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

the Witch.
    One of the good wizards from the castle—no one remembers his name—saw the Witch on her fearsome dragon as they flew across the broken land. He knew what the Witch was trying to do: she wanted to pull the fire from the bulge of the earth and spread it across the land, like a cloth over a table. She wanted to cover us all in ash and fire and smoke.
    Well, of course that’s what she wanted. No one knows why. How could we? She is a witch. She needs no rhyme and no reason, neither.
    Of course this is a true story. Haven’t you been listening?
    And so the brave little wizard—ignoring his own great peril—ran into the smoke and flame. He leaped into the air and pulled the Witch from the back of her dragon. He threw the dragon into the flaming hole in the earth, stopping it up like a cork in a bottle.
    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 already told you this story is true. I only tell true stories. Now. Off with you, and don’t let me catch you shirking on your chores. I might send you to the Witch and have her deal with you.

9.
    In Which Several Things Go Wrong
    The journey home was a disaster.
    â€œGrandmama!” Luna cried. “A bird!” And a tree stump became a very large, very pink, and very perplexed-­looking bird, who sat sprawled on the ground, wings akimbo, as if shocked by its own existence.
    Which, Xan reasoned, the poor thing probably
was
. She transformed it back into a stump the moment the child wasn’t looking. Even from that great distance, she could sense its relief.
    â€œGrandmama!” Luna shrieked, running up ahead. “Cake!” And the stream up ahead suddenly ceased. The water vanished and became a long river of cake.
    â€œYummy!” Luna cried, grabbing cake by the handful, smearing multicolored icing across her face.
    Xan hooked her arm around the girl’s waist, vaulted over the cake-­stream with her staff, and shooed Luna forward along the winding path up the slope of the mountain, undoing the accidental spell over her shoulder.
    â€œGrandmama! Butterflies!”
    â€œGrandmama! A pony!”
    â€œGrandmama! Berries!”
    Spell after spell erupted from Luna’s fingers and toes, from her ears and eyes. Her magic skittered and pulsed. It was all Xan could do to keep up.
    At night, after falling into an exhausted heap, Xan dreamed of Zosimos the wizard—dead now these five hundred years. In her dream, he was explaining something—something important—but his voice was obscured by the rumble of the volcano. She could only focus on his face as it wrinkled and withered in front of her eyes, his skin collapsing like the petals of a lily drooping at the end of the day.

    W hen they arrived back at their home nestled beneath the peaks and craters of the sleeping volcano and wrapped in the lush smell of the swamp, Glerk stood at his full height, waiting for them.
    â€œXan,” he said, as Fyrian danced and spun in the air, screeching a newly created song about his love for everyone that he knew. “It seems our girl has become more complicated.” He had seen the strands of magic skittering this way and that and launching in long threads over the tops of the trees. He knew even at that great distance that he wasn’t seeing Xan’s magic, which was green and soft and tenacious, the color and texture of lichen clinging to the lee of the oaks. No, this was blue and silver, silver and blue. Luna’s magic.
    Xan waved him off. “You don’t know the half of it,” she said, as Luna went running to the swamp to gather the irises into her arms and drink in the scent. As Luna ran, each footstep blossomed with iridescent