Chapter 22: Under the Altar Cloth

The Snow Moon chapel was a small cold room at the edge of the Lodge grounds, built of pine logs the color of honey.

We went in at ten, by the Council's order, with the elder and the clerk and a hundred wolves of both packs crowding the pews.

Nobody had told my mother.

She came in last, through the side door, in her dark green dress with her prayer book in her hand.

She stopped when she saw the room.

She saw the elder at the altar, and Jasper beside me, and Margot standing with a guard on each side, and Cecily with her chin up.

For one second her face showed nothing at all.

"Luna," said the elder. "We are here to lift the altar cloth."

"On whose word?"

"Your daughter Margot's."

My mother looked at Margot.

It was a long, flat, patient look, and Margot flinched under it.

"I see," said my mother. "She has been frightened and unwell all week. I would not trust anything she says."

"Then the cloth will say it for her," said the elder.

She nodded to the clerk.

He took one corner of the long white linen on the altar, and I took the other.

The cloth was heavy and stiff with age.

We drew it back together, and it slid off the stone with a long dry rustle.

Under it, the altar was not a block of solid stone.

It was a cabinet, with a plain oak door that had been oiled and kept clean.

The elder opened it.

Inside, in two neat rows on a shelf of pale wood, lay twenty-two small silver boxes.

Each one was the size of my palm, and each one had a six-pointed star pressed into the lid.

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