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Zig Zag Girl
We landed somewhere in the boondocks, hitting the ground hard. Going from the cold mountain air to the dusty plains of Iowa wasn’t exactly the easiest transition, but I’d had worse.
Grace, however, apparently had not. As soon as we landed, she hit the ground and screamed. Her body shuddered and twisted, chest heaving as she made retching sounds. Her skin began to peel away, strands of light crawling over her skin and hair like a virus.
With a final, shuddering scream, her body burst. The sword went flying, the tip slicing into the ground where it landed. Grace’s body rested on the floor, translucent and pale once again. She hacked once or twice more before drawing herself up, her body inverting to help her reach an upright position.
Her faint shape gave one more shiver before she opened her eyes and floated calmly.
“...finished?” I asked.
“Apologies,” she answered, her voice faint and weak. “I did not think...I have not been solid for a long time. Your hat’s magic interfered with my own.”
“Alright,” I said, walking over to the sword. I yanked it from the ground and turned back to her. “Just to be clear: you can become a real girl? You don’t have to be a sword?”
“We can take any form we choose,” she answered. “Solid or otherwise makes no difference. We are not that different than your hat; I am surprised you don’t know more.”
I glanced up at my hat and back down at the sword.
Hunh. The hatter never told me about that fun little detail. I mentally filed it away for further study.
“But just to be clear,” she said, echoing my words, “we cannot be in two places at once. In order for the sword to exist in your reality – in order for it to be ‘real’, as you say – I must remain hollow. In order for my form to come into your reality, the sword must no longer exist.”
“Ah,” I answered, “so that’s why it disappeared inside your body.”
She nodded. “Correct.”
“Interesting,” I murmured, sticking the sword back in my pocket. “You can tell me more about it on the way to the last weapon.”
Under Grace’s tired direction, I found my way to Wolf's last known residence. It was somewhat underwhelming.
At first glance, it was an old farmhouse. Simple in its construction, it had a wraparound porch raised up off the ground, one door leading directly inside and one around the corner. A back door, I was guessing. The rickety set of stairs leading up to the porch was missing a few steps, likely eaten away by rot, and any semblance of railing had been torn away by weather.
On the one hand, I couldn't believe this was the hideout of someone as supposedly powerful as Wolf. On the other hand, he outclassed me in the realm of enigmatism, so this might actually belong to him, just as it is. It could be a diversion for anyone seeking him on this planet.
I certainly couldn't talk. All my apartments and hideouts were red herrings.
But if this were simple sleight-of-hand, Grace wouldn't have led me to this beaten-up shack. There’d be no point. If this was the last place Wolf had been seen, then it was at least a starting point.
Unfortunately, the same paranoia surrounding Sparrow's castle also surrounded this place. As soon as I set foot on the grounds, a wave of fear and anxiety washed over me. I could barely get the next few steps in. I was finally frozen on the last step, paralyzed and on the verge of suffering from a very strong panic attack.
I tried my best to shake it off, but nothing worked. Fear crawled into my lungs and hung inside my body, wrapping around my insides like a snake.
I couldn't breathe.
My chest tightened.
Feelings of shame, terror, and rage crashed against me in overwhelming waves, and there was nothing I could do to fight back.
A flash of blue light washed over me from my pocket, and the snake in my guts loosened, falling away. Grace's light rescued me from Wolf's paranoia and rage, her calm demeanor surrounding me and her aura of peace giving me the space to breathe.
"What the hell?!" I gasped. "Why is this house so violent?!"
"He lived through many years of terror and isolation," she said as she shaped herself. She spread her arms wide as her body completed, slowly descending until she alighted on the rotting porch. "People began to hate him. Despise him. Even accuse him of witchcraft and evil as they surrounded this house in a mob. And people think technology makes them more advanced." She began to walk forward, and I made sure to move with her. Stay in her light.
"Wolf became so wrapped up in it, he..." She paused. A phantom hand reached out and tapped at the door. The material shuddered, swinging inward. She turned and looked at me over her shoulder, her face fallen in sorrow. "Let's just say his drinking wasn't the only thing driving Layla away from this place."
"This place attacked her?" I asked, following Grace through the house. "I thought those raised in places like this were immune to the building."
"Layla wasn't raised in this building," Grace reminded me. "She was taken in by Wolf after her father died. Her only protection from this place was Wolf. Even then, she was only protected when he was conscious. And sober."
She stopped in the center of the room and looked around for a second, scanning our surroundings. There wasn't much to look at, really; the room was decrepit, rotting wood creating the remnants of what used to be a well-loved living area. The foundation of a counter was off to one side, the cracked, rotting tiles implying the remains of a kitchen. A pile of shattered bricks spilt out into the main section. There were missing floorboards, shredded bits of fabric, and torn rugs scattered around the main floor.
The most interesting thing about the decaying chaos surrounding us was several long claw marks, shrouded in curling wallpaper and chunks of hanging wall art.
I wasn't willing to walk out of Grace's ghostly glow, so I pointed to the tears in the walls and ceiling and asked, "Layla?"
Grace stared at them, her eyes growing dim and unfocused. "I can’t...this isn't..."
"What is it?"
