The Thirteenth Moon novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: The Next Moon

I took the pen.

It was heavier than I expected, a worn black thing with a nib older than Edda.

The pack stood below the dais in the blue snow and waited.

I thought about it for a long time, and then I wrote it plain and in order.

No vine shall be cut on any woman of this pack without her word.

No vine shall be unmade without her word.

The word is hers, and the Alpha's is not.

The thirteenth moon belongs to the one who wears the vine.

I handed the ledger back, and Edda read it aloud, once, to three hundred people.

When she finished, the old man from the pass said, "Aye," and the whole pack said it after him.

That was the law.

It took a minute.

The next full moon came on a cold, clear Saturday with the snow packed hard on the ridge.

Nobody had asked for ceremony, and the pack made one anyway.

They built the witness-fires at noon.

By one o'clock the long table stood in its old place at the edge of the grounds, with the same white cloth.

The cookhall women were carrying out the pots.

I had made a pork stew.

I stirred it myself until the last minute, because some things I wasn't ready to give up.

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