by Resa Nelson
Astrid picked up a stone from the dirt floor. It was the size of her thumbnail, coated with gray pottery dust. Cool to the touch, Astrid thought.
"I think Beamon is sweet. I know he seems ill-mannered, but his heart is kind. And after having it broken in such a sad way." Mauri shook her head, her voice quiet and compassionate. "I do not know how I would survive finding my lover's body. I know he still misses Natalia. I think he's courageous to pick flowers for another."
Astrid turned the stone over in her hand. Everyone thought DiStephan had been killed by the dragon that killed Natalia. His body had never been found, so everyone assumed the dragon had devoured him in its lair.
"He and Kamella would make a good match, I think. Beamon needs someone who can return his kindness."
No one had known they were lovers: DiStephan the dragonslayer and Astrid the blacksmith—it had been an odd coupling that no one would have suspected. They quarreled often, and when she saw him kill a dragon before her eyes, Astrid experienced something she never thought possible; she was more frightened and horrified of DiStephan than she had been of the dragon.
In a moment of terror, she'd demanded that DiStephan leave so that he could not do to her what she had seen him do to the dragon. As confused and disturbed as his lover, DiStephan had vanished without a word to anyone.
Mauri examined her friend sitting on the floor and rubbing the rough edges of a stone with her thumb. Mauri sat down beside her and held out the vase. "I hope this pleases Kamella. Do you think it will?"
Had it not been for Astrid's demand, DiStephan would not have left the village.
And Natalia would not have lost her life to a dragon.
"It is a fine vase," Astrid said, absently. She could never make demands upon another dragonslayer.
"I could make another for you," Mauri said. "Perhaps someone will soon be picking flowers for you."
Astrid looked at her sharply, remembering Taddeo's unwavering stare. Under his stare, she had felt like the rock she had picked up from Mauri's floor.
"I have to leave now," Astrid said.
Mauri set the vase down. Gray smudges from the clay on her hands dotted the cobalt glass. The clay had dried completely, making her hands look cracked and dried. Quietly, she said, "Don't allow others to change you. Who and what you want to be is your choice."
Astrid looked at her own hands, larger than they should be. "I have no choice. I have a responsibility to meet."
"Your responsibility is to yourself."
Astrid paused, wondering, as she had often done before, if somehow Mauri knew about DiStephan. If she'd guessed from the days when Astrid had glowed in her radiant feelings of love for DiStephan, and the days after he'd left, when Astrid had felt herself grow as quiet as the forest. She shook her head. "No. There are times when the stakes are too high. It is September, and I can feel the dragons approaching. Sometimes I think I can smell them in the air."
"How can you assume responsibility for others until you are responsible to yourself?"
Astrid hesitated, turning the stone over in her hand. She began to answer but stopped abruptly as she turned toward Mauri. Astrid was so startled that she forgot what she had meant to say.
Mauri had changed. Her hands were tapered and graceful. Her eyes were larger and deeper set. Her cheekbones, higher.
Mauri was the same. It was just that a little more of the beauty within had surfaced.
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Astrid saw Taddeo as he approached the smithery. This time, she was not caught off-guard. She glanced at the sword leaning against a nearby tree stump and smiled.
He leered at her, the expression in his eyes assuming more than it should. "I have no time to stop for the Magenta. I have business to attend to, and it would be inappropriate to bring a weapon with me. I hope you will be able to deliver her to my camp at noon."
Astrid looked at her work. "No. I don't have time to deliver."
"Yes, but this is the Magenta—she is something special. Tonight, then?"
"No," Astrid said, looking evenly at Taddeo. "You can have her now or return some other time."
Insult edged his voice as he looked at the sword leaning against the tree stump. "Where is the Magenta's stone?" Imbedded in the hilt was not the crimson stone, but a small rock.
"Once in my hands, the gem turned to stone," she said. Astrid gauged his reaction: surprise followed by hesitation. Followed by a tolerant but determined smile.
As she'd suspected, he knew such a thing was impossible. Unless one believed in magic and enchantment.
