“Young lady, will you please remove yourself from this house at once, and go find a friend to play with?”
“Grandmama, 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.”
“It 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.
“Young 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.
“Oh 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.
“Come 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 etchings on the ground. Xan took off after the child at a run, cleaning up as she did so.
A donkey became a toy.
A house became a bird.
A barn was suddenly made of gingerbread and spun sugar.
She has no idea what she is doing, Xan thought. The magic poured out of the girl. Xan had never seen so much in all her life. She could so easily hurt herself, Xan fussed. Or someone else. Or everyone in town. Xan tore down the road, her old bones groaning, undoing spell after spell, before she caught up to the wayward girl.
“Nap time,” the Witch said, brandishing both palms, and Luna collapsed onto the ground. She had never interfered in the will of another. Never. Years ago—almost five hundred—she made a promise to her guardian, Zosimos, that she never would. But now . . . What have I done? Xan asked herself. She thought she might be sick.
The other children stared. Luna snored. She left a puddle of drool on the ground.
“Is she all right?” one boy asked.
Xan picked Luna up, feeling the weight of the child’s face on her shoulder and pressing her wrinkled cheek against the little girl’s hair.
“She’s fine, dear,” she said. “She’s just sleepy. She is so sleepy. And I do believe you have chores to do.” Xan carried Luna to the guesthouse of the mayor, where they happened to be staying.
Luna slept deeply. Her breathing was slow and even. The crescent moon birthmark on her forehead glowed a bit. A pink moon. Xan smoothed the child’s black hair away from her face, winding her fingers in the shining curls.
“What have I been missing?” she asked herself out loud. There was something she wasn’t seeing—something important. She didn’t think about her childhood if she could help it. It was too sad. And sorrow was dangerous—though she couldn’t quite remember why.
Memory was a slippery thing—slick moss on an unstable slope—and it was ever so easy to lose one’s footing and fall. And anyway, five hundred years was an awful lot to remember. But now, her memories came tumbling toward her—a kindly old man, a decrepit castle, a clutch of scholars with their faces buried in books, a mournful mother dragon saying good-bye. And something else, too. Something scary. Xan tried to pluck the memories as they tumbled by, but they were like bright pebbles in an avalanche: they flashed briefly in the light, and then they were gone.
There was something she was supposed to remember. She was sure of it. If she could only remember what.
8.
In Which a Story Contains a Hint of Truth
A story? Fine. I will tell you a story. But you won’t like it. And it will make you cry.
Once upon a time, there were good wizards and good witches, and they lived in a castle in the center of the wood.
Well, of course the forest wasn’t dangerous in those days. We know who is responsible for cursing the forest. It is the same person who steals our children and poisons the water. In those days, the Protectorate was prosperous and wise. No one needed the Road to cross the forest. The forest was a friend to all. And anyone could walk to the Enchanters’ Castle for remedies or advice or general gossip.
But one day, an evil Witch rode across the sky on the back of a dragon. She wore black boots and a black hat and a dress the color of blood. She howled her rage to the sky.
Yes, child. This is a true story. What other kinds of stories are there?
As she flew on her cursed dragon, the land rumbled and split. The rivers boiled and the mud bubbled and entire lakes turned into steam. The Bog—our beloved Bog—became toxic and rank, and people died because they could not get air. The land under the castle swelled—it rose and rose and rose, and great plumes of smoke and ash came billowing from its center.
“It’s the end of the world,” people cried. And it might have been, if one good man had not dared to stand up to 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.