The Girl Who Drank the Moon (11 page)

17.

In Which There Is a Crack in the Nut

Luna thought she was ordinary. She thought she was loved. She was half right.

She was a girl of five; and later, she was seven; and later she was, incredibly, eleven.

It was a fine thing indeed, Luna thought, being eleven. She loved the symmetry of it, and the lack of symmetry. Eleven was a number that was visually even, but functionally not—it
looked
one way and
behaved
in quite another. Just like most eleven-­year-­olds, or so she assumed. Her association with other children was always limited to her grandmother's visits to the Free Cities, and only the visits on which Luna was permitted to come. Sometimes, her grandmother went without her. And every year, Luna found it more and more enraging.

She was eleven, after all. She was both even and odd. She was ready to be many things at once—child, grown-­up, poet, engineer, botanist, dragon. The list went on. That she was barred from
some
journeys and not
others
was increasingly galling. And she said so. Often. And loudly.

When her grandmother was away, Luna spent most of her time in the workshop. It was filled with books about metals and rocks and water, books about flowers and mosses and edible plants, books about animal biology and animal behavior and animal husbandry, books about the theories and principles of mechanics. But Luna's favorite books were the ones about astronomy—the moon, especially. She loved the moon so much, she wanted to wrap her arms around it and sing to it. She wanted to gather ever morsel of moonlight into a great bowl and drink it dry. She had a hungry mind, an itchy curiosity, and a knack for drawing, building, and fashioning.

Her fingers had a mind of their own. “Do you see, Glerk?” she said, showing off her mechanical cricket, made of polished wood and glass eyes and tiny metal legs attached to springs. It hopped; it skittered; it reached; it grabbed. It could even sing. Right now, Luna set it just so, and the cricket began to turn the pages of a book. Glerk wrinkled his great, damp nose.

“It turns pages,” she says. “Of a book. Has there ever been a cleverer cricket?”

“But it's just turning the pages willy-­nilly,” he said. “It isn't as though it is
reading
the book. And even if it was, it wouldn't be reading at the same time as you. How would it know when to approach the page and turn it?” He was just needling her, of course. In truth, he was very impressed. But as he had told her a thousand times, he couldn't possibly be impressed at
every
impressive thing that she ever did. He might find that his heart had swelled beyond its capacity and sent him out of the world entirely.

Luna stamped her foot. “Of course it can't
read.
It turns the page when
I
tell it to turn the page.” She folded her arms across her chest and gave her swamp monster what she hoped was a hard look.

“I think you are both right,” Fyrian said, trying to make peace. “I love foolish things. And clever things. I love all the things.”

“
Hush, Fyrian,
” both girl and swamp monster said as one.

“It takes longer to position your cricket to turn the page than it does to actually turn the page on your own. Why not simply turn the page?” Glerk worried that he had already taken the joke too far. He picked up Luna in his four arms and positioned her at the top of his top right shoulder. She rolled her eyes and climbed back down.

“Because then there wouldn't be a
cricket
.” Luna's chest felt prickly. Her whole body felt prickly. She had been prickly all day. “Where is Grandmama?” she asked.

“You know where she is,” Glerk said. “She will be back next week.”

“I dislike next week. I wish she was back
today
.”

“The Poet tells us that impatience belongs to small things—fleas, tadpoles, and fruit flies. You, my love, are ever so much more than a fruit fly.”

“I dislike the Poet as well. He can boil his head.”

These words cut Glerk to his core. He pressed his four hands to his heart and fell down heavily upon his great bottom, curling his tail around his body in a protective gesture. “What a thing to say.”

“I mostly mean it,” Luna said.

Fyrian fluttered from girl to monster and monster to girl. He did not know where to land.

“Come, Fyrian,” Luna said, opening one of her side pockets. “You can take a nap, and I will walk us up to the ridge to see if we can see my grandmother on her journey. We can see terribly far from up there.”

“You won't be able to see her yet. Not for days.” Glerk looked closely at the girl. There was something . . .
off
today. He couldn't put his finger on it.

“You never know,” Luna said, turning on her heel and walking up the trail.

“ ‘
Patience has no wing,
' ” Glerk recited as she walked.

