Once we leave the market, they descend on me. "So, Wunay?" is all Emily needs to ask.
"I... am not exactly sure how to explain that..." I mutter. "It's just... something I said, I guess."
"But why? Why would you use a fake name with some kids you met, it doesn't make any sense," Andy says with a long sigh.
"It makes it seem like you have something to hide," Jess comments. I bite my lip. Of course I have something to hide. But I have no good explanation for the other name that doesn't give away more information than I can give. I can't say I didn't have a name, can I? Don't people have names? Would not having a name give me away? Wait, where do people get their names? Francis gave me mine. I have a feeling children most likely get names from their parents, but I can't be sure. I might be able to explain this. In a way which is... technically not a lie?
"Hey, parents give their children names, right?" I ask to verify my guess.
"Yes," Emily says without elaborating.
"Or... their guardian," Jess chimes in, looking down for some reason.
"Guardian?" I ask, getting slightly sidetracked by the new term.
"Someone who takes the place of a parent when you don't have one. Mister Fredricson is our guardian," Andy explains. I nod and get back on topic.
"I mentioned this to Emily before. Nothing good ever happened in my past. Part of that is... I never had any parents." For some reason, Jess flinches when she hears that. Did she not have parents? "I didn't have anyone. No one ever named me. Since I never had a name, when those kids asked me about it, I just... said something." I shrug.
"I see..." Emily mutters sadly. "I'm sorry we were so pushy about it..." They all look guilty now. "But then... if you had no parents, no guardian... how did you even survive?"
That topic is completely off-limits, so I close my eyes and shake my head. "I can't talk about it."
"Mmmm..." Emily grumbles and pouts as she runs into my refusal once more. "Then... if you never had a name, how did you get one?"
"Well..." I think back on it, smiling fondly. "It was given to me." I close my eyes, remembering that day. Francis, the only person who knows everything. 'It doesn't matter if you're a rail unit, you're still the strongest, brightest, nicest kid I've ever met.' His praise replays in my mind, imprinted permanently in my memory.
"By the only person who truly believes in me..." I smile from ear to ear, overflowing with joy at the memory. When I open my eyes again, I wipe away a tear. Then I freeze when I see their expressions. "D-did I say something weird?" They all look like they're about to cry.
"I believe in you too!" Emily cries and hugs me.
"Y-yeah, thank you," I grin awkwardly. It's completely different though. I think to myself while frowning internally. You believe in Aria, certainly not AR1A. It's clear as day, especially after watching her reaction earlier when she learned about rail units for the first time.
Actually, she didn't know about rail units before that... Does that mean I could have told her without scaring her? Then maybe explained things so she wouldn't be scared of me? Even as I start to regret missing that opportunity, I shake the thoughts out of my head. Of course that wouldn't work either. If I told her, she would have told other people, and I wouldn't have been able to live here anymore. Maybe if I had asked her to keep it secret...? I push those thoughts away. That chance has passed already, there's no use wondering about it now.
"Sorry for all the questions," Emily says.
"No, it's my fault for keeping so much from you. I'm really sorry, there's just a lot in my past that I absolutely cannot talk about."
Emily just sighs then says, "I know..." sadly.
I try changing topics. "Anyway, what do we normally do after we finish up at the market?"
It takes her a few moments to work herself up again before Emily answers. "Once we drop our things back at the orphanage, we have some free time. Is there anything anyone wants to do?" She turns to ask the group.
"Sorry, we were going to go check in at the smith about work stuff," Tony says, scratching his head.
"Oh? Then we don't want to keep you," Andy says.
"Uhh, what's the smith?" I ask Emily quietly.
"You mean the blacksmith?" Black smith?
"Maybe? Are there different colored ones?" I was trying not to interrupt, but it looks like everyone heard us, because they turn to listen.
"Colored?" she blinks, not comprehending the question at all. We both stare at each other for a few moments. It feels like we're speaking past each other. Thankfully, Andy jumps in.
"Tony and Robin work at a blacksmith workshop," he explains.
"Umm, what does a smith do?" I try to start with a basic question.
"Smiths make stuff out of metal," Robin says with a big grin full of pride... for some reason.
"And what do black smiths do?" I extend my question to black smiths.
"Uhh, they... make stuff out of metal..." he more or less repeats himself. Less proud, more confused.
"Then... what's the difference?" I don't get it. What about other colors? "Do red smiths or blue smiths do anything different?"
"Red...?" they all tilt their heads, looking at me uncomprehendingly. Finally, Emily looks like she figures out what I'm talking about and giggles.
"Oh, I get it. There aren't any smiths like that, just blacksmiths."
"So... the only smiths are black smiths?"
Everyone nods like it should be obvious.
"Then why are they called black smiths?" Finally, all of the kids look at each other, realizing that they took something that doesn't make any sense for granted. But no one has any answer, so they all collectively shrug. I guess that's it then, that's just how the word blacksmith is, I guess. Weird...
"That's... a really good question..." Andy mutters.
