The blade yielded before her. Cassie could feel a tiny trickle of wetness on her throat as it withdrew and Faye stepped back.
Then she looked down. She was inside the circle.
Diana took the dagger from Faye and went to the break in the circle behind Cassie. Drawing the knife through the sand, she bridged the gap, making the circle complete. Cassie had an odd sensation of closure, of something sealing. As if a door had been locked behind her. And as if what was inside the circle was different from anything outside.
“Come to the center,” Diana said.
Cassie tried to walk tall as she did. Diana's shift, she could see now, was slit all the way up to the hip on one side. There was something on Diana's long, well-made upper leg. A garter? That was what it looked like. Like the ornamental bands of lace and ribbon that a bride wears to throw at a wedding. Except that this was made of something like green suede and lined with blue silk. It had a silver buckle.
“Turn around,” Diana ordered.
Cassie hoped the cord binding her wrists was going to be cut. But instead she felt hands on her shoulders, spinning her faster and faster. She was being whirled around and pushed from side to side, from person to person. For an instant panic surged through her again. She was dizzy, disoriented. With her hands tied she couldn't catch herself if she fell. And that knife was somewhere…
Just go with it. Relax, she told herself. And magically, her fear dissolved. She let herself be bounced from one person to another. If she fell, she fell.
Hands steadied her, stood her facing Diana again. She was slightly breathless and the world was reeling, but she tried to draw herself up straight.
“You've been challenged and you've passed the tests,” Diana informed her, and now there was a little smile in Diana's green eyes, although her lips were grave. “Now are you willing to swear?”
Swear what? But Cassie nodded.
“Will you swear to be loyal to the Circle? Never to harm anyone who stands inside it? Will you protect and defend those who do, even if it costs you your life?”
Cassie swallowed. Then, trying to keep her voice level, she said, “Yes.”
“Will you swear never to reveal the secrets you will learn, except to a proper person, within a properly prepared Circle like the one we stand in now? Will you swear to keep these secrets from all outsiders, friends and enemies, even if it costs you your life?”
“Yes,” Cassie whispered.
“By the ocean, by the moon, by your own blood, will you so swear?”
“Yes.”
“Say, 'I will so swear.' “
“I will so swear.”
“She has been challenged and tested, and she has been sworn,” Diana said, stepping back and speaking to the others. “And now, since all of us in the Circle agree, I call on the Powers to look at her.”
Diana raised the dagger above her head, pointing the blade at the sky. Then she pointed it to the east, toward the ocean, then to the south, then toward the western cliff, then toward the north. Finally, she pointed it at Cassie. The words she spoke as she did sent shock waves running down Cassie's spine:
Earth and water, fire and air,
See your daughter standing there.
By dark of moon and light of sun,
As I will, let it be done.
By challenge, trial, and sacred vow,
Let her join the Circle now.
Flesh and sinew, blood and bone,
Cassie now becomes-
“But we don't all agree,” an angry voice broke in. “I still don't think she's one of us. I don't think she ever can be.”
Twelve
Diana turned sharply to face Deborah. “You can't interrupt the ritual!”
“There shouldn't be a ritual,” Deborah blazed back, her face dark and intense.
“You agreed in the meeting-“
“I agreed we had to do whatever it took to make us strong. But-“ Deborah stopped and scowled.
“But some of us may not have believed she'd pass the tests,” Faye interpreted, smiling.
Diana's face was pale and angry. The diadem she wore seemed to give her added stature, so that she looked taller even than Faye. Moonlight shimmered in her hair as it had off the blade of the knife.
“But she did pass the tests,” she said coldly.
“And now you've interrupted a ritual-broken it-while I was calling down the Powers. I hope you have a better reason than that.”
“I'll give you a reason,” Deborah said. “She's not really one of us. Her mother married an outsider.”
“Then what do you want?” Diana said. “Do you want us never to have a real Circle? You know we need twelve to get anything done. What are we supposed to do, wait until your parents-or the Hendersons– have another baby? None of the rest of us even has both parents alive. No.” Diana turned to face the others in the group, who were standing around the inside perimeter of the circle. “We're the last,” she told them. “The last generation in the New World. And if we can't complete our Circle, then it all ends here. With us.”
Melanie spoke up. She was wearing ordinary clothes under a pale green fringed shawl that looked both tattered and fragile, as if it were very old. “Our parents and grandparents would like that,” she said. “They want us to leave it all in the past, the way they did and their parents did. They don't want us digging up the old traditions and waking the Old Powers.”
“They're scared,” Deborah said scornfully.
“They'll be happy if we can't complete the Circle,” Melanie said. “But is that what we want?” She looked at Faye.
Faye murmured coolly, “Individuals can do quite a lot on their own.”