The Girl Who Drank the Moon

1.
In Which a Story Is Told

Yes.
There is a witch in the woods. There has always been a witch.
Will you stop your fidgeting for once? My stars! I have never
seen such a fidgety child.
No, sweetheart, I have not seen her. No one has. Not for ages. We’ve taken steps so that we will never see her.
Terrible steps.
Don’t make me say it. You already know, anyway.
Oh, I don’t know, darling. No one knows why she wants children. We don’t know why she insists that it must always be the very youngest among us. It’s not as though we could just ask her. She hasn’t been seen. We make sure that she will not be seen.
Of course she exists. What a question! Look at the woods! So dangerous! Poisonous smoke and sinkholes and boiling geysers and terrible dangers every which way. Do you think it is so by accident? Rubbish! It was the Witch, and if we don’t do as she says, what will become of us?
You really need me to explain it?
I’d rather not.
Oh, hush now, don’t cry. It’s not as though the Council of Elders is coming for you, now is it. You’re far too old.
From our family?
Yes, dearest. Ever so long ago. Before you were born. He was a beautiful boy.
Now finish your supper and see to your chores. We’ll all be up early tomorrow. The Day of Sacrifice waits for no one, and we must all be present to thank the child who will save us for one more year.
Your brother? How could I fight for him? If I had, the Witch would have killed us all and then where would we be? Sacrifice one or sacrifice all. That is the way of the world. We couldn’t change it if we tried.
Enough questions. Off with you. Fool child.

2.
In Which an Unfortunate Woman Goes Quite Mad

Grand Elder Gherland took his time that morning. The Day of Sacrifice only came once a year, after all, and he liked to look his best during the sober procession to the cursed house, and during the somber retreat. He encouraged the other Elders to do the same. It was important to give the populace a show.
He carefully dabbed rouge on his sagging cheeks and lined his eyes with thick streaks of kohl. He checked his teeth in the mirror, ensuring they were free of debris or goop. He loved that mirror. It was the only one in the Protectorate. Nothing gave Gherland more pleasure than the possession of a thing that was unique unto him. He liked being special.
The Grand Elder had ever so many possessions that were unique in the Protectorate. It was one of the perks of the job.
The Protectorate-called the Cattail Kingdom by some and the City of Sorrows by others-was sandwiched between a treacherous forest on one side and an enormous bog on the other. Most people in the Protectorate drew their livelihoods from the Bog. There was a future in bogwalking, mothers told their children. Not much of a future, you understand, but it was better than nothing. The Bog was full of Zirin shoots in the spring and Zirin flowers in the summer and Zirin bulbs in the fall-in addition to a wide array of medicinal and border line magical plants that could be harvested, prepared, treated, and sold to the Traders from the other side of the forest, who in turn transported the fruits of the Bog to the Free Cities, far away. The forest itself was terribly dangerous, and navigable only by the Road.
And the Elders owned the Road.
Which is to say that Grand Elder Gherland owned the Road, and the other Elders had their cut. The Elders owned the Bog, too. And the orchards. And the houses. And the market squares. Even the garden plots.
This was why the families of the Protectorate made their shoes out of reeds. This was why, in lean times, they fed their children the thick, rich broth of the Bog, hoping that the Bog would make them strong.
This was why the Elders and their families grew big and strong and rosy-cheeked on beef and butter and beer.
The door knocked.
“Enter,” Grand Elder Gherland mumbled as he adjusted the drape of his robe.
It was Antain. His nephew. An Elder-in-Training, but only because Gherland, in a moment of weakness, had promised the ridiculous boy’s more ridiculous mother. But that was unkind. Antain was a nice enough young man, nearly thirteen. He was a hard worker and a quick study. He was good with numbers and clever with his hands and could build a comfortable bench for a tired Elder as quick as breathing. And, despite himself, Gherland had developed an inexplicable, and growing, fond ness for the boy.
But.
