“Lie down, little one.” Ma rips open the gunnysack with brutal efficiency. Her voice, however, is soft. In the sky overhead, two moons shine full and bright, one yellow and one blue. A beautiful night, Papa said earlier this evening. Perfect for the moon festival. For lovers to unite. For spirits to leave their graves and meet the sky goddess in her cloudy home.
“Am I”—my voice catches—“am I going to meet the goddess tonight, Ma?”
“No, daughter.” Ma’s hard hands push down my head, rub earth over my face. “You are destined to live long and burn bright. To end all this. You will not let our sacrifice go in vain. Now close your eyes.”
In the years to come, I will wish I had listened to her this one final time. But I don’t—and so I see everything that happens next.
My mother’s hands glow green with magic, scouring the soil from her hands and her dress. A shadow covers the doorway to the terrace.
“Where is she?” the woman with the musical voice asks.
“Gone.” Ma’s voice brings goose bumps to my skin, even though the night is warm. “You’ll never find her.”
“Don’t play with me, foolish farmer!” The arrow tip of the atashban glows red with magic against the Sky Warrior’s shoulder. “Where is she?”
“I am not playing.” My mother holds up the sickle that normally hangs on the wall at the back of our house, used to harvest wheat and safflower during the Month of Flowers. Tonight, though, the crescent blade glows faintly pink at the edges when Ma dives in, slicing into the tunic sleeve of the Sky Warrior, who dodges the blow.
“A farmer with the spirit of a fighter.” The Sky Warrior sounds mildly intrigued. “A shame that we must meet like this today. A shame your death magic isn’t as strong as mine.”
Shadows struggle above me. Something clatters to the floor. Then, a scream that could have been a laugh of triumph. The air clouds with the rust-metal smell of blood. My mother drops to the floor between me and the dark shadow of the Sky Warrior, a thin red line curving her neck. The Sky Warrior wipes the bloody dagger with the edge of her long blue tunic. She looks around, kicks at the gunnysack, still half-filled with dirt.
“Are you in there, little witch? Or have you suffocated and made my life easy?”
I bite back a shout when the hammered heel of a boot presses over my palm. Tears bleed out, along with urine: a hot trail inside my woolen leggings. My mouth fills with the taste of brass. The Sky Warrior peers into the ground. She is staring right at me, the lower half of her face covered by the same sort of cloth that winds around her helmet. Her eyes narrow for a brief moment, but she does nothing. For some reason, she does not appear to see me.
A clatter of boots up the stairs. “Major Shayla, we searched the whole house,” a woman says. Her face is similarly masked. “No sign of the girl.”
The Sky Warrior straightens. “Send Emil ahead of us to look, Alizeh. The little witch couldn’t have gone too far.”
Her boot rises off my hand. She follows the woman back into the house without another glance at the damp patch of earth she just stood on, or the layer of girl underneath.
When someone dies, even a loved one, grief takes a back seat. Terror reigns in me, instead, for a good hour, the ebony star on my arm aching like a wound.
Ma tried so hard to get rid of my birthmark, even going so far as to try to burn it off my skin when I was five. It was the first time my magic resurfaced: when my fear made the fire ricochet off my skin and race up the long sleeve of Ma’s favorite blue tunic. Knives did not seem to do the trick, either, my fear once more shielding me, hardening my skin to the consistency of metal. Armor.
“A protection spell,” Ma muttered back then, almost as if it was as big a curse as the birthmark. My mother said the spell was a sign of the magic lying dormant within me, except that I had no control over it, no way of summoning any of its power or harnessing it at will. By the time I turned nine, my parents withdrew me from school because it got too difficult to explain why, out of an entire classroom of reasonably competent magi children, my performance remained the worst.
“Perhaps you should take her to the tenements outside the village,” the schoolmaster suggested quietly. “Non-magi children don’t have to go to school; they don’t have to worry about any of these things.”
“You mean non-magi aren’t allowed in schools with magi anymore,” Papa responded in a cold voice.
“Savak,” Ma told Papa. “Now is not the time—”
“Where is your honor, schoolmaster?” Papa demanded, ignoring Ma’s terrified face. “Why do you still keep this in your school?”
He pointed to a scroll that spelled out the Code of Asha hanging on a nearby wall. A system developed by the first queen of Ambar, the code declared that every human, regardless of gender, or magical heritage, must be treated with honor and respect. Originating first in Ambar, the code spread across Svapnalok before the Great War. It had been our kingdom’s greatest contribution to the united empire.
“You go too far, Savak ji!” the schoolmaster exclaimed. “How dare you question my honor!”
Ma finally put an end to what might have been a major shouting match between the two men by fervently apologizing to the schoolmaster and pulling my father out of the classroom.
Later that evening, when she found me crying at home, Ma gave me a warm hug. “Don’t be sad, my child. Look at the positive side. This way, you get a reprieve from five more tedious years of school.”
“You don’t mean that,” I said in a thick voice.
