by Kami Garcia
Gramma and I stumbled through the smoke until we neared the burning oaks, and I found Macon lying where we had left him. Gramma leaned over him and touched his cheek with her hand. “He’s weak, but he’ll be all right.” At the same moment, Boo Radley rolled over and jumped up onto all fours. He slunk over and lay down on his belly next to his master.
Macon struggled to turn his head toward Gramma. His voice was barely a whisper. “Where’s Lena?”
“Ethan’s going to find her. You rest. I’m going to help Mrs. Lincoln.”
Link was by his mom’s side and Gramma hustled in their direction without another word. I stood up, scanning the fires for Lena. I couldn’t see any of them, anywhere. Not Hunting, Larkin, Sarafine—anyone.
I’m up here. On top of the crypt. But I think I’m stuck.
Hold on, L. I’m coming.
I made my way back through the flames, trying to stick to the pathways I remembered from being in Greenbrier with Lena. The closer I got to the crypt, the hotter the flames were. My skin felt like it was peeling off, but I knew it was actually burning.
I climbed on top of an unmarked gravestone, found a foothold in the crumbling stone wall, and pulled myself up as far as I could. On top of the crypt was a statue, some kind of angel, with part of her body broken off. I grabbed onto its—I don’t know what, it felt something like an ankle—and pulled myself over the edge.
Hurry, Ethan! I need you.
That’s when I found myself face to face with Sarafine.
Who plunged a knife into my stomach.
A real knife, into my real stomach.
The end of the dream we had never been allowed to see. Only this part wasn’t a dream. I know, because it was my stomach, and I felt every inch of the blade.
Surprised, Ethan? You think Lena’s the only Caster on this channel?
Sarafine’s voice began to fade.
Let her try to stay Light now.
As I drifted away, all I could think was if you stuck me in a Confederate uniform, I’d be Ethan Carter Wate. Even down to the same stomach wound, with the same locket in my pocket. Even if all I had ever deserted was the Jackson High basketball team, rather than Lee’s army.
Dreaming about a Caster girl I would always love. Just like the other Ethan.
Ethan! No!
No! No! No!
One minute I was screaming, the next, the sound was stuck in my throat.
I remember Ethan falling. I remember my mother smiling. The glint of the knife, and the blood.
Ethan’s blood.
This couldn’t be happening.
Nothing moved, nothing. Everything was frozen perfectly in place, like a scene in a wax museum. The billows of smoke remained billows. They were fluffy and gray, but they went nowhere, neither up nor down. They just hung in the air as if they were made of cardboard, part of a backdrop in a play. The tongues of flame were still transparent, still hot, but they consumed nothing and made no sound. Even the air didn’t move. Everything was exactly as it had been a second before.
Gramma was hunched over Mrs. Lincoln, about to touch her cheek, her hand hanging in the air. Link was holding his mother’s hand, kneeling in the mud like a scared little boy. Aunt Del and Marian were crouched on the lower steps of the crypt passageway, shielding their faces from the smoke.
Uncle Macon lay on the ground, Boo crouching next to him. Hunting was leaning against a tree a few feet away, admiring his handiwork. Larkin’s leather coat was on fire and he was facing the wrong direction, halfway down the road toward Ravenwood. Predictably running from, rather than toward, the action.
And Sarafine. My mother held a carved dagger, an ancient Dark thing, high above her head. Her face was feverish with fury and fire and hate. The blade still dripped blood over Ethan’s lifeless body. Even the drops of blood were frozen in the air.
Ethan’s arm was stretched out, over the edge of the crypt roof. It hung, dangling, down toward the graveyard below.
Like our dream, but in reverse.
I hadn’t fallen through his arms. He was ripped from mine.
Below the crypt, I reached up, pushing aside flame and smoke, until my fingers interlocked with Ethan’s. I was standing on my toes, but I could barely reach him.
Ethan, I love you. Don’t leave me. I can’t do this without you.
If there was moonlight, I could have seen his face. But there was no moon, not now, and the only light came from the fire, still frozen, surrounding me on every side. The sky was empty, absolutely black. There was nothing. I had lost everything tonight.