"Best I can guess is because it gets all dirty with soot and the metal flakes off all black when you're working on it," Tony says. "That's about all I can think of." It's not much, but I guess it's something?
"Anyway, we're going to head over there now," Robin says, already starting to pull Tony away a little. Even though I was trying not to, it looks like I held them up. However...
"Uhh, can I see?" I ask. I'm really curious about this blacksmith thing. How would you make something out of metal exactly? I've seen a number of metal things like those bars in the stables, Francis' armor and sword, and the knives that other people use. They all look so different, it makes me really curious. How can they all be made of the same metal?
"Aria..." Emily starts to speak in a scolding tone. Did I say something bad? I start to shrink away from her.
"Wait, that's a great idea!" Tony runs back, grabbing me by the shoulders.
"It is?" I don't get it.
"It is?!" everyone else shouts. They don't get it either?! The next thing I know, Tony is bringing me along. Andy and Emily follow too, but Jess splits off, saying she's going to the church.
"Normally it's really rude to ask about someone else's job," Emily tells me as we walk. "If you go there and make the shop owner angry, they could take it out on the other kid by firing them or something."
"Firing them is...?"
"Not letting them work there anymore." Andy says with a grim expression.
"Jobs can pay way more money than selling things you find in the forest, so you'll be much better off if you can get one. But most people don't want to hire us because we're orphans, so it's really hard for us to get jobs," Emily explains.
"We've been training here since before... you know, before we came to the orphanage, so the boss kept us on."
"So whatever you do, don't do anything inappropriate, or disrespectful, or... or anything else bad in there," Emily warns me.
"Don't worry about it," Robin says. "Our boss is a know it all. She can just ask him all the questions she wants and he'll gladly tell her everything about blacksmithing."
"And it'll keep him off our backs..." Tony says in a low voice he probably doesn't intend for anyone to hear. I think I have pretty good hearing, I always seem to pick up things people mutter to themselves... I ponder this briefly while we walk.
Since there isn't much else to say, we quickly walk through the city. For some reason, we go all the way east back to North Main Street before turning south. I feel like taking a more direct route would get us there faster, but I'm just following the boys' lead. While we go, I idly poke at The Reeb to keep myself occupied like I've been doing all day, but don't expect anything to come of it at this point. Just before we reach the central market plaza, where all three main streets meet, we turn back into the northwest district, heading a short distance into the tightly packed buildings and arriving at our destination barely a block off of the main road.
----------------------------------------
The building we come to is surprisingly made of stone instead of wood. I thought important buildings were made of stone though. Is a blacksmith workshop a really important building? It has a big stone pole sticking up from the roof, which pours out dark smoke at an incredible rate. Is there a fire inside? A really big fire maybe? Even as I wonder about the strange building, we begin to go inside.
As soon as Tony opens the door, a heat wave rushes out. It makes everyone but the two boys flinch. They chuckle and walk through the door. We all follow on their heels.
"Hey, Boss!" the boys call.
"Hey Tony, Robin," a man calls back. As I enter the hot insides of the building, the first thing I notice is how strange it looks. There are no windows, with only one source of light - a massive, blazing fire inside a huge, enclosed fire pit near the far left corner of the room. I guess it's like a hearth, but it has big stone walls built around it, with only a small window on one side. It makes the whole place very dark, but also drawn in an incredibly orange colored lighting. Apart from that, there are some crates near the far wall and some tables and counters scattered around. The air feels hot against my skin and kind of... dirty? My eyes are drawn to the man who just called out, sitting right in front of the huge fire.
Huge! My first impression is that he is an enormous mountain of a man. He isn't wearing a shirt, so his massive arm and chest muscles are in full view, shining with sweat. Humans can have muscles like that?! He's sitting, turned toward us as we enter.
"Who are the kids?" Boss asks gruffly.
The boys quickly push me forward. "This girl is super interested in blacksmithing. She doesn't know a single thing about it and was asking us a bunch of questions. We thought that you would be way better at explaining things than us, so we brought her with us to ask you about it."
"Hmm..." he rumbles, looking at me from across the room. I can't tell what he's thinking at all. "And the others?"
"We're also from the orphanage, sir. We're just here to make sure she doesn't get herself into any trouble. She always has a lot of questions about everything, so I'm really very sorry if we're bothering you." Andy speaks smoothly while keeping his head down. "If you would rather, we can leave right away."
Boss finally rises from his seat. My mouth hangs open as he seems to just get bigger and bigger. I stare up wide eyed as he approaches. Tony and Robin move aside so he can stand right in front of me. I tilt my head all the way back to look at him. I hardly come above his knees!
Even compared to the big man at the stall earlier, he's way bigger. His hands are the size of my head! He stands before me for a few moments, and it feels like he expects me to say something. Unfortunately, I'm so stricken I react... not so well.
