by P. D. Kalnay
“Because I’ve never made any before.” It made perfect sense to me. Part of it was for Ivy, but a lot of it was the novelty of making something new.
“Some people have a love of making things,” Mr. Ryan said. “I bet Jack has a huge list of things he’d like to make. Don’t you, Jack?”
I nodded. It was true.
“How many things?” Ivy asked. She rarely spoke at the table.
“One of everything,” I said.
It was the first time I’d said that out loud. Everyone was looking at me funny, and I wondered if it had sounded crazy.
“You see?” Mr. Ryan said. “Some people are born to make things.”
“You make anything else since last summer?” Mr. Smith asked.
“A few pieces of furniture that turned out OK,” I said.
“The furniture is excellent,” Gran said. If she’d ever given me compliment, I couldn’t remember it. “Humility is a fine thing, lying isn’t.”
“He also made me a bow,” Ivy said. “It’s beautiful.”
Ivy jumped up from her seat and dashed for the door.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To get my bow!”
She returned a minute later with her bow and brought it over for Mr. Smith to look at. Considering she didn’t quite trust the guy, it spoke volumes to how proud she was of the gift. I imagined the necklace around her throat.
“This is very nice,” Mr. Smith said. He examined the bow with the care of someone who knew all the things to check. Then he peered at the string and gave the bow back to Ivy. “Did you make the string too?”
“No,” I said. “Ivy makes her own strings.”
“Ah,” Mr. Smith said, squinting at Ivy and then glancing at Gran. “It’s a very distinctive pattern.”
“I suppose you’ll be off again tomorrow?” Mr. Ryan asked.
“For another year.” Mr. Smith said. “I’d be surprised if Jack can wait that long to finish his knife.”
“Doesn’t seem likely,” I agreed.
Chapter 10 – Hot Tempered
There was no way I could leave my knife unfinished for a whole year. My days were too busy to do it all at once, but I’d find fifteen minutes here, or twenty minutes there, to go down to the workshop and move the project along. It was the only alone-time, outside of sleep, that I got. Not that I was complaining. I’d had almost fifteen years of being alone to hold me. In spite of my limited time, I never rushed. First, I used the grinder to take the knife down to its final shape and size. My tanto slowly began to look like a knife. Then, I switched to a series of files and took off the last of the bigger material. Next, I polished the blade with a succession of finer and finer stones. I could have used sandpaper or sanding blocks, but I wanted to finish the knife in a more traditional way, so I ordered a set of stones from Japan. They were crazy expensive, but I figured I had a bunch of samurai sword making in my future.
After the blade was smooth and shiny, I took the engraving tools out and very carefully carved a long, flowing dragon down both sides of the blade. To add texture and depth to the images, I randomly engraved the same sorts of geometric doodles I’d done on the flower petals of Ivy’s necklace. By midsummer, I’d finished all of that, and the knife just needed heat treating, sharpening, and a handle. Over that time I’d also sharpened the arrowheads, and added them to five shortened arrows for Ivy. I gave them to her one evening after a movie.
“Here, these are for you,” I said, handing her the arrows.
Ivy took them and carefully examined the sharp tips.
“Thank you,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll need them.”
“They’d have come in handy last summer.” I couldn’t say more without breaking my promise. “This way, with the bow, you could defend yourself in a pinch.”
“That’s very thoughtful, but I have you and Mr. Ryan to protect me. I can’t imagine needing more.”
It was nice of her to lump me in with Mr. Ryan, but I hadn’t proven particularly successful at keeping her safe on my own. I’d been the one who’d led her into danger.
“You can put them away somewhere, just in case. If I knew more I could…”
Ivy looked up at me, clutching the arrows to her chest like the world’s least romantic bouquet.
“Please be patient for a little longer,” she said.
“Fine, good night.”
“Good night, Jack.”
***
The next night at dinner I broke with long standing tradition and struck up a conversation with my grandmother.
“Gran, can I use the smithy?”
“Aren’t you already busy with other tasks?” she asked.
