A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters - Martin Harry Greenberg [62]
So I’d walked away from old friends, and quit all my gaming groups. I’d left SCA and closed my online accounts. I’d cleaned out my bookshelves and donated everything fantastical to the library. I’d wiped my hard drive, expunging my folly with the press of a key, reformatting my life and goals with a stroke. I’d taken my rejections, my manuscripts, my characters, my worlds, and stuffed them in a few boxes in the attic.
I didn’t want to climb those stairs, didn’t want to open those boxes. Too much damn pain, too much failure contained within. I didn’t want to do this.
But I didn’t want to listen to the entire history of China, either.
The attic was unfinished, so I’d have to watch my step. I pulled the chain on the light and looked around. The beams made it hard to stand upright, and I reached for one to balance myself. The wood felt rough and dry under my fingers. I breathed in dust and disuse and tried to remember the last time I’d been up here.
“Which boxes, Kate?” Wan asked, his nose twitching.
“Over there,” I said, moving carefully on the plywood. “In that corner.”
They were piled in one corner, isolated from the boxes of Christmas ornaments and college memories. Sealed with duct tape, with my shaky handwriting on the sides in black permanent marker. The lettering was hard to read, but then I’d been crying at the time. Sobbing my eyes out, to be exact.
I reminded myself to breathe and kept moving.
Wan bounded down from my shoulder, his sword slung over his shoulder, red tassel dancing from the pommel. “What is in this one?” He asked, scrambling through the opening that served as a handhold.
“Hell if I know,” I grumbled, my stomach knotting. Probably from drinking too damn much coffee. I started moving the boxes, looking at the sides. “There should be one that says ‘gamemaster’ on the side.”
I could hear him rummaging around, talking as he did so. “There are gemstones in here, Kate. With numbers on them.” His voice was muffled, but I could hear his excitement.
“Those are dice,” I said absently. I’d found the box I was looking for.
I had to work at the duct tape, and then gave up, tearing the cardboard off the top, just enough so I could look inside. Just as I expected, it was filled to the brim with . . . worlds.
Adventures, campaigns, epic quests, and short side distractions designed to strip a character of gold, money and magic. My throat closed at the sight of three-ring binders, folders, and plastic envelopes.
I reached in and dug past those things to find my source books. I knew full well that I had kept some of those, unable to bear the idea that someone else would use them.
“Kate, what is this?”
Wan was peering at me from the handhold, his paws extended into the light. He was holding a small metal figurine.
My breath caught in my throat at the sight.
Her plate was still as shiny silver as the day I had painted her. Her long blonde hair trailed out behind her, a few strands covering her face. Those had been a bitch to paint. Her eyes were wide, her mouth turned up in an open-faced smile as she lifted her halberd to strike. Pole-arms were highly underrated as weapons. Useful from the second rank, giving me an extended reach over the meatshields in front. “No helmet, Katling,” Gerald used to tease, his blue eyes—
I swallowed hard, then forced the words out. “Put it back, Wan.”
His paws pulled the figurine back into the box. “Very well,” he said, his voice muffled as he turned away. “But there are many more, and they are well painted. This other one has lost its sword, but still—”
“Wan,” was all I could get out.
His face appeared from the depths of the box, his gaze steady as he considered my face. “My apologies, Kate.”
“I found it,” I blinked quickly as I pulled the book from the box.
Wan crawled out of the box. I reached out a hand absently and he crawled up my arm to my shoulder. He peered over at the book in my hands. “Legends and Lore?” he asked doubtfully. “Gaming materials?”
“Sure,” I opened the book and rifled the pages.