The Girl Who Drank the Moon(80)

“It may as well have,” the stranger sneered. “Look at you. Aged. Decrepit. What have you made? Nothing! And the stories they tell about you! I’d say that it would curl your hair”—she narrowed her eyes—“but I don’t think your hair could take it.”

The madwoman left Antain and moved toward Luna. Her movements were slippery and slow, as though she was moving in a dream.

“Sister Ignatia!” Antain said. “How could you? The Protectorate looks to you as a voice of reason and learning.” He faltered. “My baby is facing the Robes. My son. And Ethyne—whom you cared for as a daughter! It will break her spirit.”

Sister Ignatia flared her nostrils and her brow darkened. “Do not say that ingrate’s name in my presence. After all I did for her.”

“There is a part of her that is still human,” the madwoman whispered in Luna’s ear. She put her hand on Luna’s shoulder. And something inside Luna surged. It was all she could do to keep her feet on the ground. “I have heard her, in the Tower. She walks in her sleep, mourning something that she lost. She sobs; she weeps; she growls. When she wakes, she has no memory of it. It is walled off inside her.”

This, Luna knew a bit about. She turned her attention to the memories sealed inside the Sorrow Eater.

Xan hobbled forward.

“The babies didn’t die, you know,” the old woman said, a mischievous grin curving across her wide mouth.

The stranger scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course they did. They starved, or they died of thirst. Wild animals ate them, sooner or later. That was the point.”

Xan took another step forward. She peered into the tall woman’s eyes, as though looking into a long, dark tunnel in the face of a rock. She squinted. “You’re wrong. You couldn’t see through the fog of sorrow you created. Just as I had difficulty looking in, you couldn’t see out. All these years I’ve been traipsing right up to your door, and you had no idea. Isn’t that funny?”

“It’s nothing of the kind,” the stranger said with a deep-throated growl. “It’s only ridiculous. If you came near, I would know.”

“No, dear lady. You didn’t. Just as you don’t know what happened to the babies. Every year, I came to the edge of that sad, sad place. Every year, I carried a child with me across the forest to the Free Cities, and there I placed the child with a loving family. And to my shame, its original family sorrowed needlessly. And you fed on that sorrow. You will not feed on Antain’s sorrow. Or Ethyne’s. Their baby will live with his parents, and he will grow and thrive. Indeed, while you have been prowling around the forest, your little sorrow fog has already lifted. The Protectorate now knows what it is to be free.”

Sister Ignatia paled. “Lies,” she said, but she stumbled and struggled to right herself. “What’s happening?” she gasped.

Luna narrowed her eyes. The stranger had depleted almost all but the last remnants of her magic. Luna looked deeper. And there, in the space where the Sorrow Eater’s heart should have been, was a tiny sphere—hard, shiny, and cold. A pearl. Over the years, she had walled off her heart, again and again, making it smooth and bright and unfeeling. And she likely hid other things in there as well—memories, hope, love, the weight of human emotion. Luna focused, the keenness of her eye boring inward, piercing the shine of the pearl.

The Sorrow Eater pressed her hands to her head. “Someone is taking my magic. Is it you, old woman?”

“What magic?” the madwoman said, stepping next to Xan, curling her arm around the old woman to keep her upright, and giving Sister Ignatia a hard look. “I didn’t see any magic.” She turned to Xan. “She makes things up, you know.”

“Hush, you imbecile! You have no idea what you’re talking about.” The stranger wobbled, as though her legs had been turned suddenly turned to dough.

“Every night when I was a girl in the castle,” Xan said, “you came to feed on the sorrow that seeped under my door.”

“Every night in the Tower,” the madwoman said, “you went from cell to cell, looking for sorrow. And when I learned to bottle mine up, to lock it away, you would snarl and howl.”

“You’re lying,” the Sorrow Eater croaked. But they weren’t—Luna could see the awful hunger of the Sorrow Eater. She could see her—even now—desperately looking for the tiniest bit of sorrow. Anything to fill the dark void inside her. “You don’t know a single thing about me.”

But Luna did. In her mind’s eye, Luna could see the pearly heart of the Sorrow Eater floating in the air between them. It had been hidden away for so long that Luna suspected the Sorrow Eater had forgotten it was even there. She turned it around and around, looking for chinks and crevices. There was a memory here. A beloved person. A loss. A flood of hope. A pit of despair. How many feelings can one heart hold? She looked at her grandmother. At her mother. At the man protecting his family. Infinite, Luna thought. The way the universe is infinite. It is light and dark and endless motion; it is space and time, and space within space, and time within time. And she knew: there is no limit to what the heart can carry.

It’s awful to be cut off from your own memories, Luna thought. If I know anything, I know that now. Here. Let me help you.

Luna concentrated. The pearl cracked. The Sorrow Eater’s eyes went terribly wide.