by Simon Archer
However, Bethany was a less enthusiastic student than the other two. She mostly acted as the girlfriend that made sure I took a break every once in a while. She forced me to go on walks, just to soak up the fresh air. As much as that annoyed me sometimes, I appreciated the break.
There were times, however, where Daniella, Jade, Bethany, and I would take a break together. We explored the various bedrooms in my house, breaking in each of the beds. It was wonderful to have enough room for everyone to spend the night together. More often than not, none of us went to bed alone.
Even working in the forge felt like a chore, which was different for me. Normally the smithy was my refuge from everything stressful going on in my life. There was nothing I loved more than sweating out my problems while I hammered on a piece of white-hot steel. However, the assignments for new weapons for the soldiers on the front lines poured in. It was basic equipment, stuff that I could make in my sleep. Nothing new, exciting, or challenging.
While it wasn’t hard, it was tedious. The sheer amount of swords, knives, and armor needed was enough to make even the most experienced blacksmith balk.
Luckily, I had Arges to help. He took over teaching the blacksmithing classes, and while that consumed the majority of his time, his millennia of experience with being a master blacksmith helped him churn out the necessary weapons. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get it all done without the cyclops so I was grateful for him. Plus, with his strength, we didn’t have to fight over the power tools since he mostly didn’t use them.
I did feel bad for Khryseos and Argyreos since I didn’t have the proper amount of time to spend with them. However, Ann easily stepped in to take care of the dogs, letting them roam around the farm as they once had before I came to the Academy. When they weren’t out in the fields with the farmer, they would keep me company as I studied or lay down next to me when I eventually collapsed into bed at the end of a long day.
Eventually, I got into a system. Even though my class schedule was consistent, I always had to be on duty as an Elemental Official, and the orders for weapons just kept coming in from the front lines. My friends truly made it bearable and got me through day by day. If I didn’t have Jade feeding me, Bethany making sure I was mentally sane, and Kari and Daniella holding me accountable for my homework, I’m sure I would have been able to do it all.
It was a challenge I accepted with as much grace as I could. There were some days I woke up, ready to take on the world. Others, it was harder to crawl out of bed, especially if I had an Elemental Official meeting that morning. But I even found my voice in those meetings over time. I learned the views of each of the Officials and knew that in the future, I would learn how to use them to my advantage. I never thought that politics of any kind would be in my future but I was a quick study.
But now, I was about to add another thing to my plate, something that my friends couldn’t help me with. This part, making the new tools for the Moirai, was completely up to me.
I wasn’t exactly nervous as I walked up the path to the nymphs’ encampment. But my shaking hands and unsteady steps told me otherwise.
I paused my walking and took a couple of deep breaths. I reassured myself with the knowledge that my father, Hephaestus, was the god of not just blacksmiths, but trades in general. While I’d inherited all of the blacksmithing skills, with my ability to sense metal and resistance to heat, he reigned over tinkerers of all kinds. Maybe I would get lucky and some of that would rub off on me as well.
After that mental pep talk, I continued my journey down the path to the nymphs. With each step, I reassured myself that I was a capable and skilled blacksmith. I already knew a little bit about wood carving and could probably adapt those techniques. While weaving yarn was completely foreign to me, I knew I could feign enough confidence to get through.
The clearing was empty save for Pomona and Iynx. It was a drastic change from the evening version of this same space. There were no twinkling lights or blazing fire in the center. Even Sasha’s throne was missing. Everything was deserted and looked like any other opening in the trees. Save for the two beautiful immortals and a single spinning wheel.
Pomona held a basket with a checkered tablecloth over the top of it. She rested it on her hip like some kind of washing woman from the nineteenth century. Iynx stood next to her nymph sister, twirling a knife in her hand, while the other one was crossed over her chest. While Pomona smiled at my arrival, Iynx continued her scowl from the first night I met the two of them.
“Where is everyone?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.
Iynx’s eyes narrowed, and she stuck her neck out. Not a good look for her as it made the woman more birdlike. “Why do you ask? Do you think we just lounge about all day?”
“Now, Iynx,” Pomona said as she gave the other nymph a soft pat on the arm. “Cameron’s just curious about where our sisters spend their time. That’s okay, isn’t it?”
The bird nymph grunted her response, but if Pomona was off put by Inyx’s reaction, she didn’t show it. Her face continued to spread into a cheery smile. “We all have duties throughout the Academy, helping mostly with ground maintenance. We work a lot with your friend Bethany, from the other night, which is how we knew her already.”
“Right,” I said with a slow nod. “Well, I guess it’s best that we don’t have an audience.”
“We’ll still tell them everything that happens today,” Iynx said, her voice coming out as a warning. “So if you fuck it up then they’ll still laugh at your failures.”
“Holy Hermes, Iynx,” Pomona said, her own voice raising two octaves in discomfort. “You don’t need to be so critical already. He could be a really quick learner and do well. You don’t know that he’s terrible yet.”
“Well, let’s find out who’s right, shall we?” The bird nymph challenged the fruit nymph though she kept her eyes trained on me while she spoke.
