The Birth of a new moon

'Two are needed, not four. I am the innocent here, and all the sacrifice you need,'

'I don't…' he wavered.

Anne took another step forward, talking calmly. 'Jonas, the fire is past its peak. You must have the female for your male, the moon for your sun, the mercury for your sulphur. You need me, Jonas. Now or never,'

She reached down for the hem of her T-shirt and pulled it over her head. She wore nothing underneath it but the lumpy buckskin medicine pouch between her breasts.

She kicked off her shoes and moved across the cool grass to stand directly in front of Jonas. Without hesitating, she shoved her thumbs into the waistband of her sweat pants, peeled them off, and dropped them onto the turf. Turning her head slightly to meet Jason's astonished eyes, she said, 'Take Dulcie and run,' and then she threw herself at Jonas.

Anne's final awareness was of gratitude. Jason ran, with Dulcie in his arms: it was not all in vain.

VII

Transformatio

transform (vb) To change in composition or structure;

to change in character or condition; cf. CONVERT

Procede we now to the Chapter of Exaltacion,

Of whych truly thou must have knowledge pure…

For when the Cold hath overcome the Heat,

Then into Water the Air shall turned be,

And so two contraries together shall meet,

Till either with other right well agree.

Chapter Thirty-two

From FBI documents relating to the Change case, Somerset compound Evidence photograph showing sketchbook belonging to Jason Delgado

At eight-thirty on that May morning the sun had been up for hours, slanting across the hills and fields of southern England, dispelling the dew from the rich grass and the flourishing hedgerows. The air was still, the leaves motionless, and neighboring farmers in their fields and barns only now began to pause and sniff the air, wondering if the slow-moving haze in the air might not be connected to those distant sirens that had awakened them during the night.

The trees around the brick shell that had been a Victorian manor house were scorched and withered from the heat. Those farther away were no longer green but gray, laden down with the dirty snow of ash. The air was heavy with the stink of burning things, timber and foam rubber, plastics and fuel oil, leather and flesh—although whether the flesh was human, animal, or both would not be known for many hours. And now a great number of combustion engines made their contribution, spewing fumes into the sweet May morning, all the petrol and diesel motors that had first trickled, then surged into Change as soon as the camouflaged guards had stood down. Police and fire personnel, ambulances and emergency communications vans, NCIS investigators with Social Services hard on their tail and the media left slavering at the gates to snatch photographs through the windows of the departing ambulances.

At eight-thirty on that magnificent spring morning, two more children came stumbling out of the woods. The boy wore a pair of running shorts, a once-white T-shirt, and one high-topped athletic shoe; the small girl had on a long flannel nightgown, filthy and torn, and her black hair was a wild mat of leaves and twigs. Both were shocked and footsore, badly scratched and caked in mud from their long, circuitous battle through the English jungle. They stopped at the edge of the clear ground, gaping at the incomprehensible sight before them. The girl whimpered, and the boy gathered her up into his arms and stood for a minute, studying the strangers.

Jason knew a cop when he saw one, even an English cop wearing a tweed suit, and although this was the first time in his life he had actually sought a policeman out, once he had chosen his man he did not hesitate. He adjusted Dulcie's weight in his aching arms and carried her up the drive toward the man, waiting at the tweed elbow until the man finished giving instructions to a pair of uniformed police constables.

'The bastard in the car, Bennett, knows where he is, but he's not telling. So have your men spread out, and for God's sake, be careful—he may be armed, too.' When the two uniforms had trotted away, the man looked down at Dulcie and then quickly at Jason. 'Is she hurt, lad? You need to take her over to that tent by the big tree, you see?'

'She's not hurt. Not much,' he corrected himself at Dulcie's protest, and went on firmly. 'There's a man with the FBI in the United States named Glen McCarthy. I really need someone to help me get in touch with him.'

The man looked puzzled, and then to Jason's amazement he said, 'I wish that was the hardest thing I had to do today.' He raised his head and shouted across the yard, 'Hey, McCarthy. There's one of your countrymen here, wants to talk to you.'

Jason watched the approach of this mysteriously conjured figure of ultimate authority with a mixture of suspicion and awe.

'You wanted me?' the man asked in his American accent, and then took a closer look at the girl. 'Dulcie?'

'Mr. York!' Dulcie cried. 'What are you doing here?'

'You're Glen McCarthy?' Jason asked incredulously. 'With the FBI?'

'That's me.'

'Ana told me that if I—'

'Where is she?' McCarthy demanded.

'She's in the abbey.'

'She's naked,' Dulcie said, and let out a high-pitched giggle. Glen stared at her briefly before turning to Jason.

'Show me,' he demanded.

Jason refused to move, just shook his head violently and cast a significant glance down at Dulcie.

'Oh my God,' Glen murmured, and turned away with his hand across his mouth.

Jason looked around and spotted Benjamin and his mother. He led Dulcie over to them, dropped to his knees, and told her that she would have to stay with Benjie for a few minutes while he took Glen McCarthy to find Ana. Dulcie's lip trembled, but she allowed her brother to transfer her hand to that of Benjamin's mother, who picked up a blanket and wrapped it around Dulcie's shoulders. Jason went back to Glen.

'Okay,' Glen said grimly. 'Let's go.' He looked around for the first policeman, and called, 'Paul! Okay if we borrow a car?'

The tweed-covered arm waved its permission, but Jason said, 'I don't think you can get there in a car.'

The Land Rover took them most of the way, leaving them a five-minute walk to the abbey ruins. Glen strode across the uneven ground, torn between the habitual need to hurry toward the scene of any disaster and the deep knowledge that he really did not want to lay eyes on Anne Waverly's dead body.

She was there, naked, as Dulcie had said. She lay in a welter of blood across the still figure of a big, bearded man who appeared to have taken the main brunt of the shotgun blast that had downed them both. There had been a struggle, the boy Jason started to explain. His young voice broke, loosing tears of despair and self-loathing to run down his scratched and filthy face. Ana had tried to get the gun away from Jonas, and it went off. He should have stayed; he could have helped her. He should have put Dulcie down in the woods and come back to Ana, but the gun went off then, and they ran for help and got lost, and it was his fault, all his fault.

Glen knelt down next to Anne Waverly, less aware of the boy's words than he was of the cropped hair on