Was it the presence of the moth, tumbling and fluttering between the metal triangles? I do not know. There was always so much I didn’t know, but not knowing was part of it all. Whatever the reason, suddenly my edan was shedding more triangle sides from its various pyramid points and they joined the rotation. What remained of my edan hovered in the center and from the cavernous serenity of meditation, I sighed in awe. It was a gold metal ball etched with deep lines that formed wild loops but did not touch, reminiscent of fingerprint patterns. Was it solid gold? Gold was a wonderful conductor; imagine how precise the current I guided into it would move. If I did that, would the sphere open too? Or even… speak?
The moth managed to break out of the cycle and as soon as it did, my grasp slipped. As Professor Okpala would have said, I fell out of the tree. The mathematical current I’d called up evaporated and all the pieces of my edan fell to the floor, musically clinking. I gasped and stared. I waited for several moments and nothing happened. Always, the pieces rearranged themselves back into my edan, as if magnetized, even when I fell out of the tree.
“No, no, no!” I said, gathering the pieces and putting them in a pile in the center of my bed. I waited, again. Nothing. “Ah!” I shrieked, near panic. I snatched up the gold ball. So heavy. Yes, it had to be solid gold. I brought it to my face, my hands shaking and my heart pounding. I rubbed the pad of my thumb over the deep labyrinthine configurations. It was warm and heavier than the edan had ever felt, as if it had its own type of gravity now that it was exposed.
I was about to call up another current to try to put it back together when something outside caught my eye. I went to my window and what I saw made my skin prickle and my ears ring. I stumbled back, ran my finger over the otjize on my skin, and rubbed it over my eyelids to ward off evil. My bedroom was at the top floor of the Root and it faced the west where my brother’s garden grew, the backyard ended, and the desert began.
“May the Seven protect me,” I whispered. “I am not supposed to be seeing this.” No girl or woman was. And even though I never had up until this point, I knew exactly who that was standing in my brother’s garden in the dark, looking right at me, pointing a long sticklike finger at me. I shrieked, ran to my bed, and stared at my disassembled edan. “What do I do, what do I do? What’s happening? What do I do?”
I slowly stepped back to the window. The Night Masquerade was still there, a tall mass of dried sticks, raffia, and leaves with a wooden face dominated by a large tooth-filled mouth and bulbous black eyes. Long streams of raffia hung from its round chin and the sides of the head, like a wizard’s beard. Thick white smoke flowed out from the top of its head and already I could smell the smoke in my room, dry and acrid. Okwu’s tent was several yards to the right, but Okwu must have been inside.
“Binti,” I heard the Night Masquerade growl. “Girl. Small girl from big space.”
I moaned, breathless with terror. My oldest brother, father, and grandfather had seen the Night Masquerade at different times in their lives. My father on the night he became the family master harmonizer over two decades ago. My oldest brother on the night he’d fought three Khoush men in the street outside the market when they’d wrongfully accused him of stealing the fine astrolabes he’d brought to sell. And my grandfather, when he was eight years old on the night after he saved his whole village during a Khoush raid by hacking the astrolabes of the Khoush soldiers to produce an eardrum-rupturing sound. Only men and boys were said to even have the ability to see the Night Masquerade and only those who were heroes of Himba families got to see it. No one ever spoke of what happened after seeing it. I’d never considered it. I’d never needed to.
I ran to my travel pod and pulled out a small sealed sack I’d used to store tiny crystal snail shells I’d found in the forest near my dorm on Oomza Uni. I dumped them onto my bed, where they crackled and began to turn from white to yellow as they reacted to the dry desert air. I bristled with annoyance. I’d brought the shells to show my sisters and now they’d be dust in a few minutes.
I pushed them aside and put the pieces of my edan into the transparent sack, wincing at their clinking and clattering. The gold sphere with its fingerprint-like ridges was still warm. I paused for a moment, holding it. Would it melt or burn the sack? I put it inside; the sack was made from the stomach lining of a creature whose powerful stomach juices could digest the most complex metals and stones on the planet. If it could withstand that, it certainly could contain my edan’s warm core.
I’d just put the sack into my satchel when there came a hard knock at my door. I twitched as the noise sent me back to the ship when the Meduse had knocked so hard on my door. I covered my mouth to hold in the scream that wanted to escape, then I shut my eyes. I took a deep lung-filling breath and let it out. Inhaled again. Exhaled. No Meduse at the door, Binti, I thought. Okwu is outside and it is your friend. The knock came again, followed by my father’s voice calling my name. I ran to the door and opened it and met his frowning eyes. Behind him stood my older brother Bena, also frowning.
“Did you see it?” my father asked.
I nodded.
“Kai!” Bena exclaimed, pressing his hands to his closely shaven head. “How is this possible?”
“I don’t know!” I said, tears welling in my eyes.
“What is it?” my mother asked, coming up behind him, rubbing her face. The otjize on her skin was barely a film. Normally only my father would see her like this.
My younger sister Peraa peeked from the staircase. She was the eyes of my family, silent and curious about all things. Had she seen it, too? I wondered.
Somehow, my father knew she was there, and he whipped around to shout, “Peraa, go back to bed!”
“Papa, there are people outside,” she said.
“People?” Bena asked. “Peraa, did you see anything else?”
Before she could respond, my father asked, “What people?”
“Many people,” Peraa said. She was out of breath and looked about to cry. “Desert People!”
“Eh?!” my father exclaimed. “What is happening tonight?” Then he was storming down the hall to the stairs, my brother rushing after him.
“Wait,” my mother said, holding a hand up to me. “Go in, apply otjize. Put on your pilgrimage attire.”
“Why? That’s not for…”
“Do it.”
Peraa was still standing at the top of the staircase, staring at me. I motioned for her to come, but she only shook her head and went downstairs.
My mother’s eyes migrated to my otjize-rolled okuoko.
“Do those hurt?” she asked.
“Only if you hurt them.”
“Why’d you have to do it?”
“Mama, would you rather I died like everyone else on that ship?”
“Of course not,” she said. She seemed about to say more, but instead she just said, “Hurry.” Then she turned and quickly headed down the staircase.
I applied my otjize and put on my pilgrimage clothes. The otjize would rub off onto my clothes making tonight the outfit’s official event, not my pilgrimage, blessed on this day by my otjize. So be it, I thought. Before I went out to the front door, I snuck to the back of the house. Okwu was waiting for me. “There are people standing around your home,” it said in Meduse.