The Girl Who Drank the Moon(32)

“Nothing, Fyrian,” Luna said, curling her hands around his midsection and pulling him close. She kissed the top of his head. “Nothing at all. I’m just thinking about how much I love my family.”

It was the first lie she ever told. Even though her words were true.





18.


In Which a Witch Is Discovered





Xan couldn’t remember the last time she had traveled so slowly. Her magic had been dwindling for years, but there was no denying that it was happening more quickly now. Now the magic seemed to have thinned into a tiny trickle dripping through a narrow channel in her porous bones. Her vision dimmed; her hearing blurred; her hip pained her (and her left foot and her lower back and her shoulders and her wrists and, weirdly, her nose). And her condition was only about to get worse. Soon, she would be holding Luna’s hand for the last time, touching her face for the last time—speaking her words of love in the hoarsest of whispers. It was almost too much to bear.

In truth, Xan was not afraid to die. Why should she be? She had helped ease the pain of hundreds and thousands of people in preparation for that journey into the unknown. She had seen enough times in the faces of those in their final moments, a sudden look of surprise—and a wild, mad joy. Xan felt confident that she had nothing to fear. Still. It was the before that gave her pause. The months leading her toward the end she knew would be far from dignified. When she was able to call up memories of Zosimos (still difficult, despite her best efforts), they were of his grimace, his shudder, his alarming thinness. She remembered the pain he had been in. And she did not relish following in his footsteps.

It is for Luna, she told herself. Everything, everything is for Luna. And it was true. She loved that girl with every ache in her back; she loved her with every hacking cough; she loved her with every rheumatic sigh; she loved her with every crack in her joints. There was nothing she would not endure for that girl.

And she needed to tell her. Of course she did.

Soon, she told herself. Not yet.



The Protectorate sat at the bottom of a long, gentle slope, right before the slope opened up into the vast Zirin Bog. Xan climbed up a rocky outcropping to catch a view of the town before her final descent.

There was something about that town. The way its many sorrows lingered in the air, as persistent as fog. Standing far above the sorrow cloud, Xan, in her clearheadedness, chastised herself.

“Old fool,” she muttered. “How many people have you helped? How many wounds have you healed and hearts have you soothed? How many souls have you guided on their way? And yet, here are these poor people—men and women and children—that you have refused to help. What do you have to say for yourself, you silly woman?”

She had nothing to say for herself.

And she still didn’t know why.

She only knew that the closer she got, the more desperate she felt to leave.

She shook her head, brushed the gravel and leaves from her skirts, and continued down the slope toward the town. As she walked, she had a memory. She could remember her room in the old castle—her favorite room, with the two dragons carved in stone on either side of the fireplace, and a broken ceiling, open to the sky, but magicked to keep the rain away. And she could remember climbing into her makeshift bed and clutching her hands to her heart, praying to the stars that she might have a night free from bad dreams. She never did. And she could remember weeping into her mattress—great gushes of tears. And she could remember a voice at the other side of the door. A quiet, dry, scratchy voice, whispering, More. More. More.

Xan pulled her cloak tightly around her arms. She did not like being cold. She also did not like remembering things. She shook her head to clear away the thoughts and marched down the slope. Into the cloud.



The madwoman in the Tower saw the Witch hobbling through the trees. She was far away—ever so far, but the madwoman’s eyes could see around the world if she let them.

Had she known how to do this before she went mad? Perhaps she had. Perhaps she simply did not notice. She had been a devoted daughter once. And then a girl in love. And then an expectant mother, counting the days until her baby came. And then everything had gone wrong.

The madwoman discovered that it was possible for her to know things. Impossible things. The world, she knew in her madness, was littered with shiny bits and precious pieces. A man might drop a coin on the ground and never find it again, but a crow will find it in a flash. Knowledge, in its essence, was a glittering jewel—and the madwoman was a crow. She pressed, reached, picked, and gathered. She knew so many things. She knew where the Witch lived, for example. She could walk there blindfolded if she could just get out of the Tower for long enough. She knew where the Witch took the children. She knew what those towns were like.

“How is our patient doing this morning?” the Head Sister said to her at the dawning of each day. “How much sorrow presses on her poor, poor soul?” She was hungry. The madwoman could feel it.

None, the madwoman could have said if she felt like speaking. But she didn’t.

For years, the madwoman’s sorrows had fed the Head Sister. For years she felt the predatory pounce. (Sorrow Eater, the madwoman discovered herself knowing. It was not a term that she had ever learned. She found it the way she found anything that was useful—she reached through the gaps of the world and worried it out.) For years she lay silently in her cell while the Head Sister gorged herself on sorrow.