The Girl Who Drank the Moon(51)

Antain never felt more sure of what he had to do.

He left the next morning, well before the sun rose, with his wife and child still asleep in the bed. He couldn’t bear to say good-bye.



The madwoman stood at her window, her face resting on the bars. She watched the young man slide out of the quiet house. She had been waiting for him to appear for hours. She didn’t know how she knew to wait for him—only that she did. The sun had not yet come up, and the stars were sharp and clear as broken glass, spangled across the sky. She saw him slip out of his front door and close it silently behind him. She watched him as he laid his hand on the door, pressing his palm against the wood. For a moment, she thought he might change his mind and go back inside—back to the family that lay asleep in the dark. But he didn’t. He closed his eyes tight, heaved a great sigh, and turned on his heel, hurrying down the dark lane toward the place on the town wall where the climb was least steep.

The madwoman blew him a kiss for luck. She watched him pause and shiver as the kiss hit him. Then he continued on his way, his steps noticeably lighter. The madwoman smiled.

There was a life she used to know. There was a world she used to live in, but she could hardly remember it. Her life before was as insubstantial as smoke. She lived, instead, in this world of paper. Paper birds, paper maps, paper people, dust and ink and pulped wood and time.

The young man walked in the shadows, checking this way and that to see if anyone followed him. He had a satchel and a bedroll slung across his back. A cloak that would be too heavy during the day and not nearly warm enough at night. And swinging at his hip, a long, sharp knife.

“You must not go alone,” the madwoman whispered. “There are dangers in the wood. There are dangers here that will follow you into the wood. And there is one who is more dangerous than you could possibly imagine.”

When she was a little girl, she had heard stories about the Witch. The Witch lived in the woods, she was told, and had a tiger’s heart. But the stories were wrong—and what truth they had was twisted and bent. The Witch was here, in the Tower. And while she didn’t have a tiger’s heart, she would rip you to shreds if given the chance.

The madwoman stared at the window’s iron bars until they were no longer iron bars at all, but paper bars. She tore them to shreds. And the stones surrounding the window’s opening were no longer stones—just damp clumps of pulp. She scooped them out of the way with her hands.

The paper birds around her murmured and fluttered and squawked. They opened their wings. Their eyes began to brighten and search. They lifted as one into the air, and they streamed through the window, carrying the madwoman on their collective backs, and flowed silently into the sky.



The Sisters discovered the madwoman’s escape an hour after dawn. There were accusations and explanations and search parties and forensic explorations and teams of detectives. Heads rolled. The cleanup was a long, nasty job. But quiet, of course. The Sisters couldn’t afford to let news of the escape leak into the Protectorate. The last thing they needed was to allow the populace to be getting ideas. Ideas, after all, are dangerous.

Grand Elder Gherland ordered a meeting with Sister Ignatia just before lunch, despite her protestations that today simply was too difficult.

“I don’t care two wits about your feminine complications,” the Grand Elder roared as he marched into her study. The other Sisters scurried away, shooting murderous glances at the Grand Elder, which thankfully he did not notice.

Sister Ignatia felt it best not to mention the escaped prisoner. Instead, she called for tea and cookies and offered hospitality to the fuming Grand Elder.

“Pray, dear Gherland,” she said. “Whatever is this about?” She regarded him with hooded, predatory eyes.

“It has happened,” Gherland said wearily.

Unconsciously, Sister Ignatia’s eyes flicked in the direction of the now-empty cell. “It?” she asked.

“My nephew. He left this morning. His wife and their baby are sheltering at my sister’s house.”

Sister Ignatia’s mind began to race. They couldn’t be connected, these two disappearances. They couldn’t. She would have known . . . wouldn’t she? There had been, of course, a marked drop in available sorrow from the madwoman. Sister Ignatia hadn’t given it much thought. While it was annoying to have to go hungry in one’s own home, there was always sorrow aplenty throughout the Protectorate, hanging over the town like a cloud.

Or normally there was. But this blasted hope stirred up by Antain was spreading through the town, disrupting the sorrow. Sister Ignatia felt her stomach rumble.

She smiled and rose to her feet. She gently laid her hand on the Grand Elder’s arm, giving it a tender squeeze. Her long, sharp nails pierced his robes like a tiger’s claws, making him cry out in pain. She smiled and kissed him on both cheeks. “Fear not, my boy,” she said. “Leave Antain to me. The forest is filled with dangers.” She pulled her hood over her head and strode to the door. “I hear there’s a witch in the wood. Did you know?” And she disappeared into the hall.



“No,” Luna said. “No, no, no, no, no.” She held the note from her grandmother in her hands for only a moment before she tore it to shreds. She didn’t even read past the first sentence. “No, no, no, no, no.”

“Caw,” the crow said, though it sounded more like, “Don’t do anything stupid.”