The Girl Who Drank the Moon (19 page)

30.

In Which Things Are More Difficult than Originally Planned

Luna hadn't been walking for long before she was very, very lost and very, very frightened. She had her map and she could see in her mind's eye the route that she should travel, but she had already lost her way.

The shadows looked like wolves.

The trees clacked and creaked in the wind. Their branches curled like sharp claws, scratching at the sky. Bats screeched and owls hooted their replies.

The rocks creaked under her feet, and beneath that, she could feel the mountain churning, churning, churning. The ground was hot, then cold, then hot again.

Luna lost her footing in the dark and tumbled, head over feet, into a muddy ravine.

She cut her hand; she twisted her ankle; she knocked her skull against a low-­hanging branch and burned her leg in a boiling spring. She was fairly certain she had blood in her hair.

“Caw,” said the crow. “I told you this was a terrible idea.”

“Quiet,” Luna muttered. “You're worse than Fyrian.”

“Caw,” said the crow, but what he meant was any number of unrepeatable things.

“
Language!
” Luna admonished. “And anyway, I don't believe I like your tone.”

Meanwhile, something continued happening inside Luna that she could not explain. The clicking of gears that she had felt almost her whole life was now more like the gonging of a bell. The word
magic
existed. She knew that now. But what it was and what it meant were still a mystery.

Something itched in her pocket. A small, papery something crinkled and rattled and squirmed. Luna did her best to ignore it. She had bigger problems at hand.

The forest was thick with trees and undergrowth. The shadows crowded out the light. With each step she paused and gingerly padded her foot in front of her, feeling around for solid ground. She had been walking all night, and the moon—nearly full—had vanished in the trees, taking the light with it.

What have you gotten yourself into?
the shadows seemed to say, tutting and harrumphing.

There wasn't even enough light to see the map that she had drawn. Not that a map would do her any good so far off her intended trail.

“Stuff and bother,” Luna muttered, carefully taking another step. The path was tricky here—hairpin curves and needle-­like rock formations. Luna could feel the vibration of the volcano under her feet. It didn't relent—not even for a moment.
Sleep,
she thought at it.
You are supposed to be sleeping.
The volcano didn't seem to know this.

“Caw,” said the crow. “Forget the volcano
.
You
should sleep,” he meant. This was true. Lost as she was, Luna was hardly making any progress. She should stop, rest, and wait until morning.

But her grandmother was out here.

And what if she was hurt?

And what if she was sick?

And what if she didn't come back?

Luna knew that everything alive must die someday—she had seen it with her own eyes when she assisted her grandmother. People died. And while it made their loved ones sad, it didn't seem to bother the dead person one bit. They were dead, after all. They had moved on to other matters.

She once asked Glerk what happens to people when they died.

He had closed his eyes and said, “The Bog.” There was a dreamy smile on his face. “The Bog, the Bog, the Bog.” It was the most un-­poetic thing he had ever said. Luna was impressed. But it didn't exactly answer her question.

Luna's grandmother had never spoken about the fact that she would die someday. But she clearly
would
die and likely
was dying
—this thinness, this weakness, this evasion. These were questions with one terrible answer, which her grandmother refused to give.

Luna pressed onward with an ache in her heart.

“Caw,” said the crow. “Be careful.”

“I
am
being careful,” Luna said peevishly.

“Caw,” said the crow. “Something very strange is happening to the trees.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” Luna said.

“Caw!” the crow gasped. “Watch your footing!”

“What do you think I'm trying—”

But Luna said no more. The ground rumbled, the rocks under her feet gave way, and she fell, pinwheeling into the darkness below.

31.

In Which a Madwoman Finds a Tree House

Flying on the backs of a flock of paper birds is less comfortable than you might imagine. And while the madwoman was accustomed to a bit of discomfort, the movement of the paper wings was having an effect on her skin. They cut her until she bled.

“Just a little bit farther,” she said. She could see the place in her mind. A swamp. A series of craters. A very large tree with a door in it. A small observatory through which one might see the stars.

She is here, she is here, she is here.
For all these years, her heart had painted the picture for her. Her child—not a figment of her imagination, but her child in the world. The picture that her heart painted was
real
. She knew it now.

Before the madwoman was born, her mother had sacrificed a baby to the Witch. A boy. Or so she was told. But she knew her mother had visions of the boy growing up. She did until she died. And the madwoman, too, could see her own dear baby—a big girl now. Black hair and black eyes and skin the color of polished amber. A jewel. Clever fingers. A skeptical gaze. The Sisters told her this was just her madness talking. And yet, she could draw a map. A map that led her to her daughter. She could feel its rightness in the thrum and heat of her bones.

“There,” the madwoman breathed, pointing down.

