فصل 14

14.

In Which There Are Consequences

When Luna woke, she felt different. She didn’t know why. She lay in her bed for a long time, listening to the singing of the birds. She didn’t understand a thing they were saying. She shook her head. Why would she understand them in the first place? They were only birds. She pressed her hands to her face. She listened to the birds again.

“No one can talk to birds,” she said out loud. And it was true. So why did it feel like it wasn’t? A brightly colored finch landed on the windowsill and sang so sweetly, Luna thought her heart would break. Indeed, it was breaking a little, even now. She brought her hands to her eyes and realized that she was crying, though she had no idea why.

“Silly,” she said out loud, noticing a little waver and rattle in her voice. “Silly Luna.” She was the silliest girl. Everyone said so.

She looked around. Fyrian was curled up at the foot of her bed. That was regular. He loved sleeping on her bed, though her grandmother often forbade it. Luna never knew why.

At least she thought she didn’t know why. But it felt, deep inside herself, that maybe once upon a time she did. But she couldn’t remember when.

Her grandmother was asleep in her own bed on the other side of the room. And her swamp monster was sprawled out on the floor, snoring prodigiously.

That is strange, Luna thought. She couldn’t remember a single other time when Glerk had slept on the floor. Or inside. Or un-­submerged in the swamp. Luna shook her head. She squinched up her shoulders to her ears—first one side, and then the other. The world pressed on her strangely, like a coat that no longer fit. Also, she had a terrible pain in her head, deep inside. She hit her forehead a few times with the heel of her hand, but it didn’t help.

Luna slid out of bed and slid out of her nightgown and slipped on a dress with deep pockets sewn all over, because it is how she asked her grandmother to make it. She gently laid the sleeping Fyrian into one of the pockets, careful not to wake him up. Her bed was attached to the ceiling with ropes and pulleys to make room in the small house during the day, but Luna was still too small to be able to hoist it up on her own. She left it as it was and went outside.

It was early, and the morning sun had not yet made it over the lip of the ridge. The mountain was cool and damp and alive. Three of the volcanic craters had thin ribbons of smoke lazily curling from their insides and meandering toward the sky. Luna walked slowly toward the edge of the swamp. She looked down at her bare feet sinking slightly into the mossy ground, leaving footsteps. No flowers grew out of the places where she stepped.

But that was a silly thing to think, wasn’t it? Why would something grow out of her footsteps? “Silly, silly,” she said out loud. And then she felt her head go fuzzy. She sat down on the ground and stared at the ridge, thinking nothing at all.

Xan found Luna sitting by herself outside, staring at the sky. Which was odd. Normally the girl woke in a whirlwind, rousting awake all who were near. Not so today.

Well, Xan thought. Everything’s different now. She shook her head. Not everything, she decided. Despite the bound-­up magic curled inside her, safe and sound for now, she was still the same girl. She was still Luna. They simply didn’t have to worry about her magic erupting all over the place. Now she could learn in peace. And today they were going to get started.

“Good morning, precious,” Xan said, letting her hand slide along the curve of the girl’s skull, winding her fingers in the long black curls. Luna didn’t say anything. She seemed to be in a bit of a trance. Xan tried not to worry about it.

“Good morning, Auntie Xan,” Fyrian said, peeking out of the pocket and yawning, stretching his small arms out as wide as they would go. He looked around, squinting. “Why am I outside?”

Luna returned to the world with a start. She looked at her grandmother and smiled. “Grandmama!” she said, scrambling to her feet. “I feel like I haven’t seen you for days and days.”

“Well, that’s because—” Fyrian began, but Xan interrupted.

“Hush, child,” she said.

“But Auntie Xan,” Fyrian continued excitedly, “I just wanted to explain that—”

“Enough prattling, you silly dragon. Off with you. Go find your monster.”

Xan pulled Luna to her feet and hurried her away.

“But where are we going, Grandmama?” Luna asked.

“To the workshop, darling,” Xan said, shooting Fyrian a sharp look. “Go help Glerk with breakfast.”

“Okay, Auntie Xan. I just want to tell Luna this one—”

“Now, Fyrian,” she snapped, and she ushered Luna quickly away.

Luna loved her grandmother’s workshop, and had already been taught the basics of mechanics—levers and wedges and pulleys and gears. Even at that young age, Luna possessed a mechanical mind, and was able to construct little machines that whirred and ticked. She loved finding bits of wood that she could smooth and connect and fashion into something else.

