Once upon a time…

We were four: mother, father, my sister Leyla, and me. We carried trays of dyed eggs upriver each spring, when the water turned the color of olives. People said a hidden millstone beneath the current drank moonlight all winter and gave it back in spring. This year the river ran faster. On the bank stood Mirza, the orphan we called brother. He knew the bends and the whirlpools.

We loaded our skiff. A band of palace boatmen had mutinied and took tolls with hooked poles. They waved us over. Mirza whispered the old rule of the Olive Water: if one casts an egg upstream and it floats against the flow, the river claims you as kin. We tossed three. They spun backward, bobbing like lamp wicks. The mutineers crossed their chests and stepped back.

We pushed into the narrow run. A fog rose, smelled of sesame and iron. The hidden millstone hummed. Mirza kept the prow true while we sang the egg song. The fog opened on the market quay.

We sold the eggs. We shared bread. That night we gave Mirza our family crest patch. He wore it as if he had always had it.