“Kenu could build a tower to the stars,” Father shouted. “But you’d rather your sons be beggars or pirates.”

“When have I said that?” Mother shouted too.

“I hear what you don’t say, woman.” Father quieted down.

“Do you?” Mother shook her head. Father only heard himself.

“When barren fields drink our sweat and a blight steals the harvest, I hear you.”

“You sound like a high-nosed Elder.” Mother flicked a finger under the tip of her nose. “All the time talking down to me.”

He ground his teeth. “Awa will learn good conjure.”

“Any conjure can be perverted. Even Green Elder spells.” Mother sneered. “You know this better than I do.” She didn’t want Awa to go.

Father clutched the money bags and tramped away. He’d lived with the Elders, learned poetry, masonry, and metalwork, before inheriting his brother’s farm and his brother’s witch-wife, a woman too wild to love. Kenu said Father hated those years in the enclave—fasting or eating bugs, spouting jumba jabba all day long, and walking on hot coals. Father had ugly purple scars on the bottoms of his feet and a cache of secret scrolls and spells. City chiefs, thief-lords, and priests clamored for his building conjure. He’d even built a gate for Hezram, high priest of Holy City, and earned a sack of sky rocks. Still, Father regularly cursed the Elders for ruining his life. Awa hugged her knees, panicked. A lapsed Elder selling his daughter to an enclave didn’t make sense.

“What’s this face?” Mother pinched Awa’s nose and tried to smile.

“I don’t want to go,” Awa said.

“Green Elders risked their lives to find you.” Mother gathered Awa close. The lightning tang of Smokeland clung to them both. “Elders roam the forests, plains, and mountain cliffs, collecting stories and talking folks out of foolishness.”

Awa scrunched up her face, unimpressed.

“They’re free.” Mother’s usually bright eyes had gone misty. “They have adventures across the Empire. They know a detour around the poison desert and wander to northern lands beyond Mount Eidhou.” She tickled Awa’s sides. “Elders sing songs and tell stories all day long. You’ll love that.”

Awa perked up. “Will I come back a griot storyteller to tell you tales?”

“Perhaps.” Mother’s lips trembled. “Yari, the griot of griots, has chosen you.”

Awa glowered at the Green Elders. She spat out the bee stinger from Smokeland. It burnt her tongue. Yari was a legendary griot, a walking library who knew something about everything. Still, “I don’t want to go.”

“Would you rather be sold to a transgressor hut to get bled for high priest Hezram?”

“Why sell me at all?”