Chapter 1
Sixteen looks a lot like fifteen, Isika thought, looking at her face in her bedroom mirror. Was she a little taller? Maybe. She stretched to her full height, admiring the shimmery fall of the turquoise tunic she would wear to her birthday dinner. The color was bright against her skin, as dark brown as the little velvety birds that lit on her windowsill in the morning. She had a new glow that Auntie said came from good food and a family that was hers, a place with lights that called her home in the dusk. Auntie had worked her hair into a hundred tiny braids with gold thread and jade beads woven throughout. The beads clicked softly when she turned her head from side to side.
She had the same face as always, but lately it looked more grown-up, more like her late mother’s face. She
