We lie on our backs on the cobbles of Teeth Row — me and the othergirls. The mist loosens curls from my pinned bun, ties white knots around my ankles. I can barely see the Sea-Singer’s eyes through the haze. But I squint, staring into them.

Mother Nine says the staring’s for our own good — to remember who we are not to become. Which doesn’t explain why she made the Sea-Singer’s eyes so full of I-am-right. But I won’t ask again. I only have so many fingernails.

“This will be your final Silence lesson before the Festival of Bells,” says Mother Nine. “You’d be wise to practice well.” She glances in my direction. And then she motions with her hands to call the cloisterwings.

Everyone works here, even the birds, and the cloisterwings know that Mother Nine’s flicked fingers mean food. They’re clever creatures, they really are. They know a thing or two about pleasing.

The cloisterwings swoop from trees, black-shining wings beating through air, cawing a rippling, layered song.

We can’t make shimmer — or anything else — from the songs of birds, but they help us to practice our Silence: stilling our thoughts until they center only on the forever-ribbons of the notes.

The cloisterwings don’t make songs that start in one place and end in another. Their songs travel in circles, always coming back to the beginning. The First Mother taught them to sing like that. She taught them circle-songs because she believed that where we begin is where we end.

The othergirls smart as the birds dive and swivel, whipping up air and wearing smooth trails of mist as cloaks. They’re scared of the cloisterwings because the legend goes that they were born of stone, which makes their wings as sharp as knives.

It’s true that they have hard edges — the tips of their feathers could slice tongue-fruit skins. And it suits me that the othergirls find them frightening — the trees are all my own that way.

But I’ve been up close to the cloisterwings when they’re tucked in their nests. In the night, in the quiet, I have touched their ball-of-thread heads. I have sung to them, reminded them of soaring, and seen them flying in gentle circles above me.

I know what the othergirls don’t.

I know that it’s only when we’re all awake and there’s a chance of them being caught by Mother Nine — plucked for feathers or smacked for singing too loudly — that they spin in rapid whirls. When they don’t feel threatened, they are not a threat. You could hold them in one hand if you weren’t as small-handed as I am.

I close my eyes when I hear Mother Nine’s hammering heels. I don’t want to see her, but I can’t stop listening to her steps. I can’t stop following rhythms. I tap a finger on the ground and a pattern of low notes rumbles in my throat. I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth to stop it. The othergirls breathe slow and slower.

I exhale.

No one noticed.

The cloisterwings draw out wing-beaten rhythms, chirping out looping trills, and it’s only then that I remember: I’m supposed to let their singing rush through me. But I’m not easy to open. The closed drawers in my knees and knuckles stick from damp. My blood is thick as cobble-mud.

The birds’ music — and wind, wing-wallop — fills the cloister to bursting. It fills me up, too. I clench my teeth to keep from singing. I try to remember that the blood’s barely dried on my torn thumb.

Here they are — the instruments of my closed world. Mother Nine’s click, click, clicking on uneven cobbles. The othergirls’ breathing, harmonious as flutes. The thrashing call of the sea and the lifting chords of the cloisterwings’ choir. The slice-soar of their wings through a thick breath of mist.

There’s a grumble in my throat again. A single note. It climbs up from the base of my spine. My lips part.

And I swallow it down.

Because Mother Nine’s face is over mine, its folds a shadowed dance of threats. I tangle my fingers together, all bandages and scabs, and dig them against my stomach. I try to make myself as small as a dropped feather.

“Lungmoss will speak my name long before a Master chooses a girl like you.”

I look past her snarl. Through stirring wings, I can see the Sea-Singer’s eyes. Unblinking. Unwavering.

Mother Nine steps away from me and scatters bits of dried seaflower across the ground.

The cloisterwings fall silent, dropping from flight to peck at stale morsels.