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 26-30Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 26 Summary: “In Which a Madwoman Learns a Skill and Puts It to Use”
The madwoman remembers how as a child, she listened to her now-dead mother tell stories about the Witch. The madwoman didn’t know if there was truth in the stories or not. The madwoman’s magic continues to grow, and she draws pictures incessantly as she did in childhood. The Sisters keep removing her paper, but the madwoman magically finds more. She realizes she is insane and wonders if her “madness and her magic are linked” (213). She doesn’t know if she can be cured or not, but she does know that she can now do transformations. The madwoman can change anything into paper, and she can transform herself into different insects. She hopes to someday change into a bird and fly to find Luna.
One day the madwoman changes into a beetle and spies on Sister Ignatia, who looks peaked and hungry. Grand Elder Gherland visits Sister Ignatia and informs her that Antain intends to go after the Witch. Not only that, but the townspeople have gotten wind of Antain’s plans and believe he can succeed. The Sister thinks that Antain will probably die in the forest but is concerned that Antain could return. If Antain comes back alive, even if he doesn’t find the Witch, people might still believe there is something out there and start to get ideas. Gherland tearfully suggests that one of the Sisters of the Star could eliminate Antain. Sister Ignatia eats Gherland’s sorrow. She tells Gherland that it must appear as if the Witch killed Antain, so she will go and do the job herself. Sister Ignatia promises that Antain’s death will be quick and painless.
Chapter 27 Summary: “In Which Luna Learns More Than She Wished”
Inside the ruined castle, Luna is in the middle of a whirlwind of talking papers. Luna orders them to speak, and they tell her the story of the castle and magicians who came there to study magic. The papers also tell Luna about Xan’s childhood. A “tall woman with considerable strength” (221) and dubious magical ethics brought Xan to the castle when she was a small child. The woman found Xan alone in the woods and claimed that Xan’s parents were dead. Xan was “a fountain of sorrow” (221). The magicians decided to use Xan as an experiment and see if they could enmagic her. The magicians didn’t know if their attempt would work, and some worried it could kill Xan. But they went ahead and successfully filled Xan with magic that “infused” into her being (222).
Zosimos was one of the magicians who did not want to enmagic Xan and didn’t want the other magicians to continue experimenting on her. Zosimos had been enmagicked as a child, and he knew the difficulties Xan would now face, including having to live a long time. To protect her, Zosimos became Xan’s guardian. Zosimos knew that some of the magicians were evil, especially the Sorrow Eater whose power continued to grow. Zosimos tried to warn the other magicians about the Sorrow Eater, but they ignored him. Meanwhile, Xan grew, and her own powers increased while Zosimos aged and weakened. The papers tell Luna that they hope Xan has become strong enough to face the Sorrow Eater.
Chapter 28 Summary: “In Which Several People Go into the Woods”
Xan worries about her loss of magic. She understands that she has unfairly put Luna in the same position the magicians put her in as a child, and she’s upset that Luna can’t learn about herself or hear the word “magic.” Before she departs for the Protectorate, Xan writes a note to Luna explaining things. Xan transforms into a swallow and leaves.
Antain, now the proud father of a son named Luken, travels into the woods to intercept the Witch. The madwoman watches Antain leave and knows that Sister Ignatia will follow and kill him. The madwoman realizes that the stories her mother told her are incorrect: The real evil Witch lives in the Tower. The madwoman turns the bars on her window into paper and, calling up her flock of paper birds, rides them into the woods.
Grand Elder Gherland tells Sister Ignatia that Antain left on his quest. She wonders if the madwoman’s escape is connected and heads off in pursuit.
Luna discovers Xan’s note and angrily rips it up without reading it all. Luna decides to use her map, and she and the crow follow Xan. Luna’s magic begins to spill out. She doesn’t notice when the letter reassembles itself or when one scrap of paper slips into her pocket.
Glerk and Fyrian read the entire note. In it, Xan tells Luna she is changing and apologizes for keeping things from her. Glerk notices the blue-and-silver color in the paper and realizes Luna’s magic is emerging. Glerk worries that Xan will not recover from her transformation and knows he and Fyrian must go after Xan. Glerk suddenly remembers that he used to love traveling the world. Fyrian is excited to go on a journey. They follow Luna’s footprints, which are filled with magic.
Chapter 29 Summary: “In Which There Is a Story with a Volcano in It”
A parent tells a child about the volcano, and how it was made by a different, older Witch, not the evil, baby-snatching Witch they have now. Although no one has seen the Witch, the parent hears that she looks like a girl, or a lady, or an old woman, depending. The parent relates that there also used to be dragons in the world, but they are gone now.