"You're so huge..." I gawk. It seems like his eyes just narrow a little. Emily jabs me sharply in the side with a low hiss to snap me out of it. "Uwa- err- umm-" I fumble through a few sounds as I try to get myself together. I'm supposed to be respectful here! I need to greet him now, right? How? I can't just say hi to someone like this, right? I need a respectful greeting. Respectful, respectful... I should have seen someone do that before...
I move to replay my vague memories of Francis showing a lot of respect to the handlers that one time. "It's a great pleasure to meet you, thank you for taking some of your time to speak with my humble self," I say while bowing down deeply. I only kind of remember the very respectful words, but I think this was the gist of it. And I think he bowed like this when he said it, right? No wait, I think he kneeled, didn't he?
"What are you doing?!" Emily quietly screams from close by my side.
I quickly glance back and forth between Emily and Boss. He has an eyebrow raised, and doesn't look too pleased. "You told me to be respectful, did I do it wrong?" I ask nervously, glancing back up at Boss.
"That looks way too formal, it sounds sarcastic! Where did you even learn something like that?!"
"It's complicated!" I look back up at Boss as I stand and try again. He still seems to be waiting. Other greeting, other greeting... I glance around helplessly, I don't know any other special greetings, do I? Then my eyes land on the boys now standing off to the side, behind Boss. They look terrified, there's no way they thought I would blunder a simple greeting so badly, was there? Why didn't I ask Emily to teach me greetings? For now I'll try to use their greeting, he took it well enough once, right? I raise a hand like they did. "Hey, Boss," I say stiffly. However, that one makes him look outright annoyed. I send my worried gaze back to Emily, who has turned completely pale.
Then she thwacks me on the head. "He's not your boss, he's their boss!"
The way they've been using the word finally clicks. "Boss is a title, not a name?"
"Of course not, he's the one who hired them and pays them for their work!" Emily whispers back. Standing right in front of him like this, can't he hear everything we're whispering to each other anyway?
If both of those greetings are out, I definitely don't know any others. I'll just come up with something in the middle then! I'll just introduce myself to start... "Hello sir, my name is Aria." Is that a good idea? How about mentioning what they told me about earlier? "I'm sorry I'm not very knowledgeable, so I would be happy if you took some time to speak with me." That was what Tony and Robin said they brought me here for... I glance at Emily again, who gives me a surprised 'so-so' hand gesture. Tony and Robin are giving me big thumbs up from behind the man though.
"Hmm..." he rumbles. He... doesn't look quite as displeased now I think? "You want to know about blacksmithing, little girl?" he asks. It sounds somehow... condescending?
"Yes sir. I'm very curious because I don't know anything about it." I try to answer in a way that shows I'm open to learning. Maybe that will help? He turns briefly, retrieving something from a counter. "We work with metal here. Big stuff, heavy stuff," he says it kind of proudly. They did mention blacksmiths work with metal earlier, so that's in line with the bit I already know.
"This here, is the tool of a blacksmith." He holds out a large object. It has a thick wooden handle, which is surprisingly short for how heavy duty it appears, with a large, smooth block of metal on the end. The whole thing looks very heavy and durable. It seems small in his hands, but it's probably almost the size of my torso. It kind of looks like a hammer, but I'm not sure, the shape is a bit different.
"Umm, what is it called?" I ask.
He blinks, seemingly thrown off a little. "A hammer." Oh, so it is a hammer. "But this is a no ordinary hammer," he comes back strongly. "This is a blacksmith's hammer." I just nod. Suddenly, his eyes narrow a little. "Think you can hold it, little girl?" Again, he sounds kind of condescending for some reason, like it's a challenge? I eye the hammer. Judging by the size, it has to be very heavy. Probably about... four to five times heavier than the weapons we used? I certainly wouldn't be able to swing it, but just supporting its weight should barely be doable.
"Hmm, if I can get my hands around it?" I respond. I won't be able to support its weight if I can't actually hold onto the thick handle.
With a grin, the man holds the hammer out to me. My eyes are drawn to Tony and Robin, waving their arms behind him, like they're trying to warn me about something. I place my hands on the handle extended to me. I put one hand all the way up near the metal end, and the other all the way at the bottom so I can balance the weight. My hands barely wrap halfway around the handle, but it's just enough to get a grip. Since all of the weight should be on the metal side, I put my left hand metal end underneath, and my right at the far end on top, which should give me some good leverage.
It was much harder with the short handles and long striking sections of our weapons in training since they were mostly modeled after swords, but it at least allowed me to use them, even if they were too heavy to properly fight with the things. The handle of this hammer didn't look that long in his hands, but it's almost shoulder length apart for me, a good deal longer than the handles on most of our training weapons. The weighted metal end is smaller too, which should help. I spread my feet a little for balance and weight distribution, and he releases the hammer. It's heavier than I expected, immediately putting a very heavy weight on my hands. I wouldn't be able to hold it with grip strength alone, especially since I can't even properly get my hands around it. But as expected, that's not an issue with my hands spread on the top and bottom for leverage.
