The Girl Who Drank the Moon (5 page)

7.

In Which a Magical Child Is More Trouble by Half

When Luna was five years old, her magic had doubled itself five times, but it remained inside her, fused to her bones and muscles and blood. Indeed, it was inside every cell. Inert, unused—all potential and no force.

“It can't go on like this,” Glerk fussed. “The more magic she gathers, the more magic will spill out.” He made funny faces at the girl in spite of himself. Luna giggled like mad. “You mark my words,” he said, vainly trying to be serious.

“You don't know that,” Xan said. “Maybe it will never come out. Maybe things will never be difficult.”

Despite her tireless work finding homes for abandoned babies, Xan had a deep loathing for difficult things. And sorrowful things. And unpleasant things. She preferred not to think of them, if she could help it. She sat with the girl, blowing bubbles—lovely, lurid, mostly magical things, with pretty colors swirling on their surfaces. The girl chased and caught each bubble on her fingers, and set each of them surrounding daisy blossoms or butterflies or the leaves of trees. She even climbed inside a particularly large bubble and floated just over the tips of the grass.

“There is so much beauty, Glerk,” Xan said. “How can you possibly think about anything else?”

Glerk shook his head.

“How long can this last, Xan?” Glerk said. The Witch refused to answer.

Later, he held the girl and sang her to sleep. He could feel the heft of the magic in his arms. He could feel the pulse and undulation of those great waves of magic, surging inside the child, never finding their way to shore.

The Witch told him he was imagining things.

She insisted that they focus their energies on raising a little girl who was, by nature, a tangle of mischief and motion and curiosity. Each day, Luna's ability to break rules in new and creative ways was an astonishment to all who knew her. She tried to ride the goats, tried to roll boulders down the mountain and into the side of the barn (
for decoration,
she explained), tried to teach the chickens to fly, and once almost drowned in the swamp. (Glerk saved her. Thank goodness.) She gave ale to the geese to see if it made them walk funny (it did) and put peppercorns in the goat's feed to see if it would make them jump (they didn't jump; they just destroyed the fence). Every day she goaded Fyrian into making atrocious choices or she played tricks on the poor dragon, making him cry. She climbed, hid, built, broke, wrote on the walls, and spoiled dresses when they had only just been finished. Her hair ratted, her nose smudged, and she left handprints wherever she went.

“What will happen when her magic comes?” Glerk asked again and again. “What will she be like then?”

Xan tried not to think about it.

X
an visited the Free Cities twice a year, once with Luna and once without. She did not explain to the child the purpose for her solo visit—nor did she tell her about the sad town on the other side of the forest, or of the babies left in that small clearing, presumably to die. She'd have to tell the girl eventually, of course. One day, Xan told herself. Not now. It was too sad. And Luna was too little to understand.

When Luna was five, she traveled once again to one of the farthest of the Free Cities—a town called Obsidian. And Xan found herself fussing at a child who would not sit quietly. Not for anything.

“Young lady, will you please remove yourself from this house at once, and go find a friend to play with?”

“Grandmama, look! It's a hat.” And she reached into the bowl and pulled out the lump of rising bread dough and put it on her head. “It's a hat, Grandmama! The prettiest hat.”

“It is not a hat,” Xan said. “It is a lump of dough.” She was in the middle of a complex bit of magic. The schoolmistress lay on the kitchen table, deep in sleep, and Xan kept both palms on the sides of the young woman's face, concentrating hard. The schoolmistress had been suffering from terrible headaches that were, Xan discovered, the result of a growth in the center of her brain. Xan could remove it with magic, bit by bit, but it was tricky work. And dangerous. Work for a clever witch, and none was more clever than Xan.

Still. The work was difficult—more difficult than she felt it should have been. And taxing. Everything was taxing lately. Xan blamed old age. Her magic emptied so quickly these days. And took so long to refill. And she was so tired.

“Young man,” Xan said to the schoolmistress's son—a nice boy, fifteen, probably, whose skin seemed to glow. One of the Star Children. “Will you please take this troublesome child outside and play with her so I may focus on healing your mother without killing her by mistake?” The boy turned pale. “I'm only kidding, of course. Your mother is safe with me.” Xan hoped that was true.