She groaned, bringing a hand to her head and closing her eyes. Her face twisted up for a second, grimacing as she began to shake her head back and forth. "The ghosts of this place. I can't keep them contained. The emotions are too strong..." She looked up at me suddenly, the green glow behind her eyes stronger and burning.
With a gasp, she broke her own concentration and looked away. Her light dimmed for a moment, body curling in on itself and giving off a shudder. She seemed suddenly frail, ready to shatter at a moment’s notice.
"Forgive...me," she whispered. "The ghosts of this house are too strong."
Comforting others wasn't exactly my strong suit, so I did my best to not be annoying while she regained control.
She gathered herself quickly, rising to an upright position and returning her gaze to the rips along the wall. Silence filled the space between us until she spoke again, her voice faint and haunting.
"Sometimes I can look into the past of a place. See the strongest ghosts residing there. It’s like reading animal tracks in the space between reality." She stretched out a hand towards the peeling wallpaper, only to stop an inch or two short. Her pale hand hung in the air like her words, frozen for two hammering heartbeats before it dropped to her side.
"His sword is not here. We should leave."
I glanced at the walls again. "Was I right? Were those marks left behind by Layla?"
She nodded.
"What happened?" I asked. "What was Wolf doing to her?"
She shook her head.
"You can't tell me what he did here, or you don't want to tell me?"
She paused, staring at me with her translucent gaze. "I can show you," she finally whispered. "Is that what you want? To know the secrets of a house containing nothing but rage and sorrow?"
"I just want to know what would have made those scratches," I answered. "That's all."
"I cannot tell you what I see," she said faintly, "but I can show you."
In the blink of an eye, her hand was at my forehead. Her touch was cold and numb as a knife digging into my skin, and my insides twisted.
It was like being dunked in ice water in order to force one out of a drug-induced stupor. I was numb. I was confused. I was hurt. I was frightened.
And suddenly, I could see again. I was rooted to the spot, stuck in a manicured version of Wolf’s house. It wasn't nearly in such disarray, although some of the furniture was still broken and rotted through.
I heard angry screaming down the hall to my left. A bottle broke against a wall, liquid splashing to the ground and spilling into view.
A roar penetrated my gut. My nerves jumped under my skin. A young elf with white hair stumbled out of the hallway, white tank top squeezing around her torso and exposing a small stream of blood trailing down her arm. Silver eyes flashed in her pale face as she began screaming about how she was going to run away and leave him all alone. Wolf chased after her and wrapped a hand around her elbow. With a jerk backwards, he insisted she stay, insisted she was unwanted in the outside world.
She spun on him and freed her arm with a sharp pull, the motion making him stumble backwards.
"You can't control me!" she shouted, her form flickering for a moment.
"You'll never survive out there," he insisted, the same flicker obscuring his features.
They both froze, torsos sliced by static and separating for half a second before they reset, Layla launching into motion.
Her body heaved, growing in seconds to fill the room. Her arms turned into lumbering limbs. Her fingers reshaped into claws. Her face began to stretch like rubber, forming into a nasty-looking snout. Silver eyes flashed above a growing, snarling muzzle, and the fur growing out all over her body was as white as her hair.
So this is what a half-blood looked like.
Interesting. I had never seen one before, half-bloods being extremely rare. As the rumors had it, they were half of the marwolaeth that bit them, and half of their original form. Unlike their shape-shifting brothers, they reportedly couldn’t transform completely which left their shifting ability stuck somewhere between a quadruped and a biped.
According to what I’ve heard, half-bloods were also one of the only things able to scare a full-fledged marwolaeth, one of the reasons being that half-bloods could break all the rules. Their transformations weren’t bound by day or night, it was debatable if silver had any effect on them, and their powers were off the charts.
If all the rumors were true, it made me wonder why Wolf was provoking her into shifting. Granted, he was having to rile her up to get her to turn, meaning she had no control over her own abilities, but even so I’ve never believed in poking a wolf when it’s unwarranted.
Her body writhed and twisted as it began to shrink. She let out a howling scream of rage as she swung one of her long arms at Wolf. He managed to drunkenly stumble to the side, her claws biting into the wall and tearing out the side of the doorway.
He ran along the wall and she gave chase. Each strike was an unwieldy, lumbering move on her part, her arms growing and shrinking with every step. Wolf dodged each and every strike, letting the house take the brunt of her rage.
"Control!" he slurred. "If you don't learn control, you will never move forward."
"I don't care!" she screamed, body shrinking as her voice turned back to normal. A low growl emitted from her chest. "I don't care!"
The pair of them were coming right at me.
Layla howled and lunged.
Wolf stumbled into a dodge, Layla’s half-form heading straight for me.
I tried to leap away but found I couldn't move. Her hulking form lunged, crashing right through me and shattering the image.
I gasped, air rushing into my lungs. It felt like I hadn't taken a breath in minutes.
Stumbling backward, I hunched my shoulders and spun around. I was rewarded by falling on my side, the fresh air escaping my lungs and making way for dust and soot. I began a set of heaving coughs as I scrambled to my feet, looking around. I was back in the worn-out remains of Wolf’s house.
Grace stood stock-still in front of me, green eyes glowing.
"His sword is not here," she repeated. "We should leave."