The Girl Who Drank the Moon(68)

And oh! The tyranny of grief!

And oh! The howls of a mother driven mad by sorrow. The grief and pain that he had done nothing to stop it, even though he didn’t know how. Xan could see the memory lodged in the young man’s heart. She could see how it had taken root, calcified, inflamed by his own guilt and shame.

How did this begin? Xan asked herself. How?

As if to answer, she heard in the caverns of her own memories the padded footsteps of something quiet, predatory, and terrifying, coming closer and closer and closer.

No, she thought. It couldn’t be. Still, she was careful to keep her own sorrow inside. She knew, better than anyone, the damage that sorrow can do when it finds its way into the wrong hands.

“In any case, my friend, I have never killed anyone before. I have never harmed any creature. But I love Ethyne. And I love Luken, my son. And I will do what is necessary to protect my family. I am telling you this, my swallow, because I don’t want you to be frightened when you see me do the thing I must do. I am not a wicked man. I am a man who loves his family. And because I love them, I will kill the Witch. I will. I will kill the Witch or die trying.”





38.


In Which the Fog Begins to Lift





As Ethyne and Mae moved through the square toward the Tower, the population of the Protectorate walked around with their hands shading their eyes. They shed their shawls and their overcoats, relishing the shine of the sun on their skin, marveling at the lack of the normal damp chill and learning how to squint now that the fog had lifted.

“Have you ever seen such a sky?” Mae marveled.

“No,” Ethyne said slowly. “I haven’t.” The baby murmured and fussed in the bright cloth tying him to his mother’s chest. Ethyne curled her arms around the warm knot of his body and kissed his forehead. He would need to be fed soon. And changed. In a moment, love, Ethyne thought. Mama needs to complete a task—one that should have been completed a long time ago.

When Ethyne was a little girl, her mother told her story after story about the Witch in the woods. Ethyne was an inquisitive child, and once she knew that her elder brother was one of the babies sacrificed, she was filled with questions. Where had he gone, really? What if she tried to find him—what then? What is the Witch made of? What does she eat? Is she lonely? Are you sure she’s a lady? If it is impossible to fight that which one does not understand, then why not seek to learn? The Witch was wicked, but how wicked? How wicked, exactly?

Ethyne’s constant questions had consequences. Terrible consequences. Her mother—a pale, gaunt woman, full of resignation and sorrow—began obsessively talking about the Witch. She told stories even when no one asked her to. She muttered her stories to herself while she cooked or cleaned or took the long walk with the other harvesters to the Bog.

“The Witch eats the children. Or she enslaves them. Or she sucks them dry,” Ethyne’s mother would say.

“The Witch prowls the woods on padded paws. She ate the heart of a sorrowing tiger long ago, and that heart still beats inside her.”

“The Witch is a bird sometimes. She can fly into your bedroom at night and peck out your eyes!”

“She is as old as dust. She can cross the world in her Seven League Boots. Mind you behave yourself, lest she snatches you out of your bed!”

Over time her stories lengthened and tangled; they wound around her body like a heavy chain, until she could not hold them up anymore. And then she died.

Or that’s how Ethyne saw it, anyway.

Ethyne was sixteen at the time, and known throughout the Protectorate as a remarkably clever girl—quick hands, quick wits. When the Sisters of the Star arrived after her mother’s funeral and offered her a place in their novitiate, Ethyne hesitated only for a moment. Her father was gone; her mother was gone; her older brothers (the ones not taken by the Witch) had all married and didn’t come around the house that often. It was too sad. There was a boy in her class who tugged at her heart—the quiet boy in the back—but he was from one of the important families. People who owned things. There was no way that he would give her a second look. When the Sisters of the Star came, Ethyne packed her things and followed them out.

But then she noticed that in all the things she learned at the Tower—about astronomy and botany and mechanics and mathematics and vulcanology—not once was the Witch mentioned. Not once. It was as though she didn’t actually exist.

And then she noticed the fact that Sister Ignatia never seemed to age.

And then she noticed the padded steps, stalking the hallway of the Tower each night.

And then she saw one of her novitiate sisters weeping over the death of her grandfather, and Sister Ignatia staring at the girl—all hunger and muscle and predatory leap.

Ethyne had spent her entire childhood carrying the heavy weight of her mother’s stories about the Witch. Indeed, everyone she knew bore the same weight. Their backs bent under the burden of the Witch, and their sorrowing hearts were as heavy as stones. She joined the Sisters of the Star to seek the truth. But the truth about the Witch was nowhere to be found.

A story can tell the truth, she knew, but a story can also lie. Stories can bend and twist and obfuscate. Controlling stories is power indeed. And who would benefit most from such a power? And over time, Ethyne’s eye drifted less and less toward the forest, and more toward the Tower casting its shadow over the Protectorate.