Before the Witch made the volcano, the forest was safe and filled with little villages. But because the Witch “hates happiness,” she gathered up her dragons, put them inside the volcano, and made them blow it up against their wills. Thankfully, the “brave little wizard” stopped the eruption and “saved the world” (242). The parent cautions that the volcano isn’t extinguished, however; it is still active underground, and its poison emerges in the hot pools and pockets of toxic gas that riddle the forest. The volcano even “poisons the Bog” (242). The parent concludes that the volcano is the source of all their misery, and the reason that there is no point in trying move anywhere else. Eventually, the parent gloomily concludes, the volcano will erupt again and kill them all, putting an end to everyone’s suffering.
Chapter 30 Summary: “In Which Things Are More Difficult Than Originally Planned”
Despite her map, Luna gets lost in the dark. She stumbles and falls, cutting her hand and twisting her ankle. Luna feels the ticking inside her head growing louder. She is frustrated that while she knows the word magic, she still doesn’t know what it is or what it means. Luna ignores the scrap of paper scuttling around in her pocket. The crow wisely suggests that they stop for the night and get some sleep. Luna knows this is good advice, but she pictures Xan out there alone, sick or possibly hurt. Luna thinks about death. She knows that a loved one’s death makes the people who are left behind very sad, but that the dead people themselves “had moved onto other matters” (245). Luna once asked Glerk what happens when people die, but he simply replied, “The Bog” (245). Although Xan never talks about dying, Luna realizes that she probably is. Luna decides to continue the journey. Just as the crow warns her to be careful, the ground shifts and Luna falls again.
Chapters 26-30 Analysis
Words and stories’ power to affect reality plays a major role in this section of the novel. The madwoman recalls her mother telling the same stories that the first-person parent narrators have been telling the child listeners: stories about “brave little wizards” (212), the Seven League Boots, volcanoes, and the sorrow/baby/soul-eating Witch, a Witch with a tiger’s heart. We can infer that one of the parent narrators is the madwoman’s mother. The madwoman was “never sure” her mother’s stories were true, and when she brings up those stories again later, this time she is sure they are not accurate. Even if they did contain a “hint” of truth as suggested by the title of Chapter 8, the madwoman knows it was “was twisted and bent” (229). The madwoman has learned that the true evil is Sister Ignatia, the witch in the Tower. We see more evidence of the inaccuracies of the parent’s stories in her characterizations of dragons as “wicked creatures—full of violence and duplicity and deceit” (241). Her description is ironic, given Fyrian’s loving, forgiving, guileless nature and his mother’s self-sacrifice.
Sister Ignatia and Grand Elder Gherland realize that Antain has the power to change the narrative that has kept the Protectorate citizens powerless. Should Antain return from the forest, even if he is unsuccessful, others may follow his lead, and “soon those reports of nothing become something” (218)—transforming into a new story that gives people hope and ideas. For this reason, Sister Ignatia knows that Antain’s death must be blamed on the Witch, and this is why she does not advertise the madwoman’s escape. “Ideas, after all, are dangerous” (229), and will lead to their loss of societal control. The people in the Protectorate are already experiencing hope, thanks to Antain’s idea of hunting the Witch, and their sorrow is beginning to dissipate.
We also learn about more transformations. The madwoman, through her magic and madness, can change forms. We learn that both Xan and Zosimos were unfairly changed—enmagicked—as children, which had painful consequences that Luna also shares. Xan transforms into a swallow, but she is also transitioning to death. Xan is “thinning, shrinking, fading” (224). Luna knows that all Xan’s dissimulation has “one terrible answer” (246): She is dying. Glerk also experiences a transformative epiphany when he realizes that “there were parts of himself that he had left behind to live with Xan” (237). Love can hurt. Love can withhold and repress. Xan admits lying to Luna to protect her from heartbreak and confesses to withholding the one word “that defines her life” (236). Glerk’s own love for Xan caused him to forget how he longs for the Bog and the world. As he steps away from their sheltered home, his heart leaps.
Fyrian does not understand why Xan left a note to say goodbye, but Xan knows that “some things were easier said on paper, anyway” (225). Sorrow is to be avoided, and Xan avoids unpleasant things. Talking to Luna would be too hard. Paper is an important symbol in the novel. In the case of Xan’s note, and the papers in the castle that speak to Luna, paper represents a means of communication and sharing knowledge. The madwoman’s life and obsession revolve around her “world of paper” (228), and Xan feels as if her life is “made of paper” (225). Paper preserves ideas, but it is fragile and emotionless. Paper is easily crumpled, destroyed, and remade. As Xan feels herself slipping away, she laments, “Everything fades and shreds and crinkles away to nothingness” (225).
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