Page 7 of Moon Chosen

“Don’t be sad,” Jenna whispered. “Some tea will fix you up. You can sit with me and we’ll gossip about those silly feathers in Sora’s hair while your mama Washes the Clan.” Jenna pointed to a log not far from the central campfire of the Gathering. “Sit there and rest. I’ll get your tea and be right back!”

“Thanks, Jenna,” Mari said, sitting on the log as Jenna scampered away. She felt the pitying eyes of Clanswomen on her, and managed to school her face into the impassive expression she put on for the Clan—never letting them know how much it hurt to be held apart from them—never letting them know how difficult it was to hide the truth from them.

She watched as her mama made her way to the center of the Gathering Site. She stopped before the single idol that decorated the clearing. Leda dropped the girls’ hands she’d been holding, bowing deeply to the image of the Earth Goddess who seemed to be emerging from the forest floor. Her face was a smooth, carved river stone, creamy white and flecked with quartz crystals so that as light hit it—sunlight or the softer, cooler light of the moon—she glistened as if she had been formed from wishes and daydreams. Her skin was thick, soft moss. Her hair was a verdant fern that had been lovingly coaxed to cascade down the curve of her back and over the roundness of her shoulders.

“I greet you, Great Mother, as the Clan greets me—your Moon Woman—your servant, with love and gratitude and respect,” Leda said reverently. Then she straightened and faced the watching Clan. “Men of Clan Weaver, present yourselves to me!”

As the men made their way forward, Jenna joined Mari, handing her a wooden cup filled with fragrant chamomile tea before sitting beside her on the log.

“Oh look, there’s Father.” Jenna smiled and waved. The powerfully built man who led the men acknowledged her wave with a nod, though Mari could see that his face was set in lines of pain, and his eyes were narrowed against the anger that boiled within him with the setting of the sun.

It was an anger that would overflow if his Moon Woman didn’t Wash the Night Fever from him at least every Third Night.

With the other Clansmen, Xander dropped to his knees before Leda, and as he did so, the sun sank beneath the far western horizon. Mari saw her mother’s arms lift, as if she would cradle within them the full moon that wasn’t yet visible to the rest of the Clan, but which a Moon Woman could always find—could always call—as long as the sun had fled the sky.

Mari watched the gray tinge that had begun to spread up Leda’s arms fade and disappear. Her mother’s smile was radiant as she tilted back her head so that her face and her arms were open to the darkening sky. Leda’s breathing became deep and rhythmic. Automatically, Mari’s breathing deepened with her as she practiced the grounding exercise that preceded the drawing down ritual. Mari saw her mother’s lips moving as she communed privately with her Goddess and prepared herself.

Mari’s gaze drifted around the semicircle of Clansmen and women who surrounded her, counting them and consigning to memory the twenty-two women, ten children, and seven men who were present so that she could help her mama make the proper annotation in her journal when they returned to their burrow.

Mari frowned as her eyes paused on Sora.Unbelievable!She fumed silently.Everyone else is praying and readying themselves with Mama, but not that girl.Instead of praying or studying Leda, as any other candidate for Moon Woman was expected to do, Sora was smiling at one of the young men kneeling before Leda. Mari craned her neck and saw that the young man she recognized as Jaxom kept glancing surreptitiously at Sora, a heat in his eyes that seemed to have little to do with Night Fever.

Mari felt a stab of jealously. It was so easy for Sora! She was bold and confident and beautiful.What would it be like to be her—just for one day, or even one hour? What would it be like to have a young man look at her with such heat and longing? It would be wonderful,Mari thought.It would be unimaginably wonderful.

Then into the Clan’s silence her mother, her magickal, loving Moon Woman mother, began to speak in a voice sweet and strong and sure, and Clan Weaver lifted their heads to face Leda.

“Moon Woman I proclaim myself to be

Greatly gifted I bare myself to thee.

Earth Mother aid me with your magick sight

Lend me strength on this full moon night.

Come, silver light—fill me to overflow

So those in my care, your healing will know.”

As Leda spoke the invocation, her body began to glow. Not the sickly gray glow of Night Fever, but the sublime silver illumination of the pure, icy power of the moon. Mari had watched her mama call down the moon more times than she could begin to count, but it never ceased to thrill her. And though Leda’s Earth Mother had never, ever, so much as whispered one word to Mari, she imagined that if the Goddess were to truly rise from the earth, she would look exactly like her mama.

“By right of blood and birth channel through me

the Goddess gift that is my destiny!”

Leda spoke the final words that drew from the sky the invisible threads of power that only answered a Moon Woman’s call, and as she did so she began to move from man to man, touching each upturned head. Mari thought Leda was a living paintbrush whose touch stroked moonlight and magick into the tableau of the Clan, so that in turn each man glowed silver for an instant. Even from where Mari sat, she could hear the relieved sighs of the Clansmen as their Moon Woman Washed the pain and madness of Night Fever from their bodies.

Beside her, Mari felt the tremor that went through Jenna’s slight form, reminding her of the public role she must play. Mari drained the last of her tea and then wrapped her arms more tightly around herself, pretending a pain she had never felt.

“It’s okay, Mari. She’s almost done with the men,” Jenna said.

Mari opened her mouth to say something distracting to Jenna, but the sight of Sora moving beside Leda, smiling flirtatiously at each of the newly Washed Clansmen before they drifted back to their watch places surrounding the Gathering, had her gritting her teeth in irritation.

Jenna followed her gaze and snorted indelicately. “She’s so bold! I’m surprised Leda doesn’t put a stop to that.”

Mari said nothing. She was afraid she knew why her mama didn’t put a stop to Sora’s shamelessness.The Clan needs their Moon Woman to name an heir and choose her as a formal apprentice—and that apprentice can’t have mutant skin that glows in sunlight. Yes, Sora was arrogant and annoying, but she was also popular with the Clan and obviously determined to be Moon Woman after Leda.

Leda paused before them, smiling lovingly down at Jenna and Mari. With the rest of the Clan, Jenna lifted her head and Leda pressed her hands over the delicately wrought Moon Crown. Her words were for the Clan, but her eyes met her daughter’s.

“I Wash you free of all sadness and gift you with the love of our Great Earth Mother.”