Antain had big ideas. Grand notions. And questions. Gherland furrowed his brow. Antain was-how could he put it? Overly keen. If this kept up, he’d have to be dealt with, blood or no. The thought of it weighed upon Gherland’s heart, like a stone.
“UNCLE GHERLAND!” Antain nearly bowled his uncle over with his insufferable enthusiasm.
“Calm yourself, boy!” the Elder snapped. “This is a solemn
occasion!”
The boy calmed visibly, his eager, doglike face tilted to ward the ground. Gherland resisted the urge to pat him gently on the head. “I have been sent,” Antain continued in a mostly soft voice, “to tell you that the other Elders are ready. And all the populace waits along the route. Everyone is accounted for.”
“Each one? There are no shirkers?”
“After last year, I doubt there ever will be again,” Antain said with a shudder.
“Pity.” Gherland checked his mirror again, touching up his rouge. He rather enjoyed teaching the occasional lesson to the citizens of the Protectorate. It clarified things. He tapped the sagging folds under his chin and frowned. “Well, Nephew,” he said with an artful swish of his robes, one that had taken him. over a decade to perfect. “Let us be off. That baby isn’t going to sacrifice itself, after all.” And he flowed into the street with Antain stumbling at his heels.
Normally, the Day of Sacrifice came and went with all the pomp and gravity that it ought. The children were given over without protest. Their numb families mourned in silence, with pots of stew and nourishing foods heaped into their kitchens, while the comforting arms of neighbors circled around them to ease their bereavement.
Normally, no one broke the rules.
But not this time.
Grand Elder Gherland pressed his lips into a frown. He could hear the mother’s howling before the procession turned onto the final street. The citizens began to shift uncomfortably where they stood.
When they arrived at the family’s house, an astonishing sight met the Council of Elders. A man with a scratched-up face and a swollen lower lip and bloody bald spots across his skull where his hair had been torn out in clumps met them at the door. He tried to smile, but his tongue went instinctively to the gap where a tooth had just recently been. He sucked in his lips and attempted to bow instead.
“I am sorry, sirs,” said the man-the father, presumably. “I don’t know what has gotten into her. It’s like she’s gone mad.”
From the rafters above them, a woman screeched and howled as the Elders entered the house. Her shiny black hair flew about her head like a nest of long, writhing snakes. She hissed and spat like a cornered animal. She clung to the ceiling beams with one arm and one leg, while holding a baby tightly against her breast with the other arm.
“GET OUT!” she screamed. “You cannot have her. I spit on your faces and curse your names. Leave my home at once, or I shall tear out your eyes and throw them to the crows!”
The Elders stared at her, openmouthed. They couldn’t believe it. No one fought for a doomed child. It simply wasn’t done.
(Antain alone began to cry. He did his best to hide it from the adults in the room.)
Gherland, thinking fast, affixed a kindly expression on his craggy face. He turned his palms toward the mother to show her that he meant no harm. He gritted his teeth behind his smile. All this kindness was nearly killing him.
“We are not taking her at all, my poor, misguided girl,”
Gherland said in his most patient voice. “The Witch is taking her. We are simply doing as we’re told.”
The mother made a guttural sound, deep in her chest, like an angry bear.
Gherland laid his hand on the shoulder of the perplexed husband and gave a gentle squeeze. “It appears, my good fellow, that you are right: your wife has gone mad.” He did his best to cover his rage with a façade of concern. “A rare case, of course, but not without precedent. We must respond with compassion. She needs care, not blame.”
“LIAR,” the woman spat. The child began to cry, and the woman climbed even higher, putting each foot on parallel rafters and bracing her back against the slope of the roof, trying to position herself in such a way that she could remain out of reach while she nursed the baby. The child calmed instantly. “If you take her,” she said with a growl, “I will find her. I will find her and take her back. You see if I won’t.”