For now, Xan had pushed all of Luna’s projects into a corner and divided the whole workshop into sections, each with its own sets of bookshelves and tool shelves and materials shelves. There was a section for inventing and a section for building and one for scientific study and one for botany and one for the study of magic. On the floor she had made numerous chalk drawings.

“What happened here, Grandmama?” Luna asked.

“Nothing, dear,” Xan said. But then she thought better of it. “Well, actually, many things, but there are more important items to attend to first.” She sat down on the floor, across from the girl, and gathered her magic into her hand, letting it float just above her fingers like a bright, shining ball.

“You see, dearest,” she explained, “the magic flows through me, from earth to sky, but it collects in me as well. Inside me. Like static electricity. It crackles and hums in my bones. When I need a little extra light, I rub my hands together like so, and let the light spin between my palms, until it is enough to float wherever I need it to float. You’ve seen me do this before, hundreds of times, but I have never explained it. Isn’t it pretty, my darling?”

But Luna did not see. Her eyes were blank. Her face was blank. She looked as though her soul had gone dormant, like a tree in winter. Xan gasped.

“Luna?” she said. “Are you well? Are you hungry? Luna?” There was nothing. Blank eyes. Blank face. A Luna-­shaped hole in the universe. Xan felt a rush of panic bloom in her chest.

And, as though the blankness had never happened at all, the light returned to the child’s eyes. “Grandmama, may I have something sweet?” she said.

“What?” Xan said, her panic increasing in spite of the light’s return to the child’s eyes. She looked closer.

Luna shook her head as though to dislodge water from her ears. “Sweet,” she said slowly. “I would like something sweet.” She crinkled her eyebrows together. “Please,” she added. And the Witch obliged, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a handful of dried berries. The child chewed them thoughtfully. She looked around.

“Why are we here, Grandmama?”

“We’ve been here this whole time,” Xan said. She searched the child’s face with her eyes. What was going on?

“But why though?” Luna looked around. “Weren’t we just outside?” She pressed her lips together. “I don’t . . .” she began, trailing off. “I don’t remember . . .”

“I wanted to give you your first lesson, darling.” A cloud passed over Luna’s face, and Xan paused. She put her hand on the girl’s cheek. The waves of magic were gone. If she concentrated very hard, she could feel the gravitational pull of that dense nugget of power, smooth and hard and sealed off like a nut. Or an egg.

She decided to try again. “Luna, my love. Do you know what magic is?”

And once again, Luna’s eyes went blank. She didn’t move. She barely breathed. It was as if the stuff of Luna—light, motion, intelligence—had simply vanished.

Xan waited again. This time it took even longer for the light to return and for Luna to regain herself. The girl looked at her grandmother with a curious expression. She looked to her right and she looked to her left. She frowned.

“When did we get here, Grandmama?” she asked. “Did I fall asleep?”

Xan pulled herself to her feet and started pacing the room. She paused at the invention table, surveying its gears and wires and wood and glass and books with intricate diagrams and instructions. She picked up a small gear in one hand and a small spring—so sharp at the ends it made a point of blood bloom on her thumb—in the other. She looked back at Luna and pictured the mechanism inside that girl—rhythmically ticking its way toward her thirteenth birthday, as even and inexorable as a well-­tuned clock.

Or, at least, that was how the spell was supposed to work. Nothing in Xan’s construction of the spell had indicated this kind of . . . blankness. Had she done it wrong?

She decided to try another tactic.

“Grandamama, what are you doing?” Luna asked.

“Nothing, darling,” Xan said as she bustled over to the magic table and assembled a scrying glass—wood from the earth, glass made from a melted meteorite, a splash of water, and a single hole in the center to let the air in. It was one of her better efforts. Luna didn’t seem to even see it. Her gaze slid from one side to the other. Xan set it up between them and looked at the girl through the gap.

“I would like to tell you a story, Luna,” the old woman said.

“I love stories.” Luna smiled.

“Once upon a time there was a witch who found a baby in the woods,” Xan said. Through the scrying glass, she watched her dusty words fly into the ears of the child. She watched the words separate inside the skull—baby lingered and flitted from the memory centers to the imaginative structures to the places where the brain enjoys playing with pleasing-­sounding words. Baby, baby, b-­b-­bab-­b-­b-­eeee, over and over and over again. Luna’s eyes began to darken.

“Once upon a time,” Xan said, “when you were very, very small, I took you outside to see the stars.”

“We always go outside to see the stars,” Luna said. “Every night.”

