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376 pages, Paperback
First published January 29, 2022
When I bled for the first time, I thought it was witchcraft [...] An hour later, it hadn’t stopped. Two hours. Two days. Nothing. That’s when I started to panic. Six days passed before the bleeding finally stopped. Six days of hidden laundry washes, of bloody cloth thrown off the stern and left for the sharks. I was in a state. Did I tell Omar? The ailment was clearly the result of magic; how else could a person bleed for six days straight with no clear cause? And was I its victim or its source? Then, three weeks later, it happened again. And again the next month. And again. No one explained menstruation to me. Why would a boat full of drunken men think to tell a growing girl such things? It may have been prudent to alert the Captain to the potential presence of magic on his boat, but it also posed a risk—as the only woman aboard, the men might well think the magic came from me. That I cursed myself. And if I accidentally cursed myself to bleed for a week straight, Lord only knows what I might do to them.
"Then I trip.
Finn catches my arm without even looking. He sighs and pushes me back to vertical."