The Girl Who Drank the Moon (28 page)

“Yes, I do,” Fyrian said. “She's wicked.”

“Fyrian, stop!” Luna cried, clutching at the dragon's leg.

“I miss her,” Fyrian sobbed. “My
mother
. I miss her so much. This witch should pay for what she's done.”

Glerk stood tall as a mountain. He was serene as a bog. He looked at Fyrian with all the love in the world. “No, Fyrian. That answer is too easy, my friend. Look deeper.”

Fyrian shut his eyes. He did not put down the Sorrow Eater. Great tears poured from beneath his clenched lids and fell in steaming dollops to the ground.

Luna looked deeper, past the layers of memory wrapped around the heart-­turned-­pearl. What she saw astonished her. “She walled off her sorrow,” Luna whispered. “She covered it up and pressed it in, tighter and tighter and tighter. And it was so hard, and heavy, and dense that it bent the light around it. It sucked everything inside. Sorrow sucking sorrow. She turned hungry for it. And the more she fed on it, the more she needed. And then she discovered that she could transform it into magic. And she learned how to increase the sorrow around her. She grew sorrow the way a farmer grows wheat and meat and milk. And she gorged herself on misery.”

The Sorrow Eater sobbed. Her sorrow leaked from her eyes and her mouth and her ears. Her magic was gone. Her collected sorrow was going. Soon there would be nothing at all.

The ground shook. Great plumes of smoke poured from the crater of the volcano. Fyrian shook. “I should throw you in the volcano for what you did,” he said, his voice catching in his throat. “I should eat you in one bite and never think of you again. Just as you never thought of my mother again.”

“Fyrian,” Xan said, holding out her arms. “My precious Fyrian. My Simply Enormous boy.”

Fyrian began to cry again. He released the Sorrow Eater, who fell in a heap on the rock. “Auntie Xan!” he whimpered. “I feel so many things!”

“Of course you do, darling.” Xan beckoned the dragon to come close. She put her hands on either side of his enlarged face and kissed his tremendous nose. “You have a Simply Enormous heart. As you always have. There are things to do with our Sorrow Eater, but the volcano is not one of them. And if you ate her you would get a stomachache. So.”

Luna cocked her head. The Sorrow Eater's heart was in pieces. She would not be able to repair it without magic—and now her magic was gone. Almost at once, the Sorrow Eater began to age.

The ground shook again. Fyrian looked around. “It's not just the peak. The vents are open, and the air will be bad for Luna. Everyone else, too, probably.”

The woman without hair—the madwoman (
No,
Luna thought.
Not the madwoman. My mother. She is my mother.
The word made her shiver) looked down at her boots and smiled. “My boots can take us to where we need to go in no time. Send Sister Ignatia and the monster with the dragon. I'll put the rest of you on my back, and we'll run to the Protectorate. They need to be warned about the volcano.”

The moon went out. The stars went out. Thick smoke covered the sky.

My mother,
Luna thought.
This is my mother. The woman on the ceiling. The hands in the window of the Tower. She is here, she is here, she is here.
Luna's heart was infinite. She climbed aboard her mother's back and laid her cheek against her mother's neck and closed her eyes tight. Luna's mother scooped up Xan as tender as could be, and instructed Antain and Luna to hang on to her shoulders, as the crow hung on to Luna.

“Be careful with Glerk,” Luna called to Fyrian. The dragon held the Sorrow Eater in his hands, extended as far from his body as they could be, as though he found her repellant. The monster clung to his back, just as Fyrian had clung to Glerk for years.

“I'm always careful with Glerk,” Fyrian said primly. “He's delicate.”

The ground shook. It was time to go.

46.

In Which Several Families Are Reunited

The people of the Protectorate saw a cloud of dust and smoke speeding toward the town walls.

“The volcano!” one man cried. “The volcano has legs! And it is coming this way!”

“Don't be ridiculous,” a woman countered. “Volcanoes don't have legs. It's the Witch. She's coming for us at last. Just as we knew she would.”

“Does anyone else see a giant bird coming closer that kind of looks like a dragon?—though of course that's impossible. Dragons no longer exist. Right?”

