Deadblood might glitter under the moonlight like true witchblood, but it’s still different enough that, to offer it to the gods, might be an offense.
It’s a risk.
A risk my family won’t take.
The blood is spilled for a long moment before arms are drawn back—and that is my cue.
The hoods that turn to face me are dark chasms gaping against the dawn.
I clammer into the pit.
Bones dig into the soles of my feet, biting at me.
My teeth bare in the shadows of my hood, but I don’t dare let out a hiss or a wince.
Silence is my friend.
I’m careful to avoid the heavy bag slumped in the pit, the one that looks so much like a body wrapped in dark silk.
At the edge, with bones poking into me, I drop to my knees.
Slowly, I slide forward into the lowest, humblest bow of all kinds, a prayer bow that flattens my chest on the soil, my face mushed into it, arms spread ahead of me, palms flat on the edge of the pit.
I speak my part, “I offer no blood, because it is unworthy. I live in your grace, your mercy, your fate. I offer myself to the gods. I plead for more mercy, more grace, more fate. I exist to fulfilyour wishes. I will offer more to you, more lives born of my flesh, witches born of my womb—and I do it all in humble servitude.”
I don’t stumble over a single word of this prayer I speak every year, since I got my first bleed and I was first invited to the ritual.
But a question hums through me as the quiet comes, and we all fall into a silent moment, my family dropping to their knees around the pit and lowering their heads in a bow not as deep and low as mine.
And we stay like this until the sun has come up from the horizon, and the whole circle of it is revealed.
As I get to my feet and climb out of the pit, I wonder the same question that rings in my mind each time I have spoken the prayer at the pit—
Are the words of this prayer preordained, prewritten somewhere among the aristos, plucked from history—or did my family write them?
Does my family think my blood unworthy?
That thought stiffens me as I stand over the pit and outstretch my arms. We all do. Fingertips touch. And they stay touched together as we wait for the gods to release us.
The covens, the families, don’t decide when to leave.
The gods do.
It starts with a festering.
The blood in the bag bubbles. It soaks through the threads of silk, as though it’s boiling beneath.
And it grows, more and more blood, more than any animal can contain within the body. It spills into the soil, drenching it,feedingit.
All the families of the coven should now be listening to the same deep, gurgling churn of their own blood and the sacrifice blood, and the earth rumbling beneath it all.
Our fingertips part.
Steps sliding back over the soil, we drop back onto our knees and start to push the dirt back into the pit.
We bury the offerings.
When the earth is packed dirt in the centre of old stones, the rumbling stops. No more wet gurgling to churn beneath the soil.
