I looked around. My world was stable. No expanding, no numbers, no words bouncing, crawling, oozing about with every sound I made. No tunnel in the distance. No feeling like the Earth would hurl me from its flesh into space. I sat back with relief. It was a dark night, the sky overcast with thick clouds. Our camel Rakumi was resting nearby, her saddle on the ground beside her. Mwinyi sat before the fire he’d built, eating. In the darkness, the fire was a welcome beacon. I stood up and then hesitated.
“I’m not Himba,” he said, without looking away from the fire. “Your otjize looks like adornment to me. You don’t look naked. Come and eat. We’re not staying here long.”
Regardless, as I crept up to him, I burned so hot with embarrassment that I could only approach walking sideways. I sat right beside him. This way, he’d have to make more of an effort to look at me. When I looked up, I noticed the dogs lying on top of one another on the other side of the fire, a pile of small bones beside them.
“Aren’t they wild dogs?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“So why are they still here?”
He shrugged. “The fire’s warm and they like me.” He turned to me. Surprised by his sudden look, my eyes grew wide and I crossed my arms over my chest and instinctively tried to pull my head into my top. It was such a silly thing to do that he grinned and laughed. I found myself smiling back at him. He had a nice smile.
He turned back to the fire and said, “And I gave them one of the rabbits I caught.”
I laughed, again.
“We made an arrangement,” he continued. “I feed them and they stay and stand guard for a few hours while you and I get more sleep.”
“They told you this?”
He nodded. “Wild dogs are free and playful, once you convince them not to attack you,” Mwinyi said. “I suspect we have until their bellies have settled and our fire dies down. I don’t think there are many other dangerous animals out tonight. But Binti, something’s clearly happening in your homeland… and maybe not just in your homeland.”
And what if it’s because of me? I thought. Maybe he was thinking it too because he was quiet and pensive and for several minutes neither of us spoke.
I changed the subject. “My best friend Dele… well, he used to be my best friend,” I said, gazing into the fire. “Now, I don’t think he’s a friend at all.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Mwinyi said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I think I lost all my friends when I left, really.” We were silent for a moment. I continued, “Dele was always interested in the old Himba ways. He knew everything. He was always talking about how we Himba see fire as holy. A medium to communicate with the Seven. Okuruwo, sacred fire.” I sighed, the warmth of the fire toasting my legs and face. “During Moon Fest, I’d sit beside Dele with the other girls and boys. While everyone else sang, I wanted to dance in front of the fire because I always thought the Seven preferred dance and numbers to singing. After I was tapped to be master harmonizer, Dele said I would be disgracing myself if I danced.” I frowned. When I’d last spoken to him, he’d been apprenticed to train as the next Himba chief; he’d looked and spoken to me as if I were a lost child.
“To us Enyi Zinariya, fire is sacred too,” Mwinyi said.
Something large and green zipped past my ear, zoomed a circle over the fire, and then plunged into it. There was a small burst of sparks and a soft paff!
“What was that?” I said, jumping up.
“Sit,” Mwinyi said. “And watch.”
I didn’t sit. But I watched.
A second later what looked like an orange, yellow, red spark the size of a tomato flew from the flames, shooting straight up into the black night sky. Then it silently went out.
“I thought you’d spent time in the desert before,” he said.
“Only during the day.”
“Ah, that explains why you’ve never seen an Icarus,” he said. “They’re large green grasshoppers who like to fly into fires. Then they fly out of the flames and dance with their new wings of fire and fall to the ground wingless. The wings grow back in a few days. Then they do it again. The zinariya says that some woman genetically engineered them as pets long ago.”
I looked around for the wingless grasshopper. When I saw the creature, I ran to it. I picked it up and held it to my face. It smelled like smoke. “Ridiculous,” I whispered as it jumped from my hand to the sand and hopped wingless into the darkness.
“Can… can you harmonize with them? Ask them why they do it?” I asked, coming back to the fire.
“Never bothered. I doubt they know why they do it, really. It’s how they were programmed by science, I guess.”
“Well, maybe,” I said. “But I’m sure they rationalize it somehow.”
“True. I’ll ask one someday.”
I sat down at my spot and as I did, he moved his hands before him and then asked, “How are you feeling?”
“Who wants to know?” I asked.
“Your grandmother.”
“Why doesn’t she ask me?”
He cocked his head and laughed. Then moved his hands again. Moments later, my world began to expand and I shrieked. The words came at me like a cluster of beasts zooming from the depths of the desert. I thought they were going to smash into me, so I raised my hands to protect myself. Bright like sunshine the words read, “ARE YOU ALRIGHT?”
“Okay,” I whispered, still hiding behind my raised hands. “Tell her I am okay.”
The words receded, but my world did not stop expanding. I touched the ground, grasping cool sand with my fists and digging my feet into it. I felt better.
“Ariya says don’t try to use the zinariya except with me,” Mwinyi said. “Give it about a week. You have to ease into it or it’ll make you really ill. Focus on what’s ahead more than what’s behind, for now.”
I nodded, rubbing my temples.
“Do you want to hear how I learned I was a harmonizer?” he asked, after a moment.
I nodded, digging my fingers and toes deeper into the sand. Anything to take my mind from the terrible feeling of leaving the Earth.
“When I was about eight years old—”
I gasped. “I was eight when I found my edan!” I said. “Is that when you—”
“Binti, I’m telling you the story of it. Just listen.”
“Sorry,” I said, wishing everything would stop undulating.
“So, when I was eight, I walked out into the desert,” he said. “My family was used to me doing this. I never went far and I only went during the day, in the mornings. I would walk until I could not see or hear the village.”
I smiled and nodded, the thought taking my mind off my rippling world a bit. I, too, had loved to walk into the desert when I was growing up. Even though I was never supposed to. And doing so changed my life.
“This day, I was out there, listening to the breeze, watching a bird in the sky. I unrolled my mat and sat down on a patch of hardpan. It was a cloudy day, so the sun wasn’t harsh. They came from the other side of a sand dune behind me, or maybe I’d have seen them. I hadn’t heard them at all! They were that quiet. Or maybe it was something else.”
“What? What were ‘they’?” I asked. “Another tribe?”
He nodded. “But not of humans, of elephants.”
My mouth fell open. “I’ve never seen one, but I hear they hate human beings! The Khoush say they kill herdsmen and maul small villages on the outskirts of—”
“And they always kill every human being they come across, right?” he asked, laughing.
I pressed my lips together, frowning, and unsurely said, “Yes?”
“Because I’m actually a spirit,” he said.