“You idiot!”

Modanthia shouted at Evil Oak,

once they discovered

War Dog had escaped.

“You’re lucky I don’t

chop you up into pieces

and make a rocking chair

out of you!”

Evil Oak cowered,

but tried to defend himself.

“You said to get a rumbletruck!

How was I supposed to know

there was a hole in the top?”

Modanthia ignored him.

“What are we supposed to do now?

Where did she go?

How long ago did she get out?”

“I don’t know!”

Evil Oak whimpered.

Modanthia the Malformed

sighed, and tried to think straight.

There was no telling where

that damn dog went.

She could be anywhere.

Thunderclouds rolled on the horizon.

In a half hour,

the Ash Waste would be

a sea of mush.

Modanthia tossed out a few curses,

and slowly looked around

in all directions.

She glanced up into the sky.

I need a bird’s eye view,

she thought.

“Oak,” she said,

“You take the rumbletruck on to Basp,

and tell the buyer

we’ve been delayed.”

“But Modanthia!” Oak protested.

“Don’t argue with me,” Modanthia hissed.

“Just do as I say for once!”

Evil Oak’s shoulders sunk and

he got into the rumbletruck.

Modanthia sighed.

I’ve got to do every damn thing

myself.

Modanthia closed her eyes

and focused

as Evil Oak and the rumbletruck

rumbled away.

The wind was picking up.

She could sense rain in the air.

The sky was deliriously

gray.

Silence.

Modanthia took a long, deep breath,

held it in, and let it out.

With her eyes still closed,

she hopped into the air

and transformed —

her arms became wings,

her skin become covered in feathers,

her nose became a hawk’s beak,

and her legs became razor-sharp talons.

Even before she was completely transformed,

Modanthia was flapping her wings

and lifting into the sky.

The hawk

was one of Modanthia’s

favorite shapes.

To fly —

to float upon the wind,

carried by streams of air,

your wings full,

the ground far below

like a different world.

This was no sorcery-machine.

She could feel the bristles

of her feathers.

She did not have to think

to flap her wings.

The size of the sky

was more unfathomable

than all the oceans,

and she soared into it,

still as astounded by the empty space

before her

as she was

the first time she had ever flown.

Modanthia knew

this was a great, great gift,

yet she had not always thought so.

Once,

when she had been a child,

and sick

of Skullatroid’s lessons in magic,

She claimed —

“I did not choose to be born.”

To which Skullatroid had replied

in a low, sharp voice,

“How do you know that?”

She had no answer

for him then,

and she did not have one now.

Skullatroid

had a way of doing that,

pointing something out

like throwing a hammer

into a brittle sheet

of opaque glass.

Modanthia understood the wisdom

of Skullatroid’s lessons now,

but

she still wondered —

Why?

What am I here to do?

What if Skullatroid was right?

What if her soul

or some essence of her

had known

she would be born

cursed and deformed?

Had foreseen

her miserable childhood?

Had expected

her tragic adolescent affair

with Sargos, Warlord-Governor

of Theodysia,

and the abortion that was the result?

Had known ahead of time

of her yearlong imprisonment

in the Citadel of Terror?

What if she had known?

And had chosen to be born

anyway?

The temperature was dropping.

Modanthia began to feel

raindrops on her wings.

She was running out of time.

Once the rain came, it was over.

The winds grew stronger,

and she flapped her wings

to straighten herself.

A slow groan of thunder

lumbered over the horizon.

Where was that damn dog?

She became nervous,

angry.

This was not her fault.

She was just doing

what Skullatroid told her

to do.

Damn it!

And then,

she saw with her hawk eyes

what she had been looking for,

down in the flat ash —

Paw prints.

to be continued...