I wanted to scream out his name even though no one would hear me, but I didn’t have a scream left in me. I had nothing left, except those words. I remembered the words from the visions. I remembered every one of them.
Blood of my heart.
Life of my life.
Body of my body.
Soul of my soul.
“Don’t do this, Lena Duchannes. Don’t you mess with that Book a Moons and start this darkness all over again.” I opened my eyes. Amma stood next to me, in the fire. The world around us was still frozen.
I looked at Amma. “Did the Greats do this?”
“No, child. This is your doin’. The Greats just helped me come along.”
“How could I have done this?”
She sat down next to me, in the dirt. “You still don’t know what you’re capable of, do you? Melchizedek was right about that, at least.”
“Amma, what are you talking about?”
“I always told Ethan he might pick a hole in the sky one day. But I reckon you’re the one who did that.”
I tried to wipe the tears off my face, but more just kept coming. When they reached my lips, I could taste the soot in my mouth. “Am I—am I Dark?”
“Not yet, not now.”
“Am I Light?”
“No. Can’t say you’re that, either.”
I looked up in the sky. The smoke covered everything—the trees, the sky. And where there should have been a moon and stars, there was only a thick black blanket of nothing. Ash and fire and smoke and nothing.
“Amma.”
“Yes?”
“Where’s the moon?”
“Well, if you don’t know, child, I sure don’t. One minute I was lookin’ up at your Sixteenth Moon. And you were standin’ under it, starin’ up at the stars like only God in Heaven could help you, palms raised like you was holdin’ up the sky. Then, nothin’. Just this.”
“What about the Claiming?”
She paused, considering. “Well, I don’t know what happens when there’s no Moon on your birthday on the Sixteenth Year, at midnight. It’s never happened before, far as I know. Seems to me there can’t be a Claimin’, if there’s no Sixteenth Moon.”
I should have felt relief, joy, confusion. But all I could feel was pain. “Is it over, then?”
“Don’t know.” She held out her hand and pulled me up, until we were both standing. Her hand was warm and strong, and I felt clear-headed. Like we both knew what I was going to do. Just as, I suspect, Ivy had known what Genevieve would do, on this spot, more than a hundred years ago.
As we opened the cracked cover of the Book, I knew immediately which page to turn to, as if I had known all along.
“You know it’s not natural. And you know there’s bound to be consequences.”
“I know.”
“And you know there’s no guarantee it’ll work. It didn’t turn out so well the last time. But I can tell you this: I’ve got my great-great-aunt Ivy downtown with the Greats, and they’ll help us if they can.”
“Amma. Please. I don’t have a choice.”