Chapter 3: Challenging the Moon

I come into consciousness slowly, like I'm swimming to the surface in a raging stream. Everything hurts so bad that for a bit I think maybe I've died and been buried in the ground deep enough that the earth is crushing me. I taste blood in my mouth and spit, cough, open my eyes into the dim light of my tower room and it's nothing so merciful as death that waits for me.

I've been bound so tight that the ropes are biting into my arms. I'm not even on my small old bed that I've had since I was twelve, I'm on the floor and the wooden boards under my head are sticky. I'm still bleeding. Sh*t.

Sometimes when I'm dragged back here for offending the graces of the pack with my lack of wolf, my father will stand above me like some great prophet of the people and he will tell me all the ways I fail. Not now. He's too busy with the visit of the Goddess to care, which means I'm left without even a shred of explanation. Why did he do this? Why now? Why did he rob me my one chance to get answers?

Now tears sting my eyes and the back of my throat tightens up so sore and fierce that for a moment I'm scared I'll stop breathing altogether.

How could Elliot tell them?

He was the only one who knew my special place. I showed him once when we were still allowed to be friends and my mother still graced the pack with her beautiful green eyes. I showed him all my little treasures and sometimes when I was sick or hiding or just having a day so bad that it would set birds to crying he would leave me something good to eat or a little white flower at the base of my tree.

He hasn't done it in so long that I couldn't tell if it's been months or years, but I could have sworn on my own life he'd never betray our last trust.

Except I was wrong.

Noise erupts outside and I can see that the light of day is dying through the window. There are cheers and howls and children singing loud joyous songs and the sound of the hunters' trumpets welcoming the Goddess of the Moon to our pack. I'm missing it, I'm shut away like a shameful secret and I don't even get to look at her face.

My throat burns again and I wriggle furiously along the floor, fingers scrabbling against the wood for purchase. I know this floor well, I've been beat on it often enough that it's like the back of my father's hand to me. I find the sharp spike of nail sticking out of the third board along from the door and I heave myself around until my wrists are over it.

It takes a long time to work the nail through the ropes and get my hands free, but after that the rest is simple and I'm kneeling on the floor checking myself over for injuries. I'm beat up and someone kicked me while I was out and there is sticky red blood on my head and a lump that is forming into a knot the size of a ripe plum. Nothing is broken and I can breathe in full breaths so I count those blessings on the fingers of one hand and hurry over to my little window to peek out.

The ceremony is still happening out there. My people are lined up and the children preparing for their gift ceremony tonight are being presented, wearing silver robes like moonlight and looking fresh and young and vulnerable. The scars across the palms of my hands itch and I bite back a howl. No one can be trusted with children, not if they'll cast us aside the second we don't do everything they want.

She is surrounded by the crowd so at first I don't see her clearly, then a few figures move and the light of her seems to reach out across the gap between us and find the aching place inside me where I waited for her blessing. It's like nothing I've ever known, that moment. It's like being seen to the depths of my being. It's like breathing the first good clean air my lungs have ever held.

Her face tips up and I swear her eyes, huge and luminescent, look towards me. I'm sobbing before I know it, tears pouring down my cheeks. I'm filled with the urge to run towards her and I recognise it like that deep warm urge I'd feel when my mother looked at me.

The Moon Goddess is beautiful. She's everything I always thought she might be.

She's just another thing that they've taken from me.

I watch as my father steps forwards to introduce the family, my oldest brother Frank, Violet and the triplets Jack, Teddy and Ray who were born out of mother's need to have a child to erase my shame. There's no gap near them where I should be. They don't miss me anymore, don't struggle to move to fill the spaces I would stand. It's like I was never there with them.

I cry until I'm out of tears and then I lay on my bed and listen to the party until the last sound dies out from the courtyards below. When I'm absolutely sure that everyone is asleep in their beds, I pull the rope I made of my bedsheets when I was fifteen and afraid a fire would kill me before anyone thought to check the tower for life. I've been up and down it a dozen times over the years, my grip is sure and steady as I slip out my window and carefully lower myself to the ground.

I already know where the Goddess's tent will be. I helped clear the site for it over the last few weeks and I'm used to sliding around in the shadows and making sure that no one sees me. There are only a few people left in the darkness, drunk on red wine and holy light, and none of them are sharp enough to see me crossing towards the guest tents. Even the guard standing outside the tent with the moon blazened on the side is easy to distract with a pebble skimmed across some rocks in the distance.

My heart is hammering loud in my chest as I wait for him to leave and then creep forwards and open the tent flap to duck inside. This is it. This is what I've been waiting for my whole life.