They left 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.
“Luna,” she said. “Your name will be Luna. And I will be your grandmother. And we will be a family.”
And just by saying so, Xan knew it was true. The words hummed in the air between them, stronger than any magic.
Sometimes. I have this dream. About your brother. He would be eighteen now. No. Nineteen. I have this dream that he has dark hair and luminous skin and stars in his eyes. I dream that when he smiles, it shines for miles around. Last night I dreamed that he waited next to a tree for a girl to walk by. And he called her name, and held her hand, and his heart pounded when he kissed her.
What? No. I’m not crying. Why would I cry? Silly thing.
(“But what if they all are important, Uncle?” Antain had asked the Grand Elder once.
“They can’t possibly be. In any case, by denying access, we give our people a gift. They learn to accept their lot in life. They learn that any action is inconsequential. Their days remain, as they should be, cloudy. There is no greater gift than that. Now. Where is my Zirin tea?”)
Xan visited the Free Cities twice a year, once with Luna and once without. She did not explain to the child the purpose for her solo visit—nor did she tell her about the sad town on the other side of the forest, or of the babies left in that small clearing, presumably to die. She’d have to tell the girl eventually, of course. One day, Xan told herself. Not now. It was too sad. And Luna was too little to understand.
But he didn’t kill the Witch. The Witch killed him instead.
This is why it doesn’t pay to be brave. Bravery makes nothing, protects nothing, results in nothing. It only makes you dead. And this is why we don’t stand up to the Witch. Because even a powerful old wizard was no match for her.
“I remember. All at once.” He shook his head. “Why had I forgotten?”
Xan pushed her wrinkled lips to one side. “Sorrow is dangerous. Or, at least, it was. I can’t remember why, now. I think we both became accustomed to not remembering things. We just let things get...foggy.”
Most were sent packing at the age of twelve—right when they had begun to get comfortable. Once they became aware of how much learning there was to be had in the libraries of the Tower and they became hungry for it, they were sent away.
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.
The madwoman in the Tower could not remember her own name.
She could remember no one’s name.
What was a name, anyway? You can’t hold it. You can’t smell it. You can’t rock it to sleep. You can’t whisper your love to it over and over and over again. There was once a name that she treasured above all others. But it had flown away, like a bird. And she could not coax it back.
Fyrian seemed younger and younger every day. Sometimes, it seemed to Luna that he was going backward in time while she stood still, but other times it seemed that the opposite was true: it was Fyrian who was standing still while Luna raced forward. She wondered why this was.
Dragons! Glerk would explain.
Dragons! Xan would agree. They both shrugged. Dragons, it was decided. What can one do?
Which never actually answered anything.
What if we are wrong about the Witch? What if we are wrong about the sacrifice? Antain wondered. The question itself was revolutionary. And astonishing. What would happen if we tried?
Why had the thought never occurred to him before?
Luna didn’t have very many memories that were as tenacious as this one—her memory, typically, was a slippery thing, and difficult to pin down—and so she hung on to it. This image meant something. She was sure of it.
Her grandmother, now that she thought about it, never spoke of memories. Not ever.
And the things that they did not speak of began to outweigh the things that they did. Each secret, each unspoken thing was round and hard and heavy and cold, like a stone hung around the necks of both grandmother and girl.
Their backs bent under the weight of secrets.
They say she even stole it from the moon. And then she cast a spell over all of us—a great cloud of sorrow, covering the world.
Well, of course it covers the world. That’s why the world is drab and gray. That’s why hope is only for the smallest of children. Best you learn that now.
While it was annoying to have to go hungry in one’s own home, there was always sorrow aplenty throughout the Protectorate, hanging over the town like a cloud.
Or normally there was. But this blasted hope stirred up by Antain was spreading through the town, disrupting the sorrow. Sister Ignatia felt her stomach rumble.
But the volcano never really went out. The wizard stopped it up, but it went underground. And it leaks its fury into the water pools and the mud vats and the noxious vents. It poisons the Bog. It contaminates the water. It is the reason why our children go hungry and our grandmothers wither and our crops are so often doomed to fail. It is the reason we cannot ever leave this place and there is no use trying.
Antain kneeled down. “I’m sorry,” he breathed. “I’m so, so sorry.” He scooped up the bird in his hands. It didn’t look healthy. How could it, in these cursed woods? Half the water was poisoned. The Witch. It all came back to the Witch. Curse her name forever.
A story can tell the truth, she knew, but a story can also lie. Stories can bend and twist and obfuscate. Controlling stories is power indeed. And who would benefit most from such a power? And over time, Ethyne’s eye drifted less and less toward the forest, and more toward the Tower casting its shadow over the Protectorate.
“Today the doors are opening.”
“Even to the library?” Wyn said hopefully.
“Especially the library. Knowledge is powerful, but it is a terrible power when it is hoarded and hidden. Today, knowledge is for everyone.” She hooked her arm in Wyn’s, and they hurried through the Tower, unlocking doors.
But as the clouds broke and the sky began to clear, they found themselves feeling something else, too. Something they had never felt before.
Here is the baby holding her own sweet baby. My grandchild. Here is her knowing that no one will ever take that child away.
Hope. They felt hope.
Here is the baby in his circle of friends. He is laughing. He loves his life.
Joy. They felt joy.
“I don’t know, my dear Fyrian. What I do know is that I am here with you. I do know that the gaps in our knowledge will soon be revealed and filled in, and that’s a good thing. I do know that you are my friend and that I will stay by your side through every transition and trial.”
“How do you know that name?” Sister Ignatia whispered.
“Everyone knows that name,” the madwoman said. “It was in a story. About how the Witch ate a tiger’s heart. They all whisper it. It’s wrong, of course. You don’t have a tiger’s heart. You have no heart at all.”
“There is no such story,” Sister Ignatia said. [...] “I started the stories in the Protectorate. I did. They all came from me. There is no story that I did not tell first.”
How many feelings can one heart hold? She looked at her grandmother. At her mother. At the man protecting his family. Infinite, Luna thought. The way the universe is infinite. It is light and dark and endless motion; it is space and time, and space within space, and time within time. And she knew: there is no limit to what the heart can carry.
“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.”