A swamp. Just as she had seen in her mind. It was real.

Seven craters, marking the border. Just as she had seen in her mind. They were also real.

A workshop made of stones, with an observatory. Also real.

And there, next to a small garden plot and a stable and two wooden chairs seated in a flowering arbor—an enormous tree. With a door. And windows.

The madwoman felt her heart give a great leap.

She is here, she is here, she is here.

The birds surged upward before slowly drifting down to the ground, carrying the madwoman with them, laying her down as gently as a mother lays a baby in a bed.

She is here.

The madwoman scrambled to her feet. Opened her mouth. Felt her heart seize in her chest. Surely she had given her child a name. She must have.

What child?
the Sisters used to whisper to her.
No one knows what you are talking about.

No one took your baby,
they told her.
You lost your baby. You put her in the woods and you lost her. Silly girl.

Your baby died. Don't you remember?

The things you invent. Your madness is getting worse.

Your baby was dangerous.

You are dangerous.

You never had a baby.

The life you remember is just a fancy of your fevered mind.

You have been mad forever.

Only your sorrow is real. Sorrow and sorrow and sorrow.

She knew the baby was real. And the house she lived in and the husband who loved her. Who now had a new wife and a new family. A different baby.

There never was a baby.

No one knows who you are.

No one remembers you.

No one misses you.

You don't exist.

The Sisters were all venom and slither and hiss. Their voices crawled up her spine and wound around her neck. Their lies pulled in tight. But they were only doing as they were told. There was only one liar in the Tower, and the madwoman knew who it was.

The madwoman shook her head. “Lies,” she said out loud. “She told me lies.” She was a girl in love once. And a clever wife. And an expectant mother. An angry mother. A grieving mother. And her grief made her mad, yes. Of course it did. But it made her see the truth, too.

“How long has it been?” she whispered. Her spine curled and she wrapped her arms around her belly, as though holding her sorrow inside. An ineffective trick, alas. It took her years to learn better ways to thwart the Sorrow Eater.

The paper birds hovered over her head—a quiet, rustly flapping. They were awaiting orders. They would wait all day. She knew they would. She didn't know how she knew.

“Is—” Her voice cracked. It was rusty and creaky from lack of use. She cleared her throat again. “Is anyone here?”

No one answered.

She tried again.

“I do not remember my name.” This was true. The truth, she decided, was the only thing she had. “But I had a name. Once. I am looking for my child. I do not remember her name, either. But she exists. My name exists, too. I lived with my daughter and my husband before everything went wrong. She was taken. She was taken by bad men. And bad women. And maybe also a witch. I am not certain about the Witch.”

Still no one answered.

The madwoman looked around. The only sounds were the bubbling swamp and the rustle of paper wings. The door in the belly of the enormous tree was slightly ajar. She walked across the yard. Her feet hurt. They were bare and uncalloused. When was the last time they had touched the earth? She could hardly remember. Her cell was small. The stone was smooth. She could go from one side to the other in six short steps. When she was a little girl she ran barefoot whenever she could. But that was a thousand lifetimes ago. Perhaps it happened to someone else.

A goat began to bleat. And another. One was the color of toasted bread and the other was the color of coal. They stared at the madwoman with their large, damp eyes. They were hungry. And their udders were swollen. They needed to be milked.

She had milked a goat, she realized with a start. Long ago.

The chickens clucked in their enclosure, pressing their beaks to the willow walls, keeping them inside. They gave their wings a desperate flap.

They were also hungry.

“Who takes care of you?” the madwoman asked. “And where are they now?”

She ignored the animals' piteous cries and went through the door.

Inside was a home—neat and tidy and pleasant. Rugs on the floor. Quilts on the chairs. There were two beds pulled up to the ceiling through a clever construction of ropes and pulleys. There were dresses on hangers, and cloaks on hooks. One bed had a collection of staffs leaning against the wall just under it. There were jams and bundles of herbs and dried meats studded with spices and cracked salt. A round of cheese curing on the table. Pictures on the wall—handmade pictures on wood or paper or unrolled bark. A dragon sitting on the head of an old woman. A strange-­looking monster. A mountain with a moon hovering over it, like a pendant off a neck. A tower with a black-­haired woman leaning out, reaching her hand to a bird. “She is here,” it said on the bottom.

Each picture was signed with a childlike script. “Luna,” they said.

“
Luna
,
” whispered the madwoman.
“Luna, Luna, Luna.”

And each time she said it, she felt something inside her clicking into place. She felt her heart beat. And beat. And beat. She gasped.

“My daughter is named Luna,” she whispered. She knew in her heart it was true.

