95 pages • 3 hours read
Kelly BarnhillThe Girl Who Drank the Moon
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “In Which a Witch Comes to a Decision”
Xan keeps Luna “paused” in her magical cocoon while she experiments with spells to contain Luna’s magic. Glerk explains to Fyrian that Xan is frightened because she has never done this before. Glerk illustrates this idea with a poem about a Fool who, when he loses solid ground, jumps into black space, and a scholar who falls and is lost without the tools of his trade. Fyrian asks who wrote the poem, and Glerk replies, “The Poet. The Bog. The world. And me” (77).
Xan admits Glerk to her workshop and announces that she has found a way to partition off Luna’s magic. It is like “setting a clock” (77). Luna’s magic will be like seed inside her head. When Luna turns 13, her magic will emerge. Glerk worries that this will hurt Luna’s mind, but Xan reassures him that it will not. Keeping Luna’s magic asleep will give them time to teach Luna everything from magic and mathematics to poetry and compassion and consequences. This will also help slow down Xan’s own loss of magic. The big consequence, however, is that when Luna’s magic finally does emerge, all of Xan’s magic will drain out, and she will die. Xan is sad about this but glad to have a chance to teach Luna. Xan also feels she has lived long enough and is curious about the afterlife. Glerk is sad for Xan and for Luna. He feels a “crack in his heart” (81) as Xan completes the spell.
Chapter 12 Summary: “In Which a Child Learns About the Bog”
Answering a child’s question, a parent explains that the Witch does not live in the Bog. The very idea is “ridiculous.” The Bog is where everything good comes from, like their food and the multi-use Zirin plant. The Witch is evil and cannot live in the Bog because it would eject her. The Bog is the good half of the world, and the Forest the other half. The parent explains that the Bog loves the people. The parent agrees to tell the story that “everyone knows” about how the Bog created the world.
At first, the parent says, there was nothing in the world except the Bog, which stretched “from one edge of reality to the other” (83). When the Bog became lonely, it created a Beast to see and move around the world. The Beast and Bog loved each other. The Beast wanted to express the love inside himself and so created words, which he then used to make poetry to create everything on earth. Everything, the parent stresses, “was called into being by the Bog” (84). So, people love the Bog, and the Bog returns their love.
Chapter 13 Summary: “In Which Antain Pays a Visit”
Antain feels the Elders are treating him differently since he skipped the last Day of Sacrifice, and he doesn’t understand why they scorn his questions. Avoiding his Council duties, Antain visits Sister Ignacia in the Tower. Antain apprenticed with the Sisters from the ages of nine to 12 and knows the Tower well. The Tower stands tall in the middle of the Protectorate, but most of its rooms are underground. There the Sisters study everything from bookbinding and combat training to languages, dance, and poisoning. The above-ground rooms hold the prison, torture chamber, and the Sisters’ accommodations.
Sister Ignatia is the sharp-eyed, “formidable” Head Sister. Antain observes that she appears healthier than ever. Sister Ignatia knows that Antain wants to see the sorrowful madwoman whom they are studying. Antain has been haunted by the memories of her screaming and the baby left in the forest. He asks Sister Ignatia if the woman can be cured, but the Head Sister tells him “there is no cure for sorrow” (93).
Antain visits the madwoman in her cell and finds her changed from when he first saw her: The Sisters have cut off her hair and drugged her to make her calm. Her birthmark is just a faint smudge on her forehead. Antain is amazed to see that her cell is filled with thousands of paper birds. Antain knows paper is expensive but appreciates the detail and beauty of the birds. The madwoman has also created intricate maps marked with the repeated phrase “She is here” (97). The madwoman thinks Antain is there to make fun of her. She instructs him to tell his Uncle Gherland that her baby is not dead, and that she knows where the child is. The madwoman warns Antain that a “reckoning is coming” (98). Her flock of paper birds comes to life and attacks Antain with sharp wings.
Chapter 14 Summary: “In Which There Are Consequences”
When Luna awakens from Xan’s spell, she feels different. She has a headache and doesn’t know why she can’t understand what the birds are saying. She cries but doesn’t know why she’s crying. Luna tells herself she is silly for thinking she should see flowers sprouting in her footsteps.
Xan finds Luna acting strangely quiet. Xan assures herself that even though Luna’s magic is bound, “she is still the same girl” (102). Fyrian wants to explain to Luna what has happened to her, but Xan sends him away to help Glerk. Xan decides to begin Luna’s lessons immediately. As Xan explains how magic collects and flows, she discovers the terrible consequence of her spell: Luna blanks out, “as though her soul had gone dormant” (105). Luna returns to the present but can’t remember what they were doing. Xan tries several times, but the even word “magic” sends Luna into a trance. Xan, distraught, seeks out Glerk.
They realize that Luna’s reaction to hearing about anything magical is not temporary: Each time they mention magic, Luna goes blank. Glerk and Xan do not know if any magical knowledge is staying inside Luna or not; they do know that when Luna turns 13, Xan will die and be unable to teach her. Xan suggests that maybe Luna won’t grow and will always stay this way—maybe she wasn’t even magic at all. Xan convinces herself that Luna is simply “a regular girl” (110). Xan forbids Glerk and Fyrian from talking about magic with Luna. Glerk disagrees with Xan’s approach. He believes Luna needs to know herself, to prepare herself for life and death, but Xan does not want to subject Luna to any sorrow. Luna grows without knowing about the magic locked inside her.
