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accepted their sticks and stood proudly before their families. Their first step to womanhood had begun. I wished that my face would reflect such a glow, such gladness, instead of the tightness that stretched across my cheeks.
    Then Chitsa slowly shuffled to the other side of the fire where I sat. After presenting a ceremonial stick to four more anxious girls, her cloudy eyes finally rested on me. The flames from the fire glowed around her like the sun. The tips of her hair turned orange. She became like a flower rising out of the desert. I couldn’t escape her.
    She stood above me, staring with eyes that were dotted with bits of white and grey. She once had deep green eyes like mine, another oddity in our village, especially when everyone else had black or brown. In a way, Chitsa and I had that strange, unspoken connection because of it. Sometimes I thought she could read my thoughts, and that frightened me most of all.
    Chitsa’s other features were buried in the folds of her dark, freckled skin. When her cloudy eyes held mine, she nodded once before tilting her head. She smiled, just a small one. Tentatively, I reached for the ceremonial stick she held over my head. But then her smile faded so abruptly that my hand froze in the air. My fist clenched.
    Gaho nudged me once with her elbow.
    I swallowed.
    And then I opened my hand.
    Before I could claim the stick, Chitsa pulled it close to her chest. Her eyes began to roll backwards and her eyelids started to flutter.
    Everyone around us gasped, including Gaho and Ituha.
    Yuma stood immediately, leapt across the circle in three easy sides and reached for her elbow before I even had a chance to breathe. Chitsa crumpled backwards into his arms and her head began to bob.
    Then she started to moan.
    “The Old One is having a vision,” someone whispered next to us. The hushed voices spread all the way around the fire.
    “She’s having a vision!”
    “Does she speak with Hunab Ku?”
    “Will we finally have rain?”
    “What does she see?”
    The villagers stood alongside their children to watch Chitsa convulse in Yuma’s arms. Others placed their hands over their mouths in fear and excitement. All eyes rested on Chitsa, waiting.
    Finally, her eyes stopped rolling and her head snapped upright but Yuma’s hands remained on her shoulders. He cradled her head against his arm. Then she dragged her tongue across her dry lips and shook her head, signaling to Yuma that she was all right. She could walk. With Yuma’s hand supporting the small of her back, Chitsa stepped closer to me. She nodded, once. And then she extended the last remaining ceremonial stick still clenched in her hands.
    I reached for the stick again, instinctively, but this time my hand shook, too. I didn’t bother with trying to smile. I almost dropped the stick. That’s because there was something troubling about her eyes; they had turned darker. The white was replaced with flecks of green and brown. It was as if her green color had returned.
    As I searched her eyes for answers, Chitsa mumbled something that I could barely understand. Then she spoke again. Barely above a whisper, she said, “Aiyana, you must run when you think you should walk.”
    My neck pulled back. My eyes widened.
    Run? I thought. Run where? Why? Her words didn’t make any sense. What kind of a vision was that?
    I wanted to grab Chitsa by the shoulders and beg her to tell me more but my lips froze. I was too stunned. Why had she singled me out from all of the others? Why not tell this to one of the other girls? Why me?
    Leading Chitsa by the shoulders, Yuma walked her back to a thick mat of rabbit skins beside his family. She sank down into the furs, exhausted; my opportunity to question, lost. I sat numbly, holding the stick.
    A drumbeat thundered behind me, just once, and I flinched.
    Every girl had a ceremonial stick. The Dance of Womanhood had officially begun.
    Trancelike, three more drummers began to bang their drums with long,