All girls in Chaimara are born with the right to be shamans, Keepers of their world, a power that arises on their thirteenth birthday. Yet believing such protection was no longer needed, that the land was safe and flourishing, the elders, men and women both, decided to suppress the emergence of such Keepers through a ritual called the hareya. So it has been for five hundred years. On the day she turns thirteen, Mari is visited by a Storyteller, who hands her a gift. Hours later her guardian has given away all their possessions and taken the girl into the desert. The gift is a signal from Mari's mother, warning of an enemy that seeks to destroy them both. There can be no hareya. Mari begins a journey into a Chaimara she never knew existed, one filled with alternate dimensions, and the bridges between some are fragile and easily severed. Strangers help her, some intense and some frightening, all of them unpredictable. Still others she encounters seem already aware of her purpose. Those hunting her want what she has and will not stop until they get it. When Mari bands with a small group of rebels who live in the mountains of Dromgorden, the truth of the gift and why her mother sent it to her is revealed, and so is the path she must claim as her own.