Silver Bound Girl

Chapter 43

            Willow stared back at him, mind and body freezing in place. The quiet stretched on and on, only the gentle rustle of leaves in the wind and the distant calls of birds to be heard. Finally, after his mouth working for a few moments, Rune broke the silence. “What are you?”

            His words shattered her paralysis. As if to make up for the inactivity, her brain began racing, thoughts pouring through at a speed she couldn’t keep up with. It took a few minutes for her to realize she still hadn’t answered his question and that Rune was still watching her carefully. Willow rubbed one arm with her hand and said in her low, rumbling voice, “Sasquatch.”

            Rune blinked for several seconds, a touch of colour slowly seeping back into his face. “Sasquatch?” he managed finally. “Like…Big Foot? The missing link?”

            Willow nodded, feeling relief that he hadn’t gone running and screaming into the woods. In fact, he hadn’t moved at all since she changed. The brought forth the worry that he was still partially frozen with fear and would take off as soon as he could. Her stomach had gone from a cold burn to feeling like it was on fire in moments, her insides churning with too many emotions to name. Chief among them was the worry for his reaction, fear of rejection, and the painful hope that he wouldn’t be horrified about what she was. “Yes, but not really. At least, the missing link stuff’s not even close to the truth.”

            “Huh,” he said, face shutting down into a blank canvas, his eyes still and staring at the ground. Willow concentrated on him but heard no increase in his heart’s speed, nor smelled an increase in sweat. Rune appeared relatively calm but Willow knew that had to be a lie. No one could just see a sasquatch and not freak out about it.

            The longer the silence stretched, the longer her nerves were. It was almost worse having him quiet. Shouts, screams, even him panicking and attacking her would have been things she could deal with. Instead, she stayed where she was, unmoving so as not to scare him, waiting for Rune’s reaction.

            “Well,” he said, the sudden sound of his voice all but making Willow flinch. “That definitely explains more than it doesn’t. I take it the rest of your family’s the same?”

            Willow felt like someone had just popped a balloon behind her. She stared at Rune like he was the one who’d turned into a giant, shaggy monster. “How are you this calm? How are you not freaking out?”

            Rune shrugged. “I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t shocked when I first saw you change. I mean, no one seeing their best friend go from girl to some kind of hairy creature for the first time, isn’t going to be surprised. It all happened so fast, and I was already thinking we were going to die, so the whole of it definitely had me messed up there for a couple of minutes. But I’ve pretty much known you were something different for a while now. The way you and your family are always whispering to each other, always wearing the same necklace, all living in the same town, and to be honest, you’re all too secretive and insular not to have been hiding something crazy. And when I tried to confront you about it, you got all weird. It was obvious I’d freaked you out and you were trying to hide it, so I let it drop. I will say, sasquatch didn’t even make it onto my list of stuff I thought you were. My last idea was that you were either a werewolf or an alien.”

            Willow’s jaw sagged. “You thought I was an alien?”

            A touch of red lit his cheeks. “It’s not like there are that many things that would make sense. In fairness, I thought werewolf was more likely, but you never seemed any different around the full moon.”

            “Werewolves don’t exist,” Willow murmured, mind trying to process Rune’s almost casual acceptance of her strangeness. “Doesn’t it bother you? Me turning into, this,” she said, gesturing to her own hairy form.

            “You turning into that saved both our lives. I’m not about to freak out or panic when you risked your life to save mine. Hell, you could have changed into a giant slug and I’d still be ready to hug you.”

            That startled a laugh out of Willow, one that sounded more like a bark in her current body. “You’re seriously weird.”

            Rune’s eyebrows went up. “You just admitted to being a sasquatch and I’m the weird one?”

            “Most people would be bothered by it. Most people would have run screaming from me for being a monster. Most people would be in the middle of the woods right now, gibbering in fear.”

            “Most people are assholes and idiots. You getting hairy doesn’t change who you are. Why would I be afraid of the person who has regularly threatened to beat people hassling me into the ground? And would you look at that? You finally did do it.”

            Willow couldn’t help the smile slowly spreading across her face. It wasn’t just Rune being Rune, something until moments ago she thought she’d never see again, but his easy tone. His loose stance, the faint curve of his lips, along with the amusement she could hear in his voice told her he really wasn’t bothered by what she was. This had to be a family first. She could feel the tension drain out of her shoulders as her stomach unknotted and returned to its natural temperature. She was almost giddy with relief.

            Rune saw her smile and shook his head. “Please tell me you’ve seen yourself in the mirror when you smile like that. Your whole face crinkles up so you look like one of those wrinkle dogs.”

            “You really are super weird,” she said, her grin still stretching Cheshire-like across her face.