“My cousin mentioned it.” Huda pressed her foot on the accelerator. “I hope the sheikha recovers.”

“I was there when Rania got the news.”

Huda felt an unexpected twinge of jealousy. She knew it was ridiculous, but when she pictured Ally comforting Rania, a tiny part of her wished she could have been the one to stroke her hair while she cried.

After the call from her cousin, Huda had drifted outside to the carport and searched for her old set of runes. She had a vague idea that they might reveal Rania’s mother’s fate. After ten minutes of rummaging through the cobwebbed corners of the garage, she found a small cedar box coated in a fine layer of dust. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach. She pried open the lid. Inside lay a small leather pouch, and within that, half a dozen pearlescent seashells, a few tarnished brass coins, pebbles the color of storm clouds, and the fragile bones of a small bird.

It had been twenty years or more since Huda last held the talismans, and when she picked them up, the bird bones crumbled to dust in her fingers. Tears welled in her eyes. She remembered Rania crouched beside her, urging her to empty the bag, to chart their futures in the scattered patterns of bones and coins. They would have been young teenagers then, hiding behind the tall grass near the river at the back of the sheikh’s farm.

“What do you see?” Rania had quivered with excitement. “Will I travel to London this year?”

Huda frowned. Rania had only just returned from another year at school in Baghdad, and already she was dreaming of flying away.

“Don’t rush me,” said Huda.

The tall grass hissed and swayed.

“If Mama leaves me behind on the farm again, I swear, I’ll die.”

“Must you always be so dramatic?” mumbled Huda. “Surely, some time at home won’t kill you.”

In years past, Huda would have scoffed even louder, but she’d become wary of tempting fate. Just a month ago Mustafa had sliced his foot on an old knife head buried in a riverbed. Days later, he was struck with a violent fever that set his teeth chattering. Lying on a bedroll in their back room, Mustafa called for Baba to bring him a drop of water. Huda shivered at his call. Their father had been dead more than ten years.

Huda’s grandmother had tried all the usual remedies—black cumin seed potions, turmeric poultices, and honeyed herb tea. The flame within Mustafa only grew stronger. Grandmother rested her ear again his chest, then dug through her cavernous medicine bag.

“Huda, fetch a candle,” she ordered.

When Huda returned, the old healer held a buffalo horn inscribed with powerful hadith. Like a ribbon of fine lace, the holy script looped around the curves of the blackened ivory.

“Roll your brother onto his stomach,” muttered Grandmother.