Chapter 7: Rehearsal

I didn't sleep.

I lay on Gran's bunk with the grove photo on my chest, listening to Abel breathe on the other side of the room.

By dawn I'd decided.

"I'm going down to the rehearsal," I said over coffee.

Abel set his mug down very carefully.

"They'll eat you."

"They'll listen. The elders have to. Gran was their Seer for fifty years."

"Gran's not there."

"I am."

He looked at me a long moment.

"Take the truck with the good brakes," he said, and tossed me his keys.

The Moon Grove was full by ten.

Folding chairs in rows, white ribbons on every one. Florists on ladders in the cedars, stringing more lanterns.

The whole pack had come to watch the walk-through.

The seven elders sat in their carved chairs at the north side of the ring, where they always sat.

Damien stood at the altar stone in shirtsleeves, laughing with Iris.

She was in a pale pink sundress, her curls pinned up, his ring box in her hand.

My parents were in the front row.

Lowell sat behind them with his arm across the back of a chair, sunglasses on.

I walked straight up the aisle between the chairs.

The talking died a row at a time.

I stopped in front of the elders and held up the photo of the grove.

"There's going to be a fire tomorrow night. Right here, during the ceremony."

The eldest elder, a tiny woman in her eighties with a carved cane, leaned forward to look.

The others didn't bother.

"Three of these cedars burn," I said. "The den is right behind them. The mothers and the pups."

A murmur went through the chairs.

"My brother bought six cans of fuel yesterday. He has the pack's drip torch in his truck. I saw it."

Lowell took off his sunglasses and laughed.

"For the brush piles. Ask anyone."

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