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 didn’t look as much like her mother as her sister Aria, who was an exact replica of their mother, Amani. There was something else to Isika’s cheekbones and wide-set eyes, her face less round than her mother’s. She had angles that must have come from her father, though she couldn’t know, never having met him. She placed Kital’s birthday gift, a string of beads, over her forehead and straightened it so the long red stone hung in the center. Her little brother had been waiting from the moment she woke up, ready to give her his gift. After a moment of fright as she opened her eyes and found him an inch from her face, she had laughed and hugged him and fussed over his gift.
She gave herself one last look over, then turned and walked to the kitchen, slightly ashamed of spending so much time looking at herself. After living for so many years without a mirror, even five minutes looking at her reflection felt like too much.
But the truth was that she wasn’t marveling at her own face (she still wasn’t sure that she was pretty, despite Ibba and Auntie’s opinions) or even her clothes, but at the fact that she no longer thought outsider every time she caught a glimpse of herself. She didn’t think queen, either, though she would be queen someday. But the panicky feeling of being an outsider was easing day by day. She was starting to look at herself as someone who belonged: a Maweel girl, nearly a woman, celebrating her sixteenth birthday today with her friends and family. She looked Maweel. The people of Maween—except for the refugees they rescued from the evil of the Great Waste—were black-skinned, like Isika. But it was taking her a long time to feel that she belonged to Maween.
In the kitchen, she picked up a tray of Auntie Teru’s berry tarts, carrying them out to the long table in the courtyard where Auntie buzzed back and forth, fussing over the placement of the various treats she had made. Jerutha, Isika’s stepmother, sat in a swing chair, chatting away to Auntie while rocking Mesu, her sleeping baby. Jerutha’s straight, light brown hair was tied up in a scarf—not ornate, she couldn’t stand fancy things, but lovely against her pale skin nonetheless.
Out in the garden, Abbas, a Gariah warrior, was helping Uncle Dawit and Kital hang lanterns. Nearly a year ago, Abbas had helped Isika and her brother Benayeem escape the Worker city where they had been imprisoned, and rescue Jerutha, who had also been a prisoner there, destined to be the High Priest’s wife—a fate Isika wouldn’t wish on anyone. Since the rescue, Abbas was never far from Isika’s family, revolving around them like a protector, but also pulled into the family love that emanated from Teru and Dawit.
Isika saw Abbas pause between hanging lanterns to watch Jerutha and Mesu. The tall warrior, wild-looking with his long black hair and patched desert clothing, was especially protective of Isika’s stepmother. When Uncle Dawit wanted to hang another string of lanterns, he needed to call Abbas’s name three times to get his attention.
He wasn’t the only one who worried over fragile, kind Jerutha. Isika was also fiercely protective of her stepmother. Abbas’s attention to Jerutha might have made Isika nervous, but Isika liked him. She couldn’t help it. None of them could. He was just so kind and intense, wanting to do the right thing for everyone. He looked a little odd in the garden scene, his warrior posture reminding Isika that he was trained to fight, dancing with his sword, his bright gold earrings swinging. But as he helped Uncle Dawit, he wore a smile that lit up his face.
It felt like a lifetime since Jerutha had helped Isika escape the Worker village where she had lived for many years with her stepfather, the priest, Nirloth. Isika’s family was complicated, and her family was only the beginning of the intricacies of her life. After discovering the Maweel people, or being discovered by them, she had also discovered that she and her siblings were the descendants of their stolen queen. Isika was the heir of the kingdom of Maween, and she was also World Whisperer: the ruler who kept the peace of Maweel, and the direct link to the Shaper of the World. From the beginning of Maween, when the World Whisperer was ruling, the people were at peace.
But things hadn’t gotten better for Maween when Isika stepped into the picture. The poison from the Great Waste had grown worse. Things weren’t settled or easy, they were confusing.
Isika wasn’t yet queen, but the Maweel tried to show her some of the same honor and respect they would have shown her grandmother, who reigned as queen. Some of this she simply refused. She didn’t want to spend a lot of time in court. She didn’t want the grand ballroom birthday party the elders had planned to give to her. She wanted her pottery workshop and the little party she would have here in the garden. That was all. Some of it she had to put up with. It couldn’t be helped.
She set the tray down in the spot Auntie Teru showed her, dropping a kiss on the older woman’s cheek as she passed. Auntie barely noticed, too busy counting the spicy fried mushroom balls and muttering about whether there would be enough. During her time living with Auntie Isika had learned she shouldn’t try to stop the older woman’s fretting. Auntie Teru enjoyed fussing over people and their stomachs, and there was nothing she liked as much as a lot of work. Teru and Dawit’s son had been killed in a seeking journey many years ago, devastating them. It had left a scar that meant Teru didn’t leave the house often anymore, getting shaky and panicky if she did. But she loved to have people over and to feed them until they complained that they couldn’t eat another bite, then scolding them for not taking one last pastry.
Isika smiled at her foster mother as Teru chatted with Jerutha about babies and their sweetness. She felt a huge bubble of happiness floating around inside her as she went back to the kitchen to get another tray. It swelled a little more as her friend Jabari burst through the front door. She didn’t examine the reason that she felt so happy at the sight of him. Instead, she fixed a frown on her face as he ran toward her.
