by Lee French
The ghost inside the sphere represented the best idea they had to subdue the Not-Claire until they found a way to destroy it. Drew watched the swirling mist and colors, not sure what to do. Every time he had to deal with all this ghost and magic crap, he brimmed with uncertainty, and that grated. He wanted to know exactly what to do with firm conviction and carry it out with confidence.
But he didn’t and couldn’t. “What happens if we fail?”
“With this ghost? Not much. It’s not that powerful yet. Hasn’t even figured out what it looked like in life. We escape and figure out how we went wrong, then come back and try again.”
“I don’t see a downside there.”
“We’ll make it more powerful and it’ll remember us next time.”
“Because of course we will.” Running sounded good, but it accomplished nothing. Drew tried to force confidence and certainty. He managed queasy. “Let’s do this. Get in there and take it over.”
Kay tugged on the sphere. The swirling ball of mist floated over the ground toward them. “Are you sure?”
Cringing, Drew wished Kay hadn’t asked. “Just do it.”
With a determined nod, Kay let the sphere dissipate. He stuck his hand into the ghost. White swirled around them, turning darker and building from Drew’s feet outward. First, a hardwood floor crept in every direction from him. It reached a wall and flickered upward. By the time tendrils constructed a bed, Drew recognized his bedroom.
“What are we doing here?”
“Best I got,” Kay said from beside him.
Drew snapped his head to the side and saw another young man wearing the same clothing. Instead of Drew’s curly red hair, glasses, and thin frame, Kay had a square jaw, short brown hair, and bulging muscles.
Kay met his gaze with panic in his eyes. “Oh, no,” he moaned. “We’re screwed.”
“What? Why?”
Their guest slammed its undefined arms against the walls with a low, rumbling roar.
“Later. Try not to let it touch you.”
“Why?”
“Because you have no power here.”
“What?” Drew ducked behind Kay. He held onto Kay’s shoulders and peered around his head.
“Come up with better questions,” Kay snapped. He held his hands up, forming a round, colorless shield from mist.
The other ghost pounded on the wall and screamed at it again in a more human, male voice. Drew noticed that the blank beige paint flashed with a monochrome floral pattern. The bed flickered, fighting a change to white plastic.
“What’s happening?” Drew whispered.
“Something triggered its memory,” Kay murmured. “It’s trying to force its will against ours. Think really hard about the strongest memory you have from this bedroom.”
The moment he’d first walked into this room popped into Drew’s head. When Justin adopted Claire, Grandpa Jack and Grandma Tammy took Drew in as a foster child. Grandpa Jack had walked him down the hall to this room and showed it to him.
“Is this room okay?” Grandpa Jack said.
Drew rolled his suitcase inside the biggest room he’d had to himself since his parents died. Standing in the center, he turned in a circle and tripped over himself. He fell backward and hit his back on the bed frame.
Grandpa Jack lurched in to try to save him from himself but wasn’t fast enough. “Boy, are you all right?”
Grinning like an idiot even as he winced, Drew sat on the floor. “This is really for me? By myself?”
The ghost screamed again, throwing Drew out of the scene and back into the ghost’s twisted reality. Halfway up, a stripe of wall surrendered to the floral print wallpaper. The bed gave up one corner to a cheap table. Kitchen counters sprouted below the wallpaper.
“We’re losing,” Kay growled. “Your memory isn’t helping.”
Drew shrank closer to Kay. “Then get us out of here! I don’t have anything else.”
“Working on it.” The shield grew in size until it blocked Drew’s view. Thunderous clangs echoed in the room and Kay shuddered under the weight of impacts on his shield. The ghost ripped the shield away and threw it at the wall. The white table engulfed Drew’s bed and a cheap, harvest gold refrigerator replaced his window.
With each passing moment, the ghost gained tiny bits of definition until Drew felt confident calling it a tall, broad-shouldered man. It snapped an arm out and wrapped a huge, meaty hand around Kay’s neck.
