The Girl Who Drank the Moon (21 page)

The woman, though, stepped quietly closer. Luna couldn't tell how old she was. One moment she looked very young. Another moment she looked impossibly old.

Luna said nothing. The woman's gaze drifted up to the birds in the branches. Her eyes narrowed.

“I've seen that trick before,” she said. “Did you make them?”

She returned her gaze to Luna, who felt the woman's vision pierce her, right through the middle. She cried out in pain.

The woman gave a broad smile. “No,” she said. “Not your magic.”

The word, said out loud, made Luna's skull feel as though it was about to split in half. She pressed her hands to her forehead.

“Pain?” the woman said. “It's a sorrowful thing, don't you think?” There was an odd, hopeful note in her voice. Luna remained crouched on the ground.

“No,” she said, her voice tight and ready, like a set spring. “Not sorrow. It's just annoying.”

The woman's smile soured into a frown. She looked back up at the paper birds. She gave them a sidelong smile. “They're lovely,” she said. “Those birds, are they yours? Were they a gift?”

Luna shrugged.

The woman tilted her head to the side. “Look how they hang on you, waiting for you to speak. Still. They're not your magic.”

“Nothing's my magic,” Luna said. The birds behind her rustled their wings. Luna would have turned to look, but she would have to break eye contact with the stranger, and something told her she didn't want to do that. “I don't have any magic. Why would I?”

The woman laughed, and not nicely. “Oh, I wouldn't say that, you silly thing.” Luna decided to hate this woman. “I'd say several things are your magic. And more things coming, if I'm not mistaken. Though it does look as though someone has attempted to hide your magic from you.” She leaned forward and squinted. “Interesting. That spellwork. I recognize it. But my, my, it has been
years
.”

The paper birds, as if by some signal, lifted in one great flutter of wings and roosted next to the girl. They kept their beaks faced toward the stranger, and Luna felt for sure that they had somehow become harder, sharper, and more dangerous than before. The woman gave a little start and took a step or two backward.

“Caw,” said the crow. “Keep walking.”

The rocks under Luna's hands began to shimmy and shudder. They seemed to shake the very air. Even the ground shook.

“I wouldn't trust them if I were you. They've been known to attack,” the woman said.

Luna gave her a skeptical expression.

“Oh, you don't believe me? Well. The woman who made them is a wicked thing. And broken. She sorrowed until she could sorrow no more, and now she is quite mad.” She shrugged. “And useless.”

Luna didn't know why the woman angered her so. But she had to resist everything in her that told her to leap to her feet and kick the woman as hard as she could in the shins.

“Ah.” The stranger gave her a wide smile. “Anger. Very nice. Useless to me, alas, but as it is so often a precursor to sorrow, I confess that I do like it.” She licked her lips. “I like it quite a bit.”

“I don't think we are going to be friends,” Luna growled.
A weapon,
she thought.
I think I need a weapon.

“No,” the woman said. “I wouldn't think so. I am just here to collect what is mine, and I'll be on my way. I—” She paused. Held up one hand. “Wait a moment.” The woman turned and walked into the ruined village. A tower stood in the center of the ruin—though it didn't look as if it would be standing much longer. There was a broad gash in its foundation on one side, like an open, surprised mouth. “They were in the Tower,” the woman said, mostly to herself. “I put them there myself. I remember now.” She ran to the opening and skidded on her knees across the ground. She peered into the darkness.

“Where are my boots?” the woman whispered. “Come to me, my darlings.”

Luna stared. She had had a dream once, not very long ago. Surely it was a dream, wasn't it? And Fyrian had reached into a hole in a broken tower and pulled out a pair of boots. It must have been a dream, because Fyrian had been strangely large. And then he had brought the boots to her. And she had put them in a trunk.

Her trunk!

She hadn't thought about it again until this moment.

She shook her head to clear the thought away.

“WHERE ARE MY BOOTS?” the woman bellowed. Luna shrank back.

The stranger stood, her loose gown billowing about her. She raised her hands wide overhead and with a broad, swooping motion, pushed the air in front of her body. And just like that, the Tower fell. Luna tumbled onto the rocks with a yelp. The crow, terrified by the noise and dust and commotion, sprang skyward. He circled the air, cursing all the while.

“It was about to fall,” Luna whispered, trying to make sense of what she had been seeing. She stared into the cloud of dust and mold and grit at the pile of rubble and the hunched figure of the robed woman holding her arms outward as though she was about to catch the sky.
No one could have that much power,
she thought.
Could they?

