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It was then that I realized exactly where the voice was coming from: the bundle of rags under my arm.
Chapter 13
Goosebumps rippled all the way up my hands, my arms, my shoulders, and I dropped the bundle full on the ground. The rags cushioned the sword’s landing, and it only made a slight thunk.
“Ouch.” And that. That was the other sound it made. The rags fell open, revealing the sword, incontrovertibly the source of the voice. Either that or I really was going insane.
“Are you really talking?” There was no one else in sight. I didn’t like how this was going. “Really. Is that you doing that?”
“I don’t see how any of this can be surprising to you,” the sword said. At least it seemed that way, the gems encrusted around its hilt pulsing gently in time with its words. I couldn’t say how I could tell, exactly, but I knew that the thing was being sassy with me.
“Don’t you take that tone with me.” Great. Insanity it was. Here I was, having a conversation with some kind of enchanted sword on a Meathook sidewalk, scolding it, actually, and I could sense that it was sulking back somehow. But how much more insane was this than everything else? Thea’s spheres, the Dark Room, the flaming staff, Bastion’s ridiculous magic telekinesis? I took a breath, forcing myself to settle.
“I feel like I’m owed some kind of apology,” the sword said.
“I could say the same for you.” I gathered the rags up over it before lifting it up to my chest again, just barely exposing the hilt with its pattern of red jewels so I could actually hear it speak – which was when I realized that the voice’s quality hadn’t changed. The sword hadn’t been muffled when it spoke to me from inside the rags. “Wait. You’re talking directly into my mind, aren’t you?”
“Nifty trick, isn’t it? Who needs a mouth when you can just transmit thoughts like that? Straight into someone’s brain.”
“Yeah,” I said, wondering if my feeble chuckling was sufficiently covering up how creepy I found all this. Of course, this meant that anyone I passed on the street would think I was talking to myself, and while the Meathook had no shortage of weirdoes roaming the sidewalks, I really didn’t need to be calling any attention to myself. I dug through my pockets for earphones. At least I’d look like I was on a call.
“Listen,” I said. “Don’t take this the wrong way but I’m kind of surprised that you speak so, I don’t know, conventionally. Like any guy off the street.” I couldn’t tell you how I knew that, either, but that’s what the sword sounded like in my head: just some dude of indiscernible age and accent. “You’re a sword. Shouldn’t your speech be, I don’t know.”
“Regal?” There was a sneering quality to the sword’s voice. I didn’t think it was possible for inanimate objects to be so spiteful, but there we were. “Archaic? Would it help if I adjusted my vernacular in accordance with the lofty expectations you’ve set of me? Shall I speak with formality, in academic tones? Is the pattern of my speech not sufficiently esoteric?”
“Wow. Tone it down with the sarcasm. It was just a question.”
The sword scoffed. “My previous owner – not the poor nut who stole me from him – watched a lot of television. He kept me in his living room. I suppose I picked up on a few things. And besides, who’s to say how old I really am, anyway?”
“Your previous owner?”
“I don’t have to tell you about that.” The sword huffed. This thing was expressive, and kind of mean, and I half-wished I’d called a car after all, just so I could drop it off at HQ and get this whole farce over with. I didn’t say anything else after that, just kept walking.
“So you were saying something about being hungry,” the sword ventured. “Where are we going anyway?”
I gave myself a wry smile, trying to hide it behind one hand – could the sword even see me, I wondered – and answered in a familiar, snotty tone. “I don’t have to answer that.”
Silence, for a bit, then a grudging, “Touché.”
“Ah. So you have a sense of humor after all?”
“Little bit.”
“Why does it even matter where we’re going? You make it sound like you’re going to get a bite to eat.”
“Oh, it’s nothing like that. I pick up on things that humans do around me. It’s strange, but that’s how it works. If you enjoy something, I can feel it. I can tell you that the burger you just ate was good. I can’t tell you how it tasted, but I know it was. Gives me a sense for the world.”
There was something wistful in the way it said that last part. “So you’re saying that you won’t be opposed to me picking up a – damn, actually a burger does sound good right about now.”
“Not at all. I might enjoy it, even.”
“And you won’t tell on me when I bring you back to HQ?”
“I won’t. What are they going to do to me there, anyway? Where you’re taking me?”
I shrugged. “The usual. Study you, put you in a glass case for safekeeping. You’ll be pampered, for sure, but there’s not a whole lot to do in the Gallery, from what I’m told.”
The sword sniffed again. “Burger it is, then.”
