In our family, we name only eight kids. There are photos on the wall of my older siblings- birthdays, graduations, awkward smiles- but mine stops at age three, hidden in the attic behind moth-eaten curtains. I am the ninth child and I was supposed to die before I turned ten. Instead, I woke up speaking the name of a god buried beneath the orchard and now the crows have begun to bow when I pass.

I don’t remember saying the name. I only remember the taste it left on my tongue- copper and cedar and something older, something wrong. My mother dropped the glass she was holding when I whispered it. She screamed, and then she slapped me hard enough to draw blood, as if pain might knock the syllables loose from my teeth. That night, they moved me to the cellar. ‘For safekeeping’, they claimed, ‘for everyone’s safety.’

The cellar is stone and root and earth. At night, it breathes with me.

The others don’t visit anymore. Even Garett, who used to sneak me sweet biscuits when no one was looking, won’t meet my eyes through the slats in the cellar door. He’s sixteen now. His naming day was last month. Mine was never celebrated. Ninth children don’t get cakes or songs; they get prophecies and a shallow grave if they so much as hum the wrong lullaby.

But the orchard is calling again.

I hear it in the wind that snakes through the keyhole. I feel it in the ache that burns behind my eyes when I sleep. The god beneath the root is stirring. My fingers twitch with ancient rhythms I’ve never learned.

This morning when I woke, there were muddy footprints at the base of the stairs and a crown of thorns resting on my chest.

Not one of my siblings had come down.

I leaned up against the wall, and I had no idea what was coming next.