The Girl Who Drank the Moon(25)

“What will we do when she comes of age?” Glerk asked. “How will you teach her then?” Because you will surely die then, Glerk thought but did not say. Her magic will open, and yours will pour away, and you, my dear, darling five-hundred-year-old Xan, will no longer have magic in you to keep you alive. He felt the cracks in his heart grow deeper.

“Maybe she won’t grow,” Xan said desperately. “Maybe she will stay like this forever, and I will never have to say good-bye to her. Maybe I mislaid the spell, and her magic will never come out. Maybe she was never magic to begin with.”

“You know that isn’t true,” Glerk said.

“It might be true,” Xan countered. “You don’t know.” She paused before she spoke again. “The alternative is too sorrowful to contemplate.”

“Xan—” Glerk began.

“Sorrow is dangerous,” she snapped. And she left in a huff.

They had this conversation again and again, with no resolution. Eventually, Xan refused to discuss it at all.

The child was never magic, Xan started telling herself. And indeed, the more Xan told herself that it might be true, the more she was able to convince herself that it was true. And if Luna ever was magic, all that power was now neatly stoppered up and wouldn’t be a problem. Perhaps it was stuck forever. Perhaps Luna was now a regular girl. A regular girl. Xan said it again and again and again. She said it so many times that it must be true. It’s exactly what she told people in the Free Cities when they asked. A regular girl, she said. She also told them Luna was allergic to magic. Hives, she said. Seizures. Itchy eyes. Stomach upset. She asked everyone to never mention magic near the girl.

And so, no one did. Xan’s advice was always followed to the letter.

In the meantime, there was a whole world for Luna to learn—science, mathematics, poetry, philosophy, art. Surely that would be enough. Surely she would grow as a girl grows, and Xan would continue as she was—still-magic, slow-to-age, deathless Xan. Surely, Xan would never have to say good-bye.

“This can’t go on,” Glerk said, over and over. “Luna needs to know what’s inside her. She needs to know how magic works. She needs to know what death is. She needs to be prepared.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you are talking about,” Xan said. “She’s just a regular girl. Even if she wasn’t before, she certainly is now. My own magic is replenished—and I hardly ever use it in any case. There is no need to upset her. Why would we speak of impending loss? Why would we introduce her to that kind of sorrow? It’s dangerous, Glerk. Remember?”

Glerk wrinkled his brow. “Why do we think that?” he asked.

Xan shook her head. “I have no idea.” And she didn’t. She knew, once, but the memory had vanished.

It was easier to forget.

And so Luna grew.

And she didn’t know about the starlight or the moonlight or the tight knot behind her forehead. And she didn’t remember about the enrabbiting of Glerk or the flowers in her footsteps or the power that was, even now, clicking through its gears, pulsing, pulsing, pulsing inexorably toward its end point. She didn’t know about the hard, tight seed of magic readying to crack open inside her.

She had absolutely no idea.





15.


In Which Antain Tells a Lie





The scars from the paper birds never healed. Not properly, anyway.

“They were just paper,” Antain’s mother wailed. “How is it possible that they cut so deep?”

It wasn’t just the cuts. The infections after the cuts were far worse. Not to mention the considerable loss of blood. Antain had lain on the floor for a long time while the madwoman attempted to stop his bleeding with paper—and not very well. The medicines the Sisters gave her made her woozy and weak. She drifted in and out of consciousness. When the guards finally came in to check on him, both he and the madwoman lay in a puddle of so much blood, it took them a moment to find out who, exactly, it belonged to.

“And why,” his mother fumed, “did they not come for you when you cried out? Why did they abandon you?”

No one knew the answer to that one. The Sisters claimed they had no idea. They hadn’t heard him. And later, one look at the whiteness of their faces and their bloodshot eyes led everyone to believe that it was true.

People whispered that Antain had cut himself.

People whispered that his story of the paper birds was just a fantasy. After all, no one found any birds. Just bloody wads of paper on the ground. And, anyway, who had ever heard of an attacking paper bird?

People whispered that a boy like that had no business being an Elder-in-Training. And on that point, Antain couldn’t have agreed more. By the time his wounds were healed, he had announced to the Council that he was resigning. Effective immediately. Freed from school, from the Council, and from the constant needling of his mother, Antain became a carpenter. And he was very good at it.

The Council, owing to its members’ profound discomfort whenever they had to look at the deep scars covering the poor boy’s face—not to mention his mother’s insistence—had given the boy a tidy sum of money with which he was able to secure rare woods and fine tools from the traders who did their business via the Road. (And oh! Those scars! And oh! How handsome he used to be! And oh! That lost potential. Such a pity it was. What a great and terrible pity.)