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.
ALSO BY NNEDI OKORAFOR
Binti
Binti: Home
Remote Control
Who Fears Death
Kabu Kabu
Lagoon
The Book of Phoenix
YOUNGER READERS
Zahrah the Windseeker (as Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu)
The Shadow Speaker (as Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu)
Akata Witch
Akata Warrior
The Girl with the Magic Hands
Long Juju Man
About the Author
NNEDI OKORAFOR was born in the United States to two Igbo (Nigerian) immigrant parents. She holds a Ph.D. in English and is an associate professor of creative writing, currently teaching at the University at Buffalo. She has won many awards for her short stories and young adult books, including the Wole Soyinka Africa Prize for Literature, the Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa, Le Prix Imaginales (Best Translated Novel), the Carl Brandon Parallax Award, the Black Excellence Award for Outstanding Achievement in Literature, and the Strange Horizons Readers Choice Award for Nonfiction. She has also been a finalist for the Essence Magazine Literary Award, the Tiptree Award, a British Science Fiction Association Award (Best Novel), and the Theodore Sturgeon Award. She was also a nominee for the NAACP Image Award, among others. Nnedi’s stories are inspired by her Nigerian heritage, her many trips there, and her travels around the world. Her first published adult novel, Who Fears Death, won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and her first novella for Tor.com, Binti, won the Nebula and the Hugo Awards. Nnedi lives in Illinois with her daughter, Anyaugo, and family. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1: Aliens
Chapter 2: Orange
Chapter 3: When Elephants Fight
Chapter 4: Homecoming
Chapter 5: Homegoing
Chapter 6: Girl
Chapter 7: The Root
Chapter 8: Space Is the Place
Chapter 9: Awake
Chapter 10: Stones of Saturn
Chapter 11: Ntu Ntu Bugs and Sunshine
Chapter 12: President Haras
Chapter 13: Medical
Chapter 14: Shape Shifter
Acknowledgments
Also by Nnedi Okorafor
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
BINTI: THE NIGHT MASQUERADE
Copyright © 2017 by Nnedi Okorafor
All rights reserved.
Cover illustration by Dave Palumbo
Cover design by Christine Foltzer
Edited by Lee Harris
A Tor.com Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-9313-5 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-0-7653-9312-8 (ebook)
eISBN 9780765393128
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First Edition: January 2018
Nnedi Okorafor, Binti: The Night Masquerade
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