The last thing I wanted to do was give her the impression I had any free time.
“Yeah, I just need to use it for an hour or two, to finish the heat treating for my knife.”
“I can work in the garden on my own tomorrow,” Ivy said. “There’s little to do right now.”
Gran looked back and forth between us.
“How have the swimming lessons progressed?” she asked.
“Ivy’s doing great,” I said. “She can do front crawl, breaststroke, and she’s treading water for twenty minutes without touching bottom.”
Ivy nodded her support.
“Very well, but this is the last time until I say otherwise,” Gran said. “You have more than enough to learn without being distracted by too many hobbies.”
“Thanks, Gran. Thanks, Ivy.”
“Do you know how to complete the hardening and the final temper?” Mr. Ryan asked.
“Yeah, I watched a bunch of videos, and Mr. Smith showed me the different colours for the different temperatures. I just need to be careful to heat it evenly so I don’t warp it.”
“I look forward to seeing the finished product,” he said. “If it’s anything like Ivy’s bow, or the furniture you made, it’ll be a knife to be proud of.”
“It’s looking pretty good so far,” I said.
Ivy and Mr. Ryan had both expressed an interest in seeing what I’d done with my knife, but I dislike showing people my work before it’s finished. It doesn’t matter if it’s only a sketch; I prefer to keep the intermediate stages to myself.
***
Gran gave me the key to the padlock on the smithy doors, and I fired up the forge the way Mr. Smith had taught me. If you know about bladesmithing, you may have wondered why I’d done the final grind and polish ahead of the hardening and tempering. Normally, you’d harden the steel by heating and then quickly dunking it in liquid, either water or oil. That creates a blade that will hold a good edge, but is so brittle it might shatter from dropping it. Then you temper the blade. Tempering is heating to a lower temperature and letting the metal cool more slowly. It removes some of the hardness and makes the steel tougher and less susceptible to breaking. The final grinding and polishing usually follow those steps. I had something more experimental in mind for my knife. If I succeeded, I’d have something super cool. If not, there was a good chance all of my work would be for nothing.
The plyers I used when working with the reddish metal had proven to be incredibly strong. Whatever the combination of the metals did, it made those plyers almost impossible to damage. I’d worn out a diamond cutting wheel just making a hairline scratch on one jaw, and I had also tried to break off one of the fine tips with a hammer to no effect. When combined with steel, the reddish metal added both hardness and toughness. I was half-tempted just to melt the metal onto my knife and be done with it. I tried something else instead.
***
The forge burned hot, and I placed my knife into the centre on its spine, hoping to prevent the blade from warping. Then I placed the ceramic crucible, I used for heating the reddish metal, into the hot coals. I dropped a chunk of the reddish metal into the crucible. A few seconds later, the metal turned molten and shiny. Once the entire knife glowed yellow, I carefully picked it out the coals with the pliers, holding it by the tang. I had to w
ear a thick glove because the plyers were way too short for doing that kind of job, and my hand was too close to the heat.
Right after my run that morning, I’d liberated two big jugs of olive oil from Gran’s pantry. I filled a galvanised pail with the oil to serve as my quenching tank. You have to move quickly between fire and water (or oil) when quenching. I was adding an intermediate step to the process. I carefully dipped the tip of the glowing blade into the molten reddish metal. The result was unexpected. The strange metal raced up the blade in an instant and the entire knife burned white hot. It shone so bright I had to shut my eyes and look away. Even with eyes shut, and head turned, the white hot blade remained burned into my retinas.
A more prudent (smarter) person would’ve stopped then and let the blade cool. I determined to finish. With eyes shut, I lowered the blade into the bucket of oil. Predictably, flames shot up from the oil, and I had to let the knife and plyers drop into the bucket as I jumped back. That’s not how you’re supposed to quench something. Forcing my eyes open, I saw the bucket burning merrily on top. Smoke was building up in the little room. Quickly, I set a sheet of tin across the top of the bucket (I had thought to have a lid ready) and fled out through the open doors of the smithy. The tin smothered the flames, and I stood outside until the smoke cleared. Things hadn’t gone according to plan—I had a sinking feeling that my knife was ruined.
