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Chapter 20
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Girl Who Drank the Moon, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family and Love
Storytelling, Censorship, and Control
Memory, Forgetting, and the Future
Sorrow vs. Hope
Summary
Analysis
Fyrian sings Luna’s name over and over as he dances and lands in her palm. Luna smiles. She and Xan have been home for two weeks, and Xan has been sick since they got home. Luna kisses Xan’s cheek, and since Xan is already asleep, Luna lets Fyrian sleep on her bed. She warns him that if he snores, she’ll kick him out. Fyrian promises not to snore and gives her his word as a Simply Enormous Dragon. He wishes his mother was around, but immediately takes this back and says that Glerk, Xan, and Luna are more than enough. He jumps into Luna’s pocket and falls asleep. Luna falls asleep knowing that she loves her family, but she has questions.
The way that Fyrian amends his wish for his mother shows that he’s somewhat uncomfortable with the possibility that he can love his mother and still love Xan, Glerk, and Luna like family. This speaks to Fyrian’s status as a true child (or dragonling), as he doesn’t yet have the mental skills to think about the possibility that he can love everyone equally. However, it’s also worth noting that nobody has pointed this out to him—so in this sense, Fyrian is in the dark and having to figure this out for himself.
Themes
Fyrian begins to snore and in no time, his breath creates a blister on Luna’s hip. She pulls him out and, half asleep, yells at him to get out. He disappears immediately and Luna falls back to sleep as her blister fades. Fyrian dreams of his mother trying to tell him something from the other side of the castle as the old man climbs onto her back. They dive into the volcano and Fyrian sobs, jerking himself awake. He has no idea where he is, and his body feels strange and puffy. He shouts for Xan and Glerk, and reasons that he sleep-flew here, though that’s never happened before. Fyrian finds that his wings don’t work. He flaps them and they blow leaves off of trees, which he tells himself always happens.
To the reader, it’s clear that Fyrian is actually a much larger dragon in this dream or sleep-flying session. When Fyrian tries to tell himself that he sleep-flew and that his wings are always destructive, it shows that he’s learned from Xan how to make things feel true: all he needs to do is tell himself that it’s true. However, doing this does mean that Fyrian isn’t able to allow himself to consider that he’s actually a large dragon right now, which keeps him from truly understanding this situation now or later.
Themes
Fyrian’s heart feels achy after dreaming about his mother. Fyrian’s mother was a beautiful dragon, and Fyrian wonders how many years it’s been since he’s seen her, but thinking about time makes his head hurt. He reasons it hasn’t been too long. Fyrian tries to take stock of his condition. He remembers his mother telling him to sing his fears away, and starts to sing that he’s not afraid. His feet thump heavily, but Fyrian thinks that they’ve always been that way. Fyrian asks where he is, and a figure appears in shadow. Terrified, Fyrian approaches and realizes that it’s a chimney with no house. Upon closer inspection, he finds stars carved into it and a mother hawk living inside it. The hawk is tiny, and Fyrian figures that he’s no longer in the land of the giants.
Fyrian’s mother has been dead for about 500 years, and Fyrian is even older than that. It’s easy to see that his head hurts in the same way that Luna’s does when she tries to think about magic or what she doesn’t know. This opens up the possibility that Xan has cast some sort of spell onto Fyrian, as well. Again, as Fyrian tells himself things that make him feel better but aren’t actually true, he keeps himself from actually considering that things have changed, and makes it so that he thinks of this only as a dream, not an important experience that he should remember truthfully.
Themes
Fyrian sees that he’s in a ruined village. There are pictures of dragons, a volcano, and a girl with starlight for hair. He remembers Fyrian’s mother introducing him to Xan, who would care for Fyrian someday. Then, Xan had freckles and braided hair. Fyrian thinks that this can’t be right—he never knew Xan as a young girl. Fyrian starts to cry as he remembers Xan crying. He wonders how long it’s been and remembers Xan warning him of how dangerous sorrow is. Fyrian peeks into the central tower and pulls out a pair of tiny boots with silver buckles. He remembers that the boots from the castle were giant and reasons that these are different. He remembers the magicians warning Xan and Fyrian to not touch them.
In this instance, Fyrian tries to actively alter a memory that’s likely true and relatively unadulterated. Because he thinks that he’s only ever known Xan as an old woman, he tries to ignore the fact that he did actually know her as a young woman. Especially when he then parrots Xan’s warnings about the dangers of sorrow, it shows that Fyrian has internalized Xan’s teachings and is learning to forget things and censor himself in order to make life more comfortable—even when doing so is dangerous.
Themes
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Something growls in the forest. Fyrian sings to himself and remembers that there are tigers in the woods. He shouts that he’s fierce and begs for the creature to not hurt him. Suddenly, he remembers Xan telling him that they’re family, and that if he ever wanders away and gets scared, he should say “Auntie Xan” three times quickly and a magic rope will bring him back. As the growling approaches, Fyrian shouts for Xan. Nothing happens. He shouts for Luna, and Luna lifts Fyrian out of her pocket, realizing that her burn is gone. Fyrian says that he was scared and in a strange place with a monster. Luna suggests that they both had bad dreams. They go back to sleep.
When Fyrian is only successful at returning to the swamp by yelling for Luna, it makes it very clear that Xan’s magic is already flowing into Luna and making her far more powerful than Xan. However, it’s also worth noting that Fyrian had the wherewithal to think of calling for Luna in the first place. This speaks to the strength of their bond as family members, while the fact that Luna’s name brought him home suggests that within the logic of the novel, family will always be there to help each other.
Themes
Luna wakes up with Fyrian curled up next to her. She tries to wake him, but he doesn’t stir. Luna notices a pair of big black boots. They smell somewhat familiar and the heels say, “Do not wear us unless you mean it.” As Luna picks up a boot to inspect it, pain shoots through her head. After a while, her headache disappears. She throws the boot in a wooden trunk where she keeps her treasures. She decides to tell Glerk and thinks of all the other things she wants to do. Luna knows that there was something she wanted to ask Glerk about, but she can’t remember what it is.
The pain in Luna’s head indicates that these boots are somehow magical. When Luna is unable to remember the boots so she can ask Glerk about them, it means that neither she nor the reader is able to gather this important information—which, going forward, will mean that Luna is going to have a much harder time navigating her world, since she knows so little about it.
Themes
