Water and Ghosts

Prologue

He shimmers in the light, see-through and glowing and becoming brighter as the seconds pass. The shell lying on the ground next to the brightness is not what I’m used to; my son is not as dark as I wanted him to be. That is why I made him darker.

Making a human shell isn’t hard, but it’s complicated. I had to find specific things to make the shell for him to enter— black ink for his hair, the green leaf of a piece of kale for his eyes, water from the deeper parts of the Sapphire Sea to give him a deeper voice, part of a muscle tissue to make him more muscular. He has always been a string bean, to my great disappointment. But then I had to do some intense magic to create a body that mostly resembles his own. And now, here in this graveyard, I have brought the final piece. The eyes are still and staring, the joints and muscles unmoving, the heart not beating and the lungs not breathing. 

I brought the ghost to fill the body.

I hold my breath as I watch the bright light seep into the shell, the feet pulling the rest of his ghostly body into the shell through the open mouth. The eyes close and open, blinking. His chest rises and falls. He sits up, a smirk rising to his lips.

“Interesting,” is the first thing he says. I smile at my handy work, proud of it’s perfection. His voice is the exact pitch I wanted it to be.

“Stand,” I say, wiping the smile from my face. He does as commanded, standing up to brush the grass off of the jeans and black shirt I put on the shell. “I have a mission for you.”

“You do, huh? I would never have thought.”

My eyes narrow and my nostrils flare. “Death seems to have tempered with your memory,” I snap. His smirk fades.

“Right. No sarcasm.” He looks away.

Sarcasm is a waste of my time. I don’t care for theatrics, and I don’t need drama queens.

I stand straighter and look him in the eye. “I have finally found the only other Elemental, and I know where she is going to be living. Your job is to, first and foremost, gain her trust. Trusting you will make it a lot easier for you to bring her outside the boundaries of their protected city. Where I will be able to… meet her.”

My lip curls in annoyance. If it weren’t for those wretched spells, I would have found her and killed her, along with her parents, a long time ago. But my son can go where I cannot, being human now.

I resist the urge to smile. I am victorious only after she is dead and cold, her blood seeping from her body.

“Have I made myself clear?” I ask, done explaining, making it clear that I hope he has understood.

He doesn’t break eye contact and he doesn’t blink. “Crystal.”

I do smile now. “Go fetch, boy. Bring me a doll to burn.”