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 6-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary: “In Which Antain Gets Himself in Trouble”
Five years later, Antain, the oldest of his six brothers, is now almost 18 and still an Elder-in-Training. Despite his efforts, he is unable to please the Elders. He is also unable to please his mother, the Grand Elder’s sister, who is upset at his lack of progress. She feels that she deserves the prestige of having an Elder for a son. Antain doesn’t understand why he is not yet an Elder but doesn’t mind too much. He enjoys woodworking and making toys for his youngest brother, Wyn. Antain also likes helping the kitchen staff and the gardeners. He attends school because he enjoys learning but misses the one person he wishes he had talked to, a girl named Ethyne who left school and joined the Sisters of the Star.
Antain dreads the Day of Sacrifice. The memory of the dark-haired madwoman fighting for her baby has stayed with him, aching like a “great needle in his soul” (46). He thinks of the madwoman often; she is still incarcerated in the Sisters’ dark Tower. Antain guiltily wonders why the Protectorate must keep up the sacrifices. He believes there must be a better solution and laments what the town has become. Antain has avoided attending the Days of Sacrifice by feigning illnesses.
Antain goes about his Elder-in-Training tasks: reading and erasing citizen complaints, spraying the room with a special perfume that makes people “frightened and grateful,” and glowering at servants. Grand Elder Gherland takes Antain aside and tells him that while Antain has made his dead father proud, he needs to shape up. Gherland reveals he is protecting Antain from the other Elders who are “muttering” about him. Antain doesn’t understand why he needs protection but promises to try harder. Days later, however, Antain avoids the next Day of Sacrifice. The Elders know Antain will “have to be dealt with” (49).
Chapter 7 Summary: “In Which a Magical Child Is More Trouble by Half”
Now five years old, Luna is a handful. She breaks rules and is mischievous and careless. Luna also continues to gather magic inside her. Glerk worries what will happen when her magic eventually emerges. Xan doesn’t like thinking about unpleasant things and urges Glerk to be positive, saying that perhaps Luna’s magic will never come out.
Xan is forced to face reality on a visit to Obsidian, one of the Free Cities. Twice a year, Xan journeys to the Free Cities, one time bringing a baby, and the other time using her magic to help those who need healing and care. On a care-giving visit, Xan brings Luna along, and Luna’s magic erupts. She transforms a lump of dough into a hat and then runs through the town, leaving a mess of magical transformations in her wake. Xan follows behind, changing everything back to the way it was, but Xan worries. Luna doesn’t know what she is doing and could easily hurt herself or someone else. Xan also finds that her own magic is emptying more quickly.
Xan puts Luna in an enchanted sleep to stop her magical deluge but is upset that she broke the promise she made to Zosimos, her long-ago teacher and guardian, to never use magic to interfere with another person’s will. Xan normally avoids remembering her sad childhood because she knows that “sorrow was dangerous” (56), but a few memories return to her, among them something scary. Xan can’t place what she was supposed to remember but knows it will help her with Luna.
Chapter 8 Summary: “In Which a Story Contains a Hint of Truth”
A first-person narrator agrees to a child’s request for a story but cautions it is an unpleasant and sad tale. Long ago, the parent begins, when the forest wasn’t deadly, good witches and wizards lived in the Enchanters’ Castle in the woods, and people traveled there for medicines and counsel. That all changed when an angry, evil Witch riding a dragon wanted to “pull the fire from the bulge of the earth” (58) and destroy everyone. The parent tells the questioning child that “of course” that’s what the Witch wanted. The sky filled with ash and smoke, and the water and air went bad. Thankfully, one brave wizard yanked the Witch off her dragon and threw the dragon into the erupting crater, which stopped the fire from destroying everything. The Witch, however, killed the wizard. The parent explains that “this is why it doesn’t pay to be brave” (59)—you just end up dead. The parent assures the child that this story, like all the stories the parent tells, is true.
Chapter 9 Summary: “In Which Several Things Go Wrong”
The trip home from Obsidian with Luna exhausts Xan, who must reverse the many spells that young Luna carelessly casts. Glerk can tell that Luna’s magic has arrived: He has watched blue-and-silver strands of magic approach their home and knows that Xan’s own magic is a soft green color.
