The Girl Who Drank the Moon(19)

And so the Bog created a Body: a great Beast that walked out of the Bog on its own strong, boggy legs. The Beast was the Bog, and the Bog was the Beast. The Beast loved the Bog and the Bog loved the Beast, just as a person loves the image of himself in a quiet pond of water, and looks upon it with tenderness. The Beast’s chest was full of warm and life-giving compassion. He felt the shine of love radiating outward. And the Beast wanted words to explain how he felt.

And so there were words.

And the Beast wanted those words to fit together just so, to explain his meaning. He opened his mouth and a poem came out.

“Round and yellow, yellow and round,” the Beast said, and the sun was born, hanging just overhead.

“Blue and white and black and gray and a burst of color at dawn,” the Beast said. And the sky was born.

“The creak of wood and the softness of moss and the rustle and whisper of green and green and green,” the Beast sang. And there were forests.

Everything you see, everything you know, was called into being by the Bog. The Bog loves us and we love it.

The Witch in the Bog? Please. I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in all my life.





13.


In Which Antain Pays a Visit





The Sisters of the Star always had an apprentice—always a young boy. Well, he wasn’t much of an apprentice—more of a serving boy, really. They hired him when he was nine and kept him on until he was dispatched with a single note.

Every boy received the same note. Every single time.

“We had high hopes,” it always said, “but this one has disappointed us.”

Some boys served only a week or two. Antain knew of one from school who had only stayed a single day. Most were sent packing at the age of twelve—right when they had begun to get comfortable. Once they became aware of how much learning there was to be had in the libraries of the Tower and they became hungry for it, they were sent away.

Antain had been twelve when he received his note—one day after he had been granted (after years of asking) the privilege of the library. It was a crushing blow.

The Sisters of the Star lived in the Tower, a massive structure that unsettled the eye and confounded the mind. The Tower stood in the very center of the Protectorate—it cast its shadow everywhere.

The Sisters kept their pantries and auxiliary libraries and armories in the seemingly endless floors belowground. Rooms were set aside for bookbinding and herb mixing and broadsword training and hand-to-hand combat practice. The Sisters were skilled in all known languages, astronomy, the art of poisons, dance, metallurgy, martial arts, decoupage, and the finer points of assassinry. Aboveground were the Sisters’ simple quarters (three to a room), spaces for meeting and reflection, impenetrable prison cells, a torture chamber, and a celestial observatory. Each was connected within an intricate framework of oddly-angled corridors and intersecting staircases that wound from the belly of the building to its deepest depths to the crown of its sky-viewer and back again. If anyone was foolish enough to enter without permission, he might wander for days without finding an exit.

During his years in the Tower, Antain could hear the Sisters’ grunts in the practice rooms, and he could hear the occasional weeping from the prison rooms and torture chamber, and he could hear the Sisters engaged in heated discussions about the science of stars and the alchemical makeup of Zirin bulbs or the meaning of a particularly controversial poem. He could hear the Sisters singing as they pounded flour or boiled down herbs or sharpened their knives. He learned how to take dictation, clean a privy, set a table, serve an excellent luncheon, and master the fine art of bread-slicing. He learned the requirements for an excellent pot of tea and the finer points of sandwich-making and how to stand very still in the corner of a room and listen to a conversation, memorizing every detail, without ever letting the speakers notice that you are present. The Sisters often praised him during his time in the Tower, complimenting his penmanship or his swiftness or his polite demeanor. But it wasn’t enough. Not really. The more he learned, the more he knew what more there was to learn. There were deep pools of knowledge in the dusty volumes quietly shelved in the libraries, and Antain thirsted for all of them. But he wasn’t allowed to drink. He worked hard. He did his best. He tried not to think about the books.

Still, one day he returned to his room and found his bags already packed. The Sisters pinned a note to his shirt and sent him home to his mother. “We had high hopes,” the note said. “But this one has disappointed us.”

He never got over it.

Now as an Elder-in-Training he was supposed to be at the Council Hall, preparing for the day’s hearings, but he just couldn’t. After making excuses, yet again, about missing the Day of Sacrifice, Antain had noticed a distinct difference in his rapport with the Elders. An increased muttering. A proliferation of side-eyed glances. And, worst of all, his uncle refused to even look at him.

He hadn’t set foot in the Tower since his apprenticeship days, but Antain felt that it was high time to visit the Sisters, who had been, for him, a sort of short-term family—albeit odd, standoffish, and, admittedly, murderous. Still. Family is family, he told himself as he walked up to the old oak door and knocked.

(There was another reason, of course. But Antain could hardly even admit it to himself. And it was making him twitch.)

His little brother answered. Rook. He had, as usual, a runny nose, and his hair was much longer than it had been when Antain saw it last—over a year ago now.