Furthermore

The sun was raining again.

Soft and bright, rainlight fell through the sky, each drop tearing a neat hole in the season. Winter had been steady and predictable, but it was quite poked through now, and spring was peeking out from underneath it. The world was ready for a change. The people of Ferenwood were excited for spring, but this was to be expected; they had always been fond of predictable, reliable sorts of changes, like night turning into day and rain turning into snow. They didn't much care for night turning into cake or rain turning into shoelaces, because that wouldn't make sense, and making sense was terribly important to these people who'd built their lives around magic. And squint as they might, it was very difficult for them to make any sense of Alice.

Alice was a young girl and, naturally, she was all the things you'd expect a young girl to be: smart and lively and passionate about any number of critical issues. But Alice was also lacking a great deal of something important, and it was this-her lack of something important-that made her so interesting, and so very unusual. More on that soon.

The afternoon our story begins, the quiet parts of being alive were the busiest: wind unlocking windows; rainlight nudging curtains apart; fresh-cut grass tickling unsocked feet. Days like this made Alice want to set off on a great adventure, and-at almost twelve years old-she'd very nearly figured out how to fashion one together. The annual Surrender was only a single pair of days away, and Alice-who was determined to win-knew it was her chance to set sail for something new.

She was on her way home now, occasionally peeking over her shoulder at the glittering town in the distance. The village square was undergoing no small transformation in honor of the upcoming festivities, and the clamor of instruction and construction rang out across the hills. Alice jumped from flagstone to flagstone, her face caught in the rainlight glow, her hands grasping for a

Tahereh Mafi is a girl. She was born the youngest child with four older brothers in a small city somewhere in Connecticut, and currently resides in Orange County, California, where the weather is just a little too perfect for her tastes. She graduated from a tiny liberal arts college two miles from the shores of Laguna Beach, has varying levels of competency in eight different languages and spent a semester abroad in Barcelona, Spain, where she had the opportunity to study Spanish literature in its native form. Shes traveled all over the world, lived on both sides of the country, and even spent some years writing really bad poetry. When unable to find a book, she can be found reading candy wrappers, coupons, and old receipts. She has no idea how to multiply big numbers in her head, and hopes to God no one will ever ask her to.

"[Mafi's] prose is as fresh and fragrant as the flowers her characters eat, the descriptions so vibrant that at times one can practically smell the words on the page." -New York Times Book Review

★ "A fast-paced, funny, and richly imaginative story that embraces and celebrates individuality." -Publishers Weekly, starred review

★ "Rich, luscious, clever prose." -Kirkus, starred review

From the Hardcover edition.