5 years later
In New York City
Star sighed as she brushed her long waist- length blonde hair. A college freshman in New YorkUniversity, Star lived with her parents in Queens, a suburb of New York City. As she brushed her hair she caught a glimpse of the bracelet on her wrist. It was not at all beautiful with its blue, pink and green beads and a whiteSkull locket hanging in the middle. She had had it since birth. Her parents never told her where it came from and how she got it. She brushed her long hair with one swish, put her brush down and went to bed. That night, Star couldn't sleep as she kept having nightmares. She tossed and turned and tossed and turned. Finally, she was able to sleep dreamlessly.
Whilst she was asleep, Okpen in his chambers was performing a strange dance. When the full moon came out, he poured a pink powder into a stone basin and chanted some strange words.
Suddenly, the skull on Star's bracelet rose and began to glow an eerie white and a matching necklace appeared on her neck. Her hands then started glowing.
Okpen chanted, and the skulls jiggled, danced, and danced, and danced.
Nightfall in Mombasa
Amaka felt worried. It was not because her mother had gone into another crying lapse, because that, was quite normal, but she felt as if something strange was about to happen. As she was going to bed, her eyes caught on the bracelet on her arm - she didn't know that Star and Alexandriella also had one as they had never met- she thought it was strange. As she slept, the skull on her bracelet started to dance about.
A swirling mist filled Amaka's head and Okpen came into her mind. "You have a destiny." he said to her. Princess Isabella came into her mind sad and alone in a stone room wearing a huge diamond ring.
Then she woke up. The cock crowed twice, meaning that it was two in the morning. Amaka quietly crept out of her hut in and crept past her mother's hut and her brothers' hut and went into the bush. Meanwhile Chief Ngugi was out for a midnight stroll and he saw Amaka creeping into the bush. He immediately became suspicious and so he decided to follow her. Amaka followed the footpath in the bush till it ended, ran to the nearby stream, washed her feet and took the riverside path till she got to a mud hut with a fresh grass roof.
When she entered the hut, it was all pitch black, but the ground was hard, not sandy. Then a loud but mysterious voice exclaimed, "I've been waiting for you."