I grit my teeth as the weight attempts to push my arms straight to the floor. Locking them at my sides and supporting the weight with my legs helps a lot. I exert all of my force into my arms, but all of a sudden, The Reeb feels like it jumps around inside me. I wince a little as it disrupts my concentration and the hammer slips downward a little, but I ignore it after a moment and recover.
With all of my strength, I heft the hammer up to get a closer look at it. With this massive weight, it feels like it would be an incredible weapon. Well, for someone with the strength to swing it properly. Besides the wooden handle, the metal end is extremely smooth. It's so flat on the side that I wonder how they managed it.
"Wow, this is really heavy," I say to the man with a shaky grin, trembling from the effort. "You can use this? That's really amazing!" I can hardly lift it, but he uses it regularly? He was even holding it with one hand just before, like it hardly weighed anything.
However, he raises his eyebrows in shock as he's looking at me. What is it? I swivel my head, but everyone else has the same shocked expression. "What?" I ask.
"Aria, you're really strong!" Robin almost shouts. I am?
"Well, color me impressed, didn't expect that one... So, Aria was it?" the man asks. He reaches out and I hand him the hammer. Once my arms aren't supporting all that weight anymore, they go limp at my sides, completely out of energy. Those are going to be sore later...
"I'm Gremory, the head of this workshop. It's good to meet you." He finally introduces himself, extending his hand toward me for some reason. He suddenly seems a lot more friendly?
"It's really nice to meet you too." I look at his outstretched hand, unsure what it means. When I glance at Emily, she gestures like I should take his hand while mouthing 'handshake' at me, and I remember, I did see people do something like that around the city! So I look back up at him. I just have one problem. "I'm sorry, but I uhh... can't really move my arms right now." All of my muscles in my arms feel like they've turned to mush. They're completely useless, like when I was paralyzed, but this time because they're actually too tired to move. Even the muscles in my shoulders, back, and legs are starting to burn with a sore feeling. That really was just barely the upper limit of what I can lift. After a moment, he starts to laugh loudly.
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"I like this one!" he shouts at Tony and Robin. With a quick turn, he starts walking back to where he was sitting, gesturing for me to follow. The boys quickly scamper off through a door into another area of the workshop. So this is what they meant earlier? I'd keep him off their backs by distracting him with all my questions while they did something elsewhere? Well, this works out for me too, so I can't complain.
At least I've made it through those terrifying introductions, so I'm a lot less nervous now. As he is walking, I force the muscles in my hips and legs to move from their locked positions, taking a couple shaky steps. That gets the stiffness to go away, and I can walk normally again. I follow as he sits on what looks like an overturned crate near the fire. I stand on his right, and he pulls something off a counter on his left. It kind of looks like a block of wood. He glances at it briefly before tossing it back on the counter. I wonder what that was for?
"So, what would you like to know about the great art of blacksmithing?" Gremory asks.
For now, I start with the most obvious question I have on my mind. "I was wondering how you make things out of metal." Well, that is basically his entire job so the question is too general. "What I mean is, what do you actually do with metal to make it into all sorts of different things?"
For some reason, that puts a big grin on his face. "With fire, lots of fire," he chuckles. "And this hammer." I don't quite get it. I don't understand how those relate to making metal things.
"Experience is the best teacher. I'll show you how I do it." Suddenly, he stands, moving over to the right side of the large, enclosed hearth. He uses a thick clothlike thing to open up a metal door attached to the side of the hearth, then uses a shovel to toss a bunch of gray stuff into the hearth from a big wooden crate near the far wall. Black smoke immediately billows out over him, but he pays it no mind.
"What is that?" I ask, wincing and trying not to cough as the smoke hits me too.
"Coke, burns way hotter than wood, so you need it to run a forge." If it runs a forge...
"So that's called a forge?" I ask, looking at the big hearth. With the way it's constructed with its walls, it does only vaguely resemble a hearth. So I guess they are different after all.
"Yeah." He closes the door in the side after a few shovel fulls and moves to a counter all the way near the right wall, across from the door where we entered. There are numerous crates stacked on top. I walk over, but I'm so much shorter than the counters I could walk right under them. Without comment, Gremory scoops me up with one hand, lifting me like I don't weigh anything at all, and places me standing on the counter so I can look into the crates on top. Even the crates are almost as tall as me though...
"These are the ingots I work with. Copper, nickel, and iron mostly." He points out each type of metal as he speaks, each in their own crate. "There are lots of different metals with their own uses, but most everyday stuff can be made with just these." He sifts through one crate briefly. From what I can see, it looks like there are a lot of rectangular bars of metal piled up inside. They're about the length of my forearm, and twice as thick. It also looks like they get a little more narrow at the top than they are on the bottom. The strangest part is how they're all surprisingly uniform, in the exact same shape. I wonder how they all got like that? After a few moments, he pulls one out from the iron crate, but it's actually about half the length of the other ingots, like it was cut in half somehow.
