Circles Seventeen Novels & Stories

Jordi and Noa are seventeen years old and in the last year of secondary school, and they are, at seventeen, fully themselves. Not arrived — people do not arrive, they continue. But at seventeen, they have reached the point where what they are is no longer forming so much as deepening. The substance is there. The resolution will keep increasing. But you can see the person they will be at forty from the person they are at seventeen, in the way that you can see the practice of the fortieth bowl in the second bowl if you know what you are looking at.

Zane said. "To do what." Sela, sharp on her crutch. "We're nineteen people and a granny and a girl who can pull a man's soul out through a rope. We can't hold a territory. We can barely hold a grudge." "Fifteen of the Seventeen," Bram said quietly. "And the forty, if they'll follow." Everyone looked at the forty. The forty looked at Seraphine. Seraphine looked at the ground for a second, then at me, and I understood she'd just done the same math I had and didn't love the shape of it any more than I did.