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knees when they arrived back in their village. “Look what happened when I fell. A nice woman in the marketplace helped me—”
    But her mother wasn’t interested. “Maybe you’ll watch where you’re going next time.”
    Amina helped prepare the meal, then waited out of sight while Abba and her two older brothers ate. They were the three most important people in her household and entitled to the first and best of everything. They peppered her with slaps and kicks and curses whenever she didn’t move quickly enough, especially when they were tired from working in the fields all day.
    She was still thinking about the Jewish weaver’s kindness as she lay in bed that night. Hodaya had called Amina’s hair a lovely color. She’d said there was something special that Amina could do that her sister couldn’t—and she would find out what it was someday. Hodaya said she liked being different, even though her foot was even more crooked than Amina’s.
    Amina fell asleep thinking of her words. But sometime in the middle of the night, loud voices and cheering woke her up. She sat up, listening in the dark to sounds of laughter and celebration. It sounded like the festival her village held after the olives were harvested, but they weren’t even ripe yet. When another great cheer went up, Amina climbed out of bed and peeked outside her door. Everyone in the village had gathered in the street, celebrating with torches blazing and open jars of wine. Amina’s mother and some of the other women passed through the crowd with pitchers, refilling everyone’s cups. Abba stood on the back of a wagon, swaying slightly as if the wagon was rolling down the road. “What a day this is!” he said, lifting his cup. “We’ll be rid of those filthy Jews at last! Now they’ll all die!” The crowd cheered in response.
    Amina’s Uncle Abdel, who had come to visit from a distantvillage, jumped onto the wagon beside him, draping his arm over Abba’s shoulder. “Friends, we’ll take our pick of the Jews’ houses and property,” he said. “We can have their olive groves and vineyards, harvest fields that we didn’t have to plant—”
    “And sheep!” someone yelled from the crowd. “They have huge flocks of sheep!”
    “That’s right!” Abba said. “We’ll not only reap the benefits of the Jews’ labor and prosperity, but we’ll be rid of them for good.” His words were met with joyful laughter.
    “Listen . . . listen!” The oldest man in the village shuffled toward the wagon with his arms raised, signaling that he had something to say. The laughter quieted. “I was just a boy when the Jews arrived here from Babylon with their stinking caravans. They invaded like a locust swarm, building on our land and claiming our fields and vineyards as their own. Thousands of them! That was nearly seventy years ago, and I’ve thought of little else all these years, except getting rid of them. At last we’ll have our chance!” The people gave another roaring cheer.
    Amina was wide awake now. She slipped through the door and limped barefoot across her family’s small courtyard to stand by the gate. She was too frightened by the shouting and rowdiness to venture into the street, and besides, she was in her nightclothes.
    “We need a plan,” Abba said, “so we can take advantage of this opportunity. Everyone needs to stake his claim and determine whose plunder he wants and which Jews he intends to kill. And we’ll need swords and other weapons.”
    “It might be better if we rounded up all the Jews first,” the old man said. “We could kill them all in one place.”
    “Do you think they’ll fight back?” Amina’s uncle asked.
    “They can’t!” Abba replied. “That’s the beauty of it! This decree comes from King Xerxes himself. Every Jew in the empire—every man, woman, and child—must be executed.”
    Amina didn’t understand. The woman who’d helped hertoday was Jewish. Why would the king kill someone as kind