Chapter 73: The Mill Burns

I ran out of the house with Harlan behind me and the snow coming down and the mill at the end of the road was not a mill anymore. It was a white shape in the dark with the roof gone and the walls coming apart and the light of it was white and it was not like any fire I have ever seen.

It was the stones. The stones in the circle were burning.

I got to the yard and the heat came at me like a wall and I put my arm up over my face and I stopped.

The mill was gone. The roof had fallen in and the walls were standing but the inside of it was a furnace and the furnace was white. There was white light coming out of the windows and the door and the cracks in the boards, and it was not flickering the way a fire flickers. It was steady. It was like looking at the moon.

And in the middle of the yard there was a man.

It was Erik Renn. He was standing in the snow with the box of stones in his arms and my mother's ring on his finger and the white light on his face, and he was not looking at the mill. He was looking at me.

“You are too late,” he said. “The stones are in the fire and the fire is in the stones and the curse is going to take him.”

“Where is Elias?”

“He went in,” Erik said. “He went in after the box. He is in the mill.”

I turned and looked at the mill and the white light and the door.

And then I ran.

I heard Harlan shout my name. I heard Erik say something behind me and I did not listen. I put my coat up over my head and I went into the mill.

The heat was not like heat. It was like a hand pressed flat against my whole body and it took my breath and my eyes and my sense of where I was, and I went down on my hands and knees on the floor and crawled.

The floor was hot. The boards were hot and there was smoke in the air and the white light was coming from the middle of the room where the circle had been and where the stones were.

And there was a shape in the white light.

It was Elias. He was on his knees in the middle of the floor with his hands on the stones and the stones were white and the light was going through him and he was not moving.

“Elias,” I said.

He did not answer.

I got to my feet and went to him and the heat got worse and the white light got brighter and I put my hands on his shoulders and he was hot. He was hot the way a stone is hot when it has been in the sun all day and he was not breathing.

“Elias,” I said. “Elias.”

I put my arms around him and pulled and he did not move. He was kneeling on the stones with his hands on them and the light was going through him and I could not get him up.

And then I heard it.

It was a voice. It was not Elias and it was not me and it was not any wolf in that territory. It was a woman's voice and it was coming out of the stones.

It said: the curse is not broken by the death of the wolf. The curse is broken by the life of the Luna. Take him and go.

I put my hands on the stones.

And then I said the seven words.

The white light went out.

It went out like a lamp and the mill was dark and the heat was gone and the smoke was gone and the only light was the snow through the broken roof. And Elias was lying on the floor in the dark with the stones around him and his eyes closed and his chest not moving.

I put my hand on his chest.

Nothing.

“Elias,” I said.

Nothing.

I put my mouth on his mouth and I breathed into him the way Maeve had taught me when I was a girl and we pulled a drowned calf out of the pond. I did it once. I did it twice. I did it a third time and the tears were running down my face and I did not stop.

And then his chest moved.

He coughed. He turned his head and coughed and his hand came up and found my arm and held on.

“Wren,” he said. His voice was a whisper and it was not steady.

“I am here,” I said. “I am here. Do not move.”

“The stones,” he said. “The stones were burning. I could not leave them.”

“I know.”

“They were calling me.” He opened his eyes. They were amber and they were tired and they were his. “They were calling me the way the moon calls me. And there was a voice.”

“I heard it too.”

He looked up at me.

“What did it say?”

“It said the curse is not broken by the death of the wolf,” I said. “It said the curse is broken by the life of the Luna. It said take him and go.”

He lay on the floor of the mill with his head in my lap and the snow coming down through the broken roof and the stones around us were not white any more. They were gray and they were cold.

I put my hand on the nearest one.

It was cold.

“Elias,” I said. “The stones are cold.”

He put his hand out and touched one.

“They are cold,” he said. “They have never been cold.”

I sat in the dark with him and the stones and the snow and I did not understand what had happened and I did not care. He was breathing. That was the whole of it. He was breathing.

And then Harlan came through the door with a lantern and Erik Renn behind him with the box in his arms, and Harlan stopped in the middle of the floor and looked at the two of us.

“Wren,” he said. “Is he alive?”

“He is alive.”

Harlan came and knelt down beside us and put his hand on Elias's chest and let out a breath.

“Thank God,” he said.

And then Erik Renn came forward with the box and put it down on the floor and knelt down in front of us and put his hands on his knees.

“The stones are cold,” he said. “Do you know what that means?”

“No,” I said. “And I do not care what it means tonight.”

“It means the curse is gone,” Erik said. “It means the stones have given up the thing that held them. It means the bargain the founders made in 1891 is finished and the land is free.” He looked at me. “It means the new moon will come in three days and the wolf will not change.”

Elias turned his head.

“What?” he said.

“The curse is gone,” Erik said again. “I have been carrying it for eighty-eight years and I know what it feels like when it is in a room. It is not in this room. It is not in these stones. It is not in you.” He looked at Elias. “You are free, wolf. You are the first of your line to be free.”

Elias lay on the floor of the mill with his head in my lap and did not say anything. And then his hand came up and covered his face and his shoulders began to shake.

I held him.

Harlan stood up and went to the door and called out into the snow, and his voice went down the mill road and up the ridge and across the field.

“Maeve,” he shouted. “Maeve. Bring the healer's bag. The curse is broken.”

I sat in the dark mill with my mate in my arms and the snow coming down and the stones cold around us, and I put my mouth against his hair and closed my eyes.

“Three days,” I said. “The new moon is in three days and the wolf will not change.”

He did not answer. He was asleep.