I hop down from the counter and follow him as he goes back to the forge, sitting back down and placing the ingot on top of a metal table with a funny, pointy shape that sits a little behind his seat, off to the right side. He picks up a skinny, curved thing in one hand. "These are tongs," he says as he squeezes them a couple times. They bend so the ends come together with a clacking sound, but then bend back into their original shape again when he stops squeezing.
"Oooh..." I gaze at the mysterious shape changing metal tool. This just makes him chuckle.
"Never seen tongs before, Aria?" Andy asks. Him and Emily are trying to keep their distance a little, but he speaks up when he sees me staring.
I shake my head vigorously. "No, how do they do that?"
"Haha, this is nothing. They're thin and flexible, so they bend nice and easy. I use them to handle the metal." Gremory explains while he squeezes the tongs, the ends coming together on the sides of the small metal ingot. He uses them to pick it up, moving the metal ingot over into the forge. He drops it inside, then puts the tongs down on the metal table.
"What is this thing?" I ask about the table. Given its unique shape, it's probably another tool he uses? Not to mention, the entire thing looks like it's made out of solid metal. How would you make something like this out of those metal bars?
"This is an anvil. This is where I pound out the metal."
"Pound it?"
He just grins, "Yeah, it takes a lot of strength to be a blacksmith." He flexes his arms as he says that, his incredibly large muscles bulging even bigger as he does. Wow, his muscles are so big... Then he turns back toward the forge, beginning his explanation of the process. "First I heat the ingot in the forge. Getting it hot enough takes a lot of heat. The coke burns hot enough, and the bellows give the fire the air it needs." As he says that, he steps down repeatedly on a big thing on the floor. It looks like it's made of wood or something, with a kind of fabric part connecting the top and bottom sections. But, it doesn't really look like clothing fabric, it seems more stiff. Some sort of animal skin maybe? The skin folds every time he steps down, and expands again when he lifts his foot. It connects to the bottom of the forge, a little hole in the stone wall letting it through.
"Those... bellows, they blow air into the forge? When you step down like that?" I ask. I can hear it every time he steps down, and the fire immediately grows larger with each step.
"Yup. The air feeds the fire so it can burn hotter. Now we just wait for the ingot to get hot." Gremory continues stepping on the bellows in a steady rhythm. As I watch, I start to wonder.
"Hey, why do the bellows expand again when you step off of them?"
He grins. "Perceptive one here," he says. "That's a trade secret."
"What's a trade secret?"
That one makes him chuckle again. "It means it's a secret of my craft. It gives me an advantage in my field, so I can't reveal the trick to anyone."
"Oh." That makes sense. But... I don't quite understand why it would need to be a secret in the first place? Why does he want an advantage over other people? I think about it a bit. If he's making metal things for people, having the bellows like that should make them work better. It looks faster and easier than working them up and down over and over, so it probably makes the fire hotter. If the fire gets hotter, it probably heats the metal faster. So the faster it heats, the faster he can make things? Making things faster obviously means he can make more stuff in the same amount of time. So it's all about efficiency. Even I understand that after gathering in the forest. The more efficient you are, the more things you get, and the more you can sell. The more you sell, the more money you make. "So it's all about efficiency..." I mutter to myself. I'll have to keep that in mind.
It takes a surprisingly long time for the metal ingot to heat up. Even with his special bellows. How much longer would it take with regular ones? I might have underestimated the difference just thinking about it. I keep myself occupied by rolling The Reeb around a little as my mind wanders. Actually, didn't it start moving earlier when I was holding that hammer? Did it move on its own there? Was it a reaction to the hammer? I don't know, I barely had any attention focused on it at the time, so I can't remember the feeling very clearly. Oh well, maybe I'll try testing that later, when I can lift my arms again.
Finally, the metal ingot is hot enough. Gremory removes it from the forge with the tongs, and I see that unlike before, it's actually glowing bright orange now.
"Wow, it's so bright!" I exclaim.
"That glow is how you know it's pliable. Once it's out, it starts to cool off, so you have to work fast." Even as he says this, he grabs his hammer and raises it high overhead. He holds the ingot in place with the tongs in his left hand while bringing the hammer slamming down with his right. The clang of metal is so sudden and explosive it almost makes me stagger back. My ears are ringing a little.
But he doesn't stop. With no hesitation, Gremory raises the hammer once more. He brings it down hard over and over, quickly beginning to flatten the metal ingot. It's actually changing shape when he hits it! In fact, whenever he hits it, little bits of bright orange metal fleck off of the sides as well. He turns it repeatedly, flattening it further. Then I notice, he's actually only hammering one part of it. Only about half of the ingot is being flattened out.
Slowly, the color of the ingot changes as he works on it. From blazing orange, it just barely begins to turn a more dull red color by the time he has flattened out half of the ingot into a surprisingly thin and long sheet. He holds it up for us to see. My ears are still kind of ringing, but he speaks so loudly that I can hear him anyway.