Luna slid her hand into the boy's hand, her black eyes shining like jewels. “Let's play,” she said, and the boy grinned back. He loved Luna, just like everyone else did. They ran, laughing, out the door and disappeared into the woods out back.

Later, when the growth had been dispatched and the brain healed and the schoolmistress was sleeping comfortably, Xan felt she could finally relax. Her eye fell on the bowl on the counter. The bowl with the rising bread dough.

But there was no bread dough in the bowl at all. Instead, there was a hat—wide-­brimmed and intricately detailed. It was the prettiest hat Xan had ever seen.

“Oh dear,” Xan whispered, picking up the hat and noticing the magic laced within it. Blue. With a shimmer of silver at the edges. Luna's magic. “Oh dear, oh dear.”

Over the next two days, Xan did her best to conclude her work in the Free Cities as quickly as she could. Luna was no help at all. She ran circles around the other children, racing and playing and jumping over fences. She dared groups of children to climb to the tops of trees with her. Or into barn lofts. Or onto the ridgepoles of neighborhood roofs. They followed her higher and higher, but they couldn't follow her all the way. She seemed to float above the branches. She pirouetted on the tip of a birch leaf.

“Come down this instant, young lady,” the Witch hollered.

The little girl laughed. She flitted toward the ground, leaping from leaf to leaf, guiding the other children safely behind her. Xan could see the tendrils of magic fluttering behind her like ribbons. Blue and silver, silver and blue. They billowed and swelled and spiraled in the air. They left their etchings on the ground. Xan took off after the child at a run, cleaning up as she did so.

A donkey became a toy.

A house became a bird.

A barn was suddenly made of gingerbread and spun sugar.

She has no idea what she is doing,
Xan thought. The magic poured out of the girl. Xan had never seen so much in all her life.
She could so easily hurt herself,
Xan fussed
. Or someone else. Or everyone in town.
Xan tore down the road, her old bones groaning, undoing spell after spell, before she caught up to the wayward girl.

“Nap time,” the Witch said, brandishing both palms, and Luna collapsed onto the ground. She had
never
interfered in the will of another.
Never.
Years ago—almost five hundred—she made a promise to her guardian, Zosimos, that she never would. But now . . .
What have I done?
Xan asked herself. She thought she might be sick.

The other children stared. Luna snored. She left a puddle of drool on the ground.

“Is she all right?” one boy asked.

Xan picked Luna up, feeling the weight of the child's face on her shoulder and pressing her wrinkled cheek against the little girl's hair.

“She's fine, dear,” she said. “She's just sleepy. She is so sleepy. And I do believe you have chores to do.” Xan carried Luna to the guesthouse of the mayor, where they happened to be staying.

Luna slept deeply. Her breathing was slow and even. The crescent moon birthmark on her forehead glowed a bit. A pink moon. Xan smoothed the child's black hair away from her face, winding her fingers in the shining curls.

“What have I been missing?” she asked herself out loud. There was something she wasn't seeing—something important. She didn't think about her childhood if she could help it. It was too sad. And sorrow was dangerous—though she couldn't quite remember why.

Memory was a slippery thing—slick moss on an unstable slope—and it was ever so easy to lose one's footing and fall. And anyway, five hundred years was an awful lot to remember. But now, her memories came tumbling toward her—a kindly old man, a decrepit castle, a clutch of scholars with their faces buried in books, a mournful mother dragon saying good-­bye. And something else, too. Something scary. Xan tried to pluck the memories as they tumbled by, but they were like bright pebbles in an avalanche: they flashed briefly in the light, and then they were gone.

There was something she was
supposed
to remember. She was sure of it. If she could only remember what.

8.

In Which a Story Contains a Hint of Truth

A story? Fine. I will tell you a story. But you won't like it. And it will make you cry.

Once upon a time, there were good wizards and good witches, and they lived in a castle in the center of the wood.

Well, of course the forest wasn't dangerous in those days. We know who is responsible for cursing the forest. It is the same person who steals our children and poisons the water. In those days, the Protectorate was prosperous and wise. No one needed the Road to cross the forest. The forest was a friend to all. And anyone could walk to the Enchanters' Castle for remedies or advice or general gossip.