I went back in and pulled the metal sheet off of the bucket. The olive oil had turned dark brown, and the side of the bucket felt slightly warm, so I grabbed a pair of long tongs to fish out my knife and plyers. The plyers were fine, if oily, but the knife looked bad. A certain amount of scale (oxidised coating) is to be expected when you quench steel. That coating is generally thin and flaky. My knife looked like a big black chunk of burnt wood. It was three times its original thickness and no longer resembled the blade I’d started with. To say I was disappointed would be something of an understatement.
I set the knife on the anvil and carefully tapped it with a small hammer. A crack opened across the middle. If that crack went right through, I was defeated anyway—I kept hitting the black, crusty mess. Chunks of the coating broke off, revealing a shiny dark-blue knife. I smiled as the last chuck of the coating fell away. The knife was still underneath, engraving intact, with no sign of warpage. I didn’t know how brittle it might be. Regular carbon steel would be in a fragile state at that stage of the process, and I was careful not to bang it against anything. On a whim, I picked up a rusty length of rebar that was leaning against a wall. The knife whittled off a slice of the softer steel like it was wood. It left a shiny streak running down the rebar. I’m sure if anyone had been watching, they’d have thought I was crazy… based on my maniacal laughter.
I tempered the knife in Gran’s kitchen oven. Steel normally changes colour as it heats up, and you use those colours to determine when the correct temperature has been reached. My knife was no longer steel grey. The dark blue of the knife changed to different shades as it was tilted in bright light, but heating it had no effect on the colour. That being the case, and with so many other unknown variables, I guessed at the right temperature for tempering the knife, and used the oven’s thermometer. There was a good chance the magic metal had made the knife virtually indestructible. The only way to test that would be to try to break it. The idea of using a test piece only occurred to me later. Once the blade was truly finished, I had a go at trying to mark it. Nothing in the workshop could put a scratch on the blade or the tang. Now, it needed a handle and a sheath.
I’d kept the tang of the knife full, and it felt good in my hand already. I’d also drilled holes before hardening and quenching. Over the next weeks, in my tiny periods of spare time (and at night), I added a grip of twisted silver wire and changed it to black with a drip of the reddish metal. I also added a thin guard and stubby pommel made from the soft gold. These too I hardened permanently in place with the magic metal. The heavier metals in the grip meant that the knife stayed slim while being perfectly balanced.
My knife looked awfully fancy, and like Ivy’s necklace, it seemed showy for everyday use. Not that I had an everyday use for a fighting knife. The blade was as long as my forearm and gently curved away from the sharp edge. I ended up making a sheath from the first sheet of accidentally altered gold. By heating it with a torch the metal became temporarily workable. I pounded and shaped it into a paper-thin sheath that would have been unusable without the magic of the reddish metal. The image of the dragon from the blade was repeated on the front side of the sheath, and I added a belt clip to the back. All of that work was done by just after midsummer, at the cost of a fair number of hours of lost sleep. The knife looked great, but like the necklace, I wasn’t comfortable showing it to anyone else. I put it in my sock drawer, promptly forgetting about it.
Chapter 11 – Night’s Edge
As Ivy and I picked early vegetables, and filled bushel baskets, it hit me that three quarters of the summer was already behind us. My days were full, generally happy, and they’d flown by. I watched Ivy picking tomatoes. She looked back suddenly and caught me. A year before she’d have given me a stern reprimand for staring at her. Now, she smiled.
“You look like you have something on your mind,” she said.
“I was thinking about how fast the summers here go by, and how long the winters last.” I shrugged.
“It’s the same for me. The wait to return was unbearable.”
Ivy stayed with people who weren’t her family during the winter months. I knew they weren’t very nice, but that was all I knew.
“I’ll be coming out tonight,” Ivy said.
