Coal smoke drifted through the chatter of early birds and rustling leaves, with a tinge of hot iron just on the tip of the tongue when Emilia made her way from cabin 12 to the Main Hall for breakfast. The smell of the forge meant Mrs. Wright was on campus and would be offering lessons in blacksmithing.
Emilia finished her breakfast quickly.
The forge was an open building, only one back wall of brick and a quartet of stone-based columns supporting a roof. The forge itself, a brick basin with an iron hood designed to contain and retain intense heat for softening metal, was against that back wall. There was also a shed full of tools and plenty of counter space. A large anvil stood in the center of the space, second anvil was set several feet away.
Emilia winced when she emerged from the path to the cleared space where the forge sat, the memory from a few days ago springing to mind. Then the space had smell of sulfur and burning plastic, but now it smelled of hot iron and a tinge of sweat.
At the center of the building was Mrs. Wright.
Mrs. Wright was a large woman with thick arms and a round belly. She always dressed plainly in a long-sleeved shirt, faded jeans, and thick boots. At the forge, she wore a leather apron, big gloves, and safety glasses and insisted anyone coming to take lessons do the same. Incongruously, Mrs. Wright had a short purple mohawk, the sides of her head neatly shaved. It had always struck Emilia as neat that such a grounded person should have an ostentatious hairstyle.
Emilia took comfort the roar of the fire and the ringing of the hammer as she as she watched Mrs. Wright at the larger of the two anvils, pounding a piece of steel into shape. As she watched Mrs. Wright, she felt the rhythm of the forge in her arms, back, and chest. That now familiar feeling of a new skill tingled along her shoulders and expanded through her mind.
Mrs. Wright didn’t look up as Emilia approached but she did give a blunt nod. “The gear’s in the usual spot.” Her voice was mixture of gruff and musical, like the ring of metal on metal over steaming water.
Emilia went to the shed and selected an apron and safety goggles. The thick gloves were awkward, but Emilia was certain she didn’t want to handle hot metal without them. Mrs. Wright took the piece she was working on, a simple ironspike and put it back into the roaring forge.
“You’ve been here before, right? Mimi?”
Emilia blushed and cleared her throat. “Emilia.”
Mrs. Wright grunted. “You’ve gotten taller.”
“We tend to do that at my age.”
Mrs. Wright grinned. “I thought we’d do ironspikes today. What do you say?”
Emilia followed Mrs. Wright’s lead, selecting a hammer that felt good in her hands. With a pair of tongs, she pulled a piece of iron from the forge that was just the right shade of yellow orange, and put it against the anvil. At first, she just pounded on the metal, getting a feel for the heft of the hammer, the ring of the steel, the way it moved.
She made a mistake early, letting the metal get cold, watching it crack against her hammer. She tossed it in box of scrap at Mrs. Wright’s direction.
“Mistakes are part of learning. Keep at it.”
So she did.
She selected another bar of steel and put it in the forge then took another that had already been heating. It had the right glow of orange, so Emilia took it to the second anvil. When she felt like she had a good idea of how the metal moved, how the hammer felt, she used the curved bit of the anvil, the horn Mrs. Wright called it, to start shaping the metal into a hook. Her first attempt was in the right direction and Mrs. Wright gave her a nod of approval, then gestured toward the scrap pile.
Over the next few hours, Emilia made several ironspikes of varying shape and quality: some might have been wall hooks, some were just straight spikes, some might have even been good enough to be mediocre. Those Mrs. Wright had her set aside, the others went into the scrap bin. Emilia didn’t mind that most of her efforts went to the scrap bin. She liked doing something new, she liked the way it made her feel bigger, thicker, stronger. She wondered if she was shifting shape, if Mrs. Wright noticed, but Mrs. Wright didn’t say anything, so Emilia didn’t worry about it.
Emilia lost herself in the work so much so that she didn’t realize what time it was until her stomach grumbled so loud it rattled her backbone.
She stopped swinging the hammer and held her ironspike up in its tongs to give it a look. The metal had cooled to a dull orange and she was prepared to put it back in the fire. This one wasn’t a hook or a fork or a spade, it was just a simple, straight spike, like a large nail.