"See this? This here, is how you make metal tools," he says proudly while holding up the glowing metal. Then he turns and places it back into the forge. "It's starting to cool, you have to keep it hot to forge it," he says while he begins working the bellows with his foot again.
"Wow, that's amazing. You actually beat it into the shape you want with a hammer?" So the incredible heat is just enough to make it so it will change form, then he needs to hit it over and over like that to get it into the shape he wants. Metal is amazing... "What are you making now?" I ask.
"A knife," he says simply.
"A knife... why are you flattening half of it?"
"That will be the blade, the other end is the handle."
"The handle? You mean the part you hold?" I've never gotten to use a normal knife before, I don't know if what they taught us with practice weapons applies here...
"Yeah. The metal needs to be thick enough to hold the handle comfortably. If you make it too thin, it'll break easily when you try to cut through something. Of course, more fancy knives will have leather or wood covered handles, but a solid metal knife will do everything you need." He nods with his words. "Even those need the metal pounded into a tang, or the fancy handle would snap right off of the metal blade."
"A tang?" I ask about the new word.
"You basically flatten out the handle instead of leaving it round, then you use a peg to attach the wood onto the metal so it won't break. For leather, you can just leave it round and glue the leather on. I could make them," he assures me. "But those fancy jobs go to the blacksmiths in wealthier districts."
"I see... Uhh, what's a peg?" I ask about the first of those things he mentioned that I don't know about.
"One of these." He pulls a small metal object from a small box over near the ingots and shows it to me. It's a shiny brown color like the copper he showed me before, and amazingly smooth and cylindrical. How did they get such a perfectly smooth shape? Gremory takes his place sitting at the bellows once more. "You have to punch a couple holes through your tang, then you sandwich it between the pieces of wood," he motions with his hands, showing the two pieces of wood sitting on each side of the flattened metal tang, "then drive the pegs through the holes so they stay together. The fit needs to be really tight, so those jobs are way more expensive. Only the rich bother with stuff like that though."
I nod a few times. "Yeah, that sounds like a ton of work. Where does wood like that even come from?" I ask while looking around. It doesn't seem like he keeps any sorts of wooden things like that here.
"Wood for a big job like that needs to be ordered special from a carver."
"What's a carver?"
"They work with wood instead of metal. Their stuff is cheap and nowhere near as durable as the metal goods I make," he explains. "Can't get a good cutting edge out of wood!" he laughs.
He hasn't waited that long, but he pulls the metal ingot back out of the forge again. It's already turned bright orange once more. It must be because it didn't cool all the way down, so it took a lot less time to get hot enough again. Now that I know it's supposed to be a knife, I watch him alter the shape skillfully, turning it around with each strike. The long, flat section quickly takes on a curve as he places the back flat on his anvil and hammers down to draw the blade section out. With just a few more hits, he turns the far end into a slightly rounded point. Then he turns the piece around, hammering on the handle section. He easily pounds it down on the corners to turn the rectangular shape into a cylinder. Then he hits it a little more to lengthen and thin down the handle, so it’s roughly oval shaped instead of being a completely round.
He turns it around a few times, inspecting it, before making some smaller adjustments with lighter hammer blows. "What is that section?" I ask loudly over the banging as he carefully hits the section where the blade connects to the handle. It's thicker than both other parts, and kind of rectangular.
"This is the slip guard. It's here to make sure your hand doesn't slip off of the handle onto the blade while you're holding the knife." I nod a few times. Having seen knives cutting through plants and animals alike, I can see not wanting to accidentally grab the blade...
He makes small adjustments to ensure the back of the blade is nice and straight, and that the edge follows a smooth curve the whole way down, without any waviness to it. He inspects it repeatedly as he works. Once he seems satisfied, he carries it over to a barrel at the end of the counters on the far left wall, near the door Tony and Robin went through earlier. He puts the metal in, a loud sizzling sound suddenly filling the room.
"What are you doing now?" I ask.
"I'm quenching it in oil to cool it back down enough to work on the blade."
"What is oil?"
"Oil?" he asks, looking confused.
"Ah, sorry sir, Aria doesn't know about a lot of things," Emily explains.
"Huh," he just shrugs when he hears that. "This is oil." He pulls the metal back out of the barrel, where it drips a few times. The bright orange color from earlier is gone, now it's a dull gray, maybe sort of silver. Like it was when he took it from the box. He taps it lightly a couple times with his finger. "Here," he holds it out for me to touch. It's been long enough that I can barely move my arms again. I shakily raise my hand to the metal. It really does look like a knife! It was just a bar of metal earlier, but with fire and a hammer, he changed it into this! I touch the flat of the blade with a finger. It's still pretty hot to the touch. Not enough to burn me immediately, but I draw my finger back pretty quickly anyway. Still, now my finger feels kind of weird. Reaching out again, I slide a finger along the flat of the blade, then pull it back to look at it.
