The Girl Who Drank the Moon(66)

And Xan walked over and laid her cheek on Luna’s cheek, and wrapped her arms around the swamp monster. Or, at least part of the way around. Glerk, after all, was very large.

“Are we hugging now?” Fyrian said, zooming back with the flower. “I love hugging.” And he shot into the crook of one of Glerk’s arms and insinuated himself into the fleshy folds of his body, and was, once again, the happiest dragon in the world.

Luna sat very still, her mind racing at what her own memory had revealed to her. Her own unlocked memory.

Witch.

Enmagicked.

Thirteen.

Gone.

Luna pressed the heels of her hands to her brow, trying to keep her head from spinning. How many times had she felt a thought simply fly away, like a bird? And now here they came, crowding back inside. Luna’s thirteenth birthday was very soon. And her grandmother was sick. And weak. And some day soon, she would be gone. And Luna would be alone. And enmagicked—

Witch.

It was a word that she had never heard before. And yet. When she searched her memories, she found it everywhere. People called it out in the market squares when they visited the cities on the other side of the forest. People said it when they visited homes. People called it when her grandmother’s assistance was needed—in a birth, maybe. Or to settle a dispute.

“My grandmother is a witch,” Luna said out loud. And it was true. “And now I am a witch.”

“Caw,” said the crow. “So?”

She gave a narrowed eye to the crow, wrinkling her lips into a frown. “Did you know this?” she demanded.

“Caw,” said the crow. “Obviously. What did you think you were? Don’t you remember how we met?”

Luna looked up at the sky. “Well,” she said. “I guess I didn’t really think about it.”

“Caw,” said the crow. “Exactly. That is exactly your problem.”

“A scrying device,” Luna murmured.

And she could remember. Her grandmother had made them more than once. Sometimes with string. Sometimes with a raw egg. Sometimes with the sticky insides of a milkweed pod.

“It’s the intention that matters,” Luna said out loud, her bones buzzing as she said it. “Any good witch knows how to build a tool with what’s on hand.”

These weren’t her words. Her grandmother had said them. Her grandmother had said them while Luna was in the room. But then the words flew away and she went blank. And now they were coming back again. She leaned forward and spat on the ground, making a small puddle of dusty mud. With her left hand she grabbed a handful of dried grass, growing from a crack in the rock. She dipped it into the spittle-mud and started to wind it into a complicated knot.

She didn’t understand what she was doing—not really. She moved by instinct, as though trying to piece together a song she heard once and could barely recall.

“Show me my grandmother,” she said as she stuck her thumb into the center of the knot and stretched it into a hole.

Luna saw nothing at first.

And then she saw a man with a heavily scarred face walking through the woods. He was frightened. He tripped on roots and twice ran into a tree. He was moving too quickly for someone who clearly didn’t know where he was going. But it didn’t matter, because the device obviously didn’t work. She hadn’t asked to see a man. She had asked to see her grandmother.

“My grandmother,” Luna said more deliberately, in a loud voice.

The man wore a leather jerkin. Small knives hung from either side of his belt. He opened the pouch on his jerkin and crooned to something nestled inside. A small beak peeked out of the leather folds.

Luna squinted. It was a swallow. And it was old and sick. “I already drew you,” she said out loud.

The swallow, as though in response, peeked its head out and looked around.

“I said, I need my grandmother,” she almost shouted. The swallow struggled, tittered, and squawked. It looked desperate to get out.

“Not now, silly,” the man in the device said. “Let’s wait until we fix that wing. Then you can get out. Here. Eat this spider.” And the man shoved a wriggling spider into the swallow’s protesting beak.

The swallow chewed the spider, a combination of frustration and gratitude on its face.

Luna grunted with frustration.

“I’m not very good at this yet. Show me my GRANDMOTHER,” she said firmly. And the device focused clearly on the face of the bird. And the bird stared through the scrying device, right into Luna’s eye. The swallow couldn’t see her. Of course it couldn’t. And yet it seemed to Luna that the bird shook its head, very slowly, from side to side.

“Grandmama?” Luna whispered.

And then the device went dark.

“Come back,” the girl called.

The makeshift device stayed dark. The scrying device hadn’t failed at all, Luna realized with a start. Someone was blocking it.

“Oh, Grandmama,” Luna whispered. “What have you done?”





37.


In Which the Witch Learns Something Shocking





It wasn’t Luna, Xan told herself again and again and again. My Luna is safe at home. She told herself this until it felt true. The man shoved another spider into her mouth. Despite how repellant she found the food, she had to admit that her birdish gullet found it delicious. It was the first time she had ever actually eaten while transformed. And it would be the last time, too. The slow vanishing of her life in front of her eyes did not make her sad in and of itself. But the thought of leaving Luna . . .