Chapter 5
New Year is a strictly scheduled chore that starts at midnight.
Abigail comes to wake me from my short slumber of just three hours.
I’m half-asleep as she guides me to the curtained windows.
Abigail abandons me for a moment as she drags the curtains open until the entire row of windows is exposed.
The moonlight blends with the speckles of stars.
Then it begins.
With the caress of the moonlight on my bare flesh, Abigail undresses me.
The gold basin must have been carried in while I was still asleep. Even through puffy eyes, I recognise it as the same solid gold basin used every year—and just like all those other years, it is filled with the Sacred Waters.
Abigail sinks a cotton cloth into the basin and holds it down until every thread is drowning. It rains as she lifts it, rising to stand in front of me, then she presses the soaking wet cloth onto my face.
For a heartbeat, she holds it there.
No rinsing of the cloth, no wasting of the water, she smothers me with it for a full minute.
The exact sixtieth second is up when she pushes the cloth over my face, onto the crown of my head—and only then does she start to saturate me, head-to-toe.
Every inch of my flesh is glistening with the Sacred Waters when she drops the cloth back into the basin, then unfurls rolls of white bandages.
The longer it goes on, the less puffy my face becomes. Yawns don’t arch through me anymore, but I do sway with Abigail’s handling of me.
She wraps the bandages around my breasts and my pelvis, and it somehow feels more revealing than a two-piece bathing suit.
Not like I would ever wear such a thing in front of my parents. Not like they would ever allow it.
But this is allowed.
This is mandatory.
And it’s finished off with a black robe that Abigail swings around my shoulders.
I don’t help feed my arms through the wide, long sleeves, or fasten the string at the neckline.
It’s not my place to help the help.
My time for servitude will come in the gardens.
The skies beyond the windows are a black canvas, peppered with glittering stars and stroked with wispy clouds.
Abigail escorts me downstairs to the terrace.
That is as far as she goes.
Now, it’s a family thing.
A coven thing.
My family is waiting for me on the stone terrace beyond the doors, robed and bandaged like me.
All the other families in the Coven of Europe will be doing the same, at the exact same moment.
Father turns his back on us.
He starts down the stone steps to the gardens.
Mother follows.
Then Oliver.
And, lastly, me.
Father draws his hood over his head—and that strikes the mirrored movement down the line, until we are all hooded in the darkness, guided only by the wash of moonlight.
Our bare feet sink into the cold earth with each step we take deeper into the gardens. Robes billow over the gentle breeze beyond the pond, the fountain, the aviary, and even further, past the blue cottage and the hedge park.
The walk to the runes is long.
Frost glazes the grass and bites the soles of my feet with each step, all the way to the ancient stones.
Toppled over on the dewy grass, the stones are faded—so much that I can’t make out the old runes etched into them. But I know they date back thousands of years and they surround a pit of dirt.
Robes flutter around the stones until we each stand between two, joining the ancient circle.
No instructions are spoken.
We have done this so many times before, we each know what to do.
Silence follows us down onto our knees.
The hood falls further over my head. It darkens a border of my vision. I lift my gaze upwards, but instead of seeing my mother across the dirt pit, I’m met with darkness.
I touch my gaze back to the soil.
Once, witches wandered the lands with the common humans, the magicless ones. Back then, this spot was used as a mass grave of witches.
It’s the very reason Elcott Abbey was constructed here by Cravens centuries ago.
In sync with the rest of my family, my bare hands glide over the soil, until I’m folded over. My fingers curl. They dig into the dirt, mulching it in my fists.
I drag my hands back to me, then down the sides of my folded legs—and then I do it again, and again, and again.
On our hands and knees, we dig up the mass grave.
No tools are used to hurry this along. It’s done by hand. It’s done by toil. It costs sweat and harsh breaths and snapped nails.
We brought no candles or lanterns. We work under the light of the moon that arches over the sky as the night passes us by.
Like every time we do this, the moon gets away from us, and hours in, I start to worry we won’t reach the grave before dawn.
Dirt has caked too deep into my fingernails by the time the drizzle comes. It’s a mist of winter that glistens on the shifting sleeves of my robe.
My nails stretch, ready to snap off, by the time we’ve finally dug all the way down to the bones.
Exhaustion has my breathing grated, almost raspy, and I hang my head in relief.
I get just a moment to recover before the other robes start shifting and fluttering around the circle.
