The Girl Who Bled the Moon

Prologue

Moonlight shone through the ceiling of the abandoned church where the roof had caved in, illuminating wooden beams and chunks of stone and a crumbling, ivy-covered dais. The shards of stained glass that scattered the floor glowed like embers where the light touched them. The air smelled dark and damp, like rotten leaves.

There was a girl sitting in one of the windows, and she didn't seemed to notice the broken glass that sliced into her hands where she gripped the frame. The way she was perched, and the way the moonlight slanted across her pale skin, she looked as if she could have been a figure from a biblical scene etched in stained glass. She was lovely, with delicate cheekbones and hair the color of rich honey that fell over her shoulders in waves. She wore an old-fashioned white dress with a high lace collar, her feet bare and filthy. There were dark circles like bruises beneath her eyes.

A man knelt on the stone floor at her feet, head bowed.He had cut himself on the rusted hinges of the church door, and now,he tucked his hands into fists at his sides to keep them from trembling.

"My daughter is sick," the man said, but unlike his hands, there was no way to keep his voice from trembling. "I have no where else to turn."

The girl was looking at the far wall, her eyes cast on one of the stained glass windows that still remained. The scene was of an angel carrying white flowers. "Humans are all the same,"the girl said in a rich, lilting accent, her voice quiet as if speaking to herself. "Only once your god has failed you, do you think to turn to a witch."

The man visibly swallowed, and the girl inclined her head, still not quite looking at him.

"What will you give to me in return?" she asked.

"Anything," the man told her.

The girl turned her head to look at him, and her eyes flashed black—black as pools of ink, black as obsidian, black as the deepest, darkest things buried at the center of the earth. Black as sin. "Humans always say they will give anything," the girl said. "But they hardly ever mean it."

For once, the man's voice didn't falter. "Name your price."

The girl looked impressed, but only for a moment. "The rule is a life for a life," she said.

"Then I will give my life for hers."

"You didn't let me finish." The girl dropped her hands from the frame of the window and folded them neatly in her lap.The blood from the deep gashes in her palms shone in the moonlight." The rule is a life for a life," she repeated. "It is not my rule, and so it is not my price."

"I have nothing else to offer you."

"A second life," the girl said. "That is my price."

The man's eyes widened. "No," he stammered.

"I told you: humans always say they will give anything, but they hardly ever mean it."

"I can't give something that doesn't belong to me."

"There is no such thing as belonging in this world. If you want something badly enough, you must take it for yourself," the girl said. "That is why humans are stagnant creatures. They are not willing to claw and bite and steal—truly steal—for the things that they want most. Not even for their poor,sickly daughters." The girl lowered her head pityingly at the man.

The man closed his eyes. When he spoke again, the wordw as barely a whisper. "Who?"

"The life I want is not of your wife or your sons or even your old mare," she said mockingly, as if she had read his thoughts. "It has not yet been born into this world, and I shall not claim it until you and your daughter, and even her daughter, have passed on. This, I can promise you."

"Who?" the man said again.

"Your great-great-great-grandchild. She will come of age beneath the blood moon, and only then, will I take my price."

The church was silent. The girl waited patiently, blood seeping into her dress.

Finally, the man said, "My life and hers, for my daughter's."

The girl nodded.

"And my daughter must never know of this."

"You will find none better at keeping secrets than a witch—except, perhaps, the dead." The girl stepped down from the window, her stained skirts billowing around her. Glass crunched beneath her bare feet, though again, she did not seem to notice. "We are agreed then?"

The man gave a single nod of his head.

"You must say it, out loud, for the bargain to be struck."

"Yes," the man said thickly. "My life and hers for my daughter's."

A smile touched the girl's lips, and it was a smile carved from the same broken glass that littered the floor and now sliced into the soles of the girl's feet. "The bargain has been struck, and blood has been spilled." Her eyes flickered to the cut on the man's hand, and her smile deepened. "I swear to the Mother that your daughter will be well again by the time the sun rises tomorrow."

The man's shoulders slumped, though it was impossible to tell whether with relief or defeat.

The girl's nails lengthened to long, curved talons that gleamed like knives. Her palms were still wet with blood as she raised a hand to caress the side of the man's face.

"And by the Mother, I claim your life for another's."