فصل 46

46.

In Which Several Families Are Reunited

The people of the Protectorate saw a cloud of dust and smoke speeding toward the town walls.

“The volcano!” one man cried. “The volcano has legs! And it is coming this way!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” a woman countered. “Volcanoes don’t have legs. It’s the Witch. She’s coming for us at last. Just as we knew she would.”

“Does anyone else see a giant bird coming closer that kind of looks like a dragon?—though of course that’s impossible. Dragons no longer exist. Right?”

The madwoman skidded to a halt at the wall, letting Antain and Luna tumble from her back. Antain wasted no time, entering the Protectorate’s gates at a run. Luna stayed as the madwoman gently set Xan down on the ground and helped her to her feet.

“Are you all right?” the madwoman said. Her eyes darted this way and that, never settling on one place for very long. Her face cycled through a myriad of expressions, one after another after another. She was, Luna could see, quite mad. Or, perhaps, not mad at all, but broken. And broken things can sometimes be mended. She took her mother’s hand, and hoped.

“I need to get high up,” Luna said. “I need to make something that will protect the town and its people when that thing explodes.” She pointed at the volcano’s smoking peak with her chin, and her heart constricted a bit. Her tree house. Their garden. The chickens and the goats. Glerk’s beautiful swamp. All of it would be gone in a few moments—if it wasn’t already. Consequences. Everything was consesquences.

The madwoman led Luna and Xan into the gates and up onto the wall.

There was magic in her mother. Luna could feel it. But it wasn’t the same as Luna’s magic. Luna’s magic was infused in every bone, every tissue, every cell. Her mother’s magic was more like a jumble of trinkets left in a basket after a long journey—bits and pieces knocking together. Still, Luna could feel her mother’s magic—as well as her mother’s longing and love—buzzing against her skin. It emboldened the power surging inside her, directing the swells of magic. Luna held her mother’s hand a little bit tighter.

Fyrian, Glerk, and the nearly unconscious Sorrow Eater alighted next to them.

The people of the Protectorate screamed and ran from the wall, even as Antain desperately called out that they had nothing to fear. Xan looked up at the smoking peak. “There’s plenty to fear,” she said grimly. “It just doesn’t come from us.”

The ground shook.

Antain called for Ethyne.

Fyrian called for Xan.

“Caw, caw, caw,” said the crow. “Luna, Luna, Luna,” he meant.

Glerk called for everyone to hush a moment so he could think.

The volcano sent forth a column of fire and smoke, swallowed power un-­swallowed at last.

“Can we stop it?” Luna whispered.

“No,” Xan said. “It was stopped before, long ago, but that was a mistake. A good man died for nothing. A good dragon, too. Volcanoes erupt and the world changes. This is the way of things. But we can protect. I can’t by myself—not anymore—and I suspect that you can’t on your own. But together.” She looked at Luna’s mother. “Together, I think we can.”

“I don’t know how, Grandmama.” Luna tried to surpress a sob. There were too many things to know, and not enough time to know them. Xan took Luna’s other hand. “Do you remember when you were a little girl, and I showed you how to make bubbles around the blooms of flowers, holding them inside?”

Luna nodded.

Xan smiled. “Come. Not all knowledge comes from the mind. Your body, your heart, your intuition. Sometimes memories even have minds of their own. Those bubbles we made—the flowers were safe inside. Remember? Make bubbles. Bubbles inside of bubbles. Bubbles of magic. Bubbles of ice. Bubbles of glass and iron and starlight. Bubbles of bog. The material is less consequential than the intention. Use your imagination and picture each one. Around each house, each garden, each tree, each farm. Around the whole town. Around the towns of the Free Cities. Bubbles and bubbles and bubbles. Surround. Protect. We’ll use your magic, the three of us together. Close your eyes and I’ll show you what to do.”

With her fingers curled into the fingers of her mother and grandmother, Luna felt something in her bones—a rush of heat and light, moving from the core of the earth to the roof of the sky, back and forth and back and forth. Magic. Starlight. Moonlight. Memory. Her heart had so much love, it began pouring forth. Like a volcano.