I offered her a closed mouth smile, trying to keep my irritation to a minimum. “Which one are we going to start with?”
“Wood carving,” Iynx said as she threw down the knife into a nearby stump.
I felt the fling of the metal before I heard the thunk. It connected with the wood and vibrated from the force of the throw. I didn’t know if the bird nymph was trying to be intimidating, but if she knew anything about me, she would know that knife throwing and anything to do with metal wasn’t going to frighten me.
She would have to try a lot harder if she wanted to scare me.
Something mischievous stirred inside me and I held out my hand. I felt a smile play at the corner of my lips and I made up my mind. I reached out to feel the connection I had with the metal in the knife. We synced up quickly, and then I forced the carving knife out of the stump.
Pomona gasped and put a hand up to her mouth, a common gesture for her it would seem. Iynx did her best to seem unphased, but I noticed her eyebrows rise in surprise. She caught herself and quickly brought them back down.
I moved the knife in midair and brought it to a stop in front of the bird nymph.
“I think you dropped something,” I said as I wiggled my fingers so that the blade faced away from her, hilt by her chest so she could grab it better.
Inyx didn’t reach for the knife like I thought she could. Instead, she walked away from it and sat on the stump she just assaulted. The nymph pulled out another carving knife from her boot.
“You use that one,” she said with a jerk of her chin to indicate the one still floating.
I shrugged and beckoned the knife forward towards me. The knife compiled, and I let it fall into my outstretched hand. Then I ventured to the stump across from Inyx, never taking my eyes off her.
“Well then,” Pomona said with a slight cough in her voice. She hiked up the basket on her hip. “I’m going to just be over here, setting things up for my part of the lesson.” Then, the nymph put a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “Try not to kill each other, hm?”
With that, Pomona left th
e pair of us alone. Iynx leaned back so she could tuck her legs up into a criss-cross applesauce shape atop the stump, which was an impressive balancing act. If I was feeling warm to the nymph, I would have complimented her on it, but I kept my mouth shut.
“So,” Iynx started as she set the carving knife into the side of the stump. She leaned forward and interlaced her lean fingers. “Why do you want to learn wood carving?”
“I need to make a rod,” I said honestly.
“A rod?” Iynx said as her eyebrows rose up.
“A measuring rod, specifically,” I said with an eager nod.
The nymph eyed me with an unnecessary level of suspicion. “Why?”
“I was commissioned to make a couple of tools,” I said, choosing my words carefully, though I kept my voice as casual as possible. “A rod is one of them.”
“Hm,” Iynx murmured, clearly not satisfied with my answer. “Well, luckily that’s rather easy. The hardest part is going to be making it smooth and even all the way around. That’s going to require smooth knife work and extensive sanding.”
The bird nymph reached down beside her and pulled up two rectangular blocks of wood about six inches long.
“Let’s see what you know already,” Iynx said, with a hint of challenge in her voice and a twinkle in her eye.
I spent the next hour or so doing my best to round out the edges of the rectangle. Unfortunately, my skill was not in carving. I was used to pounding out the shape. I would flatten, pull, and bend the metal to my will. It helped that I could talk to the metal itself and manipulate it using both my magic and my skill.
Here, I was working blind. The wood didn’t speak to me at all. I remembered the same sensation when I worked with gold the first time. But at least when I’d worked with that material, I was using the same skills I’d trained a lifetime to learn. In this case, I held the knife incorrectly more times than I could count. Also, I couldn’t find the delicacy needed for this trade. I always shaved off too much or too little, causing the rod to be lopsided and choppy.
Iynx clearly wasn’t impressed with my efforts. She often took my hands in hers and forced me to go through the motions. It reminded me of when my mother first taught me how to peel potatoes. Though, much, much harder.
The first time I nicked my finger, I cried out, my scream echoing throughout the clearing.
“Are you alright?” Pomona asked as she jumped up from her spot at the spinning wheel.
“Let me see it!” Iynx commanded as she yanked my hand into hers.
I stared in shock at the slice in my finger as the blood pooled. My mouth flopped open and closed at the sight, unable to find the words or properly process the rush of emotions flooding my brain.
“Oh dear,” Pomona said in a motherly tone as she put her hands on my shoulders to steady me. “You look pale as a ghost. Are you going to faint?”
“I swear to the gods that if you faint on me, I’m going to quit right here and now,” Iynx threatened. “This is nothing more than a little scrape.”
“I’m not going to faint,” I assured both of them. “I just… I’m just surprised is all.”
“You’re working with knives,” Iynx said as though this should have been an obvious fact. She looked up at me as she waved her hand over my wound. “You should expect to get cut every once in a while.”
“I know that because it makes sense but…” My voice trailed off. How was I supposed to explain this to them? “It’s just that I’ve never gotten hurt while blacksmithing.”
“Never?” Pomona said incredulously.
“I’m heat resistant,” I explained, my eyes never leaving the cut as Iynx’s magic closed it up like a zipper. “And I never hit my hand with the hammer or anything. It always hits its mark. So this is… weird,” I said, stumbling over the last word.