There was another sword resting on top of the anvil behind Astrid. She turned, then handed the Magenta—with the gemstone replaced—to Taddeo.
He smiled, examining the blacksmith's work. "Impressive, as always. If you are interested, there are other weapons I would like you to forge for me."
Taddeo had conceded defeat in attempting to lure her into his lair. Now he sought other reasons to seek contact with her. Relentlessly.
"I am sorry, but I would not have the time."
The tone of Taddeo's voice did not alter. "I would pay for them, of course." He glanced at her. "Whenever price you desire."
"I am committed to other work."
"At a later time, then."
"No," Astrid said softly. "I think not."
As she watched, careful to show no reaction, Taddeo's face changed. A leer etched itself darkly in his eyes as they became narrower and smaller. His nose grew misshapen. The lines that had so beautifully defined his jaw and cheekbones weakened. His posture slackened and his youth faded.
"There is only one other blacksmith in the area, three villages west of here," he said. "And the quality of his work lacks much. Perhaps it is time to seek a change. Perhaps I have killed enough lizards for this village." He paused, waiting for Astrid to protest. "There are many other villages seeking my services."
Instead of offering protest, Astrid said, "That is a decision you alone can make."
His eyes squinted in an unbecoming manner as he searched her face.
Astrid fought the sorrow that threatened to well within her. She wanted to remember Taddeo as she had known him, not as he had become. As hard as she tried, she couldn't remember exactly what he had looked like, only moments ago.
Astrid started at the rumble of thunder. And yet when she looked up, the sky was clear and blue.
Taddeo raised his head, his nostrils flaring. He sniffed the air like a tracking dog. Then he knelt, laying one ear to the ground.
Astrid cried out as a dragon came crashing through the poplars, someone screaming in the distance.
Dark it was, and yellow-eyed, opening its jaws as it lowered its belly to the ground, sizing up its prey. The dragon's scales were dark and mottled, its young muscles fairly bursting from its skin.
"Aiy yah!" Taddeo cried in feral rage, grasping the hilt of the Magenta. As he leapt forward, the Magenta held him back. The sword was too heavy for him to wield.
"Taddeo!" Astrid said in horror.
The dragonslayer looked at the Magenta in disbelief, as if his best friend had betrayed him. Then he looked at his arms and his body, no longer large and lean, but now withered with age. Until this moment, Taddeo hadn't noticed how severely Astrid's perception had changed him.
The dragon inhaled their fear, its tail cracking the wood on the poplar trunks as it lashed back and forth between them.
Taddeo's gaze lifted until his eyes met Astrid's. Enraged, he shouted, "Change me back!"
But she did not hear the words of the dragonslayer. Her eyes had met yellow eyes the size of saucers, primal eyes.
Unwittingly, her breath began to match the rhythm of the lizard's panting.
Its teeth glistened, ivory sharp in its slackened jaw.
"Aiy yah!" Taddeo cried, mustering his last remaining strength, pulling with all his might on the hilt. Still unable to raise the sword, he dragged it in the dust until the tip lay between him and the dragon.
With the agilit
y of a cat pinning a mouse by the tail, the dragon slapped the sword flat on the ground with one foot.
Taddeo shouted, refusing to release the hilt, falling to the ground with the sword. The dragon's toenail had sliced Taddeo's cheekbone. The wound raised a welt for a moment, then bled steadily. Oblivious, Taddeo grimaced, kicking at the dragon's foot to make it let go of the Magenta.
The dragon's jaw dropped slightly, and for a moment it looked as if it were smiling.
Like a mountain cat, Taddeo screeched in determination, holding onto the hilt of the Magenta with both hands, pivoting on his side on the ground, pushing with both feet against the dragon's foot, the tendons stretching taut in his face and neck and arms.
With its free front foot, the dragon pinned Taddeo's head to the ground.
"No!" Astrid cried. As rage woke her, she reached for the sword leaning against the tree stump. She grabbed the hilt of the new sword she'd made, a sword with a hilt shaped to fit her own hand.
