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 honey cakes, blissfully unaware of our worry. But Ani’s already been asking about her all over town; someone would have said if they’d seen her.
“Hurry,” I say, walking as fast as my uneven gait can take me. Niya keeps pace easily. We call out to the people we see, all of them familiar, and by the time we’ve arrived at the blacksmith’s home, right beside the smithy, there are a dozen more people out looking for Seri. All the children have been sent home, though.
“Rae?” Ani’s mother, Shimai, calls out to us as we hurry to her. She stands with two other women just outside her house, one of them holding a bread basket. It’s a normal scene. Too normal. It hadn’t occurred to me until this moment that Ani’s mother wouldn’t know about Seri’s disappearance. But then she says, sharply, “Seri’s not at my mother’s, is she?”
I shake my head. “She never went there. Do you know where she could be? Ani and my family are searching the market, and we’ve asked all along the way here. No one’s seen her in the last hour or so.”
Beneath the brown of her skin, Shimai’s face pales, her lips bloodless. “She has to be here.”
“We should mount a proper search,” one of her friends says. “Before it gets any later. There’s no time to lose.”
“I’ll check her friends’ houses,” the other says. “Shimai, where should I—?”
Shimai gives herself a shake and starts forward with a jerk, her expression shifting from panic to determination. She rattles off a short list of friends’ names for her friend to check, directs the other to inform her husband, who is absent from the smithy today of all days, and sets off down the street toward the market to rally a proper search. As she hurries past, she says, “Rae, you get your sister somewhere safe. Both of your sisters, just in case. They can stay in my house, if needed.”
“Yes, auntie,” I say, thankful for the excuse to send Niya into the house.
I stand in the doorway, watching Shimai as she races down the street, her legs flashing beneath her skirts. Behind me, Niya runs upstairs. This is why Mama sent us here: if we can recover a hair or two, or possibly even a ribbon or scrap of cloth that Seri has worn, then Niya might be able to use it to track her.
“Got it,” Niya calls from upstairs, and I sag against the doorframe with relief. “Took a hair from her comb.”
“Good. What else do you need?”
“Water. I’ve got everything else.”
There’s the kitchen, which has the decided advantage of keeping us hidden from sight. “Will a bowl do?”
Niya nods. “Just fine.”
“This way.” I lead the way through a house I know as well as my own. The adobe walls are smooth and cool, the kitchen shutters pushed open to light the room with its fire grate to one side and its low worktable to the other. I fill a bowl with water from a pitcher while Niya hurries outside, returning a moment later with a leaf in her hand. She pulls the door shut behind her.
I set the bowl before her as she drops onto a cushion before the table. “Do you know how to do it?”
She shrugs, delving into her bag. “I’ve never tried tracking before, but I know how to make a compass. If I can get the compass to point toward her, rather than north, then we’ll have a direction.”