I prayed for a moonless night, for a chance to be visited in the dark by the distant twinkle of gathered stars.

Chapter 31

When I was eight years old, I’d challenged Neelab to a race around the palace gardens. She was always reluctant to run against me. I loved to run, enthralled by the feeling of lightness. It was also a skill born of necessity, for otherwise my mother would have known that I had dawdled on my way home from school and Boba would have realized his binoculars were missing before I could return them to his office.

You were born with bird bones and that’s unfair, my friend had declared.

That’s ridiculous. Birds are terrible runners, I’d retorted, though I reveled in the supernatural idea that my bones might carry the gift of flight.

We were a couple of days away from the spring solstice. I had marked a circuitous path, and learning it was part of the game. The course ran past a long rectangular pool and an acre of green grass. It cut through the pocket of fruit trees and followed the far western border, looping around one of the buildings that once served as army barracks and coming back to the starting point.

The palace was distracted as everyone inside prepared for the Nowruz celebrations, either at home or with loved ones. Soaked in water, dried apricots and the mealy oleaster fruit grew plumper than they’d been before they were plucked from the trees. Bright green and black raisins simmered in tall pots, their sugars steeping the water of the haft mewa, the seven-fruit compote. It was so labor-intensive that the medley was made only for the occasion of the new year. Mounds of shelled pistachios, walnuts, and blanched almonds soaked in wide bowls to soften their skins and make them easier to peel. The walnuts were the most difficult, and every year it was the walnuts that made my mother swear she would never make haft mewa again.

Despite the festive air, Neelab was reluctant to play. In our games and contests, winners weren’t rewarded with trophies or prizes. Instead, the winner had the chance to assign the loser a punishment. When I’d claimed victory, I’d restricted Neelab to moving around by hopping on one foot for an entire day. She thought she’d secured her revenge when she made me walk an entire day with orange peels stuffed in my shoes, but to her dismay, I’d ended up with soft, citrus-scented heels.