The Girl Who Drank the Moon(60)

She licked her lips. She was so hungry. She needed to survey her surroundings.

The Head Sister held her scrying device up to her right eye and scanned the rest of the forest. Another blur. What is the matter with this thing? she wondered. She tightened the knots. Still a blur. Hunger, she decided. Even basic spells are difficult when one is not operating at full strength.

Sister Ignatia eyed the starling nest.

She scanned the mountain. Then she gasped.

“No!” she shouted. She looked again. “How are you still alive, you ugly thing?”

She rubbed her eyes and looked a third time. “I thought I killed you, Glerk,” she whispered. “Well. I guess I shall have to try again. Troublesome creature. You almost foiled me once, but you failed. And you shall fail again.”

First, she thought, a snack. Shoving her scrying device into her pocket, Sister Ignatia climbed up to the branch with the starling nest. She reached in and grabbed a tiny, wriggling nestling. She crushed it in one fist as the horrified mother looked on. The mother sparrow’s sorrow was thin. But it was enough. Sister Ignatia licked her lips and crushed another nestling.

And now, she thought, I must remember where I hid those Seven League Boots.





34.


In Which Luna Meets a Woman in the Wood





The paper birds roosted on branches and stones and the remains of chimneys and walls and old buildings. They made no sound outside the rustle of paper and the scritch of folds. They quieted their bodies and turned their faces toward the girl on the ground. They had no eyes. But they watched her all the same. Luna could feel it.

“Hello,” she said, because she didn’t know what else to say. The paper birds said nothing. The crow, on the other hand, couldn’t keep himself quiet. He spiraled upward and sped into a cluster gathered on the extended arm of an ancient oak tree, shouting all the while.

“Caw, caw, caw, caw,” the crow screeched.

“Hush,” Luna admonished. She had her eyes on the paper birds. They tilted their heads in unison, first pointing their beaks at the girl on the ground, then following the crazed crow, then looking back at the girl.

“Caw,” said the crow. “I’m frightened.”

“Me, too,” Luna said as she stared at the birds. They scattered, then massed again, hovering over her like a great, undulating cloud before settling back onto the branches of the oak tree.

They know me, Luna thought.

How do they know me?

The birds, the map, the woman in my dreams. She is here, she is here, she is here.

It was too much to think about. The world had too many things to know in it, and Luna’s mind was full. She had a pain in her skull, right in the middle of her forehead.

The paper birds stared at her.

“What do you want from me?” Luna demanded. The paper birds rested on their roosts. There were too many to count. They were waiting. But for what?

“Caw,” the crow said. “Who cares what they want? Paper birds are creepy.”

They were creepy, of course. But they were also beautiful and strange. They were looking for something. They wanted to tell her something.

Luna sat down on the dirt. She kept her eye on the birds. She let the crow nestle on her lap. She closed her eyes and took out her book and a pencil stub. Once, she had let her mind wander as she thought about the woman in her dreams. And then she had drawn a map. And the map was correct. Or at least it had been so far. “She is here, she is here, she is here,” her map said, and Luna could only assume that it was telling the truth. But now she needed to make something else happen. She needed to know where her grandmother was.

“Caw,” said the crow.

“Hush,” Luna said without opening her eyes. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

The paper birds watched her. She could feel them watching. Luna felt her hand move across the page. She tried to keep her mind on her grandmother’s face. The touch of her hand. The smell of her skin. Luna felt worry grip her heart in its fist, and two hot tears came tumbling down, hitting the paper with a splat.

“Caw,” the crow said. “Bird,” it meant.

Luna opened her eyes. The crow was right. She hadn’t drawn her grandmother at all. She had drawn a stupid bird. One that was sitting in a man’s hand.

“Well, what on earth?” Luna grumbled, her heart sinking into her boots. How could she find her grandmother? How indeed?

“Caw,” the crow said. “Tiger.”

Luna scrambled to her feet, keeping her knees bent in a low crouch.

“Stay close,” she whispered to the crow. She wished the birds were made of something more substantial than paper. Rock, maybe. Or sharp steel.

“Well,” said a voice. “What have we here?”

“Caw,” said the crow. “Tiger.”

But it wasn’t a tiger at all. It was a woman.

So why do I feel so afraid?



Ethyne stood as the Grand Elder arrived, flanked by two heavily armed Sisters of the Star. She was, by all appearances, utterly unafraid. It was galling, really. The Grand Elder knitted his eyebrows in a way that he assumed was imposing. This had no effect. To make it worse, it seemed that she not only knew the two soldiers to the right and left of him but was friends with them as well. She brightened as she saw the ruthless soldiers arrive, and they smiled back.