I mirror them and get to my feet.
The hood buries my face, it hides the break of dawn from my gaze, but the faint light is reaching over the soil.
I wonder what would happen if we didn’t reach the bones in time.
The thought is pushed out of my mind when I hear the distant sound of bare feet slapping on stone pavers.
The servants are bringing the sacrifice to us.
Freshly killed under the night sky.
Where it’s killed, I don’t know. Somewhere on the grounds, maybe.
Mr Younge leads the charge. He walks towards us, naked and balmed and without a robe.
I made the mistake of looking once. I was too young for that grim sight. But when I looked, I saw that Mr Younge walked the pavers to us, and behind him, four male servants carried something on their shoulders, the way krums carry coffins.
But it wasn’t a coffin they brought to us. It was something long, heavy, lumpy, and stuffed into a silky black bag.
That is what they bring to us now.
I look down at the toes of my feet.
At the kiss of dawn in the sky, the four Cravens standing around the dug-up pit of bones, the slapping steps grow closer.
My toes are sunken into the dirt. Dark lines cut across my nails, and I make a mental note to book a pedicure and wear closed-toe shoes today if Abigail doesn’t have the time to tend to me.
The footsteps shift from slapping on pavers to muffled thuds on mounds of dug-up dirt.
Frost spreads through my chest.
I ache to shut my eyes.
But that’s not allowed.
I force them to stay open, fixed on the bones sticking out of the earth, like teeth from gums.
A heartbeat passes, then the heap is thrown into the pit.
It thuds, hard—and I feel it in my bones.
My throat thickens, as it always does at this part.
The bag is soaked with crimson under the faint light. The material is so dark that if the light didn’t catch it at that exact angle, I wouldn’t notice the sheen of blood on the silk.
But I do.
My mouth clamps shut—and I bite down on my lips.
I don’t ask what’s in the bag.
I never do.
I tell myself it is an animal.
The servants leave the way they came. For the sound of their footsteps softening into eventual silence, we stand—we wait.
The quiet drapes over us once more, and the moment it does, movement ripples over the circle.
One by one, the others reach into the deep pockets of their robes and draw out blades—but I don’t.
Long daggers glint blended metal. The blades are split down the middle, one edge silver, the other gold, like prongs.
The sun is still rising from the horizon. The light is growing, spreading over the sky.
Father doesn’t waste a beat.
The tips of the split blades dip into his flesh.
I watch the dig, the bend of his skin as it fights the pressure—and loses the battle.
Blood spills.
Crimson streams over the edges of his forearm.
Mother is next.
Once her blood spills into the pit, Oliver digs the prong-blade into his own forearm.
Standing here at the edge, my feet sinking into soil, my face hidden by the drawn hood, I can only wait.
The ritual doesn’t want my blood.
Deadblood might glitter under the moonlight like true witchblood, but it’s still different enough that, to offer it to the gods, might be an offense.
It’s a risk.
A risk my family won’t take.
The blood is spilled for a long moment before arms are drawn back—and that is my cue.
The hoods that turn to face me are dark chasms gaping against the dawn.
I clammer into the pit.
Bones dig into the soles of my feet, biting at me.
My teeth bare in the shadows of my hood, but I don’t dare let out a hiss or a wince.
Silence is my friend.
I’m careful to avoid the heavy bag slumped in the pit, the one that looks so much like a body wrapped in dark silk.
At the edge, with bones poking into me, I drop to my knees.
Slowly, I slide forward into the lowest, humblest bow of all kinds, a prayer bow that flattens my chest on the soil, my face mushed into it, arms spread ahead of me, palms flat on the edge of the pit.
I speak my part, “I offer no blood, because it is unworthy. I live in your grace, your mercy, your fate. I offer myself to the gods. I plead for more mercy, more grace, more fate. I exist to fulfil your wishes. I will offer more to you, more lives born of my flesh, witches born of my womb—and I do it all in humble servitude.”
I don’t stumble over a single word of this prayer I speak every year, since I got my first bleed and I was first invited to the ritual.
But a question hums through me as the quiet comes, and we all fall into a silent moment, my family dropping to their knees around the pit and lowering their heads in a bow not as deep and low as mine.
And we stay like this until the sun has come up from the horizon, and the whole circle of it is revealed.
As I get to my feet and climb out of the pit, I wonder the same question that rings in my mind each time I have spoken the prayer at the pit—