prayed to the Seven that she wouldn’t start calling on Them to “come exorcise her polluted daughter” like some distraught mother in the overly dramatic newsfeed shows my sisters enjoyed watching. Suddenly, my mother let go of my okuoko and looked at me with clear eyes. Blinking. She lifted my chin. “The women leave tomorrow.”
My eyes grew wide. “Oh no! But… but I just got here!”
“Yes. For such a gifted harmonizer, your timing has always been awful.”
“My pilgrimage dress. Is that what’s in this package?” I asked.
She nodded.
“You knew.”
“You’re my daughter,” my mother said. When she pulled me to her and hugged me tightly, I rested my head on her chest and sighed. “Even if you’re wearing these strange blue clothes that make you look like some sort of masquerade.”
I burst out laughing.
All nine of my siblings came to my welcoming dinner, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews. Chief Kapika of the local Himba Council came too, as did his second-wife Neeka. Only my best friend Dele remained missing. He hadn’t been at the launch port, either. I was disappointed, but I would track him down early in the morning, before I left for my four-day pilgrimage.
“What kind of dress is that?” my sister Vera asked, as I stepped from the last stair into the crowded meeting room. “You look like some kind of mermaid masquerade. Maybe you should go greet Mami Wata at the lake.” She laughed at her own words.
I prickled. Vera was eleven years older than me, inches taller, and so beautiful that she’d had her pick of husbands from fifteen amazing suitors five years ago. She’d chosen a man who was handsome like a water spirit and an extremely successful astrolabe seller, to my father’s delight. Vera was also the most outspoken about my “irresponsibly selfish choice” to leave. She held her two-year-old son on her hip and he looked at me with wide eyes and a precious grin.
“Little Zu seems to like my dress,” I said.
“Zu likes anything strange,” she said, putting Zu down. He stepped up to me and grasped the bottom of my dress to look at it more closely. “I’m kidding,” Vera said. “Honestly, I expected you to come back wearing a skintight spacesuit or something. This isn’t so bad. And we’re all relieved that you made it home safely.”
She gave me a tight hug.
“Thanks,” I said.
And that was how the night began. As expected. I had a chance to catch up with several of my age mates, all of whom were proudly betrothed, boys and girls. I was relieved, though slightly bothered, that none of them asked if I were here to enter a betrothal too. Chief Kapika gave a speech about Himba pride. “And now our Binti Ekeopara Zuzu Dambu Kaipka of Osemba is back with us; now the community can contract back into itself like a self-protecting flower. We are all here. And that is good.” When he’d finished talking, everyone applauded. I’d smiled, uncomfortably. I was returning to Oomza Uni in two months for the beginning of next quarter, but I didn’t have to tell everyone this yet.