She was about to stick it back in the fire, when Mrs. Wright stopped her.
“That one looks pretty good. May I?”
Emilia had no idea what use a simple ironspike might have other than for practice, but she held the spike out to the woman who took it in her gloved hands. Emilia winced but either the metal was cool enough or the gloves were thick enough that Mrs. Wright was unharmed. She held the spike up and turned it over and nodded.
“I’ll scrape the scaling while you go get lunch, then we can put the finishing touches on it. What do you say?”
“I’m not hungry. We could do it now,” Emilia said, eager to continue. But her stomach growled again.
Mrs. Wright snorted. “If you faint in my forge, I’ll have to carry you to the Main Hall. Is that what you want?”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Emilia blushed. “No ma’am.”
She stowed her gear meticulously and made her way along the winding path to the Main Hall. She was ready to have a quick lunch and head back to the forge, but the girls of cabin 12 called to her. She kept an eye out for Eddie and found him in his now usual spot. He spared her a single look, flashing his red-rimmed eyes and angry frown before looking back at his food.
It was nice to sit with the girls of cabin 12. It was nice to think they were probably her friends. Even Maria refrained from snide comments and contemptuous looks.
When she returned to the forge, Mrs. Wright had a bevy of students watching her draw out simple iron nails. She gestured Emilia to a work bench off to one side. “File it. Shape it. Start with the rough files and move down the line. Take your time. Be thorough.”
Emilia sat on a low stool at a rude wooden bench and look at the files laid out beside her ironspike. She picked up the file with the biggest teeth and got started, not quite sure what she was doing. She let her hands work, trusting to her instincts, hoping her powers would guide her. She went slow, working on the most obvious spots first, a bit of a bump on one side, an uneven bevel on another, and so on. As the flaws got smaller, she used finer and finer files, trying to keep the ironspike symmetrical. It was, essentially, a squared nail with four rounded corners that tapered halfway down the length into a needle-sharp point. But it was too big to be a regular nail. It was the size of a knife, or maybe a dagger.
By the time she was hungry, she looked up to find It was early evening.
“Not bad, Mimi. Come back tomorrow and we’ll polish it up.”
• • •
The resident cabins at Camp Arrowhead were arranged in a half circle, and nestled within that half circle was a fire pit around which were arranged a variety of mismatched lawn furniture. As far as Emilia could tell, the boys’ side of camp hosted a bonfire every night. The girls’ side hosted bonfires more judiciously.
Emilia sat in a wobbly wooden deck chair with a deep seat and a tilted back, allowing her to recline with her feet up on the edge of the seat. She had her arms crossed loosely against her chest and stared into the fire, not paying attention to much. She let the flicker and crackle of the fire fill her senses, the gentle scent of wood smoke flavor the background. Her eyes drifted closed. Eventually, she caught the edges of a conversation.
“That’s rough,” Maria said. “I’m sorry to hear that.” She sounded genuine, unguarded.
“I just really miss them, you know?” Terra’s voice was small and sad and held the hint of a hitch. “People keep saying I’ll get over it eventually. I think about them every day. I don’t know if it’s possible to get over it. I’m not sure I want to.”
“I miss my brother too,” Maria said. “And he’s just in jail, not… you know.”
“Dead,” said Terra.
“Yeah. That.” Maria cleared her throat uncomfortably.
“Does anything help?” Terra asked. “Even just a little?”
“My parents thought coming out here would help,” Maria said. “Thought it would give me something to do, help me make friends, get away from home for a while.”
“Has it?”
“Not really. First thing I did was get in trouble.” Maria paused. The crackling fire filled the quite behind the babble of other conversations. There was a wispy sound like the whisking of hair. “But you know what made me feel better? I dyed my hair bright purple without talking to my parents first. They were pissed. For a while.”
“Why did that help?”
Maria made a sound like a shrug. “Not sure. Maybe because it was just for me. It was a change I could control.”
“Do you regret it?”
“It’s just hair. Hair grows back. Besides, purple is a great color.”
Terra giggled.