“ ‘Patience does not run

Nor blow, nor skitter, nor falter.

Patience is the swell of the ocean;

Patience is the sigh of the mountain;

Patience is the shirr of the Bog;

Patience is the chorus of stars,

Infinitely singing.' ”

“I am not listening to you!” Luna called without turning around. But she was. Glerk could tell.

B
y the time Luna reached the bottom of the slope, Fyrian was already asleep. That dragon could sleep anywhere and anytime. He was an expert sleeper. Luna reached into her pocket and gave his head a gentle tap. He didn't wake up.

“Dragons!” Luna muttered. This was the given answer to many of her questions, though it didn't always make very much sense. When Luna was little, Fyrian was older than she—that was obvious. He taught her to count, to add and subtract, and to multiply and divide. He taught her how to make numbers into something larger than themselves, applying them to larger concepts about motion and force, space and time, curves and circles and tightened springs.

But now, it was different. Fyrian seemed younger and younger every day. Sometimes, it seemed to Luna that he was going backward in time while she stood still, but other times it seemed that the opposite was true: it was Fyrian who was standing still while Luna raced forward. She wondered why this was.

Dragons!
Glerk would explain.

Dragons!
Xan would agree. The both shrugged. Dragons, it was decided. What can one do?

Which never actually answered anything. At least Fyrian never attempted to deflect or obfuscate Luna's many questions. Firstly because he had no idea what
obfuscate
meant. And secondly because he rarely knew any answers. Unless they pertained to mathematics. Then he was a fountain of answers. For everything else, he was just
Fyrian,
and that was enough.

Luna reached the top of the ridge before noon. She curled her fingers over her eyes and tried to look out as far as she could. She had never been this high before. She was amazed Glerk had let her go.

The Cities lay on the other side of the forest, down the slow, southern slope of the mountain, where the land became stable and flat. Where the earth no longer was trying to kill you. Beyond that, Luna knew, were farms and more forests and more mountains, and eventually an ocean. But Luna had never been that far. On the other side of her mountain—to the north—there was nothing but forest, and beyond that was a bog that covered half the world.

Glerk told her that the world was born out of that bog.

“How?” Luna had asked a thousand times.

“A poem,” Glerk sometimes said.

“A song,” he said at other times. And then, instead of explaining further, he told her she'd understand some day.

Glerk, Luna decided, was horrible. Everyone was horrible. And most horrible was the pain in her head that had been getting worse all day. She sat down on the ground and closed her eyes. In the darkness behind her eyelids, she could see a blue color with a shimmer of silver at the edges, along with something else entirely. A hard, dense something, like a nut.

And what's more, the
something
seemed to be pulsing—as though it contained intricate clockwork.
Click, click, click.

Each
click
brings me closer to the close,
Luna thought. She shook her head. Why would she think that? She had no idea.

The close of what?
she wondered. But there was no answer.

And all of a sudden, she had an image in her head of a house with hand-­stitched quilts draped on the chairs and art on the walls and colorful jars arranged on shelves in bright, tempting rows. And a woman with black hair and a crescent moon birthmark on her forehead. And a man's voice crooning,
Do you see your mama? Do you, my darling?
And that word in her mind, echoing from one side of her skull to the other,
Mama, mama, mama,
over and over and over again, like the cry of a faraway bird.

“Luna?” Fyrian said. “Why are you crying?”

“I'm not crying,” Luna said, wiping her tears away. “And anyway, I just miss my grandmama, that's all.”

And that was true. She did miss her. No amount of standing and staring was going to change the amount of time that it takes to walk from the Free Cities to their home at the top of the sleeping volcano. That was certain. But the house and the quilts and the woman with the black hair—Luna had seen them before. But she didn't know where.

She looked down toward the swamp and the barn and the workshop and the tree house, with its round windows peering out from the sides of the massive tree trunk like astonished, unblinking eyes.
There was another house. And another family. Before this house. And this family.
She knew it in her bones.

“Luna, what is wrong?” Fyrian asked, a note of anguish in his voice.

“Nothing, Fyrian,” Luna said, curling her hands around his midsection and pulling him close. She kissed the top of his head. “Nothing at all. I'm just thinking about how much I love my family.”