“We’re so screwed,” Kay squeaked.
Drew gulped. He had no idea what to do.
Chapter 8
Claire
As much as Claire wanted to help Justin find Iulia, she didn’t know how. Returning to her body gave her no information. Though she could float through the walls, she worried about getting lost or failing to understand her surroundings. If she had the ability to create weapons for Justin and Avery to use, trying seemed like a better use of her time.
“I’m not sure how time passes there compared to here, but I’ll come back as soon as I have a reason to.” That meant going through the tunnel gauntlet again, of course. Maybe an enchanted weapon would help with that too.
“I’ll see if I can figure out how to get to your demesne.” Justin draped an arm over her shoulders, but it fell through. The corner of his mouth curled down and he rested his hand on his hip instead. “And bring Avery if I can.”
Claire flipped him a mock salute and floated to the cottage. Though she didn’t know how to return to her demesne, she had a good idea. Splinters and chunks of wood and shingles littered the ground around the small house. Ropes anchored to metal spikes in the ground held down tarps covering the roof.
Out of habit, she aimed for the front door and passed through the mudroom to reach the kitchen. No wall separated it from the family room. Though Claire had died before the power released by the destruction of the Palace blew up in the living room, the hole in the roof didn’t surprise her. Somehow, she thought her spirit had been there, watching and rejecting Iulia’s attempt to build a new seal. Maybe that moment had destroyed any chance of her spirit resting peacefully.
The gaping hole centered over a worn, sagging brown couch. This piece of furniture had served as her gateway to the Palace. She approached it from behind and wished she could touch the aged, stained leather. This couch meant a lot to her, which explained how it became her gateway. Someday, Justin would have to replace it with something newer. Claire hoped she could accept the change when it came.
She drifted through it. As soon as her legs reached the seat cushion, a flash of white light filled her vision and she stood in the woods, solid and full of color. Leaving took so much effort, but returning cost her nothing more than a flicker of thought in the right place.
“Welcome back.” Rondy sat in the chair Claire had made for him earlier. “What happened?”
Staying here by himself, unable to affect the demesne, must have been boring. Claire smiled and resolved to figure out some way to help with that. She sat in her own chair and told him everything. Secrets between them now served nothing and no one.
“If you have any suggestions for how to start making weapons and armor for them, I’m listening.”
Rondy rubbed his chin and stared into the distance. “Caius did it, so we know it’s possible. Unfortunately, he’d been doing it for so long, his effort took a whisper of thought, which we can’t duplicate. In addition, he had the whole Palace to draw from.
“You, of course, can make a weapon without much work. I think the first thing to try for making one permanent is to create some kind of forge and go through the motions of banging on the metal with a hammer.”
Claire wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know how to do any of that.”
“Neither do I. But if we only stick to what we know, we don’t learn much. And if this doesn’t work, we move on to the next idea and the next until something does work. With luck, each failure will give us a piece of the puzzle until we can see the picture.”
“So
unds like a lot of work.” Not that she intended to give up. Claire stood and held her hand out. The leather-wrapped, T-shaped hilt of a sword rippled into existence, followed by a thick silver blade as long as her arm. She held it up and examined it. As far as she remembered, this matched Justin’s sword.
Rondy stood and took the blade. He slashed it through the air and used it to attack branches of the nearest tree. Leaves flew aside to land elsewhere. “The balance is a little off and the edge isn’t sharp enough. But overall, well done. You can fix that while you work on it. Now build a forge.”
“I have no idea how to build a forge.”
“You need enough heat to melt steel, a flat surface hard enough to bend steel on, and a trough of cold water deep enough to hold the entire blade. Maybe we should try replacing this leather too, so we’ll need a deer to hunt.”
Claire stared at him. “You want me to hunt a deer and make straps from its hide? Are you crazy? The deer would just be a manifestation of my will, the same as if I conjured leather strips.”
“Maybe. And maybe it’s not the same. We’re going to try things, remember?”
