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his invited guests. I squeezed next to Gaho. Chenoa and Onawa sat on the other side of Ituha. Eyota took his place at the center behind us, sitting straight as a hunter’s arrow. Fortunately, the sun finally lowered in the sky behind our shoulders but our foreheads and faces still beaded with sweat. The flames from the fire only thickened the air.
    I looked for Honovi and finally spotted him above the flames. He sat cross-legged alongside his parents across from us, surrounded by other clan families. His hair was still damp from his swim and hung loose over his bare chest and shoulders. The bruises on his chest had become darker since his swim. I waited for his eyes to meet mine but they did not. Instead, he chatted with a pretty girl of fifteen harvests from the Red Ant Clan seated next to his family. Her name was Dyani. I’d seen her lots of times collecting mesquite seeds in the saguaro forest where Chenoa and I often walked. She had the most delicate hands and feet I’d ever seen.
    Tonight, oddly, I envied her even more.
    This was the first ceremony where Honovi and I didn’t sit together and my chest tightened from the change. I should be seated with Honovi, laughing, talking, and celebrating. He shouldn’t be seated beside Dyani. He barely knew her. What did she know of Honovi’s secrets?
    Besides, it didn’t feel right sitting with Miakoda and his family of strangers. Looking at their unreadable faces, I feared that it would never feel right again.
    Yuma lifted his hands above his head one final time, a signal for everyone to sit. As his hands lifted into the air, the shuffling stopped. Then Yuma nodded to an ancient woman named Chitsa sitting beside Miakoda. She was one of the elders. Her hair was as white and coarse as Yuma’s deerskin. When she walked, her shoulders curved over her neck and almost touched her ears. She didn’t talk as much as mumble because most of her front teeth were missing. Yuma said that she had The Power and for that she commanded as much respect from the clans as he did. It was believed throughout the village that Chitsa had visions and could see the future. She was the one who foresaw the lack of rain in the last two Seasons of Longer Days; her vision told us that the corn fields would turn brown and brittle.
    And Chitsa had been right.
    “Yuma is starting the ceremony with the Dance of Womanhood,” Gaho whispered to me as Chitsa shuffled around the fire. Gaho nodded at the ceremonial sticks that Chitsa clutched in both of her hands. The skin over Chitsa’s hands was so thin that I could see most of her bones. The sticks, like her hands, were smooth from age. Each stick had a deerskin pouch round with river pebbles. When they all shook, it sounded like rain.
    My tongue dragged anxiously across my lips. I still tasted the sweetness from the wine. Normally I enjoyed watching the building excitement of our ceremonies—the beating drums, the chanting, even the fine white clouds of swirling sage and mesquite that circled above the fire. But not this time. This time I wasn’t merely an observer; I was a participant.
    Since we sat beside Miakoda’s family, people studied my family, even though we pretended not to notice. I could feel their eyes sweeping over us, silently noting the pull of our shoulders, the lift of our chins. I was suddenly grateful that I wore my mother’s best deerskin and my family’s finest jewelry. Gaho was right—let everyone see that Ituha provided well for his family. None of us went without.
    Still, my head began to spin as I waited for Chitsa to stand before me and offer a ceremonial stick. In order to join the rest of my sisters for the Dance of Womanhood, I would need to reach up and accept it. But instead of jubilation, I sank deeper into the ground, somehow hoping that Chitsa would pass me by.
    Mercifully, she started on the opposite side of the circle and handed sticks to five girls who were as many harvests old as me. Their faces brightened as they