The Girl Who Drank the Moon

by Kelly Barnhill

Human babies are only tiny for an instant—their growing up is as swift as the beat of a hummingbird’s wing.

‘In every breeze exhales the promise of spring,’ ” Glerk whispered as Luna napped during the winter. “ ‘Each sleeping tree dreams green dreams; the barren mountain wakes in blossom.’ ”

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 need to remember things. Even if it makes me sad.”

She needs to be educated. She needs to know the contents of those books, there. She needs to understand the movements of the stars and the origins of the universe and the requirements of kindness. She needs to know mathematics and poetry. She must ask questions. She must seek to understand. She must understand the laws of cause and effect and unintended consequences. She must learn compassion and curiosity and awe. All of these things.

Hope, her heart said. Hope, the sky said. Hope, said the bird in the young man’s hand and the look in his eye. Hope and light and motion, her soul whispered. Hope and formation and fusion. Hope and heat and accretion. The miracle of gravity. The miracle of transformation. Each precious thing is destroyed and each precious thing is saved. Hope, hope, hope.

impatience belongs to small things—fleas, tadpoles, and fruit flies. You, my love, are ever so much more than a fruit fly.”

His kindness was his dearest currency. His scars, she knew, had kept the silly girls away. He deserved someone extraordinary to love him.

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.

Also, it felt vaguely embarrassing—like perhaps there was something wrong with her.

She breathed deeply, allowing her heart to slow and her soul to loosen its worries and wrinkles and knots.

Everything you see is in the process of making or unmaking or dying or living. Everything is in a state of change.”

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.

“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 world is good. Go see it.”