In a blind fury, Astrid ran to the dragon's face, both hands gripping the sword spear-like above her head, aiming the point directly at the dragon's yellow eye. "Let him go!" she shouted at the dragon.
Deftly, the dragon batted Astrid in the chest, knocking the sword out of her hands and the wind out of her lungs.
Soundlessly, full of hate, she grappled for her sword, stumbled toward the dragon, and plunged the blade in the direction of the dragon's heart.
Agilely, the dragon moved, only getting nicked by the tip of Astrid's sword. In moving, it let go of the Magenta and Taddeo, who grasped his own throat, wheezing.
Astrid fell, pulled by the force of her missed blow, landing face first in the dust. Rolling over quickly, she scrambled up to find the dragon now behind her. Spinning to face it, she was struck numb with horror.
In the dragon's face inches away from hers, she saw her face reflected in its amber eyes. And what she saw on her own face was what she had seen on her lover's face the day she had seen him kill a dragon, the day she had felt so frightened of what she had seen that she demanded he leave.
It wasn't an adult dragon that DiStephan had killed or even a fledgling. It was a hatchling, weak and vulnerable, the size of a small dog. But DiStephan's fighting instinct had kicked in—all he knew was that it was a dragon, and he fought with full force, not just killing the hatchling, but dismembering it with a murderous vengeance, mindlessly, until what was left of the hatchling was unrecognizable. Astrid and DiStephan had been out in the country on a picnic when DiStephan had smelled dragon in the air.
Astrid hadn't understood what had happened, or why, and wondered if somehow DiStephan might mistake her for a dragon if he thought he smelled one in the air. But now she saw the desire to kill for the sake of killing on her own face, and it was something she never imagined she'd see.
Taddeo's face was covered with blood and dust, and he cried out again as he pulled the Magenta weakly toward the dragon, barely nudging its belly.
The dragon batted Taddeo across the smithery yard, then raised its foot to Astrid.
"No!" she shouted. She raised her sword steadily, grasping it with both wrists cocked. "I don't want to hurt you!" she screamed, wanting to cry.
The dragon snorted, its eyes narrowing.
"I've heard about you," she said shakily, staring back. "You make people smaller and weaker, and sometimes they're so frightened they turn into deer, and the only way you can tell they were once human is to look in their eyes, because that's all that's left of their humanity." Astrid shook her head slightly, looking straight into the dragon's eyes. "You can't do that to me! And I won't let you do that to my people!"
The dragon stepped closer, but Astrid stood her ground, the blade between them, one sharp edge touching the dragon's skin; the other, her own skin.
"I know you're hungry," she said, still crying. "But don't eat people. There are animals in the forest. There are grain fields and bushes of wild berries in the south. There is food all around—you don't need us!"
As the dragon leaned forward, she pressed back the pressure with the blade, still not cutting the dragon's skin. "I know you don't understand what I'm saying, but I think you understand what I mean."
The dragon sniffed her hair, then licked the sweat from her arms, sending chills down Astrid's back. Before Astrid could blink, the dragon sprang back through the poplars.
Trembling, Astrid collapsed in the dirt, both hands still clinging to the hilt of her sword.
With a thud, Taddeo sat next to her. He stared at the poplars in disbelief. "That," he said, panting, "I have never seen. The beast took you up on your offer."
"Dragons aren't that much different from you or me," Astrid said, shaken. "They just live the best way they know how."
Taddeo looked younger but still weary. He looked as if he'd regained most of his strength. "If you were not so compassionate, you could be a dragonslayer." Taddeo shook his head, looking at Astrid with admiration and only a hint of desire.
Astrid stared at the poplars, gasping, feeling her heart shake inside. It was a few moments before she had the presence of mind to speak.
"I don't want to be a dragonslayer," she said, thinking of DiStephan, now understanding the primitive rage he had felt when he slaughtered the hatchling on a gentle spring day. Astrid wondered if she had panicked or if she had possibly saved her life by demanding that he leave. She believed that she would never really know the answer. Just as she would never know whether the dragon had understood her or just picked up a more interesting scent in the air.