“And face the Witch?” Gherland laughed. “All on your own? Oh, you pathetic, lost soul.” His voice was honey, but his face was a glowing ember. “Grief has made you lose your senses. The shock has shattered your poor mind. No matter. We shall heal you, dear, as best we can. Guards!”
He snapped his fingers, and armed guards poured into the room. They were a special unit, provided as always by the Sisters of the Star. They wore bows and arrows slung across their backs and short, sharp swords sheathed at their belts. Their long braided hair looped around their waists, where it was cinched tight-a testament to their years of contemplation and combat training at the top of the Tower. Their faces were implacable as stones, and the Elders, despite their power and stature, edged away from them. The Sisters were a frightening force. Not to be trifled with.
“Remove the child from the lunatic’s clutches and escort the poor dear to the Tower,” Gherland ordered. He glared at the mother in the rafters, who had gone suddenly very pale. “The Sisters of the Star know what to do with broken minds, my dear. I’m sure it hardly hurts at all.”
The Guard was efficient, calm, and utterly ruthless. The mother didn’t stand a chance. Within moments, she was bound, hobbled, and carried away. Her howls echoed through the silent town, ending suddenly when the Tower’s great wooden doors slammed shut, locking her inside.
The baby, on the other hand, once transferred into the arms of the Grand Elder, whimpered briefly and then turned her attention to the sagging face in front of her, all wobbles and creases and folds. She had a solemn look to her calm, skeptical, and intense, making it difficult for Gherland to look away. She had black curls and black eyes. Luminous skin, like polished amber. In the center of her forehead, she had a birth mark in the shape of a crescent moon. The mother had a similar mark. Common lore insisted that such people were special. Gherland disliked lore, as a general rule, and he certainly dis liked it when citizens of the Protectorate got it in their heads to think themselves better than they were. He deepened his frown and leaned in close, wrinkling his brow. The baby stuck out her tongue.
Horrible child, Gherland thought.
“Gentlemen,” he said with all the ceremony he could muster, “it is time.” The baby chose this particular moment to let loose a large, warm, wet stain across the front of Gherland’s robes. He pretended not to notice, but inwardly he fumed. She had done it on purpose. He was sure of it. What a
revolting baby.
The procession was, as usual, somber, slow, and insufferably plodding. Gherland felt he might go mad with impatience. Once the Protectorate’s gates closed behind them, though, and the citizens returned with their melancholy broods of children to their drab little homes, the Elders quickened their pace.
“But why are we running, Uncle?” Antain asked.
“Hush, boy!” Gherland hissed. “And keep up!”
No one liked being in the forest, away from the Road. Not even the Elders. Not even Gherland. The area just outside the Protectorate walls was safe enough. In theory. But everyone knew someone who had accidentally wandered too far. And fell into a sinkhole. Or stepped in a mud pot, boiling off most of their skin. Or wandered into a swale where the air was bad, and never returned. The forest was dangerous.
They followed a winding trail to the small hollow sur rounded by five ancient trees, known as the Witch’s Hand maidens. Or six. Didn’t it used to be five? Gherland glared at the trees, counted them again, and shook his head. There were six. No matter. The forest was just getting to him. Those trees were almost as old as the world, after all.
The space inside of the ring of trees was mossy and soft, and the Elders laid the child upon it, doing their best not to look at her. They had turned their backs on the baby and started to hurry away when their youngest member cleared his throat.
“So. We just leave her here?” Antain asked. “That’s how it’s done?”
“Yes, Nephew,” Gherland said. “That is how it’s done.” He felt a sudden wave of fatigue settling on his shoulders like an ox’s yoke. He felt his spine start to sag.
Antain pinched his neck-a nervous habit that he couldn’t break. “Shouldn’t we wait for the Witch to arrive?”
The other Elders fell into an uncomfortable silence.
“Come again?” Elder Raspin, the most decrepit of the El ders, asked.
“Well, surely…” Antain’s voice trailed off. “Surely we must wait for the Witch,” he said quietly. “What would be come of us if wild animals came first and carried her off?”
