Chapter 9
It was dawn by the time I made it back to our motel, dirty and damp and dragging my feet. Memories I’d worked hard to squash now swirled around me like the storm that had recently blown over. Four parents gathered pridefully in our orchard with me in the center of both woelfin and trees....
“Have you chosen?” That was Aunt Promise, my cousins’ mother. When I was five, I’d begged to be the first to choose my self-name, and she’d made me an oath that I would be given that opportunity. So here we were, a decade later, with me leading my cohort in the ceremony of self-naming.
Moral of the story? Woelfin lived up to their names.
Not that I was thinking of Aunt Promise’s name when I turned fifteen and embarked on the self-name ceremony. Instead, I stood tall and proud. Bare feet on
