For a moment Leora's hand froze, exposed, the delicate webbing between her fingers translucent as a fish's fin, luminous against the morning sun. "If you go out there, the birmbas will eat you up and spit out your bones," Tanette taunted. "And besides," she added in her tattletale voice, "it is forbidden." Leora's webbed hand has always marked her as different. Orphaned and outcast in her stepmother's household, she keeps the hand hidden for fear of being sent to the Institute along with other "defectives." Her hand sets her apart, but it also allows her to draw pictures with haunting power. When Leora peers past the locked gates of her village, she feels her life might be different. But it isn't until she dares to free a baby birmba, a creature she's been taught to fear, that her life begins to change. For it is this act of kindness that sets in motion an unforgettable adventure, a quest for family and belonging, that takes Leora into the forbidden Outside. - from Amzon