The other Elders stared at the Grand Elder, their lips tight.
“Fortunately, Nephew,” he said quickly, leading the boy away, “that has never been a problem.”
“But-“Antain said, pinching his neck again, so hard he left a mark.
“But nothing,” Gherland said, a firm hand on the boy’s
back, striding quickly down the well-trodden path. And, one by one, the Elders filed out, leaving the baby behind.
They left knowing all but Antain-that it was not a
matter of if the child were eaten by animals, but rather that
she surely would be.
They left her knowing that there surely wasn’t a witch.
There never had been a witch. There were only a dangerous forest and a single road and a thin grip on a life that the Elders had enjoyed for generations. The Witch-that is, the belief in her-made for a frightened people, a subdued people, a compliant people, who lived their lives in a saddened haze, the clouds of their grief numbing their senses and dampening their minds. It was terribly convenient for the Elders’ unencumbered rule. Unpleasant, too, of course, but that couldn’t be helped.
They heard the child whimper as they tramped through the trees, but the whimpering soon gave way to the swamp sighs and birdsong and the woody creaking of trees through out the forest. And each Elder felt as sure as sure could be that the child wouldn’t live to see the morning, and that they would never hear her, never see her, never think of her again.
They thought she was gone forever.
They were wrong, of course.

3.
In Which a Witch Accidentally Enmagics an Infant

A t the center of the forest was a small swamp-bubbly, sulfury, and noxious, fed and warmed by an under ground, restlessly sleeping volcano and covered with a slick of slime whose color ranged from poison green to lightning blue to blood red, depending on the time of year. On this day-so close to the Day of Sacrifice in the Protectorate, or Star Child Day everywhere else the green was just beginning to inch its way toward blue.
At the edge of the swamp, standing right on the fringe of flowering reeds growing out of the muck, a very old woman leaned on a gnarled staff. She was short and squat and a bit bulbous about the belly. Her crinkly gray hair had been pulled back into a thick, braided knot, with leaves and flowers growing out of the thin gaps between the twisted plaits. Her face, despite its cloud of annoyance, maintained a brightness in those aged eyes and a hint of a smile in that flat, wide mouth. From certain angles, she looked a bit like a large, good-tempered toad.
Her name was Xan. And she was the Witch.
“Do you think you can hide from me, you ridiculous mon ster?” she bellowed at the swamp. “It isn’t as though I don’t know where you are. Resurface this minute and apologize.” She pressed her expression into something closely resembling a scowl. “Or I will make you.” Though she had no real power over the monster himself he was far too old-she certainly had the power to make that swamp cough him up as if he were nothing more than a glob of phlegm in the back of the throat. She could do it with just a flick of her left hand and a jiggle of her right knee.
She attempted to scowl again.
“I MEAN IT,” she hollered.
The thick water bubbled and swirled, and the large head of the swamp monster slurped out of the bluish-green. He blinked one wide eye, and then the other, before rolling both toward the sky.
“Don’t you roll your eyes at me, young man,” the old woman
huffed.
“Witch,” the monster murmured, his mouth still half submerged in the thick waters of the swamp. “I am many centuries older than you.” His wide lips blew a bubble in the algae slick. Millennia, really, he thought. But who’s counting? “I don’t believe I like your tone.” Xan puckered her wrinkled lips into a tight rosette in the middle of her face.
The monster cleared his throat. “As the Poet famously
said, dear lady: ‘I don’t give a rat’s-“” “GLERK!” the Witch shouted, aghast. “Language!”
“Apologies,” Glerk said mildly, though he really didn’t mean it. He eased both sets of arms onto the muck at the shore, pressing each seven-fingered hand into the shine of the mud. With a grunt, he heaved himself onto the grass. This used to be easier, he thought. Though, for the life of him, he couldn’t remember when.
