Sister Ignatia/The Sorrow Eater Character Analysis

But he didn’t kill the Witch. The Witch killed him instead.

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.

Most were sent packing at the age of twelve—right when they had begun to get comfortable. Once they became aware of how much learning there was to be had in the libraries of the Tower and they became hungry for it, they were sent away.

They say she even stole it from the moon. And then she cast a spell over all of us—a great cloud of sorrow, covering the world.

Well, of course it covers the world. That’s why the world is drab and gray. That’s why hope is only for the smallest of children. Best you learn that now.

While it was annoying to have to go hungry in one’s own home, there was always sorrow aplenty throughout the Protectorate, hanging over the town like a cloud.

Or normally there was. But this blasted hope stirred up by Antain was spreading through the town, disrupting the sorrow. Sister Ignatia felt her stomach rumble.

But the volcano never really went out. The wizard stopped it up, but it went underground. And it leaks its fury into the water pools and the mud vats and the noxious vents. It poisons the Bog. It contaminates the water. It is the reason why our children go hungry and our grandmothers wither and our crops are so often doomed to fail. It is the reason we cannot ever leave this place and there is no use trying.

A story can tell the truth, she knew, but a story can also lie. Stories can bend and twist and obfuscate. Controlling stories is power indeed. And who would benefit most from such a power? And over time, Ethyne’s eye drifted less and less toward the forest, and more toward the Tower casting its shadow over the Protectorate.

“How do you know that name?” Sister Ignatia whispered.

“Everyone knows that name,” the madwoman said. “It was in a story. About how the Witch ate a tiger’s heart. They all whisper it. It’s wrong, of course. You don’t have a tiger’s heart. You have no heart at all.”

“There is no such story,” Sister Ignatia said. [...] “I started the stories in the Protectorate. I did. They all came from me. There is no story that I did not tell first.”

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.

But he didn’t kill the Witch. The Witch killed him instead.

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.

Most were sent packing at the age of twelve—right when they had begun to get comfortable. Once they became aware of how much learning there was to be had in the libraries of the Tower and they became hungry for it, they were sent away.

They say she even stole it from the moon. And then she cast a spell over all of us—a great cloud of sorrow, covering the world.

Well, of course it covers the world. That’s why the world is drab and gray. That’s why hope is only for the smallest of children. Best you learn that now.

While it was annoying to have to go hungry in one’s own home, there was always sorrow aplenty throughout the Protectorate, hanging over the town like a cloud.

Or normally there was. But this blasted hope stirred up by Antain was spreading through the town, disrupting the sorrow. Sister Ignatia felt her stomach rumble.

But the volcano never really went out. The wizard stopped it up, but it went underground. And it leaks its fury into the water pools and the mud vats and the noxious vents. It poisons the Bog. It contaminates the water. It is the reason why our children go hungry and our grandmothers wither and our crops are so often doomed to fail. It is the reason we cannot ever leave this place and there is no use trying.

A story can tell the truth, she knew, but a story can also lie. Stories can bend and twist and obfuscate. Controlling stories is power indeed. And who would benefit most from such a power? And over time, Ethyne’s eye drifted less and less toward the forest, and more toward the Tower casting its shadow over the Protectorate.

“How do you know that name?” Sister Ignatia whispered.

“Everyone knows that name,” the madwoman said. “It was in a story. About how the Witch ate a tiger’s heart. They all whisper it. It’s wrong, of course. You don’t have a tiger’s heart. You have no heart at all.”

“There is no such story,” Sister Ignatia said. [...] “I started the stories in the Protectorate. I did. They all came from me. There is no story that I did not tell first.”

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.