Free A Knight to Remember by Bridget Essex

when I turn it, it reflects the sunshine into my eyes, temporarily blinding me.   It’s so heavy , that it’s actually hard to lift, and when I can see again, blinking away the spots in my vision, I notice the gem in the pommel, what I thought was a rhinestone when I first picked it up.   But no.   This doesn’t really look like a rhinestone.   It looks, instead, more like a gem, like, an actual precious stone .   It’s clear, like a diamond, but it also has this weird blue-green flash of color deep within…
    The flash of the gem almost blinds me again, but I turn my eyes at the last second, rest my gaze on the ground.
    I blink for a long moment, still staring at the ground.   Because there’s something on the ground that’s even more fantastical than this massive, heavy, too-real sword in my hands.   Something utterly…impossible.
    I move the sword so that the point rests against the earth, and the pommel is leaning against my side for a moment, because I’ve suddenly lost a great deal of my strength, and I can’t hold the sword up anymore.   My legs are buckling under me, but I tighten my knees, stare down at the ground.   Beyond the sword, in the grass of my backyard, are the divots I saw from the back door.   But, this up close, I can actually see them much more clearly, can see the details.
    They’re not divots.
    They’re…tracks.   Animal tracks, I realize, as my brain tries to make sense of what, exactly, I’m seeing.
    They look a little like a Tyrannosaurus Rex’s footprints, is the first thing I realize.
    And then I realize that I’m comparing fresh footprints in my backyard to those of a dinosaur .   But really, what else in the whole world could I compare them to?   Each individual print (and there are three perfectly clear ones and a few smudges into the earth, I realize, as I count them up) is about four feet long.   Four feet.   That’s about how long my dog is.
    I glance up after a long moment and stare thoughtfully at my shed.   Or, rather, what used to be my shed.   Because the useless little building that I always thought only existed to house snakes and spiders (and would never, ever house my little lawnmower for those exact reasons) is now flattened, boards everywhere in tangled stacks, and the roof smooshed into the ground.
    Really, the best word to describe it is obliterated .
    For a single heartbeat, I wonder if it was destroyed because of a lightning strike.   I wonder if lightning hit the roof of the shed and it just sort of…exploded.   And then I think better of it, because, seriously—I know better.   It wasn’t because of a lightning strike that my shed is now a pile of kindling in my backyard.
    I stare at what was once my shed and swallow, my heart starting to pound inside of me.  
    Is it actually possible that Virago could be telling the truth?  
    I mean…I know that I saw something last night, something that can’t really be explained.   It was enormous.   And it was out in my backyard.   So, no, I don’t know exactly what I saw, but it couldn’t possibly have been a hallucination—could it have?   It seemed so real.    
    I stare down at the footprint.
    That certainly seems real enough.
    I turn around and stare at the woman who stands in the doorway easily, leaning against the frame with raw grace, one hand on her leather-clad hip, her head to the side, her silken black ponytail pooling over her shoulder as she watches me intently.   A little shiver runs through me, and I close my hand around the pommel of the sword that leans against my side.
    I saw Virago’s wound last night.   I saw the blood, the blood that leaked onto my couch, the evidence of which is still there .   That wasn’t faked—it was real .   And now, somehow, the wound is healed, the wounds in both her side and her thigh completely gone, as if they’d never been there.  
    And then, of course, there’s this sword.   I look down at it, try to lift it again, but I