The bell came out of the sand at first light, and I made Esk stand back while I looked at it.
The crack was gone. The bronze held its shape like it had never been broken at all.
Esk: Well? You going to hit it, or just stare at it till dinner?
I hit it once, and the note rolled out over the yard and off the harbor.
Clean. Whole. Mine.
Esk: Fuck me, Els. That's the best one you've ever poured.
Morag: That's my father's note in it. I'd know it anywhere.
My mother said it quietly, like a prayer she hadn't meant to say out loud.
Then the gate creaked, and Elder Crane came through with his staff clicking on the stones.
He never came to the yard unless something was wrong, so my stomach dropped straight down.
Crane: Miss Bray. That's the bell for the Mating Moon?
Elspeth: It is. It's fixed and it's true. I'll stake the yard on it.
I said it too fast. My hands were still dirty and my heart was going like a hammer.
Crane: Good. The elders met this morning. We want you to ring it.
For a second I didn't understand him. Ringing the Moon bell was a job for someone older, someone with grey in her hair.
Crane: You cast it. Your family's name goes on it. It should be your hand that wakes it.
Crane: And the pack will see a Bray at the rope, not hiding in the foundry.
There was a small blade in that last part, and I felt it slide in.
Esk: She's not hiding. She's been pouring bronze since before dawn.
Crane: I know what she's been doing. That's why it's her.
Crane's grey eyes moved to Esk, then back to me, and the corner of his mouth almost moved.
Crane: Will you do it, Elspeth?
My mouth was dry, but a bell-caster does not shake in front of an elder.
Elspeth: Yes. I'll ring it.
The gate clicked shut, and my mother crossed the yard faster than a woman her age should.
Morag: My girl. My brave, stubborn, bronze-haired girl.
She hugged me hard, and I smelled tea and wool and office ink on her hands.
Morag: Your da would have wept. He'd have stood right here and wept like a fool.
I hugged her back and made myself smile, because she needed me to be all right.
Elspeth: I'm fine, Mam. It's just a rope and a bell.
Morag: It is not just anything, and you know it. But I'll let you pretend for now.
She patted my cheek and went back to the office, and I stood there with my smile going stiff.
Esk: You know what this means. You have to be in the square. In front of everyone. In clothes.
Elspeth: I own clothes. A whole drawer of them. Some with no grease at all.
Esk laughed, and the laugh loosened the tight thing in my chest a little.
But under the joke, the quiet voice was already going, low and mean.
It said they'll all be watching, and most of them will be looking at Wade, not at you.
Later I carried my tools to the square, and there was Wade across the stones with Talitha warm under his arm.
Wade: Els! Motor's running sweet. Knew you'd sort it.
Elspeth: Glad it runs.
He turned back to Talitha before I'd finished the sentence, and the splinter in my chest twisted.
That was the trouble with wanting him. He was always warm, and it never landed on me for long.
I walked home with dirty hands and the note of my own bell still in my head.
Two nights till the Mating Moon, and the whole pack would hear me ring it.
Some stubborn part of me still thought, maybe when they hear it, one of them will hear me too.