The mountain shattered. Fire rained. Ash darkened the sky. The bubbles glowed in the heat and wobbled under the weight of wind and fire and dust. Luna held on tight.

Three weeks later, Antain hardly recognized his home. There was still so much ash. Stone and the remnants of broken trees littered the streets of the Protectorate. The wind carried volcanic ash and forest fire ash and ash that no one wanted to identify down the slope of the mountain and deposited it in the streets. By day, the sun barely peeked through the smoky haze, and at night the stars and moon remained invisible. Luna sent rains washing down the Protectorate and the wood and the ruined mountain, which helped to clear the air a little. Still, there was much left to be done.

People smiled hopefully, despite the mess. The Council of Elders languished in prison, and new council members were elected by popular vote. The name Gherland became a common insult. Wyn ran and maintained the library in the Tower, which welcomed all visitors. And finally, the Road opened, allowing citizens of the Protectorate, for the first time in their lives, to venture forth. Though not many did. Not at first.

In the center of these changes stood Ethyne—all reason and possibility, and a hot cup of tea, with a baby strapped to her chest. Antain held his small family close. I shall never leave you again, he murmured, mostly to himself. Never, never, never.

Both Xan and the Sorrow Eater had been moved to the hospital wing of the Tower. Once people understood what Sister Ignatia had done, there were calls for her imprisonment, but with every moment, the life that had been so extended in both women dwindled, bit by bit.

Any day now, Xan thought. Any moment. She had no fear of death. Only curiosity. She had no idea what the Sorrow Eater thought.

Ethyne and Antain moved Luna and her mother into the baby’s room, assuring them that Luken didn’t need his own room, and anyway they couldn’t bear to be parted from him even for a moment.

Ethyne transformed the room into a place of healing for both mother and daughter. Soft surfaces. Thick curtains for when the day became unbearable. Pretty flowers in jars. And paper. So much paper (though there always seemed to be more, and more and more). The madwoman took to drawing. Sometimes Luna helped. Ethyne prescribed soup and healing herbs. And rest. And endless love. She was fully prepared to provide all of it.

Meanwhile, Luna set herself to discovering her mother’s name. She went door to door, asking anyone who would talk to her—which wasn’t many at first. People in the Protectorate didn’t love her implicitly as people in the Free Cities did. Which was a bit of a shock, to be honest.

This will take some getting used to, Luna thought.

After days of asking, and days of searching, she returned to her mother at suppertime, kneeling at her feet.

“Adara,” she said. She pulled out her journal and showed her mother the pictures she had drawn, back before they had ever met. A woman on the ceiling. A baby in her arms. A tower with a hand extended from the windows. A child in a circle of trees. “Your name is Adara. It’s all right if you don’t remember it. I’ll keep saying it until you do. And just as your mind went skittering in every direction trying to find me, so did my heart go wandering trying to find you. Look here. I even drew a map. ‘She is here, she is here, she is here.’ ” Luna closed the journal and looked into Adara’s face. “You are here, you are here, you are here. And so am I.”

Adara said nothing. She let her hand drift onto Luna’s hand. She curled her fingers against the girl’s palm.

Luna, Ethyne, and Adara went to visit the former Grand Elder in prison. Adara’s hair had begun to grow. It curled around her face in big, black hooks, framing her large, black eyes.

Gherland frowned as they walked in. “I should have drowned you in the river,” he said to Luna with a scowl. “Don’t think I don’t recognize you. I do. Each one of you insufferable children has haunted my dreams. I would see you grow and grow even when I knew you had died.”

“But we didn’t die,” Luna said. “None of us did. Perhaps that was what your dreams were telling you. Perhaps you should learn to listen.”

“I’m not listening to you,” he said.

Adara knelt down next to the old man. She laid her hand on his knee. “The new council has said that you can be pardoned as soon as you are willing to apologize.”

“Then I shall rot in here,” the former Grand Elder huffed. “Apologize? The very idea!”