“Fyrian is over there by the vents, crying his eyes out, poor thing.” Xan fumed. Glerk sighed deeply. Xan thrust her staff onto the ground, sending a spray of sparks from the tip, surprising them both. She glared at the swamp monster. “And you are just being mean.” She shook her head. “He’s only a baby, after all.”
“My dear Xan,” Glerk said, feeling a rumble deep in his chest, which he hoped sounded imposing and dramatic, and not like someone who was simply coming down with a cold. “He is also older than you are. And it is high time-”
“Oh, you know what I mean. And anyway, I promised his mother.”
“For five hundred years, give or take a decade or two, that dragonling has persisted in these delusions-fed and perpetuated by you, my dear. How is this helping him? He is not a Simply Enormous Dragon. At this point, there is no indication that he ever will be. There is no shame at all in being a Perfectly Tiny Dragon. Size isn’t everything, you know. His is an ancient and honorable species, filled with some of the greatest thinkers of the Seven Ages. He has much to be proud of.”
“His mother was very clear-” Xan began, but the monster interrupted her.
“In any case, the time is long past that he know his heritage and his place in the world. I’ve gone along with this fiction for far longer than I should have. But now…” Glerk pressed his four arms to the ground and eased his massive bottom under the curve of his spine, letting his heavy tail curl around the whole of him like a great, glistening snail’s shell. He let the paunch of his belly sag over his folded legs. “I don’t know, my dear. Something has shifted.” A cloud passed over his damp face, but Xan shook her head.
“Here we go again,” she scoffed.
“As the Poet says, ‘Oh ever changéd Earth-“”
“Hang the Poet. Go apologize. Do it right now. He looks up to you.” Xan glanced at the sky. “I must fly, my dear. I’m already late. Please. I am counting on you.”
Glerk lumbered toward the Witch, who laid her hand on his great cheek. Though he was able to walk upright, he often preferred to move on all sixes-or all sevens, with the use of his tail as an occasional limb, or all fives, if he happened to be using one of his hands to pluck a particularly fragrant flower and bring it to his nose, or to collect rocks, or to play a haunting tune on a hand-carved flute. He pressed his massive fore head to Xan’s tiny brow.
“Please be careful,” he said, his voice thick. “I have been beset of late by troubling dreams. I worry about you when you are gone.” Xan raised her eyebrows, and Glerk leaned his face away with a low grumble. “Fine,” he said. “I will perpetuate the fiction for our friend Fyrian. “The path to Truth is in the dreaming heart,’ the Poet tells us.”
“That’s the spirit!” Xan said. She clucked her tongue and blew the monster a kiss. And she vaulted up and forward on her staff’s fulcrum, sprinting away into the green.
Despite the odd beliefs of the people of the Protector ate, the forest was not cursed at all, nor was it magical in any way. But it was dangerous. The volcano beneath the forest low-sloped and impossibly wide-was a tricky thing. It grumbled as it slept, while heating geysers till they burst and restlessly worrying at fissures until they grew so deep that no one could find the bottom. It boiled streams and cooked mud and sent waterfalls disappearing into deep pits, only to reappear miles away. There were vents that spewed foul odors and vents that spewed ash and vents that seemed to spew nothing at all until a person’s lips and fingernails turned blue from bad air, and the whole world started to spin.
The only truly safe passage across the forest for an ordinary person was the Road, which was situated on a naturally raised seam of rock that had smoothed over time. The Road didn’t alter or shift; it never grumbled. Unfortunately, it was owned and operated by a gang of thugs and bullies from the Protectorate. Xan never took the Road. She couldn’t abide thugs. Or bullies. And anyway, they charged too much. Or they did, last time she checked. It had been years since she had gone near it many centuries now. She made her own way in stead, using a combination of magic and know-how and com mon sense.
Her treks across the forest weren’t easy by any means. But they were necessary. A child was waiting for her, just outside the Protectorate. A child whose very life depended on her arrival and she needed to get there in time.
