“Now there’s a girl who’ll end up alone,” a voice says somewhere behind me.
I freeze up, my shoulders stiff as old wood. I can’t even make myself turn around, or look to see who else they might be talking about. I don’t have to, anyhow. I know it’s me.
“No surprise there,” another voice says. “Shame her parents’ll have to keep her. No one else will.”
I make myself turn to the side and stump away, back toward Ani, because I don’t need to see who’s talking to know which boys they are. And anyway, I won’t end up alone. I’ve got my sister Niya, same as she’s got me.
“What is it?” Ani asks as I reach her. She glances past me. “Were those boys bothering you?”
“No.” My voice is hard and flat. I try to ease it a bit. “They didn’t say a word to me.”
“Yeah, well, that’s Finyar’s son; he’s always full of ugly things. Want me to punch him for you?”
I laugh, taken back to that day Ani and I became friends a good dozen years ago, when she punched a boy who was heckling me and then proceeded to play with Bean. Anyone who would take on bullies and then befriend a toddler couldn’t possibly be someone I didn’t want to know. Even if I prefer to fight my own battles.
She flexes her fingers now. “You know, you haven’t let me punch anyone in ages. How are they going to learn their manners if someone doesn’t set them straight?”
“They’re not worth it,” I say easily. That much, at least, is true. They aren’t even worth acknowledging. “And it would ruin a lovely day. Let their mothers deal with them.”
Ani snorts but lets the subject drop. I loop my arm through hers, and together we make our way back through the market. We spend a half hour catching up with mutual friends before parting ways, Seri pattering off to visit her grandmother and Ani calling admonishments to watch her step.
Ani and I get along wonderfully, Mama once told me, because at heart we were both cut from the same stubborn cloth, tight-woven and sheltering. Ani would go to war for her friends, and for her sister. And I’ve learned to do whatever it takes to protect my own sisters: Bean from her hotheadedness, and Niya because of the secret she keeps.
Still, Sheltershorn is a quiet town. There are few dangers, even fewer strangers, and little that threatens us beyond inclement weather and the occasional accident. So, when Ani comes up to our cart over an hour later, as we ready ourselves for the ride back home, it doesn’t occur to me that anything can be too wrong. The market is slowly emptying out, the remaining shoppers lingering over their purchases as they catch up with friends. There’s nothing apparent to worry about.
“Rae,” Ani says, glancing from me to Bean and back again. “Have you seen Seri? I can’t find her anywhere. It’s been an hour at least.”
“What?” Mama asks, coming around the cart.
Inside the cart, seated as far from the dog as possible, my middle sister, Niya, looks up, gray eyes worried.
“It’s my sister,” Ani says, the gentle brown of her face faintly sallow. “I can’t find her.”
Chapter
2
“Could she have gone off with a friend?” Mama asks, calm as always.
Ani hesitates. “She said she was going to our grandmother’s, but when I went to fetch her, Nani said she’d never come. No one’s seen her along the way, either. I know she’s not at home. I was hoping she’d come back to check on the dog.”
Bean frowns. “She only helped me settle it in, and then she went back to you.”
“You haven’t seen her since?” Ani asks.
We shake our heads.
“We’ll help you look,” Mama says. “Bean and I will ask the market sellers with you. Rae and Niya, you head to Ani’s home and ask everyone along the way. Niya . . . you don’t mind helping?”
It’s not the question it seems to be. In that moment, I know Mama believes something bad has happened to Seri, because she’s asking Niya to look for Seri in the way only she can, using the magic that she’s kept hidden her whole life. Mama would never ask such a thing unnecessarily.
It’s a risk—it always is, when Niya uses her magic—because by this point, we’ve broken every law there is about harboring a secret talent. She should have been taken from us when her powers first manifested, to be trained as a mage in service to the king, but Mama and Baba had met a mage or two by then. They didn’t want their child taken away and raised to be a stranger. So they kept her, and hid her, and Niya has trained herself, working small magics around the ranch, and then teaching herself healing to help the animals, and eventually to subtly aid Mama’s midwifery patients when nothing else can. Only a handful of people know Niya’s secret, and for Mama to ask her to use her gifts now? She’s very worried.
“Of course I’ll help,” Niya says. She grabs the small bag that holds her sewing and hops down from the wagon. “Come on, Rae.”
“Were there any strangers here today?” I hear Bean ask as Niya and I start walking. I cock my head, listening, and catch Mama’s answer: of course there were a few, but we can’t assume it was strangers.
We also can’t assume that it wasn’t.
“Do you think she could have been . . .” Niya hesitates, and I hear the word she won’t say, the one I don’t want to speak either.
“That hasn’t happened in years,” I say, my voice short.
“But it has happened.”
I look away. “That’s why you need to track her.”
It’s still possible Seri only popped into a friend’s house and is happily eating