But one day, an evil Witch rode across the sky on the back of a dragon. She wore black boots and a black hat and a dress the color of blood. She howled her rage to the sky.

Yes, child. This is a true story. What other kinds of stories are there?

As she flew on her cursed dragon, the land rumbled and split. The rivers boiled and the mud bubbled and entire lakes turned into steam. The Bog—our beloved Bog—became toxic and rank, and people died because they could not get air. The land under the castle swelled—it rose and rose and rose, and great plumes of smoke and ash came billowing from its center.

“It's the end of the world,” people cried. And it might have been, if one good man had not dared to stand up to the Witch.

One of the good wizards from the castle—no one remembers his name—saw the Witch on her fearsome dragon as they flew across the broken land. He knew what the Witch was trying to do: she wanted to pull the fire from the bulge of the earth and spread it across the land, like a cloth over a table. She wanted to cover us all in ash and fire and smoke.

Well, of course that's what she wanted. No one knows why. How could we? She is a witch. She needs no rhyme and no reason, neither.

Of course this is a true story. Haven't you been listening?

And so the brave little wizard—ignoring his own great peril—ran into the smoke and flame. He leaped into the air and pulled the Witch from the back of her dragon. He threw the dragon into the flaming hole in the earth, stopping it up like a cork in a bottle.

But he didn't kill the Witch. The Witch killed him instead.

This is why it doesn't pay to be brave. Bravery makes nothing, protects nothing, results in nothing. It only makes you dead. And this is why we don't stand up to the Witch. Because even a powerful old wizard was no match for her.

I already told you this story is true. I only tell true stories. Now. Off with you, and don't let me catch you shirking on your chores. I might send you to the Witch and have her deal with you.

9.

In Which Several Things Go Wrong

The journey home was a disaster.

“Grandmama!” Luna cried. “A bird!” And a tree stump became a very large, very pink, and very perplexed-­looking bird, who sat sprawled on the ground, wings akimbo, as if shocked by its own existence.

Which, Xan reasoned, the poor thing probably
was
. She transformed it back into a stump the moment the child wasn't looking. Even from that great distance, she could sense its relief.

“Grandmama!” Luna shrieked, running up ahead. “Cake!” And the stream up ahead suddenly ceased. The water vanished and became a long river of cake.

“Yummy!” Luna cried, grabbing cake by the handful, smearing multicolored icing across her face.

Xan hooked her arm around the girl's waist, vaulted over the cake-­stream with her staff, and shooed Luna forward along the winding path up the slope of the mountain, undoing the accidental spell over her shoulder.

“Grandmama! Butterflies!”

“Grandmama! A pony!”

“Grandmama! Berries!”

Spell after spell erupted from Luna's fingers and toes, from her ears and eyes. Her magic skittered and pulsed. It was all Xan could do to keep up.

At night, after falling into an exhausted heap, Xan dreamed of Zosimos the wizard—dead now these five hundred years. In her dream, he was explaining something—something important—but his voice was obscured by the rumble of the volcano. She could only focus on his face as it wrinkled and withered in front of her eyes, his skin collapsing like the petals of a lily drooping at the end of the day.

W
hen they arrived back at their home nestled beneath the peaks and craters of the sleeping volcano and wrapped in the lush smell of the swamp, Glerk stood at his full height, waiting for them.

“Xan,” he said, as Fyrian danced and spun in the air, screeching a newly created song about his love for everyone that he knew. “It seems our girl has become more complicated.” He had seen the strands of magic skittering this way and that and launching in long threads over the tops of the trees. He knew even at that great distance that he wasn't seeing Xan's magic, which was green and soft and tenacious, the color and texture of lichen clinging to the lee of the oaks. No, this was blue and silver, silver and blue. Luna's magic.

Xan waved him off. “You don't know the half of it,” she said, as Luna went running to the swamp to gather the irises into her arms and drink in the scent. As Luna ran, each footstep blossomed with iridescent flowers. When she waded into the swamp, the reeds twisted themselves into a boat, and she climbed aboard, floating across the deep red of the algae coating the water. Fyrian settled himself at the prow. He didn't seem to notice that anything was amiss.

