My Gown Had No Gems, So I Walked Out of My Own Bonding Ceremony novel · Chapter 9 of 32
Chapter 9: Thirty-Six Stones
Someone was hammering on the lodge door before it was properly light.
Jasper was out of bed and in his jeans before I had found my own sleeve.
"Clara!" a voice cried through the wood. "Clara, it's me. Please."
I knew that voice.
I opened the door, and my middle sister fell inside with snow in her hair.
Cecily had a long garment bag over one arm and a flashlight in her mouth, and her hands were blue.
"I took the first plow sled across the ice," she said around the flashlight. "I didn't tell anyone. Margot thinks I'm in the chapel."
"Sit," said Jasper, and put a blanket on her.
She sat on the edge of the bed and unzipped the bag with shaking fingers.
Out came her blue gown, the one she had worn to the Founders' supper.
"I couldn't sleep," Cecily said. "I kept looking at that pouch in Dad's hand. And I kept thinking about the study."
"Cecily."
"I counted my own gown last night, Clara. I never counted it before. Nobody does. You only count them at the circle, and mine was counted when I was twenty-one."
She laid the gown flat across the quilt.
The skirt spread out in a pool of pale silk and the gems gleamed in the firelight.
"I'm twenty-five," she said. "I've got thirty-six stones on this dress."
I stared at her.
"I counted it three times," she said. "Eleven too many."
Nobody spoke.
Jasper came and crouched at the edge of the bed.
"Have you got a glass?" he said.
Cecily took a jeweler's loupe from her pocket.
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