(And Oliver Newbanks could step on a porcupine. Alice would find Father by herself.)

I HAVEN’T ANY IDEA HOW MANY CHAPTERS ARE IN THIS BOOK

The morning arrived the way Alice imagined a whisper would: in tendrils of gray and threads of gold, quietly, quietly. The sky was illuminated with great care and deliberation, and she leaned back to watch it bloom.

Alice was sitting atop a very high hill, the whole of Ferenwood snoozing just below. Sleeping homes exhaled quietly, smoking chimneys gently puffing, unlit windows glinting golden in the dawn. Dew had touched the earth and the earth touched back: Blades of grass shivered awake as they reached for the sky, freshly showered and slightly damp. Bees were lounging, bread was baking, birds were chirping to the trees. Everything smelled like warm velvet tea and a freshly scrubbed face and something very, very sweet. Alice smiled, clutching her arms in the breeze.

The air was cold in places, but warm where the sun touched it, so she shifted to catch a spotlight. Her skirts glimmered in the glow as she adjusted her legs, and feeling a slight quiver in her stomach, Alice plucked a nearby dandelion and popped it in her mouth.

This was it.

Today she would be competing with every twelve-year-old in the village. All eighty-six of them would stand before the Town Elders and surrender their greatest talents. In exchange, they hoped to be recognized and set with a task that would change history.

In truth, simply being tasked at all was a great accomplishment. Ferenwood never talked of the children who were rejected outright, dismissed on account of being so thoroughly incapable that they could not possibly live up to a challenge. Instead, the conversation was always about the greatest task and which child it would go to. This auspicious day was a grand celebration of magic; and for Alice, who desperately longed to be more than nothing, the Surrender meant everything.

It meant redemption.

Alice stood up and smoothed the creases in her skirts. She was so proud of this outfit and all the work she’d put into it. In fact, it was the only time she was happy to be wearing clothes.

Not that there was anyone around to see them.

She’d slipped out of the house while Mother and the triplets were still fast asleep. No hellos, no good-byes, just Alice moving into a new moment. This quiet morning might have been her last for a long time, and she wanted it all to herself.

Happy Birthday to me, she thought. Alice was now officially twelve years old.

She skipped a ways down the path toward the town square, skirts bunched in her hands, bangled ankles and wrists making a merry tune of their own. The path to the square was one of her favorites.

Green stood sentinel on both sides of her.

Celery trees and apple bushes and lime stalks all as tall as she, swaying to a rhythm she recognized. The dirt was soft and welcome under her bare feet, and when it felt right she stopped, digging her toes into the ground as she turned her face up to the sky. Alice could see the entire square from here, and the sight of it stopped her still, the way it always did.

Ferenwood had many tall trees, but only a few tall places, and the square was the tallest place in town. And even though the trees (Ink trees and Night trees, Sink trees and Climb trees; Berry trees and Nut trees and Red trees and Wild trees) were rich in color (corn colored and raspberry stained and even a deep dark blue), and extremely varied (some grew pink stones and others dripped orange in the night), the square was tall and colorful and varied in ways the trees were not.

The buildings in town seemed (understandably) magicked together, strokes of a paintbrush licking them into being. Swirls and swirls of color had been swept together by a careful artist. Colors melted up walls and rushed down doors, orange and lavender swirling into a plump onion of a roof that sat snugly upon a structure painted gold; this was the health house. Green and yellow tangled with sapphire and silver to create a colorful dollop of a dome atop the schoolhouse. Strokes of flaming blue and rosy white were slicked together like an upside-down ice-cream cone: this, the roof of the mint-colored courthouse.

In this light, Ferenwood looked delicious.

Alice closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. Father had taught her to love this town, and she couldn’t help but want to make her people proud.

The sky was in fine form this morning, ready for its big moment. The clouds would burst open just as soon as the ceremony was over, showering the village in felicitations from the sky. Rain meant renewal, and the people of Ferenwood welcomed it. It was what their souls were made of.

When their world was built it was so breathtakingly beautiful—so rich and colorful—the sky wept for a hundred years. Tears of great joy and grief flooded the earth, fissuring it apart and, in the process, creating rivers and lakes and oceans that still exist today. There was joy for the beauty, but great sadness, too—sadness that no one was around to appreciate the majesty of it all. And so, as the story goes, Ferenwood folk were born from the tears that watered the earth and grew them into being.

The Surrender was how they gave thanks.

At twelve they surrendered themselves and their gifts and, in return, took on a task—the purpose of which was always to help someone or someplace in need. They gave back to the world and, in the process, they grew up.

This was when their lives truly began.

I hadn’t wanted to mention this earlier, but Oliver Newbanks had been standing just to the left of our Alice for over fourteen minutes before he finally stepped forward and pulled on her braid. I also feel compelled to mention that Alice responded by pinching him very, very hard.

Oliver yelped and teetered, nearly losing his balance. He tugged up his shirt to inspect the damage and offered Alice a ripe word or two to express his feelings on the matter. Alice turned away, very purposely avoiding the sight of his bare torso and the sound of his still-babbling voice.

“Would you hush?” she finally said to him. “You are ruining a perfectly good moment.” She nodded to the sun inching its way up the sky.

“Alice,” he said impatiently, “you need to give me an answer. You promised you’d let me know before the Surrender this morning, and now the moment is nearly upon us.”