Binti decides that she mus return immediately. Her father tells her that she should stay where she is, because she is the one being sought, but the connection breaks. In the midst of that learning, Binti has a vision of her family in great danger. Heedless of the conflict brewing back at Binti’s home, her grandmother begins instructing her in the wisdom of the Enyi Zinariya, which she will need to know to claim her full inheritance, both among the people she grew up with, the Himba, and when she returns to the interstellar Oomza University. She learns that her edan, which she has only just begun to unlock while in a deep mathematical trance, is one such artifact. She has learned that, far from being subsistence-level savages, the Desert People, who call themselves Enyi Zinariya, have known for centuries that humanity is not alone in the universe and have harbored some artifacts of alien supertechnology for generations.

By the end of that novella, her paternal grandmother’s people have taken her out into the desert for considerably more time than they had initially promised when she agreed to go with them. In Binti: Home only her personal intervention prevented hostilities between the Khoush and the Meduse. And to be honest, the best thing that happens in Binti: The Night Masquerade, from a storytelling perspective, is a plot surprise a bit more than halfway through the novella, and I am not going to avoid talking about that either. It’s nearly impossible to talk about Binti: The Night Masquerade without discussing elements of Bin ti and Binti: Home, so I am not even going to try.

Binti the night masquerade