My life before Abira’s arrival had been a very stable thing and comfortably slow-paced. By that I mean that very few things happened to me suddenly. Even moving to Rabatha had not been a sudden thing. I had known for months beforehand. The train ticket had been bought five weeks before I left. My single bag had been packed a week and a half in advance. I didn’t know that life could change direction so sharply so quickly. I was young enough to think there was ample time to consider any major decision, and I was inexperienced enough to think that life gave you ample time to make the right one.

I fell into a deep, black sleep that first night of Abira’s arrival. When Dirva woke me the next morning, her things were still piled in his armchair, but she herself was nowhere to be found. I could feel the change in the air as soon as I woke. There was a certainty of difference, intangible but inescapable. Dirva carried in him a steely darkness that day. He was closed and hard, whatever he felt secreted away from the rest of the world. There was no warmth to him. He asked me if I was hungry. I said I wasn’t. He looked at me closely. “How’s your mind? Can you think straight? Have you slept it off?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I think so.”

He leaned against the wall and peered out the window down into the narrow alley below, his arms crossed against his chest. “There are things I need to explain to you, Ariah, and then you will have to make a choice, and you will have to make it today. Do you understand?”

“Yes?” I said, but I didn’t, and he knew I didn’t.

“Your mother’s mother was red. Tell me, did she tell you much about the way the reds live? Families and marriage, things like that?”

“Not terribly much, no.”

“You are unfamiliar with the term ‘da,’ then?”

“I am. I’m sorry.”

Dirva shot me an impatient frown. “Why should you be sorry?”

“I…because, well, I…”