The Girl Who Drank the Moon(81)

“Some of us,” Xan said, “choose love over power. Indeed, most of us do.”

Luna pressed her attention into the crack. With a flick of her left wrist, she forced it open. And sorrow rushed out.

“Oh!” the Sorrow Eater said, pressing her hands to her chest.

“YOU!” came a voice from above.

Luna looked up and felt a scream erupt in her throat. She saw an enormous dragon hovering just overhead. It soared in a spiral, pulling closer and closer to the middle. It erupted fire into the sky. It looked familiar, somehow.

“Fyrian?”

Sister Ignatia tore at her chest. Her sorrow leaked onto the ground.

“Oh no. Oh, no, no, no.” Her eyes went heavy with tears. She choked on her own sobbing.

“My mother,” the dragon-who-looked-like-Fyrian shouted. “My mother died and it is your fault.” The dragon dove down and skidded to a halt, sending sprays of gravel in every direction.

“My mother,” the Sorrow Eater mumbled, barely noticing the enormous dragon bearing down on her. “My mother and my father and my sisters and my brothers. My village and my friends. All gone. All that was left was sorrow. Sorrow and memory and memory and sorrow.”

Possibly-Fyrian grabbed the Sorrow Eater by the waist, holding her up high. She went limp, like a doll.

“I should burn you up!” the dragon said.

“FYRIAN!” Glerk was running up the mountain, moving faster than Luna had thought it was possible for him to move. “Fyrian, put her down at once. You have no idea what you’re doing.”

“Yes, I do,” Fyrian said. “She’s wicked.”

“Fyrian, stop!” Luna cried, clutching at the dragon’s leg.

“I miss her,” Fyrian sobbed. “My mother. I miss her so much. This witch should pay for what she’s done.”

Glerk stood tall as a mountain. He was serene as a bog. He looked at Fyrian with all the love in the world. “No, Fyrian. That answer is too easy, my friend. Look deeper.”

Fyrian shut his eyes. He did not put down the Sorrow Eater. Great tears poured from beneath his clenched lids and fell in steaming dollops to the ground.

Luna looked deeper, past the layers of memory wrapped around the heart-turned-pearl. What she saw astonished her. “She walled off her sorrow,” Luna whispered. “She covered it up and pressed it in, tighter and tighter and tighter. And it was so hard, and heavy, and dense that it bent the light around it. It sucked everything inside. Sorrow sucking sorrow. She turned hungry for it. And the more she fed on it, the more she needed. And then she discovered that she could transform it into magic. And she learned how to increase the sorrow around her. She grew sorrow the way a farmer grows wheat and meat and milk. And she gorged herself on misery.”

The Sorrow Eater sobbed. Her sorrow leaked from her eyes and her mouth and her ears. Her magic was gone. Her collected sorrow was going. Soon there would be nothing at all.

The ground shook. Great plumes of smoke poured from the crater of the volcano. Fyrian shook. “I should throw you in the volcano for what you did,” he said, his voice catching in his throat. “I should eat you in one bite and never think of you again. Just as you never thought of my mother again.”

“Fyrian,” Xan said, holding out her arms. “My precious Fyrian. My Simply Enormous boy.”

Fyrian began to cry again. He released the Sorrow Eater, who fell in a heap on the rock. “Auntie Xan!” he whimpered. “I feel so many things!”

“Of course you do, darling.” Xan beckoned the dragon to come close. She put her hands on either side of his enlarged face and kissed his tremendous nose. “You have a Simply Enormous heart. As you always have. There are things to do with our Sorrow Eater, but the volcano is not one of them. And if you ate her you would get a stomachache. So.”

Luna cocked her head. The Sorrow Eater’s heart was in pieces. She would not be able to repair it without magic—and now her magic was gone. Almost at once, the Sorrow Eater began to age.

The ground shook again. Fyrian looked around. “It’s not just the peak. The vents are open, and the air will be bad for Luna. Everyone else, too, probably.”

The woman without hair—the madwoman (No, Luna thought. Not the madwoman. My mother. She is my mother. The word made her shiver) looked down at her boots and smiled. “My boots can take us to where we need to go in no time. Send Sister Ignatia and the monster with the dragon. I’ll put the rest of you on my back, and we’ll run to the Protectorate. They need to be warned about the volcano.”

The moon went out. The stars went out. Thick smoke covered the sky.

My mother, Luna thought. This is my mother. The woman on the ceiling. The hands in the window of the Tower. She is here, she is here, she is here. Luna’s heart was infinite. She climbed aboard her mother’s back and laid her cheek against her mother’s neck and closed her eyes tight. Luna’s mother scooped up Xan as tender as could be, and instructed Antain and Luna to hang on to her shoulders, as the crow hung on to Luna.

“Be careful with Glerk,” Luna called to Fyrian. The dragon held the Sorrow Eater in his hands, extended as far from his body as they could be, as though he found her repellant. The monster clung to his back, just as Fyrian had clung to Glerk for years.

“I’m always careful with Glerk,” Fyrian said primly. “He’s delicate.”