Chapter 13: The Cord Falls

The oldest elder walked into the ring of dry leaves with her white braids swinging.

She did not look at Hester.

She turned to the pines and told two hundred wolves what she had heard from behind a flour barrel.

She told it in order, in a flat old voice, and she left nothing out.

When she reached "Six times I held you up so he would never reach seven," a woman in the trees began to cry.

"That's a lie," said Hester. "She's senile. She's been senile for years."

"I have been exactly this senile since before you were Luna," said the elder. "Ask your son."

Dane had not moved.

He stood with his hands open at his sides and stared at his mother.

"Mama," he said.

"Don't listen to her."

"Is it true?"

"Dane, sweetheart, it is more complicated than..."

"Is it true?"

Hester pressed her lips together.

I took the notebook out of my jacket and held it up so the whole hill could see it.

Then I held it out to Tobin, across the Stone.

He came out of the trees with his satchel banging on his hip, and his hands shook when he took it.

"Page one," I said. "Read the dates."

Tobin cleared his throat.

He read the first cut, and the note beside it, in his dry healer's voice, and it was awful to hear it that way.

He read the sentence written the night my wrists were opened: Child will not wake. Washed her arms.

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