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Chapter 8
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
The journey home from the Free Cities is disastrous. Luna turns stumps into birds and a stream into cake. Xan is exhausted from having to clean up after her. Xan dreams that night of Zosimos explaining something to her, but she can’t hear over the rumble of the volcano. Finally, Xan and Luna reach home. Glerk meets them and says seriously that Luna is complicated—he’s been watching her silver and blue magic. As Luna runs to the swamp flowers blossom under her feet and she and Fyrian board a boat of her own making. Exhausted, Xan leans against Glerk.
While the kind of magic that Xan has to perform seems understandably tiring, her exhaustion also seems out of proportion for such an accomplished witch. This suggests that there’s even more that Xan needs to remember, as there’s likely an underlying cause for her exhaustion. Luna’s sense that everything is normal comes in part from the fact that Xan hasn’t prepared her for this moment, meaning that Luna’s in no state to hear that she needs to tone it down or accept that this isn’t normal.
Themes
Xan attempts to teach Luna to control her magic. When Xan was enmagicked at age 10, she was sad and grateful for Zosimos’s guidance—he protected her from someone who loved sorrow—but at age five, Luna won’t sit still. She refuses to focus and instead, makes objects dance and somehow breaks through a blocking spell that Xan places on her. Xan sends her outside and collapses in exhaustion. Over the next few days, Luna becomes even more uncontrollable. She accidentally makes one of Fyrian’s wings disappear and Xan resorts to encasing the house and animals in bubbles to protect them. Luna pops them gleefully. Xan asks Glerk to take Fyrian away for safety and tries to hide her rattling breath from him.
Xan’s rattling breath and her inability to effectively place blocking spells on Luna shows again that there’s more to this than the understandable exhaustion that accompanies raising a magical child. This makes it even clearer to the reader that Xan needs to remember something that she forgot so that she can figure out how to deal with Luna. This probably means doing things similar to how Zosimos did them, but since Xan barely remembers him, she can’t put any of his methods into practice.
Themes
As Xan follows Luna and undoes her magic, she grows increasingly weaker. Finally, Glerk reaches the end of his rope and returns to the swamp. As Luna greets him and says that he’s as cute as a bunny, Glerk transforms into a fluffy bunny. Luna cries and Glerk, having no idea who he is, hops away. Xan finds Glerk and then tries and fails to make Luna understand that she turned Glerk into a bunny. Xan puts Luna to sleep, returns an unhappy Glerk to his regular form, and then says that she doesn’t know how to teach Luna. She encases Luna in a cocoon and when Glerk expresses alarm, Xan sadly says that Zosimos used to do this to her.
Now that Xan remembers a bit better, she likely understands that Zosimos may have encouraged her to be ethical at all times—while also understanding that there are times when it’s necessary for someone’s safety to put them in a cocoon like this. This helps Xan to understand that while Zosimos loved her, he wasn’t perfect, and it also begins Xan’s journey of remembering how exactly Zosimos taught her. If she can remember this, she can figure out how to handle Luna.
Themes
Glerk sits heavily and says that he remembers now. He asks why he forgot. Xan points out that sorrow is dangerous, though she can’t remember why, and she believes that they both got used to not remembering things. Glerk thinks there’s more to this, but he leaves the subject alone. Xan tells Glerk to not let Fyrian touch Luna in her cocoon and says that she’s going to the old castle, where she last saw Zosimos, Fyrian’s mother, and the other witches and wizards. She knows she needs to remember things, even if it’s sad.
Xan and Glerk suggest here that when there’s no need to dwell on sadness, it’s normal to try to forget it—but even though it’s normal to do this, it doesn’t mean that this is a good practice. The fact that Xan can’t remember why sorrow is dangerous suggests that there are more foes out there of whom Xan isn’t yet aware.
Themes
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