It was the first lie she ever told. Even though her words were true.

18.

In Which a Witch Is Discovered

Xan couldn't remember the last time she had traveled so slowly. Her magic had been dwindling for years, but there was no denying that it was happening more quickly now. Now the magic seemed to have thinned into a tiny trickle dripping through a narrow channel in her porous bones. Her vision dimmed; her hearing blurred; her hip pained her (and her left foot and her lower back and her shoulders and her wrists and, weirdly, her nose). And her condition was only about to get worse. Soon, she would be holding Luna's hand for the last time, touching her face for the last time—speaking her words of love in the hoarsest of whispers. It was almost too much to bear.

In truth, Xan was not afraid to die. Why should she be? She had helped ease the pain of hundreds and thousands of people in preparation for that journey into the unknown. She had seen enough times in the faces of those in their final moments, a sudden look of surprise—and a wild, mad joy. Xan felt confident that she had nothing to fear. Still. It was the
before
that gave her pause. The months leading her toward the end she knew would be far from dignified. When she was able to call up memories of Zosimos (still difficult, despite her best efforts), they were of his grimace, his shudder, his alarming thinness. She remembered the pain he had been in. And she did not relish following in his footsteps.

It is for Luna,
she told herself.
Everything, everything is for Luna.
And it was true. She loved that girl with every ache in her back; she loved her with every hacking cough; she loved her with every rheumatic sigh; she loved her with every crack in her joints. There was nothing she would not endure for that girl.

And she needed to tell her. Of course she did.

Soon,
she told herself.
Not yet.

T
he Protectorate sat at the bottom of a long, gentle slope, right before the slope opened up into the vast Zirin Bog. Xan climbed up a rocky outcropping to catch a view of the town before her final descent.

There was something about that town. The way its many sorrows lingered in the air, as persistent as fog. Standing far above the sorrow cloud, Xan, in her clearheadedness, chastised herself.

“Old fool,” she muttered. “How many people have you helped? How many wounds have you healed and hearts have you soothed? How many souls have you guided on their way? And yet, here are these poor people—men and women and children—that you have refused to help. What do you have to say for yourself, you silly woman?”

She had nothing to say for herself.

And she still didn't know why.

She only knew that the closer she got, the more desperate she felt to leave.

She shook her head, brushed the gravel and leaves from her skirts, and continued down the slope toward the town. As she walked, she had a memory. She could remember her room in the old castle—her favorite room, with the two dragons carved in stone on either side of the fireplace, and a broken ceiling, open to the sky, but magicked to keep the rain away. And she could remember climbing into her makeshift bed and clutching her hands to her heart, praying to the stars that she might have a night free from bad dreams. She never did. And she could remember weeping into her mattress—great gushes of tears. And she could remember a voice at the other side of the door. A quiet, dry, scratchy voice, whispering,
More. More. More.

Xan pulled her cloak tightly around her arms. She did not like being cold. She also did not like remembering things. She shook her head to clear away the thoughts and marched down the slope. Into the cloud.

T
he madwoman in the Tower saw the Witch hobbling through the trees. She was far away—ever so far, but the madwoman's eyes could see around the world if she let them.

Had she known how to do this before she went mad? Perhaps she had. Perhaps she simply did not notice. She had been a devoted daughter once. And then a girl in love. And then an expectant mother, counting the days until her baby came. And then everything had gone wrong.

The madwoman discovered that it was possible for her to
know
things. Impossible things. The world, she knew in her madness, was littered with shiny bits and precious pieces. A man might drop a coin on the ground and never find it again, but a crow will find it in a flash. Knowledge, in its essence, was a glittering jewel—and the madwoman was a crow. She pressed, reached, picked, and gathered. She knew
so many things
. She knew where the Witch lived, for example. She could walk there blindfolded if she could just get out of the Tower for long enough. She knew where the Witch took the children. She knew what those towns were like.

“How is our patient doing this morning?” the Head Sister said to her at the dawning of each day. “How much sorrow presses on her poor, poor soul?” She was hungry. The madwoman could feel it.

None,
the madwoman could have said if she felt like speaking. But she didn't.

