The Girl Who Drank the Moon(15)

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.



Xan 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.”