Not now, I think. But before I can reply she turns toward Sequoyah.

“Father, can I show Uwohali my friends now?” she asks.

A warm smile creases my father’s face. It’s clear that he will agree to anything my half sister asks of him.

I feel a surge of anger toward this little girl who took my place. But I don’t let that emotion show on my face, even though my hands squeeze the wooden tabletop so hard that my knuckles turn white.

“Uh-huh,” Sequoyah says. “If it is agreeable with your brother.”

He looks at me. What can I do? I nod my reluctant head.

“Good,” my father says. He holds up his long-stemmed pipe. “I will be on the porch.”

Ahyokah takes my hand and leads me to the back of the cabin. Her three corn-husk dolls, made in the proper way with no faces, are sitting there on a miniature bed that I am certain was carved by my father. It makes me feel even more jealous of all the attention he has given her, attention I never received.

Yet, at the same time, I can’t stop myself from admiring the workmanship that went into making that little bed and my sister’s little friends. I sit down cross-legged on the floor to look closer at them. They are not at all like the dolls that non-Tsalagi children have, like the one I saw once being held in the arms of a white child who was being driven by in a carriage. That white child’s doll had such a shiny, humanlike face that I found it disturbing to see.

Ahyokah’s three friends were made in our old way from dried corn husks folded and tied together to make a head, a body, and two arms. Each one is dressed like a Tsalagi woman. And, of course, they do not have faces on them.

My little sister is leaning her head against my shoulder.

“Do you know why corn-husk dolls never have a face?” I ask.

“Can you tell me why?” she asks.

And almost before I know it I am telling her the story.

“It was because of the first of their kind. Long, long ago, that first corn-husk doll was so good-looking that everyone admired her. Everyone talked about how beautiful she was. Corn-Husk Doll heard what people said and she became vain.

“‘No one is as beautiful as I am,’ she boasted.

“She began to spend much of her time looking at her reflection in the water and admiring herself.

“‘I am so beautiful,’ she would say. ‘I am so very beautiful!’