Free Honorbound by Adam Wik Page B

everything that had happened that morning.
    “So you haven’t even taken it out yet?” she asked.
    “No. Mom says I’m not allowed to.”
    Sarah slid off the bed and quietly pushed the door until it was almost closed.
    “Your mom’s in the kitchen.”
    “But if she finds out she’ll take it away from me.”
    “Don’t be such a baby. She’ll never know. Come on, I want to see it.”
    I hopped off the bed and went over to my present. The skin wrapped handle was soft, the sheath smooth as glass. I carried it over to Sarah at the door.
    “It’s so pretty,” she said. She ran her fingers along the enameled wood. “Take it out.”
    I pulled on the handle. The blade resisted for a second before popping free of the scabbard with a click. I slid it out as gently as I could. The steel sliding from its case made a soft, sweet whisper. I cringed, sure that Mom would come charging in at the noise, but the sounds of her cooking continued to waft through the crack in the door.
    The blade was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen. Almost three feet of gleaming steel razor sprouting from an engraved square above the hand guard. There were two characters etched into it. One looked like two lowercase T’s with a few extra lines coming off of them. The other looked like an uppercase E mixed with an uppercase I.
    “I wonder what that says.”
    “Hold on,” Sarah said, “I’ll look it up.”
    A few seconds on her phone and she had the answer.
    “Ok, it says this first one here is either pronounced son or mura , and it means town or village.”
    “Or? What do you mean or?”
    “It says both, I think they have multiple meanings. The second one is pronounced either sei or masa . It means righteous, correct or justice.”
    “So, ‘town justice’?”
    “I guess.” She slipped her phone back into her pocket.
    “I like it.”
    We didn’t have any more time to admire it before we heard Mom coming back down the hall. I snapped the sword back into its sheath and laid it back on the dresser then jumped back onto the bed just as she poked her head through the door.
    “Would you like to stay for dinner? We’re having chicken and rice tonight.”
    “Of course,” Sarah said, “I’ll have to ask Dad though.”
    “Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll give him a call and let him know.”
    Dinner went quickly enough and by the time Sarah left I was thinking more about having to go back to school the next day than my gift. I went to change for bed before I brushed my teeth. When I got to my dresser the sword was lying naked next to its sheath. I grabbed it and slid it back in.
    I could’ve sworn I had put it away before dinner. I would have to be more careful, if Mom had walked in and seen it lying out she would’ve killed me.

    By the time Sarah and I were walking to school the next morning I had forgotten all about it. The day was filled with meeting new teachers, self—introductions and all the other trappings of the first day of another tedious school year. Sarah and I only had one class together, so we compared teachers the whole walk home.
    “Ugh, be so glad you don’t have Mrs. Nelson for English. I think she already hates me,” she said as we rounded the corner.
    “Sounds better than my English class. Right in the middle the leg on my desk broke. The whole thing tipped over with me in it and I smacked my head on the desk next to me.”
    She fought back a smile.
    “Don’t laugh, it really hurt.”
    Her dad never came home until late so she decided to come hang out with me until her little brother came home. Mom had left a note saying she had some errands to run, so we went to my room to play video games. Sarah plopped down on the bed while I picked a game.
    “Hey,” she said, “didn’t you say you’d get in trouble if your mom knew you took the sword out?”
    “Yeah, why?”
    “’Cause it’s out now.”
    She was right. The blade sat naked on the dresser. I hurried over and slid it back into the