“Whether you apologize or not is irrelevant,” Ethyne said kindly. “I forgive you, Uncle. With my whole heart. As does my husband. When you apologize, however, you may begin healing yourself. It is not for us. It is for you. I recommend it.”

“I would like to see my nephew,” Gherland said, a tiny crack in his imperious voice. “Please. Tell him to come and see me. I long to see his dear face.”

“Are you going to apologize?” Ethyne asked.

“Never,” Gherland spat.

“That is a pity,” Ethyne said. “Good-­bye, Uncle.”

And they left without another word.

The Grand Elder maintained his position. He remained in prison for the rest of his days. Eventually, people stopped visiting, and they stopped mentioning him—even in jest. And in time, they forgot about him altogether.

Fyrian continued to grow. Each day he flew across the forest and reported back what he had seen.“The lake is gone, filled with ash. And the workshop is gone. And Xan’s house. And the swamp. The Free Cities are still there, though. They were unharmed.”

Riding on Fyrian’s back, Luna visited each one of the Free Cities in turn. While the residents were happy to see Luna, they were shocked not to see Xan, and, at the news of her ill health, the Free Cities grieved as one. They weren’t so sure about the dragon, but when they saw how gentle he was with the children, they relaxed a bit.

Luna told them the story of a town that was under the control of a terrible Witch, who held them prisoner under a cloud of sorrow. She told them about the children. About the terrible Day of Sacrifice. About the other Witch, who found the children in the forest and brought them to safety, not knowing what horrors had delivered them into this predicament in the first place.

“Oh!” cried the citizens of the Free Cities. “Oh, oh, oh!”

And the families of the Star Children held the hands of their sons and daughters a little more tightly.

“I was taken from my mother,” Luna explained. “Like you, I was brought to a family who loved me and whom I love. I cannot stop loving that family, and I don’t want to. I can only allow my love to increase.” She smiled. “I love the grandmother who raised me. I love the mother I lost. My love is boundless. My heart is infinite. And my joy expands and expands. You’ll see.”

In town after town, she said the same thing. And then she climbed onto Fyrian’s back and returned to her grandmother.

Glerk refused to leave Xan’s side. His skin grew cracked and itchy without the daily wash of his beloved swamp water. Every day, he looked longingly at the Bog. Luna asked the former Sisters—friends of Ethyne’s—to please keep buckets at the ready to douse him when he needed it, but well water just wasn’t the same. Eventually, Xan told him to stop being such a silly and walk down to the Bog for a daily bath.

“I can’t stand the thought of you suffering, dearest,” Xan whispered, her withered hands on the great beast’s face. “Plus—and don’t take this the wrong way—but you stink.” She took a rattling breath. “And I love you.”

Glerk laid his hands on her face. “When you’re ready, Xan, my darling, darling Xan, you may come with me. Into the Bog.”

As Xan’s health began to fail more rapidly, Luna informed her mother and her hosts that she would be sleeping in the Tower.

“My grandmother needs me,” she said. “And I need to be near my grandmother.”

Adara’s eyes filled with tears when Luna said it. Luna took her hand. “My love isn’t divided,” she said. “It is multiplied.” And she kissed her mother and returned to her grandmother, curling up next to her night after night.

The day the first wave of Star Children returned to the Protectorate, the former Sisters threw open the windows of the hospital.

The Sorrow Eater by now looked as old as dust. Her skin crinkled over her bones like old paper. Her eyes were sightless and hollow. “Close the window,” she rasped. “I can’t bear to hear it.”

“Leave it open,” Xan whispered. “I can’t bear not to.”

Xan, too, was a dry husk. She hardly breathed. Any moment now, Luna thought as she sat by Xan’s side, holding her tiny hand, as light as feathers.

The Sisters left the windows open wide. Cries of joy wafted into the room. The Sorrow Eater cried out in pain. Xan sighed with happiness. Luna gently squeezed her hand.

“I love you, Grandmama.”

“I know, darling,” Xan wheezed. “I love . . .”

And she drifted away, loving everything.