Chapter 12: The Stone

The letter was only a page and a half long.

My mother wrote it in the last week of her fever, in a hand that grew more crooked as it went.

She said she was sorry she wouldn't see me become a woman.

She said the housekeeper who nursed her prayed so beautifully by her bed.

That woman had asked three times which herbs end a fever and which end a life.

I told her, my mother wrote. I was too tired to wonder why she asked.

She said my father was a good man and a weak one, and he had laughed at her fears.

Then, at the bottom of the second page, in letters that pressed through the paper:

At the Stone, if the Moon gives you a mate who is kind, say yes.

If he rejects you, do not say Heard unless you wish it ended.

The word closes the bond from your side, and only from your side.

No one can say it for you, and no one has the right to hurry you.

Remember the thyme song.

I put the page down on the quilt, and I did not cry.

Maud was crying enough for both of us.

"So I never said it," I said.

"Even with a boy's voice in front of two hundred people, I never said the word."

"You ran," said Maud.

"I never read this."

"No, love." She wiped her nose on her sleeve. "You couldn't have."

I found Osian on the tower roof at dusk, leaning on the parapet with his coat blowing about him.

I gave him the letter, and he read it twice, his lips moving over the last paragraph.

"I want to see the Stone," I said.

"Tonight?"

"I've been dreaming of it for five years. I'd like to know if it's real."

He folded the page and gave it back to me as carefully as a man handing over an egg.

"I'll take you," said Osian.

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