Chapter 15 Summary: “In Which Antain Tells a Lie”
The Sisters find Antain in a pool of blood in the madwoman’s cell. The paper birds cut Antain horribly, and his once-handsome face is now ruined, scarred for life. The scars hurt, physically at first, then as a “dull ache of something lost” (120). People don’t believe Antain’s story about the paper birds and whisper about him. Antain resigns from the Council and becomes a carpenter, following his passion for woodworking. The Council gives him a little money to start his business, and soon Antain is a successful businessman, and his craftsmanship is renowned even outside the Protectorate. Antain constructs a small home for himself and is “mostly content,” though now the world feels heavy and sorrowful. He keeps largely out of sight in the Protectorate, making sure his hood shadows his face so his scars don’t make people too uncomfortable.
Antain’s mother tells him that some of the mothers in the Protectorate have noticed his growing wealth and might consider letting him marry one of their less-pretty daughters. Antain declines. He wishes he’d had the courage to speak to Ethyne when they were in school together and he was still handsome.
On one of his walks, Antain runs into Sister Ignatia, looking full and happy, working in her poisonous herb garden. His attitude toward her has changed, as she never came to visit him when he was recovering. Looking up at the Tower, the sight of the madwoman with a paper bird in her hand makes Antain uneasy. He dreams about her nightly. Antain discovers that Ethyne is leaving the Sisters of the Star, to Sister Ignatia’s disapproval. Ethyne greets Antain cheerfully and unflinchingly, and laughs at his joke. Sister Ignatia is outraged that Ethyne isn’t sorry for leaving. Antain helps Ethyne carry her belongings away from the Tower. As Ethyne touches his arm, Antain’s heart soars.
Chapters 11-15 Analysis
We see another facet of the Protectorate’s method of control: the withholding of knowledge. Antain serves the Sisters until the day he becomes too thirsty for knowledge. Antain realizes “the more he learned, the more he knew what more there was to learn” (87). He yearns to see inside Sisters’ vast library and is dismissed the day after he gains access to it. As Sister Ignatia tells him, “knowledge, after all, is a precious commodity (93). Knowledge is hoarded and guarded and kept from ordinary citizens.
Similarly, characters withhold knowledge from themselves and others. Xan tries to deceive herself about Luna’s magic, telling herself Luna was never magical, or is allergic to magic, and is really just a normal girl. Xan ropes Glerk and Fyrian into aiding her deception when she tells them not to speak of magic around Luna. Again, against Zosimos’s mandate, Xan uses her magical power to keep Luna under control, deny her self-knowledge, and, essentially, keep her from growing up.
This idea ties into another of the novel’s main themes: transformation from childhood into adulthood. Glerk argues that Luna needs knowledge about herself to prepare for life. Xan, who fears losing Luna, wants Luna to stay the same, hoping that “maybe she won’t grow […] Maybe she will stay like this forever, and I will never have to say goodbye to her” (109). While the Council withholds knowledge out of self-interest, Xan keeps knowledge from Luna out of love and a desire to protect. This protection includes keeping Luna safe from sorrow.
Yet Luna is already sensitive to a loss she can’t remember; when her magic is walled off, she cries without knowing why. She cannot recover memories that are important to her. The search to recover memory will drive Luna in the chapters to come. Xan and Glerk both recognize they have buried sorrowful memories, yet Xan feels “it was easier to forget” (111).
Sister Ignatia appears to take sustenance from sorrow. Twice Antain notes that the Head Sister looks healthier than she has in the past. When Ethyne refuses to feel remorse about leaving the novitiate, Antain sees Sister Ignatia’s eyes go black “as if she was terribly hungry” (125). The Sister’s odd reaction to sorrow gives clues to her identity and foreshadows events to come. Sister Ignatia claims there is no cure for sorrow, but the fog that Antain falls into after the paper bird attack lifts when he feels hope, and when Ethyne does not reject him and lays her hand on his arm. Antain’s hope is rewarded, and he learns that things that never happen (no one leaves the Sisters) can happen.
We also learn more about the importance of the Bog, which becomes a significant symbol of life and creation, as “all good things come from the Bog” (82). The Bog sustains the people of the Protectorate with food and the means to make a livelihood. In fact, all life springs from the Bog. The parent’s story about the Bog expands on the characters’ foundational belief system and confers some particulars about Glerk. Starting the creation story about the Bog, the parent uses the words “in the beginning” (83)—the same words that begin the creation narrative in the Bible’s Book of Genesis. When Glerk shares a poem with Fyrian, the dragon asks who made it. Glerk replies, “The Poet. The Bog. The World. And me. They are all the same thing, you know” (77). His answer suggests that Glerk is the compassionate Beast created by the Bog: “The Beast was the Bog, and the Bog was the Beast” (83). Glerk feels that magic is “nonsense” as it was not a part of the “song that built the world” (78), indicating that Glerk knows the song that built the world and perhaps sang it himself.
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