Chapter 22: The Harvest Moon Rite

The Harvest Moon Rite is danced on the open plain, in a ring of standing stones.

It falls on the first full moon after the grain comes in.

Three hundred wolves stood on the dark grass around the ring.

I could hear them breathing.

I stood at the edge of the circle in the silver dress, with my mother's six pins in my hair and nothing at all on my bare back.

The night air was cold on my spine.

The mark between my shoulder blades was warm.

Across the ring, Cormick stood in a black coat with his hands at his sides, and he had not taken his eyes off me since the drums began.

Pip was in the troupe line behind me, and she hissed, "Breathe," and I breathed.

At the edge of the crowd I found my father, with his cap in his hands.

The thin elder raised her cane.

"Heir of Greywater," she said. "Dancer of the Rite. Come into the ring."

I walked in.

The grass was soft and damp under my bare feet.

Cormick and I stopped an arm's length apart, in the center of the stones, with the whole plain waiting.

The drum began a low, slow beat.

We moved through the first figure, hands near but not touching, turning around one another as we had done a hundred times.

My body knew it by now.

When the drum quickened, the elders expected the shift.

Cormick's wolf rose in him, swift and sure, and his shoulders bent and his hands began to change.

Mine did not.

I felt it start in my chest, a long slow pull.

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