Part 30 (1/2)
The milk didn't ring in the pail any more, but the gold rang fine on the dooryard stones.
The witch barely glanced at it. ”I don't want your gold, blacksmith.”
”I din't want for hers, neither,” Weyland said. ”'Tis the half of what she gave.” He didn't stoop to retrieve the coin, though the witch snaked a softshoed foot from under her kirtle and skipped it back to him, bouncing over the cobbles.
”What can I pay?” he asked, when the witch met his protests with a shrug.
”I didn't say I could help you.” The latest pull dripped milk into the pail rather than spurting. The witch tugged the bucket clear and patted Heidrun on the flank, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and the pail between her ankles while the nanny clattered over cobbles to bound back up on the roof. In a moment, the goat was beside the chimney again, munching b.u.t.tercups as if she hadn't just had a meal of apples. A large, fluffy black-and-white cat emerged from the house and began twining the legs of the stool, miaowing.
”Question 'tisn't what tha can or can't do,” he said sourly. ” 'Tis what tha will or won't.”
The witch lifted the pail and splashed milk on the stones for the cat to lap. And then she stood, bearing the pail in her hands, and shrugged. ”You could pay me a Name. I collect those.”
”If'n I had one.”
”There's your own,” she countered, and balanced the pail on her hip as she sauntered toward the house. He followed. ”But people are always more disinclined to part with what belongs to them than what doesn't, don't you find?”
He grunted. She held the door for him, with her heel, and kicked it shut when he had pa.s.sed. The cottage was dim and cool inside, only a few embers banked on the hearth. He sat when she gestured him onto the bench, and not before. ”No Names,” he said.
”Will you barter your body, then?”
She said it over her shoulder, like a commonplace. He twisted a boot on the rushes covering a rammed-earth floor and laughed. ”And what'd a bonny la.s.s like thaself want with a gammy-legged, fusty, coal-black smith?”
”To say I've had one?” She plunged her hands into the washbasin and scrubbed them to the elbow, then turned and leaned against the stand. When she caught sight of his expression, she laughed as well. ”You're sure it's not your heart that's broken, Smith?”
”Not this sennight.” He scowled around the rim of his cup, and was still scowling as she set bread and cheese before him. Others might find her intimidating, but Weyland Smith wore the promise-ring of Olrun the Valkyrie. No witch could mortify him. Not even one who kept Heidrun- who had dined on the leaves of the World Ash-as a milch-goat.
The witch broke his gaze on the excuse of tucking an escaped strand of his long gray ponytail behind his ear, and relented. ”Make me a cauldron,” she said. ”An iron cauldron. And I'll tell you the secret, Weyland Smith.”
”Done,” he said, and drew his dagger to slice the bread.
She sat down across the trestle. ”Don't you want your answer?”
He stopped with his blade in the loaf, looking up. ”I've not paid.”
”You'll take my answer,” she said. She took his cup, and dipped more ale from the pot warming over those few banked coals. ”I know your contract is good.”
He shook his head at the smile that curved her lips, and snorted. ”Someone'll find out tha geas one day, enchantress. And may tha never rest easy again. So tell me then. How might I mend a la.s.s's broken heart?”
”You can't,” the witch said, easily. ”You can replace it with another, or you can forge it anew. But it cannot be mended. Not like that.”
”Gerrawa with tha,” Weyland said. ”I tried reforging it. 'Tis gla.s.s.”
”And gla.s.s will cut you,” the witch said, and snapped her fingers. ”Like that.”
He made the cauldron while he was thinking, since it needed the blast furnace and a casting pour but not finesse. If gla.s.s will cut and shatter, perhaps a heart should be made of tougher stuff, he decided as he broke the mold.
Secondly, he began by heating the bar stock. While it rested in the coals, between pumping at the bellows, he slid the shards into a leathern bag, slicing his palms-though not deep enough to bleed through heavy callus. He wiggled Olrun's ring off his right hand and strung it on its chain, then broke the heart to powder with his smallest hammer. It didn't take much work. The heart was fragile enough that Weyland wondered if there wasn't something wrong with the gla.s.s.
When it had done, he shook the powder from the pouch and ground it finer in the pestle he used to macerate carbon, until it was reduced to a pale-pink silica dust. He thought he'd better use all of it, to be sure, so he mixed it in with the carbon and hammered it into the heated bar stock for seven nights and seven days, folding and folding again as he would for a sword-blade, or an axe, something that needed to take a resilient temper to back a striking edge.