“Yes, yes,” Xan said. “Pay attention. One night, long ago, as we looked at the stars, I gathered starlight on my fingertips, and fed it to you like honey from the comb.”

And Luna’s eyes went blank. She shook her head as though clearing away cobwebs. “Honey,” she said slowly, as though the word itself was a great burden.

Xan was undeterred. “And then,” she pressed. “One night, Grandmama did not notice the rising moon, hanging low and fat in the sky. And she reached up to gather starlight, and gave you moonlight by mistake. And this is how you became enmagicked, my darling. This is where your magic comes from. You drank deeply from the moon, and now the moon is full within you.”

It was as though it was not Luna sitting on the floor, but a picture of Luna instead. She did not blink. Her face was as still as stone. Xan waved her hand in front of the girl’s face, and nothing happened. Nothing at all.

“Oh, dear,” Xan said. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”

Xan scooped the girl into her arms and ran out the door, sobbing, looking for Glerk.

It took most of the afternoon for the child to regain herself.

“Well,” Glerk said. “This is a bit of a pickle.”

“It’s nothing of the kind,” Xan snapped. “I’m sure it’s temporary,” she added, as though her words alone could make it true.

But it wasn’t temporary. This was the consequence of Xan’s spell: the child was now unable to learn about magic. She couldn’t hear it, couldn’t speak it, couldn’t even know the word. Every time she heard anything to do with magic, her consciousness and her spark and her very soul seemed to simply disappear. And whether the knowledge was being sucked into the kernel in Luna’s brain, or whether it was flying away entirely, Xan did not know.

“What will we do when she comes of age?” Glerk asked. “How will you teach her then?” Because you will surely die then, Glerk thought but did not say. Her magic will open, and yours will pour away, and you, my dear, darling five-­hundred-­year-­old Xan, will no longer have magic in you to keep you alive. He felt the cracks in his heart grow deeper.

“Maybe she won’t grow,” Xan said desperately. “Maybe she will stay like this forever, and I will never have to say good-­bye to her. Maybe I mislaid the spell, and her magic will never come out. Maybe she was never magic to begin with.”

“You know that isn’t true,” Glerk said.

“It might be true,” Xan countered. “You don’t know.” She paused before she spoke again. “The alternative is too sorrowful to contemplate.”

“Xan—” Glerk began.

“Sorrow is dangerous,” she snapped. And she left in a huff.

They had this conversation again and again, with no resolution. Eventually, Xan refused to discuss it at all.

The child was never magic, Xan started telling herself. And indeed, the more Xan told herself that it might be true, the more she was able to convince herself that it was true. And if Luna ever was magic, all that power was now neatly stoppered up and wouldn’t be a problem. Perhaps it was stuck forever. Perhaps Luna was now a regular girl. A regular girl. Xan said it again and again and again. She said it so many times that it must be true. It’s exactly what she told people in the Free Cities when they asked. A regular girl, she said. She also told them Luna was allergic to magic. Hives, she said. Seizures. Itchy eyes. Stomach upset. She asked everyone to never mention magic near the girl.

And so, no one did. Xan’s advice was always followed to the letter.

In the meantime, there was a whole world for Luna to learn—science, mathematics, poetry, philosophy, art. Surely that would be enough. Surely she would grow as a girl grows, and Xan would continue as she was—still-­magic, slow-­to-­age, deathless Xan. Surely, Xan would never have to say good-­bye.

“This can’t go on,” Glerk said, over and over. “Luna needs to know what’s inside her. She needs to know how magic works. She needs to know what death is. She needs to be prepared.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you are talking about,” Xan said. “She’s just a regular girl. Even if she wasn’t before, she certainly is now. My own magic is replenished—and I hardly ever use it in any case. There is no need to upset her. Why would we speak of impending loss? Why would we introduce her to that kind of sorrow? It’s dangerous, Glerk. Remember?”

Glerk wrinkled his brow. “Why do we think that?” he asked.

Xan shook her head. “I have no idea.” And she didn’t. She knew, once, but the memory had vanished.

It was easier to forget.

And so Luna grew.

And she didn’t know about the starlight or the moonlight or the tight knot behind her forehead. And she didn’t remember about the enrabbiting of Glerk or the flowers in her footsteps or the power that was, even now, clicking through its gears, pulsing, pulsing, pulsing inexorably toward its end point. She didn’t know about the hard, tight seed of magic readying to crack open inside her.

She had absolutely no idea.