“GONE!” the woman shrieked. “THEY ARE GONE!”

She turned and stalked toward the girl. With a flick of her left wrist, she bent the air in front of her, forcing Luna to her feet. The woman kept her left hand out, pinching the air with clawed fingers, keeping Luna in place from several yards away.

“I don't have them!” Luna whimpered. The woman's grip hurt. Luna felt her fear expand inside her, like a storm cloud. And as her fear grew, so did the woman's smile. Luna did her best to stay calm. “I just got here.”

“But you have touched them,” the woman whispered. “I can see the residue on your hands.”

“No I haven't!” Luna said, thrusting her hands into her pockets. She tried to force away any memory of the dream.

“You will tell me where they are.” The woman raised her right hand, and even from far away, Luna could feel the fingers on her throat. She began to choke. “You will tell me right now,” the woman said.

“Go away!” Luna gasped.

And suddenly, everything moved. The birds lifted from their roost and massed behind the girl.

“Oh, you silly thing.” The woman laughed. “Do you think your silly parlor tricks can—” And the birds attacked, swirling like a cyclone. They shook the air. They made the rocks tremble. They bent the torsos of the trees.

“GET THEM OFF ME!” the woman shrieked, waving her hands. The birds cut her hands. They cut her forehead. They attacked without mercy.

Luna held her crow close to her chest and ran as fast as she could.

35.

In Which Glerk Smells Something Unpleasant

“I'm itchy, Glerk,” Fyrian said. “I'm itchy all over. I'm the itchiest in the world.”

“How, dear boy,” Glerk said heavily, “could you possibly know that?” He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.
Where has she gone?
he wondered.
Where are you, Xan?
He felt the tendrils of worry wind around his heart, nearly squeezing it to a stop. Fyrian had perched right in between the monster's great, wide-­spaced eyes, and he began scratching his backside madly. Glerk rolled his eyes. “You've never even seen the world. You might not be the itchiest.”

Fyrian scratched at his tail, his belly, his neck. He scratched his ears and his skull and his long nose.

“Do dragons shed their skins?” Fyrian asked suddenly.

“What?”

“Do they shed their skins? Like snakes?” Fyrian attacked his left flank.

Glerk considered this. He searched his brain. Dragons were a solitary species. Few and far between. They were difficult to study. Even dragons, in his experience, didn't know much about dragons.

“I do not know, my friend,” he said finally. “The Poet tells us,

‘
Each mortal beast must find its Ground—

be it forest or fen or field or fire.
'

Perhaps you will know all that you wish to know when you find your Ground.”

“But what is my Ground?” Fyrian asked, worrying at his skin as though he meant to scratch it right off.

“Dragons, originally, were formed in stars. Which means that your Ground is fire. Walk through fire and you will know who you are.”

Fyrian considered this. “That sounds like a terrible idea,” he said finally. “I don't want to walk through fire at all.” He scratched his belly. “What's your Ground, Glerk?”

The swamp monster sighed. “Mine?” He sighed again. “Fen,” he said. “The Bog.” He pressed his upper right hand to his heart. “The Bog, the Bog, the Bog,” he murmured, like a heartbeat. “It is the heart of the world. It is the womb of the world. It is the poem that made the world. I
am
the Bog, and the Bog is me.”

Fyrian frowned. “No, you're not,” he said. “You're Glerk. And you're my friend.”

“Sometimes people are more than one thing. I am Glerk. I am your friend. I am Luna's family. I am a Poet. I am a maker. And I am the Bog. But to you, I am simply Glerk.
Your
Glerk. And I do love you very much.”

And it was true. Glerk loved Fyrian. As he loved Xan. As he loved Luna. As he loved the whole world.

He inhaled again. He should have been able to catch wind of at least
one
of Xan's spells. So why couldn't he?

“Look out, Glerk,” Fyrian said suddenly, swooping up and looping in front of Glerk's face, hovering in front of his nose. He pointed backward with his thumb. “That ground up there is very thin—a skin of rock with fire under it. You'll fall through as sure as anything.”

Glerk wrinkled his brow. “Are you certain?” He squinted at the rock stretch ahead. Heat poured off it in waves. “It's not supposed to be burning here.” But it was. This seam of rock was clearly burning. And the mountain buzzed underfoot. This had happened before, when the entire mountain had threatened to unpeel itself like an overripe Zirin bulb.