Some of the oil he dipped the knife in came off on me. I rub it between my fingers. It seems kind of like water, but it's thicker. It sticks to my skin instead of running off. And it's kind of slippery, rubbing it between my fingers like this. "So this is oil...?" It is sort of see through, but not quite as much as water. It's hard to tell exactly what color it is with the lighting in here though. There's a smell to it too. Kind of metallic. I try licking it.
"Blegh!" it tastes terrible!
"Aria! Don't go putting weird stuff in your mouth!" Emily scolds me, grabbing me and roughly wiping the oil off of my tongue with her sleeve.
"Hahaha," Gremory laughs a rumbling laugh as he watches us. "Anyway, we use oil to cool the metal because water's no good. Hot metal rusts real fast, like all that." He points at the floor near the anvil.
"Uhh, you mean the stuff that came off earlier?" I ask, kneeling down to get a closer look at the little flecks of stuff that came off. I tentatively touch a bit of it. It's still warm, but it's been lying on the floor long enough to cool down. Like the knife, it's no longer glowing orange, having turned a dark black color instead. I pick up one bit that seems to be more of a ball shape than a thin flake like most of it. I look at it closely, but there isn't much to see, it's just a tiny ball of metal stuff. "What is rust?"
"Metal gets rusty when you expose it to too much moisture." So moisture is water I guess? "When it's hot like this, even the air causes the outer part to start rusting while you're hammering it," Gremory explains.
"Ok... but uh, what is rust exactly?" I tilt my head, confused. So metal turns to rust when you add too much water, but what exactly is this 'rust' it turns into?
"Well, rust is rust. That's all there is to it," Gremory shrugs. "It's not really metal anymore. It gets brittle and weak, won't hold an edge. Once metal starts to rust, you have to scrape all the rust away or it'll eat away at the metal until it's gone. Once the metal turns to rust, there's no turning it back. Like that stuff, it's useless." So metal eventually changes into something else, and there's no way to turn it back? And the rust it turns into is useless?
"If it's useless, can I keep this thing? It's interesting." I ask about the tiny rust ball.
"Sure, I can't use it for anything." He just shrugs.
"Thanks a lot." I smile brightly. Gremory chuckles while he works on wiping the oil off of the knife with an incredibly dirty looking rag. The thing is almost completely black. Maybe since he's always wiping oil away with it?
"Now I just need to grind this and give it an edge," he explains while walking over toward the door Tony and Robin went through. We follow him through to the new area, which is way cooler than the other room. Actually now that I'm thinking about it, I'm completely drenched in sweat just from standing in there for a while!
"Hey boss, what's up?" a new voice says as we enter.
"Need the grinder," he answers.
"And... these children are...?" I finally get a look at the person asking when Gremory moves past him. He's not old or young, average height, short cut brown hair. A surprisingly average looking person. He does have some pretty big muscles though. It looks like you need a whole lot of physical strength to be a blacksmith. So you have a lot of strength when you have big muscles. Or maybe it's the other way around, you get big muscles because you're really strong? Either way, that explains why even Tony and Robin are pretty muscular.
"Just showing a curious child how blacksmithing works."
"O-ok?" the man blinks a few times, clearly very confused by this. Unlike the previous room, this one is long and skinny. It kind of reminds me of the room Mina was in at the stables. We pass between the average man and Tony and Robin, who are sitting and working on something at a table to our left.
At the far end of the room, there are two odd looking things set up with a little distance between them. It's like a seat, with a big round rock looking thing in front of it, set in some kind of metal stand. Gremory sits, placing his foot on a wedge shaped thing, which attaches to a wooden stick, that then attaches to a metal piece bent at very straight angles, and eventually goes through the big stone part in the middle. What in the world is this thing?
"This is a grindstone, we use it to sharpen the edges of any blades we make here," Gremory explains. He runs his hand across the blade part of the knife to show that it isn't sharp at all after being hammered out. "I just go like this," he spins the stone part toward himself, which seems to rotate in place somehow. Then he steps down on the wedge thing. It sinks down, then rises back up, just like the bellows earlier. However, it also causes the wooden part to move. But the wood is connected to the metal piece that seems to be spinning with the round stone.
I keep staring, trying to understand what I'm seeing. While I'm gawking, Gremory explains that you press the blade into the stone to sharpen the edge. He pours a bucket of water over the spinning stone as well, saying it's needed to let it slide well while sharpening. Then he presses the knife into the stone, releasing a scraping sound, shrill and very loud in the small room. He slowly slides it back and forth as he sharpens the blade.
But I'm absolutely stunned by the strange rotating machine the grindstone uses. I try to trace the motion with my eyes to figure out how it works. So the stone is spinning, and it must be attached to the metal bar going through it. That metal bar is holding the stone suspended in the metal frame. The way it sits on the other parts of the frame, the stone itself doesn't actually touch anything but the metal rod through its center. Not even the floor, that must be what allows it to spin. So it's like a wheel, but since it's suspended from the ground, it can rotate freely.
"What is this thing here?" I ask, pointing at the wedge part he's stepping on.