Xan curled her arm across Glerk's back and leaned against him. She was more tired than she'd ever been in her life.

“This is going to take some work,” she said.

Then, leaning heavily on her staff, Xan made her way to the workshop to prepare to teach Luna.

It was, as it turned out, an impossible task.

Xan had been ten years old when she was enmagicked. Until then, she had been alone and frightened. The sorcerers who studied her weren't exactly kind. One in particular seemed to hunger for sorrow. When Zosimos rescued her and bound her to his allegiance and care, she was so grateful that she was ready to follow any rule in the world.

Not so with Luna. She was only five. And remarkably bullheaded. “Sit still, precious,” Xan said over and over and over as she tried to get the girl to direct her magic at a single candle. “We need to look inside the flame in order to understand the—
Young lady. No flying in the classroom
.”

“I am a crow, Grandmama,” Luna cried. Which wasn't entirely true. She had simply grown black wings and proceeded to flap about the room. “Caw, caw, caw!” she cried.

Xan snatched the child out of the air and undid the transformation. Such a simple spell, but it knocked Xan to her knees. Her hands shook and her vision clouded over.

What is happening to me?
Xan asked herself. She had no idea.

Luna didn't notice. She transformed a book into a dove and enlivened her pencils and quills so that they stood on their own and performed a complicated dance on the desk.

“Luna,
stop,
” Xan said, putting a simple blocking spell on the girl. Which should have been easy. And should have lasted at least an hour or two. But the spell ripped from Xan's belly, making her gasp, and then didn't even work. Luna broke through the block without a second thought. Xan collapsed onto a chair.

“Go outside and play, darling,” the old woman said, her body shaking all over. “But don't touch anything, and don't hurt anything, and
no magic
.”

“What's magic, Grandmama?” Luna asked as she raced out the door. There were trees to climb and boats to build. And Xan was fairly certain she saw the child talking to a crane.

Each day, the magic became more unruly. Luna bumped tables with her elbows and accidentally transformed them to water. She transformed her bedclothes to swans while she slept (they made an awful mess). She made stones pop like bubbles. Her skin became so hot it gave Xan blisters, or so cold that she made a frostbitten imprint of her body on Glerk's chest when she gave him a hug. And once she made one of Fyrian's wings disappear in mid-­flight, causing him to fall. Luna skipped away, utterly unaware of what she had done.

Xan tried encasing Luna in a protective bubble, telling her it was a fun game they were playing, just to keep all that surging power contained. She cast bubbles around Fyrian, and bubbles around the goats and bubbles around each chicken and a very large bubble around the house, lest she accidentally allow their home to burst into flames. And the bubbles held—they were strongly magic, after all—until they didn't.

“Make more, Grandmama!” Luna cried, running in circles on the stones, each of her footprints erupting in green plants and lurid flowers. “More bubbles!”

Xan had never been so exhausted in her life.

“Take Fyrian to the south crater,” Xan told Glerk, after a week of backbreaking labor and little sleep. She had dark circles under her eyes. Her skin was as pale as paper.

Glerk shook his massive head. “I can't leave you like this, Xan,” he said as Luna made a cricket grow to the size of a goat. She gave it a lump of sugar that had appeared in her hand and climbed aboard its back for a ride. Glerk shook his head. “How could I possibly?”

“I need to keep the both of you safe,” Xan said.

The swamp monster shrugged. “Magic has nothing on me,” he said. “I've been around for far longer than it has.”

Xan wrinkled her brow. “Perhaps. But I don't know. She has . . .
so much
. And she has no idea what she's doing.” Her bones felt thin and brittle, and her breath rattled in her chest. She did her best to hide this from Glerk.

X
an followed Luna from place to place, undoing spell after spell. The wings were removed from the goats. The eggs were untransformed from muffins. The tree house stopped floating. Luna was both amazed and delighted. She spent her days laughing and sighing and pointing with wonder. She danced about, and where she danced, fountains erupted from the ground.

Meanwhile, Xan grew weaker and weaker.

