Chapter 19: The Eve

On the night before our birthday, we pushed the two beds together.

It was Clara's idea, because she could not sleep a whole night with her hand in someone's unless they lay close.

She lay in the middle.

I lay on her left and my mother on her right.

Rowan made a bed of quilts on the floor, with the old yellow dog across her feet.

"Nobody asked the dog," I said.

"He asked himself," Rowan said. "I'm just the pillow."

The window was open an inch.

Outside, the pack was carrying tables into the Gathering Hall by lantern light.

Now and then a hammer knocked and somebody laughed.

Clara's hand was warm in mine.

I had been giving for days, in shifts, and I had stopped waiting for the cold.

Around midnight a thin tiredness crept up my arm, and I told her.

"Switch," Clara said. "Mom, take her place."

"I'm good for an hour," I said.

"Then take the hour, and stop being brave."

My mother slid her fingers over Clara's other palm and held my gaze across her daughter.

"Brynn," she said.

"Yes?"

"I said I'd ask."

My stomach tightened.

"You don't have to do it tonight," I said.

"It's tonight or tomorrow in front of two hundred people," she said.

She took a steadying breath.

"I'd rather do the hard version in the dark."

"Seven," she said. "What did you want when you turned seven?"

I looked at the ceiling.

I could have said nothing.

Instead I said, "A dog."

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