For as long as Xan could remember, every year at about the same time, a mother from the Protectorate left her baby in the forest, presumably to die. Xan had no idea why. Nor did she judge. But she wasn’t going to let the poor little thing perish, either. And so, every year, she traveled to that circle of sycamores and gathered the abandoned infant in her arms, carrying the child to the other side of the forest, to one of the Free Cities on the other side of the Road. These were happy places. And they loved children.
At the curve of the trail, the walls of the Protectorate came into view. Xan’s quick steps slowed to a plod. The Protectorate itself was a dismal place-bad air, bad water, sorrow settling over the roofs of its houses like a cloud. She felt a yoke of sad ness settle onto her own bones.
“Just get the baby and go,” Xan reminded herself, as she did every year.
Over time, Xan had started making certain preparations a blanket woven of the softest lamb’s wool to wrap the child and keep it warm, a stack of cloths to freshen a wet bottom, a bottle or two of goat’s milk to fill an empty tummy. When the goat’s milk ran out (as it invariably did the trek was long, and milk is heavy), Xan did what any sensible witch would do: once it was dark enough to see the stars, she reached up one hand and gathered starlight in her fingers, like the silken threads of spiders’ webs, and fed it to the child. Starlight, as every witch knows, is a marvelous food for a growing infant. Starlight col lection takes a certain knack and talent (magic, for starters), but children eat it with gusto. They grow fat and sated and shining.
It didn’t take long for the Free Cities to treat the yearly arrival of the Witch as something of a holiday. The children she brought with her, their skin and eyes bright with starlight, were seen as a blessing. Xan took her time selecting the proper family for each child, making sure their characters and inclinations and senses of humor were a good match for the little life that she had cared for over the course of such a long journey.
And the Star Children, as they were called, grew from happy infants to kind adolescents to gracious adults. They were accomplished, generous of spirit, and successful. When they died of old age, they died rich.
When Xan arrived at the grove, there was no baby to be seen, but it was still early. And she was tired. She went to one of the craggy trees and leaned against it, taking in the loamy scent of its bark through the soft beak of her nose.
“A little sleep might do me good,” she said out loud. And it was true, too. The journey she’d been on was long and taxing, and the journey she was about to begin was longer. And more taxing. Best to dig in and rest awhile. And so, as she often did when she wanted some peace and quiet away from home, the Witch Xan transformed herself into a tree-a craggy thing of leaf and lichen and deep-grooved bark, similar in shape and texture to the other ancient sycamores standing guard over the small grove. And as a tree she slept.
She didn’t hear the procession.
She didn’t hear the protestations of Antain or the embarrassed silence of the Council or the gruff pontifications of Grand Elder Gherland.
She didn’t even hear the baby when it cooed. Or when it whimpered. Or when it cried.
But when the child opened its throat into a full-fledged wail, Xan woke up with a start.
“Oh my precious stars!” she said in her craggy, barky, leafy voice, for she had not yet un-transformed. “I did not see you lying there!”
The baby was not impressed. She continued to kick and flail and howl and weep. Her face was ruddy and rageful and her tiny hands curled into fists. The birthmark on her forehead darkened dangerously.
“Just give us a second, my darling. Auntie Xan is going as fast as she is able.”
And she was. Transformation is a tricky business, even for one as skilled as Xan. Her branches began to wind back into her spine, one by one, while the folds of bark were devoured, bit by bit, by the folds of her wrinkles.
Xan leaned on her staff and rolled back her shoulders a few times to release the kinks in her neck-one side and then the other. She looked down at the child, who had quieted some, and was now staring at the Witch in the same way that she had stared at the Grand Elder-with a calm, probing, unsettling gaze. It was the sort of gaze that reached into the tight strings of the soul and plucked, like the strings of a harp. It nearly took the Witch’s breath away.
“Bottle,” Xan said, trying to ignore the harmonics ringing in her bones. “You need a bottle.” And she searched her many pockets to find a bottle of goat’s milk, ready and waiting for a hungry belly.