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I had just turned nine when Aisha walked into my classroom, stopping the conversation and stealing my heart in the same instant.

I think we all stared, and then, as Aisha looked back defiantly, we dropped our gazes back to our books as though we were suddenly interested in Stigrosc prime number theories. Pat, our teacher for the day, smiled a little thinly. “Class, this is Aisha, from al-Gohara.”

A few of us looked up and muttered greetings, as Pat guided our new classmate to a seat near the doorway. A message from Morgan flowed across my book. Pregnant, e opined.

I glanced at Aisha’s golden-pale profile out of the corner of my eye. Don’t think so, I replied.

Must be. Look at the size of those boobs.

It was hard not to, despite Aisha’s loose and very opaque sky-grey robe, but that would have been even more impolite than passing notes in class—and class was meant to teach us social skills: we would have learned math much faster at home. Can’t be, I protested. Aisha was taller even than Pat, at least two meters, but all the al-Goharans I’d seen were taller still, and Aisha probably wasn’t much older than we were.

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