The Sharded Blade | Part 1 (A Dark Fantasy Novella)

Part 9

The next night, she reappeared. And right on schedule with the same look on her face as when we had last seen each other. Using a piece of chalk, I had marked the spot where my feet had been so I knew exactly where to stand. I even tried to mimic the posture I had been in as best I could, thinking maybe it would help.

Our previous conversation still fresh in my mind, I restarted the discussion from the night before.

"Will you show me?" The pleading tone of my voice contained a forced calm that lied about my eagerness. Inside, I was growing weary of not already having five more shards off my blade.

"You'll kill them, won't you?" Her inquiry contained a noticeable caution that wasn't lost on me.

"I will do what must be done to bad people," I assured her.

She looked down, contemplating my offer. "I will show you." The quaver in her eventual answer told me she was not in any way, shape, or form at ease with the concept. Then she looked around, noticing something different from when she had previously been here. "The rain has stopped?"

I nodded. "Yes."

She nodded back. "Come with me."

As she led me out into the night, like a cautious, frightened, actually alive person fearing what the night might have in store, Gertrude overcame her apparent trepidation and leaped up onto my shoulder to tag along. Her claws sunk into the thick fabric of my cloak, lightly pinching the skin underneath. I just hoped the rat would keep quiet and draw as little attention our way as possible.

Thankfully, she did.

During our trek, the girl and I stuck to the back alleys as much as possible; passages I knew well. This girl, however, not so much. She stopped often to get her bearings, and we backtracked more than once, sometimes venturing out into the empty streets of a city past dark and whenever the route required such.

Like the normal person she wasn't, this girl left obvious traces of her passage. Her feet displaced water from puddles remaining from the storms here and there, leaving soggy footprints in her wake. Ghosts were definitely odd, I thought. But I wanted five shards off my blade, so I didn't have time to ponder the complexities of her existence much beyond that.

Then another revelation hit me. Did the girl know she was dead? I honestly didn't think she did. What if she didn't, and I told her? Would it break whatever spell was holding her to this world? Out of an abundance of caution, and not wanting to ruin this golden opportunity served up to me upon a silver platter, I decided not to test that theory and find out. At least, not yet.

Committing our route to memory, it soon became clear where our nighttime journey to the place of her death was leading: West Park. An entire forest just inside the city walls on, as one would guess by the name, the western edge of town. In years past, it had been used to host hunts for the entertainment of paying customers. Hunts of prey that stood no real chance once set loose.

A plague brought in by fleas on some yellow tailed foxes years ago put a perminant end to that merriment.

At the edge of the city and the woods, the phantom girl I was following with eager strides stopped to once more figure out her location. As she did so, she started to become translucent. Her time tonight was up, but she didn't know it.

"This way," she encouraged me in the final seconds before she faded away. With just a single step towards the trees, she was once more gone.

I know I said something unkind as I frowned. This entire experience was becoming tiresome. I mean, I understood that her constant exiting of this world was probably well beyond her control. But I was still becoming irked by it.

Bored, and already here, I set off in the direction the spirit had attempted to run off in. You know, before whatever forces that controlled her prevented such. As I did so, Gertrude continued to tag along in blissful silence upon my shoulder.

The hours that followed were spent exploring the woods and finding nothing. The place was expansive, and one could easily become lost in it, especially during the night.

Ready to give up, I prepared to return to the inn and wait until the following night and hoping the girl's spirit would return once more. To occupy my mind, I was fiddling with my dagger as it hung at my side, eager to use it and being denied the pleasure. About half way out of the forest was when Gertrude began sniffing the air in earnest.

She squelched at me, then bounded off my shoulder to the ground.

As for myself? Well, I was torn between following the rat and just heading home. But, knowing the hellspawn the way I did, I decided that it was in my best interest to pursue her.

She had a good head start, but Gertrude wasn't so fast that I couldn't keep up.

We wove between the trees; her more easily than me. She was very low to the ground, while I caught the odd branch painfully and every so often in the face. The sting from each whip to my skin was a subtle reminder I wasn't dead. Not yet. Not like the girl.

The chase didn't last long. Shortly after it began, we stumbled upon a cabin in the woods that showed the appearance of being more dilapidated than it probably was.

Gertrude continued on, even as I stopped. I don't know why my legs ceased to function. It was as if something inside me knew that I wouldn't like whatever I would find once I picked the lock and entered.