There are some old clothes laid out on the bed: boys’ things, oversized and fifteenth-hand.

Her eyes travel over my thin frame unforgivingly. They pause at my face, studying me, as if looking for something. “Dieu soit loué, at least you’re not pretty.” Her voice catches.

She’s right. Where Azelma is softness and curves, I’m bones and angles. The only thing we have in common is our olive skin, the legacy of the pied-noir woman who birthed us. When I was small and winter winds rattled the panes like vengeful spirits trying to get in, Azelma would put her soft arms around me and tell me stories. “What do you want to hear, little cat?” she would ask.

“Tell me about our mother.”

Father says she was nothing but a rat for leaving us with him.

“The woman who birthed us is not our true mother,” Azelma would say. “Our mother is the City.”

But even I knew it was not the City that had gifted us our olive skin and raven hair.

Now Azelma’s gaze falls to the thick braid that I struggle to plait by myself. She reaches out and I go to her. She unties the braid with deft, gentle fingers and begins to brush.

“Our mother the City is not a merciful mother,” she says as she gathers my hair in one hand. “To be a girl in this city is to be weak. It is to call evil things down upon you. And the City is not kind to weak things. She sends Death the Endless to winnow the frail from the strong. You know this.”

I hear the sound before I realize what is happening: a sharp, shearing scrape. Then I feel a sudden lightness at the back of my neck. My eyes widen, but before I can say a word, a tail of dark hair lands softly at my feet. Azelma takes the shears to the rest of my hair, cropping it close to my scalp.

“Keep it short,” she says, and when she is done: “Take off that dress.”

I wonderingly obey, my hands trembling to undo the buttons she sewed on. She used to force me to stand like a statue, arms outstretched, while she fit one of her old dresses to my frame, her mouth full of bent, rusted pins. I always squeezed my eyes shut, afraid she would draw blood. She would laugh at me through pinched lips. “I’ve not pricked you yet, little kitten.”

I peel off the dress and hand it to her. I stand before her in a much-patched linen shift.

“That too.”

Fear and cold prick my skin.

“Hear my words, for they are all I have left to give. Wrap them around your flesh like armor. You may forget my face and my voice, but never forget the things I am telling you.”

“I won’t,” I say, trying not to tremble.

“Eat only enough to stay alive. You must get used to hunger so that it won’t break you. Stay small so you will fit into tight spaces and they will always have need of you.”