The beds were cold. The hearth was cold. No shoes sat on the rug by the door. No one was here. Which meant that Luna and whoever else lived in this house were not here. They were in the woods. And there was a witch in the woods.

32.

In Which Luna Finds a Paper Bird. Several of Them, Actually.

By the time Luna regained consciousness, the sun was already high in the sky. She was lying on something very soft—so soft that she thought at first she was in her own bed. She opened her eyes and saw the sky, cut by the branches of the trees. She squinted, shivered, and pulled herself up. Took her bearings.

“Caw,” breathed the crow. “Thank goodness.”

First she assessed her own body. She had a scratch across her cheek, but it didn't seem particularly deep, and a lump on her head that hurt to touch. There was dried blood in her hair. Her dress was torn at the bottom and at both of her elbows. Other than that, nothing seemed particularly
broken
, which itself was fairly remarkable.

Even more remarkable, she lay atop a bloom of mushrooms that had grown to enormous size at the edge of a creek bed. Luna had never seen mushrooms so large. Or comfortable. Not only had they broken her fall, but they had prevented her from rolling directly into the creek and possibly drowning.

“Caw,” said the crow. “Let's go home.”

“Give us a minute,” Luna said crossly. She reached into her satchel and pulled out her notebook, opening it to the map. Her home was marked. Streams and knolls and rocky slopes were marked. Dangerous places. Old towns that were now in ruins. Cliffs. Vents. Waterfalls. Geysers. Places where she could not cross. And here, at the bottom corner.

“Mushrooms,” the map said.

“Mushrooms?” Luna said out loud.

“Caw,” said the crow. “What are you talking about?”

The mushrooms on her map were next to a creek. It didn't lead to her route, but it lead to a place where she could safely traverse across mostly stable ground. Maybe.

“Caw,” the crow whined. “
Please
let's go home.”

Luna shook her head. “No,” she said. “My grandmother needs me. I can feel it in my bones. And we are not leaving this wood without her.”

Wincing, she staggered to her feet, replaced her notebook in her satchel, and tried her best to hike without limping.

With each step her wounds hurt a little less and her mind cleared a little more. With each step her bones felt stronger and less bruised, and even the dried blood in her hair felt less heavy and crusty and sticky. Soon, she ran her hand through her hair, and the blood was gone. The lump was gone, too. Even the scratch on her face and the tears in her dress seemed to have healed themselves.

Odd,
thought Luna. She didn't turn around, so she didn't notice her footsteps behind her, each one now a garden blooming with flowers, each flower bobbing in the breeze, the large, lurid blooms turning their faces toward the disappearing girl.

A
swallow in flight is graceful, agile, and precise. It hooks, swoops, dives, twists, and beats. It is a dancer, a musician, an arrow.

Usually.

This swallow stumbled from tree to tree. No arabesques. No gathering speed. Its spotted breast lost feathers by the fistful. Its eyes were dull. It hit the trunk of an alder tree and tumbled into the arms of a pine. It lay there for a moment, catching its breath, wings spread open to the sky.

There was something it was supposed to be doing.
What was it?

The swallow pulled itself to its feet and clutched the green tips of the pine bough. It puffed its feathers into a ball and did its best to scan the forest.

The world was fuzzy.
Had it always been fuzzy?
The swallow looked down at its wrinkled talons, narrowing its eyes.

Have these always been my feet?
They must have been. Still, the swallow couldn't shake the vague notion that perhaps they were not. It also felt that there was somewhere it should be. Something it should be doing. Something important. It could feel its heart beating rapidly, then slowing dangerously, then speeding up again, like an earthquake.

I'm dying,
the swallow thought, knowing for certain that it was true.
Not right this second, of course, but I do appear to be dying.
It could feel the stores of its own life force deep within itself. And those stores were starting to dwindle.
Well. No matter. I feel confident that I've had a good life. I just wish I could remember it.

It pressed its beak tightly shut and rubbed its head with its wings, trying to force a memory.
It shouldn't be this difficult to remember who one is,
it thought. Even a fool should be able to do it. And as the swallow racked its brain, it heard a voice coming down the trail.

“My dear Fyrian,” the voice said. “You have, by my last count, spent well over an hour speaking without ceasing. Indeed, I am shocked that you haven't felt the need even to draw a breath.”

“I can hold my breath a long time, you know,” the other voice said. “It is part of being Simply Enormous.”

The first voice was silent for a moment. “Are you sure?” Another silence. “Because such skills are never enumerated in any of the texts on dragon physiology. It is possible that someone told you so to trick you.”

“Who could possibly trick me?” the second voice said, all wide eyes and breathless wonder. “No one has ever told me anything but the truth. In my whole life. Isn't that right?”

The first voice let loose a brief grumble, and silence reigned again.