The madwoman skidded to a halt at the wall, letting Antain and Luna tumble from her back. Antain wasted no time, entering the Protectorate's gates at a run. Luna stayed as the madwoman gently set Xan down on the ground and helped her to her feet.

“Are you all right?” the madwoman said. Her eyes darted this way and that, never settling on one place for very long. Her face cycled through a myriad of expressions, one after another after another. She was, Luna could see, quite mad. Or, perhaps, not mad at all, but broken. And broken things can sometimes be mended. She took her mother's hand, and hoped.

“I need to get high up,” Luna said. “I need to make something that will protect the town and its people when that thing explodes.” She pointed at the volcano's smoking peak with her chin, and her heart constricted a bit. Her tree house. Their garden. The chickens and the goats. Glerk's beautiful swamp. All of it would be gone in a few moments—if it wasn't already. Consequences. Everything was consesquences.

The madwoman led Luna and Xan into the gates and up onto the wall.

There was magic in her mother. Luna could feel it. But it wasn't the same as Luna's magic. Luna's magic was infused in every bone, every tissue, every cell. Her mother's magic was more like a jumble of trinkets left in a basket after a long journey—bits and pieces knocking together. Still, Luna could feel her mother's magic—as well as her mother's longing and love—buzzing against her skin. It emboldened the power surging inside her, directing the swells of magic. Luna held her mother's hand a little bit tighter.

Fyrian, Glerk, and the nearly unconscious Sorrow Eater alighted next to them.

The people of the Protectorate screamed and ran from the wall, even as Antain desperately called out that they had nothing to fear. Xan looked up at the smoking peak. “There's plenty to fear,” she said grimly. “It just doesn't come from us.”

The ground shook.

Antain called for Ethyne.

Fyrian called for Xan.

“Caw, caw, caw,” said the crow. “Luna, Luna, Luna,” he meant.

Glerk called for everyone to hush a moment so he could think.

The volcano sent forth a column of fire and smoke, swallowed power un-­swallowed at last.

“Can we stop it?” Luna whispered.

“No,” Xan said. “It was stopped before, long ago, but that was a mistake. A good man died for nothing. A good dragon, too. Volcanoes erupt and the world changes. This is the way of things. But we can protect. I can't by myself—not anymore—and I suspect that you can't on your own. But together.” She looked at Luna's mother. “Together, I think we can.”

“I don't know how, Grandmama.” Luna tried to surpress a sob. There were too many things to know, and not enough time to know them. Xan took Luna's other hand. “Do you remember when you were a little girl, and I showed you how to make bubbles around the blooms of flowers, holding them inside?”

Luna nodded.

Xan smiled. “Come. Not all knowledge comes from the mind. Your body, your heart, your intuition. Sometimes memories even have minds of their own. Those bubbles we made—the flowers were safe inside. Remember? Make bubbles. Bubbles inside of bubbles. Bubbles of magic. Bubbles of ice. Bubbles of glass and iron and starlight. Bubbles of bog. The material is less consequential than the intention. Use your imagination and picture each one. Around each house, each garden, each tree, each farm. Around the whole town. Around the towns of the Free Cities. Bubbles and bubbles and bubbles. Surround. Protect. We'll use your magic, the three of us together. Close your eyes and I'll show you what to do.”

With her fingers curled into the fingers of her mother and grandmother, Luna felt something in her bones—a rush of heat and light, moving from the core of the earth to the roof of the sky, back and forth and back and forth. Magic. Starlight. Moonlight. Memory. Her heart had so much love, it began pouring forth. Like a volcano.

The mountain shattered. Fire rained. Ash darkened the sky. The bubbles glowed in the heat and wobbled under the weight of wind and fire and dust. Luna held on tight.

T
hree weeks later, Antain hardly recognized his home. There was still
so much ash
. Stone and the remnants of broken trees littered the streets of the Protectorate. The wind carried volcanic ash and forest fire ash and ash that no one wanted to identify down the slope of the mountain and deposited it in the streets. By day, the sun barely peeked through the smoky haze, and at night the stars and moon remained invisible. Luna sent rains washing down the Protectorate and the wood and the ruined mountain, which helped to clear the air a little. Still, there was much left to be done.