It wasn't a blade he made of his iron, though, now that he'd forged it into steel. What he did was pound the bar into a rod, never allowing it to cool, never pausing hammer-and then he drew the rod through a die to square and smooth it, and twisted the thick wire that resulted into a gorgeous fist-big filigree.
The steel had a reddish color, not like rust but as if the traces of gold that had imparted brilliance to the ruby gla.s.s heart had somehow transferred that tint into the steel. It was a beautiful thing, a cage for a bird no bigger than Weyland's thumb, with cunning hinges so one could open it like a box, and such was his magic that despite all the gla.s.s and iron that had gone into making it it spanned no more and weighed no more than would have a heart of meat.
He heated it cherry-red again, and when it glowed he quenched it in the well to give it resilience and set its form.
He wore his ring on his wedding finger when he put it on the next morning, and he let the forge lie cold-or as cold as it could lie, with seven days' heat baked into metal and stone. It was the eighth day of the forging, and a fortnight since he'd taken the girl's coin.
She didn't disappoint. She was along before midday.
She came right out into the sunlight this time, rather than lingering under the hazel trees, and though she still wore black it was topped by a different hat, this one with feathers. ”Old man,” she said, ”have you done as I asked?”
Reverently, he reached under the block that held his smaller anvil, and brought up a doeskin swaddle. The suede draped over his hands, clinging and soft as a maiden's breast, and he held his breath as he laid the package on the anvil and limped back, his left leg dragging a little. He picked up his hammer and pretended to look to the forge, unwilling to be seen watching the lady.
She made a little cry as she came forward, neither glad nor sorrowful, but rather tight, as if she couldn't keep all her hope and antic.i.p.ation pent in her breast any longer. She reached out with hands clad in chevre and brushed open the doeskin- Only to freeze when her touch revealed metal. ”This heart doesn't beat,” she said, as she let the wrappings fall.
Weyland turned to her, his hands twisted before his ap.r.o.n, wringing the haft of his hammer so his ring bit into his flesh. ”It'll not shatter, la.s.s, I swear.”
”It doesn't beat,” she repeated. She stepped away, her hands curled at her sides in their black kid gloves. ”This heart is no use to me, blacksmith.”
He borrowed the witch's magic goat, which like him-and the witch-had been more than half a G.o.d once and wasn't much more than a fairy story now, and he harnessed her to a st.u.r.dy little cart he made to haul the witch's cauldron. He delivered it in the sunny morning, when the dew was still damp on the gra.s.s, and he brought the heart to show.
”It's a very good heart,” the witch said, turning it in her hands. ”The latch in particular is cunning. Nothing would get in or out of a heart like that if you didn't show it the way.” She bounced it on her palms. ”Light for its size, too. A girl could be proud of a heart like this.”
”She'll have none,” Weyland said. ”Says as it doesn't beat.”
”Beat? Of course it doesn't beat,” the witch scoffed. ”There isn't any love in it. And you can't put that there for her.”
”But I mun do,” Weyland said, and took the thing back from her hands.
For thirdly, he broke Olrun's ring. The gold was soft and fine; it flattened with one blow of the hammer, and by the third or fourth strike, it spread across his leather-padded anvil like a puddle of blood, rose-red in the light of the forge. By the time the sun brushed the treetops in its descent, he'd pounded the ring into a sheet of gold so fine it floated on his breath.
He painted the heart with gesso, and when that was dried he made bole, a rabbit-skin glue mixed with clay that formed the surface for the gilt to cling to.
With a brush, he lifted the gold leaf, bit by bit, and sealed it painstakingly to the heart. And when he had finished and set the brushes and the burnishers aside-when his love was sealed up within like the steel under the gold-the iron cage began to beat.
”It was a blacksmith broke my heart,” the black girl said. ”You'd think a blacksmith could do a better job on mending it.”
”It beats,” he said, and set it rocking with a burn-scarred, callused fingertip. ” 'Tis bonny. And it shan't break.”
”It's cold,” she complained, her breath pus.h.i.+ng her veil out a little over her lips. ”Make it warm.”
”I'd not wonder tha blacksmith left tha. The heart tha started with were colder,” he said.
For fourthly, he opened up his breast and took his own heart out, and locked it in the cage. The latch was cunning, and he worked it with thumbs slippery with the red, red blood. Afterwards, he st.i.tched his chest up with cat-gut and an iron needle and pulled a clean s.h.i.+rt on, and let the forge sit cold.
He expected a visitor, and she arrived on time. He laid the heart before her, red as red, red blood in its red-gilt iron cage, and she lifted it on the tips of her fingers and held it to her ear to listen to it beat.
And she smiled.