Nnedi Okorafor - Binti - The Complete Trilogy

I brought out the small washcloth I always carried and my jar of otjize .

“Are you alright now?” Okwu asked, hovering close behind me.

I slowly used the washcloth to rub off the dried otjize from my arms and then I’d get to my face. Back home, I’d never have done this in front of my parents, let alone my friends. “I’ve dragged you all out here,” I muttered. “Sorry.” I touched my okuoko and more otjize flaked off. I could see the blue of them beneath it in the bright moonlight. I frowned.

“A nice walk usually makes me feel better,” Haifa said. Then she laughed loudly and said, “Seriously, though, I hope we don’t die out here.” She laughed again.

“That would not be a respectable death,” Okwu said.

I flaked more otjize off my okuoko . My left eye twitched and I grabbed one of my okuoko . It hurt. “Okwu,” I said. “Why’d you do this to me?” I turned to it. I waited, breathing heavily. In the light of the moon, the smoothness of its blue dome perfectly reflected the sand.

“Our chief demanded it,” Okwu said.

“But it’s my body,” I screamed at it. “I went into the Meduse ship for peace. Your people, you all just… why couldn’t you have just asked ?! Let… let me choose?!”

“Not everything can be a choice.”

Five five five five five five . I calmed. I could see it even in the ripples of the sand. Back home, I’d been born able to tree and I’d been born with the skill to call up current, to harmonize. When I honed that skill, it bloomed with ease and joy because I was moving in the direction of the Seven. And so my family, my people decided my fate. Or so they thought.

I got up, my legs shaking. I stared at the dried bush. I broke the number sixty-four in half, broke it again, then again, then again as I called up a current. I held up my left hand, letting the current circulate in my palm like a tiny burning planet. Then I whipped my hand toward the dried bush and let it shoot right into its center. Crack!

“Binti!” Haifa exclaimed, jumping back as the bush burst into flame, lighting the desert around us. Okwu moved away, too. Not far behind Okwu, I saw something skitter away.

“Back home, the Himba view the okuruwo as the gateway to the Seven,” I said, as the fire grew. The warmth it gave off was nice in the cooling desert air. “ Okuruwo means ‘sacred fire’ in my language. The council elders keep it burning so that we are always connected to the Seven. Heat, fire, smoke, it all leads to the Seven.” I stepped a few feet to my right so that I was in the path of the smoke as the breeze blew. I let the smoke wash over me. “Centuries ago, Himba women would take smoke baths because they believed it cleaned them more deeply than water,” I said. Yet it’s unbreathable, like Okwu’s gas , I thought.

I brought out my edan and held it in my bandaged hand. I glared at it, the smoke obscuring me from the others for the moment as the desert night breeze blew. I touched the many points of its stellated cube form. It had saved my life and built a bridge of communication between myself and a prideful murderous tribe and I still didn’t know what it was. If I hadn’t found it in the desert back when I was eight years old, would I still be home?

A tiny bit of blood had seeped through my bandage, a tiny red flower. Like the red flower on Heru’s chest. Instead of casting the thing into the fire, I opened my mouth and inhaled the fire’s smoke. My chest felt as if I’d lit it afire and I coughed violently.

“Eeeeeeeeee!!”

I jumped, still coughing, unconsciously putting my edan in my pocket. Okwu, who’d been beside me, suddenly was not. I whirled around. Something near the fire was exploding! Haifa was jumping in the flames and tackling it.

The Bear had caught fire! I ran to Haifa who was rolling the Bear this way and that, trying to put out the Bear’s hair. “Throw sand! Throw sand!” I shouted. Okwu started whirling around like a top. I’d never seen it do that. Its whirling sprayed the Bear with copious amounts of sand. I scuttled about throwing sand, too. And all through, the Bear continued shrieking, “Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

When the fire was out, the Bear was left with a large patch of her hair burned away, revealing a bald spot of black flesh just above one of her thick legs. I saw that the Bear actually had three thick stumpy brown legs, which explained how she moved so agilely.

I lay on the sand beside the Bear as she sighed softly. Haifa lay where the Bear’s chest would have been had she had a chest. Okwu hovered beside us. “Fire can be an evil spirit,” it said.

“Why’d you have to get so close?” Haifa breathed, looking angrily at the Bear.

“Fire’s the gateway to the Seven,” I said, staring at the sky.

“It beautiful,” the Bear said.

“You should privilege life before beauty,” Okwu said.

I rolled my eyes.

The Bear was okay. It turned out that within an hour, her hair began to grow back over the bald spot and the burned flesh, though still tender, was already healing. Her kind of People were hearty. I realized that her foolish behavior wasn’t as perilous as it looked, just painful and a bit embarrassing. Even more fascinating, in a pouch near her chest, the Bear carried a sheer cloth-like thing that she could stretch into a large tent. The Bear was of a nomadic people who could sleep anywhere in comfort. With the items in my satchel and dragging my friends along, I’d come far more prepared for a night in one of Oomza Uni’s deserts than I could have ever imagined.

It took the Bear minutes to set up what I could only call… a flesh tent. It wasn’t part of her flesh, but it was made of her flesh, at least according to Haifa. The Bear placed the small square on the ground. It might have been a light purple, but in the firelight this was difficult to tell. The Bear stepped on the square and began to tap at different spots on it with her several toes. With each tap, a part of it unfolded and unfurled like the wings of a butterfly, until eventually the Bear stepped back and it was as if the thing had a life of its own… and really did become a delicate creature not so unlike a butterfly.

“What is this?” I asked, laughing, as I stepped up to it. The size of my dorm room, it was oval shaped with a sheer texture like a tinted bubble. I poked at it. “It feels like silk. Do you spin silk? That’s beautiful!”

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.