“I’ve always wanted to cut my hair.” Alexandria’s calm, quiet voice cut through the babble of background conversation and crackle of fire.
Emilia blinked her eyes open and turned her head to the left to see a knot of girls from cabin 12 all sitting close enough to her to include her without disrupting her. Everyone was there but Frankie. They looked somber, though Terra had a small grin about her eyes.
“So why don’t you?” Maria asked.
“My mother said no. She says my long hair is beautiful and I should keep it that way.”
“She’s not wrong,” said Maria. “Your hair is beautiful.”
Alexandria crossed her arms firmly. “Maybe. But I’ve always wanted to see what it’s like short. And it’s my hair after all.”
“You know,” said Maria. “I brought my salon kit. I’ve got combs and scissors and dyes… I’m not an expert, but I’ve got some practice, and if you want…” She nudged Terra, “and I could dye yours.”
“Purple?”
“I’m all out of purple. But I’ve got yellow, pink, green, black…”
“Green!” said Terra, fairly bouncing in her chair.
Cindy cleared her throat uncomfortably. “I’m not sure what papa would think if you came home with green hair.”
“Papa won’t mind,” Terra said. “Besides, like Alexandria said, it’s my hair. I’ll turn it green if I want to. Don’t you want to try it? You could go pink!”
Cindy chuckled. “No thank you. I’m happy with my hair the way it is.”
“Grease stained?” Terra said, a teasing to her tone Emilia had never heard from her before.
“Darn right,” Cindy ran a hand through her rough, dirty blonde curls.
“When can we do it?” Terra asked. “Now?”
Maria looked around surreptitiously, then grinned and nodded. “All those ready for Maria’s Hair Salon, follow me.” The girls of cabin 12 followed Maria into their cabin, and Emilia got up to follow them. It felt nice to join the others, it felt right.
Cindy didn’t want her hair dyed, so Maria put her to work helping. She organized supplies, brushed out hair, so on and so forth. Despite Maria’s insistence that she was an amateur, it seemed to Emilia she had a lot of practice. She brushed and washed and cut and dyed with impressive efficiency. Less than an hour later, the girls of cabin 12 were grinning ear to ear at their new hair.
Terra’s shaggy, long hair was smooth and soft and emerald green. Alexandria was short and spiky with bubblegum pink tips. Nadia’s pale blonde hair looked like it had the contrast turned up to canary yellow. Rosa’s tight black curls were now fire red. Emilia didn’t get her hair dyed, she wasn’t sure it would stick, but she did let Maria give it a trim and style. She was pleased with the way it looked.
• • •
After a hurried breakfast, Emilia hurried to the forge. Mrs. Wright was there, lighting the fire. Emilia bid Mrs. Wright good morning and sat on the bench, setting to work immediately with the finest sandpaper Mrs. Wright had, dunking the ironspike in a nearby bucket of water and going over it again and again and again until the sun was high in the sky and her ironspike shone like a dull grey mirror. She held it up, examining it from all angles, looking for imperfections. When she couldn’t find any, she stood from her stool, back aching, and stretched.
Mrs. Wright looked up from her work. “How’s it coming?”
“All right, I think.” She handed her spike over. “What’s next?”
Mrs. Wright took the ironspike and looked it over. She spent several minutes at it. The fire of the forge and the sun of summer gleamed off the polished surface. Emilia watched the metal she’d forged with her own hands gleaming until her eyes watered from it, blue and red afterimages dancing behind her eyelids.
“Do you know why iron trinkets are considered good luck?”
Emilia shook her head. She hadn’t even known they were.
“It was thought that goblins feared iron. Perhaps even that the metal repelled them, so folk in the Iron Age hung ironspikes over doors and made handles of iron and wore iron pendants. To repel the evil spirits.”
After everything she’d seen this summer, Emilia didn’t dismiss the story. “Do you think they were right?”
Mrs. Wright shrugged. “Couldn’t say. But this is a finely made ironspike. If you might be encountering evil spirits any time soon, I recommend you keep it with you.” She nodded at the shed. “You’ll find some boiled linseed oil and a cloth in there. That’ll keep it from rusting.”