After the eruption—and the magical corking of that eruption—the volcano had never slept soundly, even in the early days. It had always been rumbly and shifty and restless. But this felt different. This was
more
. For the first time in five hundred years, Glerk was afraid.

“Fyrian, lad,” the monster said. “Let us pick up our pace, shall we?” And they began tracking along the high side of the seam, looking for a safe place to cross.

The great monster looked around the forest, scanning the stretch of undergrowth, narrowing his eyes and extending his gaze as best he could. He used to be better at this sort of thing. He used to be better at many things. He inhaled deeply, as if he was trying to suck the entire mountain into his nose.

Fyrian looked at the swamp monster curiously.

“What is it, Glerk?” he said.

Glerk shook his head. “I know that smell,” he said. He closed his eyes.

“Xan's smell?” Fyrian fluttered back up to his perch on the monster's head. He tried to close his eyes and sniff as well, but he ended up sneezing instead. “I love Xan's smell. I love it
so much
.”

Glerk shook his head, slowly, so that Fyrian would not fall. “No,” he said in a low growl. “Someone else.”

S
ister Ignatia could, when she wanted to, run fast. Fast as a tiger. Fast as the wind. Faster than she was going now, certainly. But it wasn't the same as when she had her boots.

Those boots!

She had forgotten how much she loved them once upon a time. Back when she had curiosity and wanderlust and the inclination to go to the other side of the world and back in a single afternoon. Before the delicious and abundant sorrows of the Protectorate had fed her soul until it was indolent and sated and gloriously fat. Now, just thinking about her boots imbued her with a youthful spark. So black were those beautiful boots that they seemed to bend the light around them. And when Sister Ignatia wore them at night, she felt herself full to bursting with starlight—and, if she timed it right, moonlight as well. The boots fed right into her very bones. Their magic was a different sort than was available to her from sorrow. (But oh! How easy it was to gorge herself on sorrow!)

Now Sister Ignatia's magical stores were starting to dwindle. She had never thought to sock any away for a rainy day. It never rained in the Protectorate's marvelous fog.

Stupid,
she chided herself.
Lazy!
Well. I must simply remember how to be crafty.

But first, she needed those boots.

She paused a moment to consult her scrying device. At first, all she saw was darkness—a tight, closed-­up sort of darkness, with a single, pale, horizontal line of light cutting across. Very slowly, the line began to widen, and a pair of hands reached in.

A box,
she thought.
They are in a box. And someone is stealing them. Again!

“Those are not for you!” she shouted. And although there is no way the person attached to those hands could have heard her—not without magic, anyway—the fingers seemed to hesitate. They pulled back. There was even a bit of a tremble.

These hands weren't the child's, that much was certain. These were grown-­up hands. But whose?

A woman's foot slid into the dark mouth of the boot. The boot sealed itself around the foot. Ignatia knew that the wearer could put the boots on and off as wanted, but there would be no removing the boots by force as long as the wearer was alive.

Well,
she thought,
that shouldn't be a problem.

The boots began walking toward what looked like an animal enclosure. Whoever was wearing them did not know how to use them yet. Fancy wasting a pair of Seven League Boots as though they were nothing more than work slippers! It was a crime, she thought. A scandal.

The wearer of the boots stood by the goats, and the goats sniffed at her skirts in a fawning sort of way that Sister Ignatia found utterly unattractive. Then the boots' wearer began to walk around.

“Ah!” Sister Ignatia peered more intently. “Let's see where you are, shall we?”

Sister Ignatia saw a large tree with a door in the middle. And a swamp, littered with flowers. The swamp looked familiar. She saw a steep mountainside with several jagged rims along the top—

Great Heavens!
Are those craters?

And there! I know that path!

And there! Those stones!

Could it be that the boots had made their way back to her old castle? Or the place where the castle
had been
, anyway.

Home,
she thought in spite of herself. That place had been her home. Perhaps it still was, after all these years. Despite the ease of life in the Protectorate, she had never again been so happy as she had been in the company of those magicians and scholars in the castle. Pity they had to die. They wouldn't have died, of course, if they had had the boots, as was the original plan. It didn't occur to them that anyone might try to steal them and run away from the danger, leaving them all behind.

And they thought they were so clever!

In the end, there had never been a magician as clever as Ignatia, and she had the entire Protectorate to prove it. Of course, she had no one left to prove it
to
, which was a pity. All she had was the boots. And now they were gone, too.

No matter,
she told herself.
What's mine is mine.
And that's everything.

Everything.

And she ran up the trail toward home.