Agili has called this meeting today. Because he is not just the chief of our town, but a very respected elder, people answered his call. But not all came because of their respect for our village chief. Some have flocked here today for another darker, bloodier reason . . . like ravens to a kill. They are the ones who have muttered the most about my father’s talking leaves being evil magic. They are here in the expectation that his evil may be exposed. Their hope is that he will either be exiled forever or sentenced to death. I have heard that some of them have sworn that if the council does not sentence him to die, then they will take care of that themselves. It has been whispered that, no matter what is shown or decided today, Sequoyah and his family will not live to see another sunrise.

I wish I could be more helpful. I have been studying hard for more than two weeks now. But I have not yet learned my father’s way of writing our language well enough. It should not take that much longer for me to be able to write it and read it as well as he does. All it requires is for me to memorize, recognize, and be able to draw those eighty-six shapes. My friend Yugi has also made good progress, even though he has not learned as much as I now know. I now can read and write more than half of the syllables.

But half is not enough. To be able to write anything said in Tsalagi or to read anything written in the syllabary one must know it all. And I do not.

Aside from Sequoyah, there is only one person who perfectly knows all of our syllabary. That one is my little sister, Ahyokah.

I look over at her and she smiles at me. She is not nervous at all. She and my father are both sitting there, their faces as calm as the surface of a pond on a sunny, windless day.

But I am not calm. I am so nervous that I feel sick to my stomach. Of course, that may just be because I am so hungry right now. When I got up this morning I forgot to eat anything before coming here to the Council House. I cannot think of another time in my life when I have been so worried about anything that I have forgotten to eat. My stomach rumbles as I think of that. It rumbles so loud that, if there were not so many people talking, it would have been heard by everyone around me.

Someone nudges my side. I turn. It’s Yugi.

To my surprise, he does not look worried at all. In fact, he looks quite confident. He trusts me more than I trust myself. I just hope I have not led him onto a path that will lead us over a cliff!