I sobbed until I couldn’t breathe and my fingers slipped through his, knowing I would never feel those fingers in my hair again.
Ethan.
I wanted to scream out his name even though no one would hear me, but I didn’t have a scream left in me. I had nothing left, except those words. I remembered the words from the visions. I remembered every one of them.
Blood of my heart.
Life of my life.
Body of my body.
Soul of my soul.
“Don’t do this, Lena Duchannes. Don’t you mess with that Book a Moons and start this darkness all over again.” I opened my eyes. Amma stood next to me, in the fire. The world around us was still frozen.
I looked at Amma. “Did the Greats do this?”
“No, child. This is your doin’. The Greats just helped me come along.”
“How could I have done this?”
She sat down next to me, in the dirt. “You still don’t know what you’re capable of, do you? Melchiz-edek was right about that, at least.”
“Amma, what are you talking about?”
“I always told Ethan he might pick a hole in the sky one day. But I reckon you’re the one who did that.”
I tried to wipe the tears off my face, but more just kept coming. When they reached my lips, I could taste the soot in my mouth. “Am I—Am I Dark?”
“Not yet, not now.”
“Am I Light?”
“No. Can’t say you’re that, either.”
I looked up in the sky. The smoke covered everything—the trees, the sky, and where there should have been a moon and stars, there was only a thick black blanket of nothing. Ash and fire and smoke and nothing.
“Amma.”
“Yes?”
“Where’s the moon?”
“Well if you don’t know, child, I sure don’t. One minute I was lookin’ up at your Sixteenth Moon. And you were standin’ under it, starin’ up at the stars like only God in Heaven could help you, palms raised like you was holdin’ up the sky. Then, nothin’. Just this.”
“What about the Claiming?”
She paused, considering. “Well, I don’t know what happens when there’s no Moon on your birthday on the Sixteenth Year, at midnight. It’s never happened before, far as I know. Seems to me there can’t be a Claimin’, if there’s no Sixteenth Moon.”
I should have felt relief, joy, confusion. But all I could feel was pain. “Is it over, then?”
“Don’t know.” She held out her hand and pulled me up, until we were both standing. Her hand was warm and strong, and I felt clear-headed. Like we both knew what I was going to do. Just as, I suspect, Ivy had known what Genevieve would do, on this spot, more than a hundred years ago.
As we opened the cracked cover of the Book, I knew immediately which page to turn to, as if I had known all along.
“You know it’s not natural. And you know there’s bound to be consequences.”
“I know.”
“And you know there’s no guarantee it’ll work. It didn’t turn out so well the last time. But I can tell you this: I’ve got my great-great-aunt Ivy downtown with the Greats, and they’ll help us if they can.”
“Amma. Please. I don’t have a choice.”
She looked into my eyes. Finally, she nodded. “I know there’s nothin’ I can say that’ll keep you from doin’ it. Because you love my boy. And because I love my boy, I’m goin’ to help you.
”
I looked at her and I understood. “Which is why you brought The Book of Moons here tonight.”
Amma nodded, slowly. She reached toward my neck with her hand, and pulled the necklace holding the ring out from inside Ethan’s Jackson High sweatshirt, which I still was wearing. “This was Lila’s ring. He had to love you somethin’ fierce to give it to you.”
Ethan, I love you.
“Love is a powerful thing, Lena Duchannes. A mother’s love, that’s not somethin’ to be trifled with. Seems to me, Lila’s been tryin’ to help out, as best she could.”
She ripped the ring off my neck. Where the chain broke, I could feel a mark, cutting into my skin. She slipped the ring on my middle finger. “Lila would’ve liked you. You have the one thing Genevieve never had when she used the Book. The love a two families.”
I closed my eyes, feeling the cool metal against my skin. “I hope you’re right.”
“Wait.” Amma reached down and pulled Genevieve’s locket, still wrapped in her family handkerchief, out of Ethan’s pocket. “Just to remind everyone that you’ve already got the curse.” She sighed uneasily. “Don’t want to be tried twice for the same crime.”