People smiled hopefully, despite the mess. The Council of Elders languished in prison, and new council members were elected by popular vote. The name Gherland became a common insult. Wyn ran and maintained the library in the Tower, which welcomed all visitors. And finally, the Road opened, allowing citizens of the Protectorate, for the first time in their lives, to venture forth. Though not many did. Not at first.

In the center of these changes stood Ethyne—all reason and possibility, and a hot cup of tea, with a baby strapped to her chest. Antain held his small family close.
I shall never leave you again,
he murmured, mostly to himself.
Never, never, never.

B
oth Xan and the Sorrow Eater had been moved to the hospital wing of the Tower. Once people understood what Sister Ignatia had done, there were calls for her imprisonment, but with every moment, the life that had been so extended in both women dwindled, bit by bit.

Any day now,
Xan thought.
Any moment.
She had no fear of death. Only curiosity. She had no idea what the Sorrow Eater thought.

E
thyne and Antain moved Luna and her mother into the baby's room, assuring them that Luken didn't need his own room, and anyway they couldn't bear to be parted from him even for a moment.

Ethyne transformed the room into a place of healing for both mother and daughter. Soft surfaces. Thick curtains for when the day became unbearable. Pretty flowers in jars. And paper. So much paper (though there always seemed to be more, and more and more). The madwoman took to drawing. Sometimes Luna helped. Ethyne prescribed soup and healing herbs. And rest. And endless love. She was fully prepared to provide all of it.

Meanwhile, Luna set herself to discovering her mother's name. She went door to door, asking anyone who would talk to her—which wasn't many at first. People in the Protectorate didn't love her implicitly as people in the Free Cities did. Which was a bit of a shock, to be honest.

This will take some getting used to,
Luna thought.

After days of asking, and days of searching, she returned to her mother at suppertime, kneeling at her feet.

“Adara,” she said. She pulled out her journal and showed her mother the pictures she had drawn, back before they had ever met. A woman on the ceiling. A baby in her arms. A tower with a hand extended from the windows. A child in a circle of trees. “Your name is Adara. It's all right if you don't remember it. I'll keep saying it until you do. And just as your mind went skittering in every direction trying to find me, so did my heart go wandering trying to find
you
. Look here. I even drew a map. ‘She is here, she is here, she is here.' ” Luna closed the journal and looked into Adara's face. “You are here, you are here, you are here. And so am I.”

Adara said nothing. She let her hand drift onto Luna's hand. She curled her fingers against the girl's palm.

L
una, Ethyne, and Adara went to visit the former Grand Elder in prison. Adara's hair had begun to grow. It curled around her face in big, black hooks, framing her large, black eyes.

Gherland frowned as they walked in. “I should have drowned you in the river,” he said to Luna with a scowl. “Don't think I don't recognize you. I do. Each one of you insufferable children has haunted my dreams. I would see you grow and grow even when I knew you had died.”

“But we didn't die,” Luna said. “None of us did. Perhaps that was what your dreams were telling you. Perhaps you should learn to listen.”

“I'm not listening to you,” he said.

Adara knelt down next to the old man. She laid her hand on his knee. “The new council has said that you can be pardoned as soon as you are willing to apologize.”

“Then I shall rot in here,” the former Grand Elder huffed. “Apologize? The very idea!”

“Whether you apologize or not is irrelevant,” Ethyne said kindly. “I forgive you, Uncle. With my whole heart. As does my husband. When you apologize, however, you may begin healing
yourself
. It is not for us. It is for you. I recommend it.”

“I would like to see my nephew,” Gherland said, a tiny crack in his imperious voice. “Please. Tell him to come and see me. I long to see his dear face.”

“Are you going to apologize?” Ethyne asked.

“
Never,
” Gherland spat.

“That is a pity,” Ethyne said. “Good-­bye, Uncle.”

And they left without another word.

The Grand Elder maintained his position. He remained in prison for the rest of his days. Eventually, people stopped visiting, and they stopped mentioning him—even in jest. And in time, they forgot about him altogether.