Ivy had made a late-night visit to the garden at the same time last summer, to, as she put it, ‘Encourage the plants to give a little more.’ At the time I’d thought she was crazy. Now, with all I’d seen, and the incredible yield from the garden last year, I thought it likely that the plants really were listening to her requests.
“Ok,” I said. “I’ll be at the back door for midnight.”
“Jack, you don’t need to.”
“I won’t be able to sleep if I’m worrying about you anyway.”
That got me a bigger smile before she returned to the tomatoes.
“As you wish,” Ivy said.
The way she said it tickled something at the back of my brain, but after a minute of not coming up with anything, I went back to pulling carrots.
***
New boarders were at the dinner table that night. My grandmother got what I considered to be a high percentage of weirdos for her clientele. Mr. Ryan and Mr. Smith seemed normal enough, but a lot of the people who stayed at Glastonbury Manor ranged from slightly-off-putting to kind-of-freaky. Many weren’t what I’d have thought of as the bed-and-breakfast-crowd either. When I arrived for dinner, three new guests were eating with the regulars. Some of Gran’s unusual guests looked ordinary enough. These three looked like they’d just stepped off the set of a post-apocalyptic b-movie. None were sporting the requisite welding goggles or flat-black painted football pads, but they had no shortage of black leather, tattoos, and piercings. There were two men and a woman. All of them were big. The woman was as tall as me, and the men even taller. Each had shaggy brown hair and grey-green eyes, looking so similar that they had to be related. Six eyes appraised me as I sat down at the table.
“This is my grandson, Jack,” Gran said.
“Hello Jack,” the tall woman said. “I’m Relique, and these are my brothers Deirk and Jellan.”
I guess that explains the resemblance. The lady gave off a dangerous, predatory vibe that I didn’t think was in my imagination.
“Hello,” I said. “How long are you staying?”
“Not long,” Relique said. “We have business to take care of in the area, and then we’ll be moving on. We stay nowhere for long.”
Each brother gave me a non-comital grunt as a greeting. I couldn’t imagine what business the three might be in. Ivy stared down at her plate and avoided l
ooking around the table. She was a generally shy girl and rarely spoke at dinner. Gran was her normal, coldly polite self. Mr. Ryan on the other hand… he seemed tense. I’d known him for over a year, and we’d spent a lot of time together; he wasn’t his normal, relaxed self. After all the time I’d spent sparing with him, I’d learned that Mr. Ryan was never entirely off his guard, however casual his outward appearance. Now, I half expected him to spring across the table, steak knife in hand. When he spoke, I felt certain that wasn’t only my imagination.
“I hope none of your business is too local,” Mr. Ryan told Relique softly.
“We don’t discuss our business with outsiders,” Relique said. “Discretion is part of what we’re paid for.”
“No doubt,” Mr. Ryan said. “I didn’t mean to be rude. Courtesies and proper manners are important no matter how far one travels from home. Don’t you think?”
I ate and listened while trying not to be obvious about the close attention I was paying to the strange dinnertime conversation. Historically, Mr. Ryan hadn’t gotten to know Gran’s guests.
“We don’t place as much stock in tradition as some,” Relique said. “The job always comes first.”
What kind of job?
“Being too single-minded can be detrimental to one’s health,” Mr. Ryan said. He ate a forkful of steak.
That sounded like a threat to me. The woman took a good look at Mr. Ryan before apparently dismissing him.
“Our business is our own,” Relique said. “We don’t tolerate interference.”
Deirk and Jellan didn’t seem to be big talkers, but both looked ready to rumble.
“I prefer business not be discussed—or conducted—in this house,” Gran said.
“Of course,” Relique said agreeably. “You are the mistress of this house after all.”
That’s what Ivy usually called Gran, making these people extra suspicious. Nobody spoke for the rest of dinner. It was awkward. Afterwards, Mr. Ryan stopped me in the hallway and told me we’d be skipping sword practice that evening. We never skipped sword practice, but I was tired, and it meant I’d get to watch two movies with Ivy.