Looking around, I realize that I have come up in a small clearing far away from the village that is protected by a ring of fence twice as tall as I am. The Unconsecrated are beginning to swarm around me. Two steps in any direction and they could reach me through the metal links. Blood hammers through my body, panic clouding my vision, making my hands shake and pound with the rhythm of my heart.

I try to look everywhere at once. And then Sister Tabitha stretches out her hand, a finger slipping out of her black tunic, to point past me toward the trees. I had not seen the gate but it is there—the same complicated set of gates that is used in the village when someone is damned into the Forest. All Sister Tabitha has to do is pull a rope that lies on the ground by her hand.

The gate will open, she and the other Sisters will slip back down into their secret passage and I will be alone to face the Unconsecrated.

“What are you doing?” I try to scream but my voice is too weak, too breathy. “Why are you doing this to me?” I hiccup as I try to draw in air. The Unconsecrated are so close. Everywhere I turn they are desperate for me, writhing against the fence.

Tears pour from my eyes, drip from my chin. “Please,” I whisper, slipping back to my hands and knees, crawling toward Sister Tabitha, grasping at her black tunic. “Please don't leave me here.” I am like a child begging her mother.

“There is always a choice, Mary,” Sister Tabitha says to me, standing with her feet braced against the steps, the lower half of her body still concealed belowground. “It is what makes us human, what separates us from them.”

I look into her face, try to find a way to make this end. Her cheeks are red from the crisp air and her own fervor. There are lines at the corners of her eyes like relics, as if she once knew how to smile long ago.

My shoulders slump. I am kneeling before Sister Tabitha. I drop my head to my chest, despondent. There is nothing I can do.

She places both her hands on my head. “It is important for you to know this, Mary,” she tells me. “You must understand the importance of this choice you are making to become one of us.

The Sisterhood is not something to be entered into lightly.” I keep my eyes on the ground, staring at the dully colored fall leaves as I nod. My body shakes and I cannot control my jerking muscles. The Unconsecrated claw desperately at the fence all around me. They can smell me here.

“I must hear you say it, Mary.” Her hands slip through my hair and all I can think about is my mother and the choice she made.

“I choose to join the Sisterhood,” I tell her, desperate to get out of the clearing.