For years, the madwoman's sorrows had fed the Head Sister. For years she felt the predatory pounce. (
Sorrow Eater,
the madwoman discovered herself knowing. It was not a term that she had ever learned. She found it the way she found anything that was useful—she reached through the gaps of the world and worried it out.) For years she lay silently in her cell while the Head Sister gorged herself on sorrow.

And then one day, there was no sorrow to be had. The madwoman learned to lock it away, seal it off with something else. Hope. And more and more, Sister Ignatia went away hungry.

“Clever,” the Sister said, her mouth a thin, grim line. “You have locked me out. For now.”

You have locked me in,
the madwoman thought, a tiny spark of hope igniting in her soul.
For now.

The madwoman pressed her face to the thick bars in her thin window. The Witch had left the outcropping and was, right now, limping toward the town walls, just as the Council was carrying the latest baby to the gates.

No mother wailed. No father screamed. They did not fight for their doomed child. They watched numbly as the infant was carried into the horrors of the forest, believing it would keep those horrors away. They set their faces and stared at fear.

Fools,
the madwoman wanted to tell them.
You are looking the wrong way.

The madwoman folded a map into the shape of a falcon. There were things that she could make happen—things that she could not explain. This was true before they came for her baby, before the Tower—one measure of wheat would become two; fabric worn thin as paper would become thick and luxurious in her hands. But slowly, during her long years in the Tower, her gifts had become sharp and clear. She found bits and pieces of magic in the gaps of the world and squirreled them away.

The madwoman took aim. The Witch was heading for the clearing. The Elders were headed for the clearing. And the falcon would fly directly to where the baby was. She knew it in her bones.

G
rand Elder Gherland was, it was true, getting on in years. The potions he received every week from the Sisters of the Star helped, but these days they seemed to help
less
than usual. And it annoyed him.

And the business with the babies annoyed him, too—not the
concept
of it, really, nor the
results
. He simply did not enjoy touching babies. They were loud, boorish, and, frankly,
selfish
.

Plus, they stank. The one he held now certainly did.

Gravitas was all fine and good, and it was important to maintain appearances, but—Gherland shifted the baby from one arm to the other—he was getting too old for this sort of thing.

He missed Antain. He knew he was being silly. It was better this way, with the boy gone. Executions are a messy business, after all. Especially when family is involved. Still. As much as Antain's irrational resistance to the Day of Sacrifice had irritated Gherland to no end, he felt they had lost something when Antain resigned, though he couldn't say exactly what. The Council felt empty with Antain gone. He told himself that he just wanted someone else to hold the wriggling brat, but Gherland knew there was more to the feeling than that.

The people along the walkway bowed their heads as the Council walked by, which was all fine and good. The baby wriggled and squirmed. It spat up on Gherland's robes. Gherland sighed deeply. He would not make a scene. He owed it to his people to take these discomforts in stride.

It was difficult—no one would ever know
how
difficult—to be this beloved and honorable and selfless. And as the Council swept through the final causeway, Gherland made sure to congratulate himself for his kind, humanitarian nature.

The baby's wails devolved into self-­indulgent hiccups.

“
Ingrate,
” muttered Gherland.

A
ntain made sure he was seen on the road as the Council walked by. He made brief eye contact with his uncle Gherland—
Awful man,
he thought with a shudder—and then slipped out behind the crowd and hooked through the gate when no one was looking. Once under the cover of the trees, he headed toward the clearing at a run.

Ethyne was still standing on the side of the road. She had a basket ready for the grieving family. She was an angel, a treasure, and was now, incredibly, Antain's wife—and had been since a month after she left the Tower. And they loved one another desperately. And they wanted a family. But.

The woman in the rafters.

The cry of the baby.

The cloud of sorrow hanging over the Protectorate like a fog.

Antain had watched that horror unfold and had done nothing. He had stood by as baby after baby was taken and left in the forest.
We couldn't stop it if we tried,
he had told himself. It's what everyone told themselves. It's what Antain had always believed.

But Antain had also believed that he would spend his life alone, and lonely. And then love proved him wrong. And now the world was brighter than it was before. If that belief could be proved wrong, could not others be as well?