Finally Glerk couldn't stand it anymore. Leaving Fyrian at the crater's edge, he galumphed down to his beloved swamp. After a quick dip in the murky waters, he made his way toward Luna, who was standing by herself in the yard.

“Glerk!” she called. “I'm so happy to see you! You are as cute as a bunny.”

And, just like that, Glerk was a bunny. A fluffy, white, pink-­eyed bunny with a puff for a tail. He had long white lashes and fluted ears, and his nose quivered in the center of his face.

Instantly, Luna began to cry.

Xan came running out of the house and tried to make out what the sobbing girl had told her. By the time she began to look for Glerk, he was gone. He had hopped away, having no idea who he was, or what he was. He had been enrabbited. It took hours to find him.

Xan sat the girl down. Luna stared at her.

“Grandmama, you look different.”

And it was true. Her hands were gnarled and spotted. Her skin hung on her arms. She could feel her face folding over itself and growing older by the moment. And in that moment, sitting in the sun with Luna and the rabbit-­that-­once-­was-­Glerk shivering between them, Xan could feel it—the magic in her bending toward Luna, just as the moonlight had bent toward the girl when she was still a baby. And as the magic flowed from Xan to Luna, the old woman grew older and older and older.

“Luna,” Xan said, stroking the ears of the bunny, “do you know who this is?”

“It's Glerk,” Luna said, pulling the rabbit onto her lap and cuddling it affectionately.

Xan nodded. “How do you know it is Glerk?”

Luna shrugged. “I saw Glerk. And then he was a bunny.”

“Ah,” Xan said. “Why do you think he became a bunny?”

Luna smiled. “Because bunnies are wonderful. And he wanted to make me happy. Clever Glerk!”

Xan paused. “But
how,
Luna? How did he become a bunny?” She held her breath. The day was warm, and the air was wet and sweet. The only sounds were the gentle gurgling of the swamp. The birds in the forest quieted down, as if to listen.

Luna frowned. “I don't know. He just did.”

Xan folded her knotty hands together and pressed them to her mouth. “I see,” she said. She focused on the magic stores deep within her body, and noticed sadly how depleted they were. She could fill them up, of course, with both starlight and moonlight, and any other magic that she could find lying around, but something told her it would only be a temporary solution.

She looked at Luna, and pressed her lips to the child's forehead. “Sleep, my darling. Your grandmama needs to learn some things. Sleep, sleep,
sleep, sleep, sleep
.”

And the girl slept. Xan nearly collapsed from the effort of it. But there wasn't time for that. She turned her attention to Glerk, analyzing the structure of the spell that had enrabbited him, undoing it bit by bit.

“Why do I want a carrot?” Glerk asked. The Witch explained the situation. Glerk was not amused.

“Don't even start with me,” Xan snapped.

“There's nothing to say,” Glerk said. “We both love her. She is family. But what now?”

Xan pulled herself to her feet, her joints creaking and cracking like rusty gears.

“I hate to do this, but it's for all our sakes. She is a danger to herself. She is a danger to all of us. She has
no idea
what she's doing, and I don't know how to teach her. Not now. Not when she's so young and impulsive and . . .
Luna-­ish
.”

Xan stood, rolled her shoulders, and braced herself. She made a bubble and hardened the bubble into a cocoon around the girl—adding bright threads winding around and around.

“She can't breathe!” Glerk said, suddenly alarmed.

“She doesn't need to,” Xan said. “She is in stasis. And the cocoon holds her magic inside.” She closed her eyes. “Zosimos used to do this. To me. When I was a child. Probably for the same reason.”

Glerk's face clouded over. He sat heavily on the ground, curling his thick tail around him like a cushion. “I remember. All at once.” He shook his head. “Why had I forgotten?”

Xan pushed her wrinkled lips to one side. “Sorrow is dangerous. Or, at least, it was. I can't remember why, now. I think we both became accustomed to not remembering things. We just let things get . . . foggy.”

Glerk guessed it was something more than that, but he let the matter drop.

“Fyrian will be coming down after a bit, I expect,” Xan said. “He can't stand being alone for too long. I don't think it matters, but don't let him touch Luna, just in case.”

Glerk reached out and laid his great hand on Xan's shoulder. “But where are
you
going?”