That night, she walked to the fig tree. She sat on the roots that curled into the water like arthritic fingers. She dipped her hand in.

It whispered it through the reeds on the morning she was born, a soft yahr-rah that rolled over the water like a stone skipping toward the horizon. Her mother, kneeling on the mudbank with blood on her hands and joy splitting her face, heard it. And so the girl was called Yara, which in the old tongue meant small water .

The child closed her fingers around the bird. And far off, in the deep pool beneath the fig tree, the current turned once—soft as a whisper, steady as a heartbeat.

“Witch,” the uncle whispered, but his voice trembled.

“They will try to stop your heart,” she whispered.

“Now you listen,” Yara said. “The river knows your name too.”