Lahat ng Kabanata ng Bound by the Cursed Moon: Kabanata 601 - Kabanata 610

Point of View: Rhen (Female Lead)"Briar, you fell asleep standing up in front of the whole Tending Office. Sit down before I carry you out like a sack of flour. Ten years, and you still believe tired is something that happens to other people."I am Rhen, and I had just watched my daughter doze on her feet beside a stack of unopened letters.The Tending Office had once been the village hall. Ten years had turned it into something between a schoolroom and a post office. The great map still hung under the window, glowing its seven soft lights. Beneath it, three long tables groaned with ledgers, wax seals and cold cups of tea. The room smelled of ink and wet wool. Someone had pinned a drawing of a bell to the door, signed in crayon by a child who was now a grown woman."I was not asleep," Briar said. She blinked hard. "I was resting my eyes.""Standing up.""It is a skill.""It is a warning." I took the letter out of her hand. It was upside down. "How long since you slept a full night?"

Point of View: Rhen (Female Lead)"Mama, you retired. You do not get to appear every time I yawn and take my work away. I am fine. I am always fine. Why does everyone keep asking me that?"I am Rhen, and my daughter said that to me in front of twelve clerks.It was the middle of the afternoon at the Tending Office. A week had gone by. I had not taken anything away, though I had come very close to trying. I had only walked in and offered, very politely, to sit in on the rota meeting. Briar had put down her pen so hard that ink splashed across the minutes.The clerks suddenly found their ledgers fascinating. Marisol rose without a word and poured tea into twelve cups, setting one before each clerk as if nothing had happened. It was a small, kind thing, and the room breathed again."I only offered to listen," I said."You offered to chair.""I offered to listen, and then to chair, if you wanted.""I do not want." Briar pressed her fingers to her temples. "Mama, I am sorry. That was sharp

Point of View: Rhen (Female Lead)"Nobody here remembers the bell, Kieran. They treat the rite like a tax. I stood in this ring when the stones hummed, and a boy just asked if we could skip the quiet part."I am Rhen, and I was learning what it felt like to become a story people had already heard.It was the evening before the annual Tending. The First Concord ground lay under a darkening sky, the ring of seven gray stones standing as they had for two hundred years. Someone had built a low shelter against the windward side with a roof of green slate and a hearth for the cold. On its back wall, in letters carved by the first keepers and re cut by the new, ran the Charter of the Concord. A cold wind combed the grass flat. Somewhere in the dusk a lamb cried for its mother, and the stones stood in their circle like old men who had stopped listening to the weather.Fifty young keepers sat on benches in rows, fresh from every line. They were cheerful, well fed, and thoroughly bored. A girl

Point of View: Rhen (Female Lead)"Rhen, you are the one person who will tell me the truth. Did my people just insult the dead, or did I teach them to? Because the Marrow rite took eleven minutes."I am Rhen, and I did not know the answer, which is the worst thing a friend can say.We walked through the Marrow camp together, Isolde and I, past low brown tents pitched in a half ring against the wind. The Marrow line had always done things quietly. The older keepers kept their rites close, in whispers and bent heads. The younger ones, I noticed, walked in loose, cheerful groups and laughed at private jokes."Eleven minutes," Isolde said again. She was a thin, strong woman in her sixties, with gray hair cut short for ease and a face that had been stern so long it had forgotten how to be anything else. Today it was only tired. "My grandmother would have wept. She would have lit a fire in the middle of the road and made all of us watch the whole hour twice.""What did they say?""They said

Point of View: Rhen (Female Lead)"Mama, I answered Maren's letters by form for two years. She replied by form. I never saw her handwriting once. Tell me honestly, what kind of Chair does that make me?"I am Rhen, and I had to choose between comforting my daughter and telling her the truth.We were in the Tending Office after dark. The ceremony had ended in a tangle of murmurs, and the delegations had drifted away to their camps with troubled faces. Now only a few of us remained. A single lamp burned on the long table. The map hung quiet on its wall, seven lights glowing. One of them, I noticed, was a little paler than the rest."A tired one," I said."That is not an answer.""It is the truest one I have." I sat beside her. "Briar, you want me to say you failed. Or that you did not. Either would be easier for me. But you are neither. You are a woman who built a system so large that it started to answer letters for you.""That is worse.""It is worse and it is kinder. It is not a sin.