Chapter One

Orange Moons I have left the Black Sea, my skin golden and salty, and my tangled hair brighter from the sun, to take the train that crosses the land by the violet-blue waters and the sunflower fields near Bucharest, then cuts through mountains into resin-pungent forest.

I am seventeen. Every summer my parents and I leave the hot streets of Bucharest to spend two weeks on the beaches of the Black Sea, after which we spend two months of summer in my aunt’s house in Brasov, the city at the foot of the Carpathians. I always rush to the mountains, hungry for the cool, fragrant air and sparkling sunrises.

This time I have come only with my mother. The night I arrive from the Black Sea, I want to go out for a stroll around the neighborhood right away. My aunt Nina, my mother’s sister, tells me I should rest first and not go off like that, all heated up and sweaty. She always gives her advice in a timid, soft way, as if worried she might upset you, unlike my mother, who blurts out her judgments in shrill tones, demanding that you listen.

My younger cousins Miruna and Riri want me to stay and play with them. Miruna, who is almost ten years old now and has the bluest eyes I have ever seen, starts crying, and she says I never play with them anymore and that she hates me. Riri, only five, with dark eyes like blackberries, throws a wooden toy box at my head. I tell them I’ll play with them later. The only one who doesn’t care what I do is my uncle Ion, who is snoring loudly on the sofa in the kitchen, too exhausted from work to even go to bed.

I need to cool off my sunburned body in the fresh mountain air, and I fly down the marble staircase,