“You’re not used to making mistakes is what you’re telling me,” Iynx said as she flung my now healed hand back at me. Even though it was attached to my body, I felt the unusual urge to catch my own hand. So I cradled it against my chest with my other arm.
“That’s not it,” I protested although I couldn’t think of an argument beyond that.
“Uh huh,” the bird nymph said skeptically. “This isn’t metalwork, son of Hephaestus. This is a completely different element. Your powers aren’t going to help you here.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” I grumbled.
The nymph wasn’t kidding. Not only was this literally a different element I was working with, but I was so out of my element. I didn’t realize how much I leaned on my magical powers when it came to making weapons until I had to work on something without them.
That didn’t deter me, though. I thought about my determination and force of will when it came to running every morning with Officer Ashley. Or physical training with Hailey. Those skills took me a while to learn and build up stamina for. However, now I woke every morning for a five-mile run and I could spar with the best soldiers at the Academy.
I just had to have the same realistic expectations when it came to wood carving and weaving.
Except when it came to sanding. Then everything exploded. Literally.
I had known of the concept when someone rubbed two sticks together that the friction would create a fire. But I’d never actually seen it in real life. Apparently, the same thing could happen when you sanded a block of wood. Or at least, the same thing could happen when I sanded a block of wood.
I rubbed the rough paper along the sharp edges I carved to even them out a little bit. My fingers pressed into the paper, my strokes short and vigorous. I wasn’t paying attention to my pace until a familiar scent of smoke wafted up to my nostrils.
“What the--?” Iynx asked but she couldn’t finish the question before a flame popped up against my wooden block.
I wasn’t afraid of fire. I’d never been given my proclivity. However, the sudden appearance of that single flame shocked me enough to send me tumbling over the back of my stump. I exclaimed as I fell and lost my grip on the paper and the block.
The fire tumbled to the forest floor and immediately gathered more fuel in the dry grass. The flames gobbled it up and began to spread.
“Oh!” Pomona cried as she hopped up and rushed to the source of the fire. Iynx stood and ran away from the flames, as though she didn’t know what to do. Pomona danced from foot to foot, her indecisiveness clear.
My instincts from elementary school kicked in and I rolled over the flames. Since I was already on the ground, this was easy to do. While I wasn’t the one on fire, I still “Stop, Dropped, and Rolled” myself over the flames. Soon, the fire lacked any oxygen to continue and my resistant body managed to put out the danger.
I laid on my back breathing heavily, arms spread out as though I were making a snow angel. I stared up at the gray sky, which threatened another round of snow. The two nymphs stuck their head in my line of sight, looking down on me.
“What the hell?” Iynx asked with pinched eyebrows. “What do you think you were doing? Were you trying to burn the forest down?”
“No,” I replied indignantly. I sat up, forcing the two immortals to back away a bit. “I don’t know what happened. It’s not like I can create fire or anything.”
“Well you just did,” Iynx said with a dramatic point to the black spot on the forest floor. “I don’t know how I’m going to be able to teach you when you just blow shit up.”
I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand. “That was nothing! It was just a little flame. It didn’t hurt anything.”
“But it could have!” Iynx protested. “This forest is a sacred place and you were so careless.”
“We’re just glad you were here to put out the fire,” Pomona said, trying to ease the situation.
“He shouldn’t have been here to start it in the first place,” Iynx complained as she crossed her arms and turned away from the pair of us.
The fruit nymph let out a defeated sigh. She straightened herself back up and offered me a
simple smile. “Why don’t we shift over to the weaving lesson for a bit?”
“Good idea,” I agreed.
I pushed myself up and crossed over to the spinning wheel. Pomona tottered behind me and we left Iynx to her pouting.
“Go ahead and sit down,” Pomona offered, gesturing with her hand. Once I did as I was told, she added, “So you seemed to know a little about wood carving when you started. What do you know about weaving?”
“Uh… ” I stuttered. Then I pointed to the sharp on the spindle. “If I touch that I’ll go to sleep for one hundred years?”
The nymph cocked her head at me. “Huh?”
“Nevermind,” I muttered. “Different myth. Just assume that I know nothing.”
“Got it,” Pomona said as she snapped her fingers. “Well, let’s start with the parts of the spinning wheel and what it actually does.”
The fruit nymph took more time explaining than the bird nymph had. She pointed out the wheel, the bearings, the treadle, and other parts that made up the spinning wheel. The whole process was done by hand to twist fibers together to make one thread.
Pomona taught me about the two different types of twist yarns, an S and Z shape. Even though cotton was the most modern day fiber for yarn, Pomona insisted on using wool.
“It’s what was most common in ancient Greece,” the nymph explained. “And Ann has the nicest sheep with the best coats.”
I started with a clump of fibers and had to stretch them out. It felt a bit like teasing hair, like the girls used to do in the 80s. Then I would spin the wheel so that the twisted fibers would wrap around the spindle. It was a mesmerizing process, one that transfixed me with the constant movement. I had to hold the wool fibers in one hand while I spun the wheel with the other.