“We have to eat something.”
Filiz grabbed the kettle handle, which burned her in a way the fires she ignited never did. She cursed and dropped the kettle, spilling its contents on the floor.
Her mother fell on her knees, scooped water in her hand, brought it to her lips.
“Stop it!” Filiz fell on her mother, wrenching her hands from her mouth. She grabbed her bag and produced a wedge of baklava, a greasy veal cutlet. She pressed the food into her mother’s hands. Her mother gaped at the food as if her hands were on fire. Then she started eating.
Filiz watched her mother scarf half of the cutlet down. “Is there more?” she whispered.
Filiz shook her head.
“We are dying.”
The Assembly took place in Filiz’s great-uncle Yusuf’s cave. After Solon’s cave, which none of the others had ever been allowed to see, let alone enter, Yusuf’s cave had the largest room for gathering. The fire was dwindling, Filiz’s pet peeve. A large painted evil eye watched them from the back wall. Filiz wondered if the eye was blind; it hadn’t protected her people in a long time.
She had not been to an Assembly in years, since before her father died. She went tonight because she knew the Poet was going to rat out Solon and his food. She wanted to do what she could to temper the Celans’ reactions.
“It is happening.” Yusuf furrowed his wiry white eyebrows as Filiz entered the room. His skin reminded Filiz of a pan-fried quail, brown and tight and cracking from sun. “The animals we have long hunted now hunt us. Our home has become treacherous as everything around us starves.”
The group was small that night, less than twenty of her neighbors. They looked haggard and feral. She knew that these were the healthiest of them, that everybody absent lay in a nearby cave, too malnourished to move.
The Poet was there, sitting between two other boys his age. The boys’ dark skin had a strange white tint. It took Filiz a moment to realize that their skin was caked with salt. They must have been out in the rain all day building the arks. It was an old project of the Celans, in preparation for the flood that generations of them had feared. There were many ancient stories of heroes riding out past floods in sturdy arks. Few took their construction seriously, even stealing the food the ark builders had begun to stockpile when the famine hit last year. But everything was different now that the tear rain fell from the sky. Filiz didn’t know where the Celans thought they’d sail to, or how they would survive at sea, but many were convinced the arks would be their salvation.
Filiz had grown up with the Poet and the other boys, but since she’d been to Kusadasi she felt like an alien all the time—too rural for the city, too cosmopolitan for home. Before the flood, she’d concluded that to be happy she must sever ties with the mountains, that one should not hold on to situations out of guilt.
Her grandmother Seyma sat atop a cushion next to Yusuf. Her white hair cascaded past her knees. Seyma claimed her quirk worked only when she was sleeping—she could visit others’ dreams—but Filiz knew she could snake inside another’s mind at any time of day.
Her neighbors made room as Filiz stepped toward the center of the Assembly. She knelt down before the fire, snapped her fingers, and brought the flame roaring back to life. She never thought much of her quirk until moments like these, when its value became obvious. All the Poet could do was sing and whistle like a bird, a useless gift. Birds never had anything comprehensible to say.
Filiz sat next to a child named Pergamon. He was like a silent shadow, always following her around. His quirk was the otherworldly power of his grip. Filiz had often heard his parents shrieking when Pergamon held their hands. Now he was napping, his soft cheek resting on his arm.