Chapter 10: Moon-Blood

"Stand up," Conall said. "Slowly."

He had his hands on my shoulders, and his voice was steady, and I held on to it.

My bones were moving.

I could feel them sliding, long and slow, under my skin.

"I don't know what to do."

"You don't have to do anything. It already knows. Stop holding it back."

"I'm not holding it."

"You've been holding it since you were nineteen," he said. "Let go."

I closed my eyes.

I thought of the party and the video and the blue thermos.

I thought of five years of mornings where I had swallowed something bitter and called it kindness.

I let go.

It hurt.

It hurt more than anything had hurt since the cemetery, a hard bright wrench along my spine, and my knees hit the grass.

I heard myself cry out, and I heard Conall say, "You're doing it. You're doing it. I've got you."

My hands went into the dirt, and they were not hands anymore.

My jaw lengthened.

My back bowed, and a rush of warmth ran from my skull down to my tailbone, and my clothes tore away from me in strips.

Then the pain stopped.

It stopped all at once, and I stood on four legs in the dark, shaking.

The night opened.

I had thought I could smell, those last few days, but I had known nothing.

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