Feathers on Fire
an excerpt

Winter Lily never realized what her mother meant about freedom, or duty, until that summer, her fifteenth summer, the moon when the new traders arrived, carrying the gift of their strange, large shells and turquoise beads. While she spent the afternoon washing the family’s clothing, Lily dreamed of where she might journey if she were a small beetle riding a leaf for a boat. Would she find herself in an entirely new land, the land of turquoise and cave dwellers? Or would she simply twirl, trapped in one of the river’s slack waters, swamped with mud or brought to ruin by the well-aimed rocks of small boys?

Lily glanced up to make sure her small brother was safe, and noticed that he was surrounded, as always, with his friends. Many of the boys were growing up without fathers, without older brothers to show them the ancient rituals. In some ways, Lily knew that her own family was blessed, with a father who was not a warrior, but a scribe.

Where her little brother played, there were many younger, and younger boys, not yet old enough for battle, or even to hunt. They pantomimed battle, wrestling each other with egg-sized fists. They mock-hunted, chased toads, stalked lizards or the shadows of imagined lizards. They carried stones into piles and played at making them into miniature buildings. One child sat alone, placing small, smooth river stones into a pattern of his own imagination. The design reminded Lily of a symbol that her father carved, and she wondered how a boy so small, maybe five summers, or six, could know this pattern. Maybe he, too, had been born to the mind of the scribe, or the astronomer.