"You realize, of course," Taddeo said, standing and offering her a hand up, "that you just dismissed a week's meal for the village."
Astrid accepted his hand, leaning on her sword as she stood. "There will be others." She trembled, wiping the tears from her face, looking out toward the poplars. "Dragon season has only just begun." She looked back at Taddeo, squinting. "And I trust you will not allow any other dragon to get away."
Taddeo caught his breath, then relaxed into a smile. "No," he said confidently. "That is the last one to get away."
Realizing her clothes felt loose, Astrid looked down to see that her body had returned to its normal shape and size.
"That happened when you fought the dragon," Taddeo said. "You returned to yourself."
Feeling awkward and hesitant, Astrid gave him a slight smile. "You've returned to yourself, too."
"Yes," Taddeo said, clearing his throat. "As has the Magenta." He bowed slightly, holding the Magenta between his hands as if in prayer. "Thank you for your work."
Astrid waved as he left, then hugged the body to which she'd come back.
"You're welcome," she said, watching the dragonslayer walk away with the sword she had forged for him.
The Silver Shoes
By Resa Nelson
One cool spring morning, Astrid paused at her blacksmith’s fire when she heard the bell ring at the door in the next room. Astrid put down the bellows she had been using to encourage the fire and, as a matter of habit, changed the shape of her body from the larger, more masculine shape she used to do her work to her natural female shape.
As her body shifted, Astrid’s trousers became more snug against her widening hips, and her vest became loose and roomy. Only then did she walk into the shop adjoining the smithery.
Lenore, the new cobbler, stood in the open doorway. Lenore was tall and shapely, and her corn-silk hair draped across her shoulders like fine cloth. Lenore was waving to a man across the road and, as she did so, her waist became more narrow and her bosom larger and more shapely.
Astrid caught her breath. Like the other villagers, Astrid would sooner change her clothes in public than her shape. She’d seen Lenore change her shape in public before, but this was the first time Astrid had stood nearby as it happened. Astrid felt shocked and embarrassed. At the same time, she admonished herself not to be unkind. “Lenore,” Astrid said. “May I help you with something?”
Lenore turned to face Astrid. As she di
d, her waist and bosom returned to their normal appearance. Lenore hesitated, holding onto the doorjamb. “I know this may sound odd,” she said, smiling. “But I need a pair of shoes.”
Astrid laughed, then looked down and saw Lenore was barefoot. Her feet were beautiful. They were brown and high-arched. Her toes were straight and narrow. “I have heard that cobblers’ children often go without shoes, but I never knew it was true of the cobbler herself!” Astrid said.
Although Lenore was far from a shy woman, she seemed to withdraw for a moment, looking down at her feet. “I need a blacksmith to make a special pair of shoes for me. I need a pair of silver shoes.”
Astrid realized that she had failed to invite Lenore inside. “Come, sit down,” Astrid said.
They sat together at a round, wooden table.
“I have never made a pair of shoes before,” Astrid said.
“I can help,” Lenore said. “I have never worked with metal, as you do. But if we put our skills together, we should be able to figure out how such shoes can be made.”
Astrid put her elbows on the table and rested her chin in both hands. She gazed at Lenore for a few moments, trying to puzzle her out. “Perhaps we can.”
Lenore looked back steadily at Astrid. “Perhaps it would be helpful if I tell you why I need these shoes.”
Astrid shrugged. “If you like.”
Lenore looked frightened for a moment, as if she might run away like a deer in the woods. Then her eyes calmed and her face relaxed. “As you know, I have not always lived here. I come from the northlands, where owning a good pair of shoes gives one a decent chance of surviving the winter.”
###
“My father was a cobbler, and when I was a child, I learned my trade from him. Soon after, both my mother and father were taken by the plague. Their house was burned down by neighbors fearing the spread of illness. It was summer, and I left the village where I was born with nothing but my clothes, the shoes on my feet, a handful of cobbler's needles, and a small knife.