Xan knows it will be a challenge to teach the young Luna how to focus and control her powers. Xan was 10 and frightened when she was enmagicked. When Zosimos became her guardian, Xan was happy to follow his direction. Xan finds that Luna cannot sit still and listen to instruction or even understand that she is casting magic. Xan finds that her own magic is failing and her health is weakening: She looks pale and older. Xan realizes her magic is draining into Luna. When Luna accidentally turns Glerk, who is ancient and allegedly impervious to magic, into a bunny, they know they must do something drastic, as Luna is a danger to them all. Temporarily, Xan puts Luna in stasis inside a magical cocoon. She remembers that Zosimos did this to her as a child.
Glerk wonders why he had forgotten this. Xan explains that fearing sorrow, they both “became accustomed to not remembering things” (68). Now, however, Xan needs to remember. She tells Glerk she is going to the old castle where she saw Zosimos and Fyrian’s mother for the last time to try to remember things, even if they are sad.
Chapter 10 Summary: “In Which a Witch Finds a Door, and a Memory, Too”
Xan follows a trail up the volcano crater to the old castle, which is now nothing but a ruin. All but one of the stones are missing. Xan finds the stone that remains and reads the words carved into it by Zosimos. One side of the stone shows “Don’t forget,” and the other side says, “I mean it” (71).
Xan simply can’t remember what Zosimos wanted from her and, leaning her head against the stone, apologizes to him. This triggers magic inside the stone, which opens into doors. Xan suddenly remembers a day when she was 13 and Zosimos warned her about the dangers of sorrow, reminding Xan that “she is still about” (72). Thanks to his warning, Xan hid her memories and sadness deep inside. But now, a few memories are returning. Xan remembers living in the castle. It was full of people and life, which changed when the volcano erupted. As everyone fled, Xan tried to protect them all—except for one person—with her spells.
Xan remembers how Zosimos and Fyrian’s mother flew into the volcano and stopped the eruption, sacrificing themselves and saving everyone. Yet strangely, not long afterward, Xan could hardly remember Zosimos. Determined to find out why her memories are hiding, and why Zosimos magically hid the castle, Xan walks through the doors.
Chapters 6-10 Analysis
This section expands on the Protectorate’s repressive nature and builds the theme of the suppression of ideas. Gherland explains the Council of Elders’ totalitarian philosophy to Antain. The Elders control people’s by denying them means to express themselves, request redress, or build their own futures. Gherland declares that “by denying access, we give our people a gift. They learn to accept their lot in life. They learn that any action is inconsequential” (43). Similarly, Gherland sees little value in public education, since he views the school as a “structure to house and amuse those who have no futures until they are old enough to work for the benefit of the Protectorate” (45). Antain’s own teacher is a sycophant, and Gherland doesn’t understand why someone of Antain’s “stature” doesn’t have a tutor instead of attending school. The Council even goes to the extreme of drugging petitioners to ensure their deference (43). They keep the people hopeless, helpless, and dependent.
Antain is one of the only citizens who relishes the sunshine that briefly breaks through the fog in the Protectorate. The sunlight gives him a “momentary rush of hope and promise” (43). Unlike other citizens, Antain is an independent thinker who questions why the sacrifices must continue. Antain struggles against the idea that change is impossible. Even though no one has ever quit the Sisters, he maintains hope that Ethyne may leave one day.
The child in the first-person narratives also continues to question the parent, wondering if the stories are true. The parent insists the story is true and rhetorically asks, “What other kinds of stories are there?” (58). The chapter title, however, indicates that the parent’s story contains only “a hint of truth” (57). The bit of truth is expanded on by Xan, who tells the real story of how Zosimos and Fyrian’s mother stop the volcano. The moral of the parent’s story reinforces the Protectorate agenda: Don’t resist; accept your lot in life. The parent explains bravery gets you killed and that “is why we don’t stand up to the Witch” (59). The storyteller and the story are suspect.
Xan, albeit to her horror, also uses her powers to suppress. Xan reasons that the need to protect Luna and others from Luna’s magic justifies breaking her promise to never use magic to control another person. Xan also explores why she repressed and hid away her own memories, which seem connected to past sorrow. Xan, Glerk, and Zosimos all comment on the “danger” of sorrow. Their comments foreshadow the presence of a mysterious “she” who makes their sorrow dangerous.
Sorrow creates a numbing, forgetful fog. In the Protectorate’s City of Sorrows, “it was always cloudy. Fog clung to the city walls and cobbled streets like tenacious moss” (43). The people in the Protectorate—except Antain—have no hope or initiative. They are sorrowful, and as Gherland comments, “Their days remain, as they should be, cloudy” (43). The themes of memory and sorrow and self-deception and self-knowledge continue to build as the novel progresses.
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