She laid the locket on the Book. “This time we make it right.”
Then she took the well-worn charm off her own neck, and laid it on the Book, next to the locket. The small gold disc looked almost like a coin, the image faded with wear and time. “To remind everyone, if they’re messin’ with my boy, they’re messin’ with me.”
She closed her eyes. I closed mine. I touched the pages with my hands, and began to chant—at first slowly, then louder and louder.
“CRUOR PECTORIS MEI, TUTELA TUA EST.
VITA VITAE MEAE, CORRIPIENS TUAM, CORRIPIENS MEAM.”
I spoke the words with confidence. A certain confidence that only comes from truly not caring whether you live or die.
“CORPUS CORPORIS MEI, MEDULLA MENSQUE,
ANIMA ANIMAE MEAE, ANIMAM NOSTRAM CONECTE.”
I called out the words to the frozen landscape, though there was nobody but Amma to hear them.
“CRUOR PECTORIS MEI, LUNA MEA, AESTUS MEUS.
CRUOR PECTORIS MEI. FATUM MEUM, MEA SALUS.”
Amma reached for me, taking my trembling hands in her strong ones, and we spoke the Cast again, together. This time we spoke in the language of Ethan and his mother, Lila, of Uncle Macon and Aunt Del and Amma and Link and little Ryan and everyone who loved Ethan, and who loved us. This time, what we spoke became a song.
A love song—to Ethan Lawson Wate, from the two people who loved him most. And would miss him the most, if we failed.
BLOOD OF MY HEART, PROTECTION IS THINE.
LIFE OF MY LIFE, TAKING YOURS, TAKING MINE.
BODY OF MY BODY, MARROW AND MIND,
SOUL OF MY SOUL, TO OUR SPIRIT BIND.
BLOOD OF MY HEART, MY TIDES, MY MOON.
BLOOD OF MY HEART. MY SALVATION, MY DOOM.
Lightning struck me, the Book, the crypt, and Amma. At least, that’s what I thought had happened. But then, I remember it feeling that way to Genevieve, too, in the visions. Amma was thrown back against the wall of the crypt, her head knocking against the stone.
I felt the electricity course through my body and relaxed into it, accepting the fact that if I died, at least I would be with Ethan. I felt him, how near he was to me, how much I loved him. I felt the ring, burning on my finger, how much he loved me.
I felt my eyes burning, and everywhere I looked, I saw a haze of golden light, as if it were coming from me somehow.
I heard Amma whisper. “My boy.”
I turned toward Ethan. He was bathed in gold light, just like everything else. He was still motionless. I looked at Amma in panic. “It didn’t work.”
She leaned against the stone altar, closing her eyes.
I screamed, “It didn’t work!”
I stumbled away from the Book, into the mud. I looked up. The moon was there again. I raised my arms above my head, toward the heavens. Heat burned through my veins where there should have been blood. The anger welled inside me, with nowhere to go. I could feel it eating away at me. I knew if I didn’t find a way to release it, it would destroy me.
Hunting. Larkin. Sarafine.
The predator, the coward, and my murderous mother, who lived to destroy her own child. The gnarled branches of my Caster family tree.
How could I Claim myself when they had already claimed the only thing that mattered to me? The heat surged up through my hands, as if it had a will of its own. Lightning streaked across the sky. I knew where it was going even before it hit.
Three points on a compass, with no North to guide me.
The lightning exploded into flame, striking its three targets simultaneously—the ones who had taken everything from me tonight. I should have wanted to look away, but I didn’t. The statue that had been my mother a moment before was strangely beautiful, engulfed in flame, in the moonlight.
I lowered my arms, wiping the dirt and ash and grief from my eyes, but when I looked back she was gone.
They were all gone.
The rain began to fall, and my blurred vision sharpened until I could see the sheets of rain hitting the smoking oaks, the fields, the thickets. I could see clearly for the first time in a long time, maybe ever. I made my way back toward the crypt, toward Ethan.
But Ethan was gone.
Where Ethan’s body had been lying moments before, now there was someone else. Uncle Macon.
