Nnedi Okorafor - Binti - The Complete Trilogy

“My name is Assistant Sagar,” our teacher said, a sleek hairless foxlike person with eyes on its snout who stood on two legs at my height. When it spoke, it touched something near its throat and though I understood it, I also heard other voices speaking at the same time, probably in languages the others could understand. I smiled, delighted. The way people on Oomza Uni were so diverse and everyone handled that as if it were normal continued to surprise me. It was so unlike Earth, where wars were fought over and because of differences and most couldn’t relate to anyone unless they were similar.

“This is a placement test,” Sagar said. “You will step up and face the group and tree as well as you can.”

“What if we can’t really do it well?” the one who looked like a giant crab made of diamonds asked. It was beside me and clearly agitated as each of its legs kept stamping on the grass, sending ntu ntu bugs leaping this way and that. I grinned again. I could understand it, too! Whatever Sagar was using to communicate with all of us, it connected our group as well. I turned to the group closest to me, which was a few feet away; all I heard were grunts, humming, and a “pop pop pop.”

Not one individual in my group could tree with difficulty, let alone with ease. When I took my turn, Sagar said, “Good. At least there’s one. And you might be the only one in the entire class today.” I was. In a class of over two hundred new students, I was the only one who could tree. This would not have been the case if all the other students on my ship hadn’t been wiped out; Heru could tree as well as I could. This added to the other reasons students mostly kept their distance from me. In that group, where we’d all stayed close to each other as we waited to be tested, as soon as I got up there, did what I could do, and then moved aside for someone else to try, I knew I was apart again.

After the last two students took their turns, I looked at the sky above. I’d once read about a phenomenon that happened in the colder parts of Earth when oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere collided with electrically charged particles released from the sun. The resulting swirls of green lights were beautiful and strange and though I never wanted to go to a part of Earth where there was snow and intense cold, I’d been curious what these lights would look like. As I stood away from my fellow students I realized that, with so many trying to descend into mathematical trance and call up current, the air had charged. The odd pinkish orange bright sky swirled with green-blue lights. I could even feel the charged air on my skin. I’d stood there for minutes looking up and reveling in the feeling of so much possibility and newness.

Now, in the Osemba House, I awoke feeling like I did that day on Oomza Uni—the hairs on my hands standing on end, the feeling of energy all around me. I opened my eyes and sat straight up. Mwinyi was nearby on his mat and he stirred but didn’t awaken. Then I heard it, a rumble from far away and a low haunted howling.

I got up and walked out the back door. Okwu was already there, floating easily before the fire. Its okuoko that were intact looked fully healed and the ones that had hanging tips were shorter, the tips having fallen off. But at least they were blue again.

“I thought you didn’t like the fire,” I said.

“I’ve grown used to it now.”

Warm wind blew off the desert and from afar I could see a flash of lightning.

“It’s still far,” Okwu said.

“But it’s coming,” I said. “It doesn’t rain much here. But I hope it’ll arrive after sunrise.” I paused and then asked, “Will your chief agree to a truce?”

Okwu didn’t answer for a long time and I began to wish I hadn’t asked.

“Meduse aren’t the problem,” Okwu finally said. “Your council must succeed. And I think you need to be careful.”

We left the Osemba House with about an hour until dawn. It was windy and the overcast sky made it even darker, and thus easier to see the occasional flash of lightning in the distance. I shut the door behind me and when I turned, I was shocked that I actually had a reason to smile.

“Oh!” I exclaimed as we left the Osemba House. “You’re glowing.”

Okwu, who’d regained most of its strength, vibrated its dome. “I took from your lake,” it said. “Those snails.”

“The clusterwinks?” I asked, gently touching its softly glowing blue dome. The bioluminescent snails lived in the lake and happened to be spawning when we arrived. Okwu had been covered with them when it had emerged from the lake yesterday.

“Yes,” it said. “When Meduse spend a lot of time with such things, we absorb their genetic coding and make it our own.”

“Is Binti going to start glowing too?” Mwinyi asked. I frowned at him as he snickered.

Okwu’s dome vibrated, but it said nothing.

Okwu’s glow came in handy. The overcast sky, blowing dust, and the Osemba-wide blackout left the streets darker than normal. With my astrolabe broken, I had nothing to help light the way. Even the glow from bioluminescent flowers on some of the homes and buildings was muted. We walked close to each other, this time completely alone and unwatched as we journeyed across Osemba back to the Root.

With each step I took through my hometown, I wondered what I was walking toward, purposely bringing myself closer to. I’d needed to reconnect with my family after I’d left the way I did and with all that went on to happen, but realistically, it was my own insecurities that brought me running home so soon. When the Meduse anger had come forth, I’d immediately assumed something was wrong with me instead of realizing that it was simply a new change to which I had to adjust. I’d thought something was wrong with me because my family thought something was wrong with me. And now my childish actions had brought death and war. What had I started? Whatever it was, I had to finish it.

The wind blew harder and I was glad for the layer of otjize I’d put on my skin and rolled over my okuoko . As we passed the group of Undying trees, Mwinyi and I pressed our hands to our ears and Okwu rushed up the road so fast that I lost sight of it. Mwinyi and I stopped, completely in the dark.

“Okwu!” I called. But the noise drowned out my voice. I called it through my okuoko . Far up the road between two homes, it stopped.

Just come, I heard it say in my mind. I cannot be near those evil trees.

I looked at Mwinyi.

“I have an idea,” I quickly said, trying not to look at the trees yards away that were vibrating so fast that they looked like a blur. I relaxed as I focused on the powerful gusty wind and raised my hands and typed through the zinariya as I spoke the words. The equation “w = ½ r A v3” floated in red before me, then it began to blow toward Okwu like a flag attached to an invisible pole in front of me. As I watched it, I raised my hands and called up a bright ball of current.

The dusty road, vibrating trees, the storefront across the street, and the people looking out the window from the home beside it were all illuminated by my light. Mwinyi and I took one look at the Undying trees and quickly moved on. Even when we caught up to Okwu, I continued to use my light. And in this way, as we reached the part of Osemba near my home where the Khoush had taken out their anger when they couldn’t find Okwu and me, we saw that several of the half-destroyed homes had caved in or toppled because of the wind. This last block of homes and buildings looked like the old images of Khoushland cities and towns during the Khoush-Meduse wars decades ago. Pockmarked walls, blasted homes, crumbled buildings. Sandstone wasn’t made to survive war, and stone buildings, like the Root, could be exploded to rubble and even burned.