"The peddle, it lets me spin the grindstone so I can keep both my hands on the knife," Gremory explains while he's working on the knife. That's the biggest confusing part. The pedal is attached to a wood piece with a thin strip of metal. When I look closely, it seems like the metal can flex a little, the way the tongs did. It flexes back and forth as the stick moves with the wheel. But the bottom of the stick doesn't really move, only the top. So when he presses down on the pedal, it pulls the stick down. That's why the stick is attached to the metal rod with those weird angled parts. It makes it so when the rod spins, the top of the stick moves in a circle around the rod. Because the top and bottom can each move separately, it can spin like this, but as long as he presses down on the pedal at the right time, it will pull the stick down to spin the rod and keep the stone part spinning.
"Wow..." I am starstruck by this for some reason. Something about the way it transforms the simple back and forth motion of his foot into spinning motion is so mysterious and brilliant at the same time. "T-that's incredible..."
"Is it really?" Gremory asks with a bemused look. I nod emphatically a few times. "I like your enthusiasm," he chuckles. It's not long until he has the blade finished on the knife. He looks at it closely for a bit before nodding. He holds it out for me to see.
"This is the result of a blacksmith's work. A good knife that'll last a long time."
"Wow, that's really amazing." I smile. "Oh yeah, how much does a knife cost anyway?"
He thinks for a moment. "I made this myself, so this one would be about five irons," he says. I... have no idea how much that is. So they use iron for money too?
"How much is an iron worth?" I turn and ask Emily quietly.
"It's ten coppers, which is..." she thinks for a bit, before Andy helps.
"One hundred nuvrite," He says. "So five irons is fifty coppers... which is... uh..." He seems to be thinking about it, but the math resolves easily. So a copper is one hundred barr, and an iron is one thousand. Five irons, fifty coppers, five hundred nuvrite, five thousand tin, five thousand barr, simple. But that number...
"Five thousand barr?! Wow, that's expensive!" I exclaim. Then lower my head as I think, "I'm going to need to save up for a knife." I nod to myself a few times. How long would that take anyway? I made just over fifty barr selling my first two weeks of gathered stuff. Five thousand divided by twenty five is... two hundred weeks? That nearly four years!
"Hahaha, I wouldn't aim for something like this for your first knife, it would take forever to get it," he laughs. I nod seriously. "Look for a cheap knife, like a copper or bone knife, they're much more reasonable for someone your age." So there are other kinds of knives that I can afford? "Stay away from cheap mollite knives though, those things won't hold an edge long enough to be worth their price. And snap if you look at 'em wrong, that's why I don't touch the stuff," he shakes his head.
I smile brightly, taking his advice to heart. "Thanks a lot, I'll do that."
"Well, that's about it here, I suppose you were going to go back with these two... Hey Tony, Robin, you almost done?" The two boys say they're nearly finished with... whatever they're doing. I go over to look, and it seems like they have small pointed things. They are pressing the pointy sticks into various types of metal items and tapping them with hammers a few times. They do it at certain angles, digging slightly into the surface of the metal to mark it with some sort of squiggle.
"What's this?" I ask.
"A maker mark, it shows that these were made in this shop," Robin explains as he works. They weren't exaggerating when they said they were nearly done, because after tapping the mark just a couple more times, they are finished.
I turn back to Gremory. "Thank you for teaching me so much about blacksmithing, it was all really interesting," I say, bowing down deeply.
"No problem, it's not every day I get someone in here who's genuinely interested in the trade," he laughs. He extends his hand, and this time I'm able to take it. I can't say I really know much about handshakes, but it doesn't really seem to matter since his hand completely covers my hand, wrist, and my forearm almost up to my elbow. Is this even a handshake anymore?
Even so, we more or less shake hands, then head out of the workshop.
----------------------------------------
"Ah, freedom! It's what, eighth bell? We have so much extra time today!" Tony cheers.
"What should we do now?" Robin asks. I know what I want to do next, get some water. It was so hot in there, I feel really thirsty. I wipe away some of the sweat on my forehead, then stop when I see my arm. It's stained completely black. I rub my hands across my face, and they come away black again. I'm completely covered in soot from standing right in front of the forge. When I look down at myself, I see that I'm covered head to toe in dark soot. I really need to wash myself off. I could go back to the orphanage and just wipe myself down again, but I'm near the central plaza now, it would be a much shorter trip to the river than usual. I never have the time to go there to wash myself now, so I might not want to miss the opportunity.
"Hey Aria, it looks like you're thinking about something, you have somewhere you want to go?"
"Yeah, I was thinking of going to the river to wash myself off."
"Ahh, I can see..." she says, looking me up and down. Unlike me, Andy and her weren't standing directly next to the forge, so they aren't all that dirty. At least, no more than usual. "Well, we were thinking of heading back for now. I guess we'll see you a bit later."
I nod and pass back the bag Emily lent me earlier. "Sure, see you all later." I wave to everyone. They all wave goodbye as well. Then they turn north, while I go south, back to the closest main street.