I picked up the jar and held it between my palms. It was also warm, as if it had absorbed the sun. I put on my favorite red wrapper and matching top, one of the outfits I’d brought with me when I’d first arrived on Oomza Uni. The material was soft and worn from many washings and wind faded because I’d gone off into the desert many times wearing this very outfit.
The night of my return, I’d gone to the usual spot in the nearby forest to collect the clay. I’d dug a small hole and marked it with twigs and, apparently, while I was away one of the round-bodied beasts I’d seen a couple times had made the place its rest spot. The top layer of clay was coated with rough black hairs and pressed with hooved footprints. I scraped off this layer and dug out a large clump of the clay. I mixed it with the special black flower oil I still had in my room and then I started counting down.
Now I whispered, “Zero,” and twisted the jar open. The smell that wafted out made me grin. I looked at the Night Masquerade costume I’d hung on the wall beside the window and said to it, “Yes. It’s ready.” I dug my right index and middle fingers into it, my two fingers I’d had since I was born. Then I smeared it on my left hand, thinking hard about the fact that this was the first time it had ever had otjize on it. It went on smooth, like something that belonged there. Then I fell into my routine. I always ended with my face.
With a sigh, I dug out a large dollop and massaged it into my cheeks. For the first time in a while, I felt like myself. When I was done applying it to my skin, I started rolling it on my ten okuoko, hiding the clear blue with speckles at the tips. Because they were so long, they required quite a bit of otjize. As I started rolling the last one between my palms, I heard the sound of metal clinking and then a soft hum from behind me.
Slowly, I turned around. There on my desk, the golden ball and its triangle metal slivers were rising and hovering about five inches in the air. As I watched, the pieces were drawn to the rotating golden ball. They clinked some more as they reattached themselves, trying one shape and then shifting to another. Stellated, square, star, cylinder. I crept over to it, my hand still clutching my last otjize-free okuoko.
I quickly climbed the tree, grasping at the Pythagorean theorem. I called up a current as I brought my face about a foot from it. The moment I held up my hands, the current softly buzzing between them, the pieces suddenly decided to stick. I actually felt the force the golden ball made in order to pull the metal pieces to it. Then the object fell to my desk with a thunk.
“What?” I asked, touching the tip of the shiny silver pyramid it had become.
When it did nothing else, I went back to my jar of otjize and finished doing my hair. I rubbed a bit more into the five anklets I now wore on each ankle, took a last look at my new edan, and then left to meet up with Mwinyi, Okwu, Haifa, and the Bear. When school started back up in a few Earth days, I’d have something interesting to show Professor Okpala. However, for the time being all I cared about was finally seeing the Falls with my friends.
And when we got there, it really was like witnessing a beautiful dream.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Three Augusts in a row, Binti’s story came to me. It happened each time I returned to Buffalo, New York, after spending the summer with my family in the south Chicago suburbs of Illinois. In the August of 2016, I wanted to take a break from writing. I didn’t think I’d have the ending to Binti’s story for a while, years even, and I was fine with that. Then I sat down one evening and the entire story came to me. First the end, then the middle, then the beginning.
Over three days, I scribbled down the plot in the little Ankara cloth-covered journal I’d bought in the Lagos airport. But I didn’t answer the call to adventure immediately. I had courses to teach and another novel to edit. I went to South Africa and gazed at the Lion’s Head, went to the Arizona desert and followed a Pepsis wasp, I saw the White House while it was still worth seeing, and I had a conversation about microbes with a Ph.D. student during a lunch with the African Cultural Association at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. When winter break arrived, the moment I took off my professor hat to give the writer’s cap that I always wear some fresh air, whatever it is that takes hold of me to make me write descended on me.
So first and foremost I want to thank that thing that grabs, that whispers, that urgently tells. I’d like to thank my Ancestors, who walk in front of, behind, beside, fly above, and swim beneath me. Thanks to my daughter, Anyaugo, for demanding to know what happened to Okwu. Thanks to my editor Lee Harris and my agent, Don Maass, for their excellent feedback. And thanks to my beta reader Angel Maynard, who responded with, “Mind blown!” after reading the first clean draft. And finally, thank you to the rest of my immediate family, my mother, sisters Ifeoma and Ngozi, brother Emezie, nephews Dika and Chinedu, and niece Obioma. Without you all energizing my life, the Binti Trilogy would never ever have happened. I love you all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nnedi Okorafor was born in the United States to two Igbo (Nigerian) immigrant parents. She holds a PhD in English and was a professor of creative writing at Chicago State University. She has been the winner of many awards for her short stories and young adult books, and won a World Fantasy Award for Who Fears Death. Nnedi’s books are inspired by her Nigerian heritage and her many trips to Africa.
Also by Nnedi Okorafor
DAW Books proudly presents the novels of Nnedi Okorafor:
WHO FEARS DEATH
THE BOOK OF PHOENIX
BINTI: THE COMPLETE TRILOGY
Binti | Binti: Home | Binti: The Night Masquerade
with Binti: Sacred Fire
Newsletter
Copyright
BINTI copyright © 2015 by Nnedi Okorafor.
BINTI: HOME copyright © 2017 by Nnedi Okorafor.
BINTI: THE NIGHT MASQUERADE copyright © 2018 by Nnedi Okorafor.
BINTI: SACRED FIRE copyright © 2019 by Nnedi Okorafor.
All Rights Reserved.
Jacket art by Greg Ruth.
Jacket design by Jim Tierney.
Book designed by Fine Design.
DAW Book Collectors No. 1813.
Published by DAW Books, Inc.
1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.