“But the deer would just do what I wanted it to. It’ll stand there and let me peel strips off its hide. Which is gross, so I don’t want to do that.”
“Invest it with enough sentience to behave like a deer.”
“What?”
Rondy stabbed the sword into the ground and draped an arm around her shoulders. “This is about going through the steps to make something so it feels real. And I might be wrong. Maybe none of this will help. But the more time, effort, and energy you invest in a process, the more likely it is to turn out the way you want. Snap your fingers to make a sword, and what have you got? A construct made of mist that you don’t care about. Toil over its creation in a furnace, and you’re putting something of yourself into the blade.”
“Maybe I should mine the iron,” Claire grumbled.
“Maybe you should. Begin at the beginning.”
“That was a joke. Besides, I don’t know how to mine anything. Or forge a sword, or hunt a deer.”
“Don’t you see, Claire? It doesn’t matter. The point isn’t that you follow the directions perfectly and make the pretty cake pictured with the recipe. The point is that you make the cake with your own hands, out of quality ingredients, and you do it with as much love and care as you’re capable of investing in it because you want the person eating the cake to know they’re important to you.”
“How did we switch to cake?” When Rondy gave her a look, Claire sighed and nodded. She understood the metaphor. “So I do all this stuff however I think it should be done, and don’t worry about the details of mining or forging, or whatever. Just focus and make the cake.”
Rondy squeezed her and let go. “Start by changing this sword into a pickaxe and mining some iron to make a sword.”
Claire took the weapon. With a thought, she shifted the shape to a pick and slung it over her shoulder. “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work I go,” she muttered.
“They mined diamonds, Claire.”
“Whatever.” She plunged into the woods. Chewing over Rondy’s cake speech, she decided to put the iron ore a fair distance away. In a cave. Past a stream. The longer it took her to get there, the more time she had to think about what it should look like.
While she walked, she created a deer. She’d seen real deer before. Or had she? In her head, she pictured a stately, statuesque creature with an impressive rank of antlers. Did it come from a memory, or from the idea of how a deer should look? Maybe she’d seen pictures at some point. But her was father a… something. He’d had a job. But she couldn’t remember what he did.
Beside her, the silver outline of a creature streaked upward from four hooves. The lines danced into the air, twining together and spreading to create a body and a head. Two fuzzy ears sprouted and filled in. But silver didn’t match the deer she in her mind. As with the outline, color rippled from the hooves until it created small details with brown, white, beige, black and yellow.
She regarded the creature and decided something seemed off. After a long moment of staring at it, she realized the head needed more. The tawny deer following her grew two bony antlers with graceful curves and five sharp points each. This buck towered over her, graceful and magnificent.
To get the leather she needed for wrapping the hilt, she’d have to kill this noble creature. That seemed wrong. After going to the trouble to craft such an impressive animal, killing it felt… rude. Maybe she could just strip half of it, regrow the skin, and let it go. Even if it felt pain, at least it got to live.
She touched its soft, white chin and met its empty gaze. To do this right, she needed to hunt the buck. This required the creature to have autonomy and enough intelligence to understand the game. Though it made her goals seem even more cruel, she needed this to make the swords. They needed the swords to save the world.
At her wish, a tiny puff of green mist floated out of her locket and slipped into the buck’s left ear.
The deer blinked huge, brown eyes. Green shimmered across its body from nose to tail and hooves, leaving it with a subtle green undertone. It opened its mouth and bleated like a giant goat.
“I ought to be able to understand you.”
It bleated again.
Claire shrugged and figured she’d kept it simple enough to not have actual language. “Go amuse yourself.” She continued on her way and noted the deer turning to wander in another direction. Later, she’d make herself a bow and hunt it. Hopefully, it would hide and run away from her.
When she reached the stream, she hopped onto a flat, wet rock and slipped. Thanks to her mastery of physics in her demesne, she only fell halfway to the water’s surface. Going by Rondy’s plan, though, she knew she needed to conquer the stream. She deposited herself at the near bank again and took more care to cross.
