Maria waited for the other girls to go to supper, then she hid her Grimoire beneath the floorboards before going off to explore. She knew well enough to keep her bloodline a secret, for her talents could bring her luck or misery. It was a curious place she found herself in, the opposite of all she had known. Where there had been darkness, there was now light. Where there had been a solitary life, there was now a bustling household. Much of the living space was outside, and as she crossed the courtyard she marveled at how in this arid, subtropical land there could be a garden that was so lush. She walked along a path that was bordered by mangoes and Jamaican apple trees and brilliant flowering aloe vera speckled with yellow blooms. It was here she set Cadin free. She had crafted an amulet to wear around her throat with a single black feather, so she knew he would always be called back to her, no matter how far he might go. The bird studied her from the branch of a guava tree, then rose into the dusky air of this new world of theirs. By now it was evening. The moon itself seemed different here, glowing with pale silver light. In the salt flats there were miraculous birds, flamingoes, white and scarlet ibis, green herons, great blue herons, and the black-crowned night heron that cried in the dark as if it were a woman pleading for her life. But of all of these, it was the robber crow that was most beautiful to Maria, for he had more compassion than any man she had ever met, and far more loyalty.