The apprentice sat now outside the entrance to the chamber. Below, she could see the oracle making her way—spindly arms and spider legs—up the rocky path. Her vestments billowed behind her: She was a sail of white on the dry terrain. Halfway up, the oracle paused and tipped her head to watch a bird cross the blue expanse. Then, after the bird had circled and disappeared from view, she pointed at the apprentice and then the sky.

The apprentice, Alba—for this was her name, though no one called her by name any longer—sighed. The oracle would ask her about the bird. Was it a hawk? A vulture? Was it flying toward the sunrise? Had it alighted from an oak? What did it portend?

Taking a handful of stones, Alba began to toss them at the scrub in hopes of startling out another bird and distracting the old woman with a different augury. But at the rattle of the first stone, she heard a small tsk behind her, and when she glanced around, she saw one of the guards—the guards who called themselves priests but performed no priestly duties she could see—shaking his head and waggling his finger to emphasize his displeasure. Alba grimaced. She knew he was waiting for her to go into the chamber, but, no, she would not let him take her few minutes of light and air. At the very least, she would wait for the oracle.

She tipped her chin up and closed her eyes, feeling the rising sun warm against her skin and resolutely ignoring the throaty gmms and hrmms of the priest behind her.

She used to be afraid of the priest-guards. She remembered when they had arrived in her village. She remembered how that day, someone’s goats had gotten loose and were causing havoc—they had hopped and clambered onto the roofs and were tearing great mouthfuls of thatch from the homes. She and her father and the other villagers had been trying to shoo them back to their pen, but when the priests had arrived in their robes so brilliantly white against the mud and grime and had announced in their solemn tones—We are seeking the one with the gift—everyone had stopped, goats and roof damage be damned. Bring us the girl who sees the future, they had announced over the chorus of bleats and the chewing of thatch. Bring us the girl.

Though the villagers knew of no girl who saw the future, still they had obeyed the priest-guards. Why had they been so afraid of these men? They brought all the girls. Alba remembered the line she had stood in while the priests tapped and prodded and questioned each girl and the goats ate holes in their homes. Almost the smallest—though not the youngest—called always a pip by her father, Alba had tried not to let her voice tremble when they came to her; she had tried not to let them see how her knees shook.

Alba thought now with regret of how she had answered the head priest. After cupping her chin in his hand, after turning her head from side to side, he had asked her, “My servant right now is preparing my dinner—what is he making?” and she had said what she’d seen. Why had she done so? Despite the startling white of his robe, the delicate slenderness of his hands, he had a rim of dirt beneath his fingernails. A smudge of mud by his knee. And she knew he would have come through the woods.