“Do you have to gallop into a room like a donkey?” she asked.
He grinned at her and handed her a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with what looked suspiciously like his headscarf.
She took it, unable to keep the smile back any longer.
“What is this?” she asked.
“A gift, of course, Squawker. What else could it be? I feel like I’ve been waiting to give it to you forever!”
She looked at him, a head taller than her now, the broad lines of his face creased in smiles. He had skin the exact color of their darkest sienna glaze in the workshop. He had turned seventeen not too long ago, and he looked like a man. He didn't act like one, though.
“Um,” she said, untying the scarf from the brown paper. “Is this your ser?”
“Yeah, I’m going to need to get that back,” he said. “But hurry!”
“Is it going to disappear if I don’t open it?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Do you need me to do it for you?”
She laughed. “All right, hold on, I can do it.”
They stood in the doorway to the living space of the house, and guests trickled past them, stopping only to smile and greet Isika as they aimed for the table outside, laden with Auntie’s food. Isika carried Jabari’s gift into the kitchen and laid it carefully on the cooking bench, turning it so the paper fell away. Her mouth dropped open. It was a pot. A clumsy little coil pot, slightly crooked and about the size of a cup to hold coffee or spice tea, but much thicker than the cups in their home.
She looked up at him.
“It’s my first one ever,” he said. “Tomas finally let me do something other than sweep.”
Isika turned it over in her hands, feeling the smooth blue glaze under the pads of her fingers. Jabari had been working in the pottery workshop for almost a year, sweeping and cleaning kilns, hovering over her while she worked the pottery wheel, mixing glazes and getting underfoot.
These last months were responsible for the friendship between them, after their rocky start and the fact that Isika couldn’t help using her many strong gifts, though Jabari was the more knowledgeable one and had trained his whole life. He had stopped scolding her so much and she couldn’t help liking him. He was just so fun, a bright spot in the workshop. Isika found she hated the days that he didn’t show up to work.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. She suddenly felt like she might cry. “I’ll drink my coffee out of it every morning.”
“Oh. Well… you might not be able to do that,” Jabari said, clearing his throat. “It split in the kiln and there’s a bit of a crack. But you could use it as a nice shelf decoration.” He took it from her and carried it over to a bookshelf in the living space of the house. “Like this. See?”
She stared at him. She was still confused about the fact that he had chosen to stay home, rather than traveling this year. Jabari was a gifted seeker. His job was to find and destroy poison. He loved jungle and forest, rivers and swimming in moonlight. He was hardly himself in the confines of the city. And yet, here he was. And next week his brother, Gavi, was heading out on a seeking journey without Jabari, for the first time ever. Yet here Jabari was, making pots, excited as a child about it.
“Wow,” she said. “Thank you.” She left the pot on the shelf, smiling at him.
When she turned back to look through the back door to the garden, she realized opening the gift had taken longer than she thought. The garden was filled with people, and as soon as she stepped out, she was overwhelmed by hugs and blessings from the people who had come to celebrate her birthday. It made her teary and happy, but deeply sad at the same time, the way she had been on every birthday since her mother died.
Kital ran over and threw himself at her, with Ibba flying headlong at her soon after.
“Happy birthday, Isika!” they cried, and she kissed them both, laughing, wiping tears away quickly. She was pulled into the crowd. Already men pulled their drums out of the leather satchels that held them, getting ready to start the dancing and singing. Benayeem, her younger brother by a little over a year, came and stood by her. He slung an arm around her, squeezing her shoulder, and she leaned on him. The lights in the garden shone like the fire birds that lived in the forests of Maween.
“Happy?” he asked.
“So happy. I made the right choice.”
As the heir to the throne, Isika was owed a birthday banquet at the palace, a large, ostentatious affair with all the elders from different parts of Maween and as many Othra as they could entice. Isika had refused it all. She wanted a small party here, in her own garden, with the people who loved her. The four ruling elders were invited and would arrive at some point. But Isika knew them and they were less scary in her home than they were in the plush throne room.
Standing there, again Isika found herself wishing for something she couldn’t have: to be a normal, non-royal Maweel girl. The last months had been the happiest of her life, uneventful and filled with long days in the pottery studio. There were, of course, the strange moments that came from being smack in the center of so many worlds. She was a girl who had grown up in the Worker village and had a sister who had been taken from her there, and a stepmother that she had rescued from the Workers, enemies of the Maweel people.
Plus she had Keethior, a magical companion animal who had chosen her. And a friend for life, a Gariah warrior who seemed to think his mission was to guard her; four elders who wanted to know what her intentions were; her own brothers and sisters; her adopted aunt and uncle; and all her traveling companions.
“It’s complicated, isn’t it?” she asked Ben, watching Abbas whirl in his own rhythm to the songs the drums were crying out, oblivious to the steps of the other dancers.
“Very,” he agreed. “But wonderful.” He looked around. “Where is Aria? She shouldn’t miss this.”
Their younger sister, whom they had lost when she was seven and was now thirteen, lived with her own foster parents, one more complicated thing about their new lives. Isika wished their sister lived with them, but Aria was struggling and often pushed the other siblings away.
Isika shook her head slowly. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I hope she finds her way here.”