The Moon Sickle

The Moon Sickle is a harvesting sickle of exceptionally fine, old craftsmanship that hung for generations on the wall of Bracken's hut in the Saltwood, looking ordinary and hanging cold. It is the circle's own keepsake, entrusted to Flint after he helped calm the blighted elk and spare the camp.

By the circle's telling, the sickle came home long ago with a moon-marked woman of the Saltwood — the one their oldest story says walked north the last time the blue moon rose full, and quieted the machine-place that was poisoning the coast. When she returned it went cold and ordinary, and it has hung on the wall through every hand that has held the circle since, "waiting for the moon to turn."

Now that the blue moon is brightening again, the sickle has begun to stir. Bracken received Flint as a fellow moon-circle druid and entrusted it to him — and that first night, as Flint drifted off to sleep with it beside him, its blade woke with the faintest glimmer of light, the first anyone of the circle has seen it glow in living memory. Its old power seems to be waking with the moon, just as the story says. In Flint's hands it sharpens his magic and lends extra strength to his healing.