The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill Read Free Book Online

“What will she be like then?”
    Xan tried not to think about it.

    X an 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.
    When Luna was five, she traveled once again to one of the farthest of the Free Cities—a town called Obsidian. And Xan found herself fussing at a child who would not sit quietly. Not for anything.
    â€œYoung lady, will you please remove yourself from this house at once, and go find a friend to play with?”
    â€œGrandmama, look! It’s a hat.” And she reached into the bowl and pulled out the lump of rising bread dough and put it on her head. “It’s a hat, Grandmama! The prettiest hat.”
    â€œIt is not a hat,” Xan said. “It is a lump of dough.” She was in the middle of a complex bit of magic. The schoolmistress lay on the kitchen table, deep in sleep, and Xan kept both palms on the sides of the young woman’s face, concentrating hard. The schoolmistress had been suffering from terrible headaches that were, Xan discovered, the result of a growth in the center of her brain. Xan could remove it with magic, bit by bit, but it was tricky work. And dangerous. Work for a clever witch, and none was more clever than Xan.
    Still. The work was difficult—more difficult than she felt it should have been. And taxing. Everything was taxing lately. Xan blamed old age. Her magic emptied so quickly these days. And took so long to refill. And she was so tired.
    â€œYoung man,” Xan said to the schoolmistress’s son—a nice boy, fifteen, probably, whose skin seemed to glow. One of the Star Children. “Will you please take this troublesome child outside and play with her so I may focus on healing your mother without killing her by mistake?” The boy turned pale. “I’m only kidding, of course. Your mother is safe with me.” Xan hoped that was true.
    Luna slid her hand into the boy’s hand, her black eyes shining like jewels. “Let’s play,” she said, and the boy grinned back. He loved Luna, just like everyone else did. They ran, laughing, out the door and disappeared into the woods out back.
    Later, when the growth had been dispatched and the brain healed and the schoolmistress was sleeping comfortably, Xan felt she could finally relax. Her eye fell on the bowl on the counter. The bowl with the rising bread dough.
    But there was no bread dough in the bowl at all. Instead, there was a hat—wide-­brimmed and intricately detailed. It was the prettiest hat Xan had ever seen.
    â€œOh dear,” Xan whispered, picking up the hat and noticing the magic laced within it. Blue. With a shimmer of silver at the edges. Luna’s magic. “Oh dear, oh dear.”
    Over the next two days, Xan did her best to conclude her work in the Free Cities as quickly as she could. Luna was no help at all. She ran circles around the other children, racing and playing and jumping over fences. She dared groups of children to climb to the tops of trees with her. Or into barn lofts. Or onto the ridgepoles of neighborhood roofs. They followed her higher and higher, but they couldn’t follow her all the way. She seemed to float above the branches. She pirouetted on the tip of a birch leaf.
    â€œCome down this instant, young lady,” the Witch hollered.
    The little girl laughed. She flitted toward the ground, leaping from leaf to leaf, guiding the other children safely behind her. Xan could see the tendrils of magic fluttering behind her like ribbons. Blue and silver, silver and blue. They billowed and swelled and spiraled in the air. They left their