I didn’t understand. I turned to Amma for answers. Her eyes were enormous, frightened. “Amma, where’s Ethan? What happened?”
But she didn’t answer me. For the first time ever, Amma was speechless. She was staring at Uncle Macon’s body, dazed. “Never thought it would end like this, Melchizedek. After all those years, holdin’ the weight a the world on our shoulders together.” She was talking to him as if he could hear her, even though her voice was tinier than I had ever heard it. “How am I gonna hold it up on my own?”
I grabbed her shoulders, her sharp bones digging into my palms. “Amma, what’s going on?”
She raised her eyes to meet mine, her voice barely a whisper. “You can’t get somethin’ from the Book, without givin’ somethin’ in return.” A tear rolled down her wrinkled cheek.
It couldn’t be true. I knelt next to Uncle Macon and slowly reached out to touch his perfectly shaven face. Usually, I would find the misleading warmth associated with a human being, fueled by the energy of the hopes and dreams of Mortals, but not today. Today, his skin was ice cold. Like Ridley’s. Like the dead.
Without giving something in return.
“No… please no.” I had killed Uncle Macon. And I hadn’t even Claimed myself. I hadn’t even chosen to go Light, and I had still killed him.
The rage began to well up inside me again, the wind whipping up around us, swirling and churning like my emotions. It was beginning to feel familiar, like an old friend. The Book had made some kind of horrible trade, one I didn’t ask for. Then I realized.
A trade.
If Uncle Macon was here, where Ethan had been lying dead, could that mean that maybe Ethan was out there alive?
I was on my feet, running toward the crypt. The frozen landscape tinted in that golden light. I could see Ethan, lying in the grass in the distance next to Boo, where Uncle Macon had been just moments ago. I made my way over to him. I reached for Ethan’s hand, but it was cold. Ethan was still dead and now Uncle Macon was gone, too.
What had I done? I had lost them both. Kneeling in the mud, I buried my head in Ethan’s chest and wept. I held his hand against my cheek. I thought of all the times he had refused to accept my fate, refused to give up, to say good-bye.
Now it was my turn. “I won’t say good-bye. I won’t say it.” It had come to this, just a whisper in a field of smoldering weeds.
Then I felt it. Ethan’s fingers began to curl and uncurl, searching for mine.
L?
I could
barely hear him. I smiled as I cried, and kissed the palm of his hand.
Are you there, Lena Beana?
I laced my fingers through his, and swore I would never let them go. I held up my face and let the rain fall upon it, washing away the soot.
I’m here.
Don’t go.
I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you.
2.12
Silver Lining
I looked at my cell. It was broken.
The time still read 11:59.
But I knew it was well after midnight, because the fireworks finale had started, even though it was raining. The Battle of Honey Hill was over for another year.
I lay in the middle of the muddy field, letting the rain wash over me. As I watched the small-time fireworks attempt to explode in the still drizzling night sky, everything was cloudy. My mind just couldn’t focus. I had fallen, hit my head and a few other places, too. My stomach, my hip, my whole left side ached. Amma was going to kill me when I came home, banged up like this.
All I remembered was, one second I was holding onto that stupid angel statue, and the next second I was lying flat on my back in the mud, here. I thought a piece of that statue broke off when I was trying to climb to the top of the crypt, but I wasn’t really sure. Link must have carried me out here after I knocked myself out like an idiot. Aside from that, it was like my mind had been wiped clean.
I guess that’s why I didn’t understand why Marian, Gramma, and Aunt Del were huddled near the crypt, crying. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when I finally stumbled over there.
Macon Ravenwood. Dead.
Maybe he had always been dead, I didn’t know, but now he was gone. I knew that much. Lena threw herself onto his body, the rain drenching both of them.
Macon, wet from the raindrops for the first time.
The next morning, I pieced together a few things about the night of Lena’s birthday. Macon was the only casualty. Apparently, Hunting had overpowered him after I lost consciousness. Gramma explained that feeding on dreams was much less substantial than feeding on blood. I guess he had never really stood a chance against Hunting. Still, it hadn’t stopped him from trying.