The swallow knew those voices. It fluttered closer to get a better look.

The second voice flew away and returned, skidding on the back of the owner of the first voice. The first voice had many arms and a long tail and a great, broad head. It had a slow bearing to it, like an enormous sycamore tree. A tree that moved. The swallow moved closer. The great many-­armed and tailed tree-­creature paused. Looked around. Wrinkled its brow.

“Xan?” it said.

The swallow held very still. It knew that name. It knew that voice.
But how?
It couldn't remember.

The second voice returned.

“There are things in the woods, Glerk. I found a chimney. And a wall. And a small house. Or it was a house, but now it has a tree in it.”

The first voice didn't answer right away. It swung its head very slowly from side to side. The swallow was behind a thicket of leaves. It hardly breathed.

Finally the first voice sighed. “You were perhaps seeing one of the abandoned villages. There are many on this side of the woods. After the last eruption, the people fled, and were welcomed into the Protectorate. That's where the magicians gathered them. Those who were left, anyway. I never knew what happened to them after that. They couldn't come back into the woods, of course. Too dangerous.”

The creature swung its great head from side to side.

“Xan has been here,” it said. “Very recently.”

“Is Luna with her?” the second voice said. “That would be safer. Luna can't fly, you know. And she is not impervious to flames like Simply Enormous Dragons. That is well-­known.”

The first voice groaned.

And, all at once, Xan knew herself.

Glerk,
she thought.
In the woods. Away from the swamp.

Luna. All on her own.

And there was a baby. About to be left in the forest. And I have to save it, and what on earth am I doing, dilly-­dallying here?

Great heavens. What have I done?

And Xan, the swallow, burst from the thicket and soared over the trees, beating her ancient wings as best she could.

T
he crow was beside himself with worry. Luna could tell.

“Caw,” the crow said, and meant, “I think we should turn back.”

“Caw,” he said again, which Luna took to mean, “Be careful. Also, are you aware that rock is on fire?” And so it was. Indeed, there was an entire seam of rock, curving into the damp and deeply green forest, glowing like a river of embers. Or perhaps it
was
a river of embers. Luna checked her map. “River of Embers,” the map said.

“Ah,” Luna said. And she tried to find a way around.

This side of the forest was far more rageful than the section that she usually traveled.

“Caw,” the crow said. But Luna didn't know what it meant.

“Speak more clearly,” she said.

But the crow did not. He spiraled upward, perched briefly at the topmost branch of an enormous pine. Cawed. Spiraled down. Up and down and up and down. Luna felt dizzy.

“What do you see?” she said. But the crow wouldn't say.

“Caw,” the crow said, swooping back over the tops of the trees.

“What has gotten into you?” Luna asked. The crow didn't say.

The map said “Village,” which should have been visible just over the next ridge. How could anyone actually live in this forest?

Luna traversed the slope, watching her footing, as the map advised.

Her map.

She had made it.

How?

She had no idea.

“Caw,” the crow said. “Something coming,” it meant.
What could possibly be coming?
Luna peered into the green.

She could see the village, nestled in the valley. It was a ruin. The remains of a central building and a well and the jagged foundations of several houses, like broken teeth in neat, tidy squares. Trees grew where people had once lived, and low plants.

Luna curved around the mud pot and followed the rocks into where the village used to be. The central building was a round, low tower with curved windows looking outward, like eyes. The back portion had fallen off, and the roof had caved in. But there were carvings in the rock. Luna approached it and laid her hand on the nearest panel.

Dragons. There were dragons in the rock. Big dragons, small dragons, dragons of middling size. There were people with quills in their hands and people with stars in their hands and people with birthmarks on their foreheads that looked like crescent moons. Luna pressed her fingers to her own forehead. She had the same birthmark.

There was a carving of a mountain, and a carving of a mountain with its top removed and smoke billowing outward like a cloud, and a carving of a mountain with a dragon plunging itself into the crater.

What did it mean?

“Caw,” said the crow. “It's nearly here,” he meant.

“Give me a minute,” Luna said.

She heard a sound like rustling paper.

And a high, thin keen.

She looked up. The crow sped toward her, flying in a tight, fast twist, all black feathers and black beak and panicked cawing. It reared, flipped backward, and fluttered into her arms, nestling its head deeply into the crook of her elbow.

The sky was suddenly thick with birds of all sizes and descriptions. They massed in great murmurations, expanding and contracting and curving this way and that. They called and squawked and swirled in great clouds before descending on the ruined village, chirping and fussing and circling near.

But they weren't birds at all. They were made of paper. They pointed their eyeless faces toward the girl on the ground.

“Magic,” Luna whispered. “This is what magic does.”

And, for the first time, she understood.