From there, she decided to practice her stealth for the upcoming hunt. Instead of thinking about the silliness and uselessness of the task, she spent time placing her feet and slipping between branches to avoid making noise. Maybe she’d discover how to be solid on Earth at some point, and then have a use for this skill. And maybe pigs would fly.
After a while, the cave loomed dark and cool. Claire plunged into it and hurried down a rough-hewn spiral into the ground. The corkscrew took her deeper and deeper until she reached the end. There, she willed a puff of greenish light into existence and found glittering silver rock exactly where she expected to find it.
“Is iron ore silver?” Only now did she think to wonder. But it didn’t matter. She heaved her pickaxe and slammed it against the wall as hard as she could. Chips of silvery rock showered her. Hitting it again and again, she chose to be grateful for all the time she’d spent chopping firewood for Justin, though that had nothing to do with anything. In her own demesne, her muscles lasted until she decided to stop.
She kept going until a chunk of rock the size of her head came loose. “I hope this is big enough for two swords.” Coming back and doing this all over again for Avery seemed stupid. The rock weighed more than she expected, which made no sense. Claire shrugged at herself and snapped a piece of cloth out of nowhere. Only the materials had to come from honest work, not the tools. She wrapped the cloth around the rock and bunched it to make two handles. Using those, she hefted the rock onto her back with the handles over her shoulders.
For added challenge, she jogged up the tunnel. Sweat beaded on her brow and soaked her shirt at the small of her back. True to Rondy’s advice, she avoided altering the tunnel to make it shorter or give it light. When she reached the end, she paused long enough to adjust her grip then resumed running. She splashed through the stream, happy to have the cool water hit her skin and soak her clothes.
Only when she returned to the clearing, panting and ready to fall over, did she realize she could have set up her forge next to the cave. She dropped the rock and collapsed next to it. Lying on her back, gasping for breath and facing a
bright, blue sky, she thought through the next phase of this plan.
To proceed, she needed a fire, hammer, anvil, and barrel of water.
This quest was going to take forever.
Chapter 9
Drew
“Give me control!” Drew squeezed Kay’s shoulders so tight his knuckles turned white.
Gripping the enemy ghost’s arm, Kay dangled from its hand around his neck. His sneakers kicked open air. “Glurk?”
“You’re a ghost. I’m a human. It can’t dominate me. And I’m already possessed!”
Kay stopped struggling. His body dissipated and the enemy ghost staggered forward. The half-kitchen, half-bedroom faded, and Drew landed hard enough that he fell. His shoulder hit a rock and a bone cracked. The enemy ghost, now closer in appearance to a large, musclebound man, hovered over Drew.
With a panicked squeak, Drew scrabbled away until he got his feet underneath himself and ran. “We’re going to need a bigger boat!” He glanced over his shoulder and saw the ghost in slow, steady pursuit. Drew leaped over a fallen tree to land in someone’s backyard. Two kids played on a swing set. Their dog jumped to its feet and barked.
Mutt rushed to Drew’s side. “Shut up! We’re not invaders!”
The dog stopped barking.
Drew dove into the woods again and bolted in a different direction. “Can it chase us once it loses sight of us?”
“That made no sense,” Kay said, his voice breathy and full of wonder, “but it worked. And no, it should lose track of us. Keep running, though. Just in case.”
“Master, that was strange and scary!”
“I know, Mutt.” Puffing and gasping, Drew had to slow down to catch his breath. “We’re not doing that again until we have a better plan.”
“If we can find a way to bring Mutt with us, that’d up our odds of winning.”
“You’re remarkably calm, Kay.”
“I’m panicking so hard you can’t tell anymore.”
Drew wanted to laugh. It came out as choked sobs. “Why did it win?”
“I didn’t expect to become separate. I couldn’t use your latent witch abilities to enhance my own power.”