“Fifteen minutes, thirty-seven seconds,” Liyana says. She doesn’t want to be talking with this man and has no idea why he is talking to her, but the desire to speak about swimming is ever-present, the words escaping before she can stop them. “I used to be able to hold it for tw—longer.”
“Used to?”
Liyana shrugs droplets from her shoulders. “Out of practice.” She glances back at the pool. She’s wasting valuable water time. “I should—”
“How often do you come here?”
Liyana’s frown returns. “Did you just ask me if I come here often?”
He laughs. “Yeah, I guess I did—sorry, I didn’t mean to.” He pulls his hand over his hair. Liyana notices that he’s quite attractive—tall, muscular, skin the colour of wet earth—exceedingly attractive, one might say, if one were that way inclined. “I didn’t mean it like that. I was only asking . . . this isn’t my local gym. I wondered if it’s worth the membership fee.”
Liyana rubs her thumb over the wet stone. It wants to return to the water. “I suppose so, I don’t know. I only come to swim.”
“How often?”
“Once a month.”
His eyebrows rise. “Really? You don’t—you look much fitter than that.”
Liyana shifts in the water, pulling her arms closer, covering the view to her breasts. “I don’t think—”
“Shit,” he says. “I’m so sorry. That sentence should’ve stayed in my head. I didn’t—”
“Mean it like that?” Liyana raises a single eyebrow.
“Yeah,” he says. “I, um, I only meant to say that you—you look like an athlete.”
Liyana regards him. In addition to being handsome, he has a voice that, even when he’s self-conscious and stumbling, sounds like a river smoothing rocks. Perhaps that’s why she has let this conversation go on so long.
I was an athlete once. The words wait in Liyana’s throat. But to let them out would incite questions she has no intention of answering.
“I’ve got to go,” she says instead. “I’ve only got forty-seven minutes left.”
“That’s—you’re very . . . precise.”
He smiles again and Liyana is caught by it, reminded of something long ago. A moon breaking through clouds. A river catching its light.
2nd October
Thirty days . . .
10:36 a.m.—Scarlet
Scarlet didn’t want to go but her grandmother had insisted. Why she’d thought a day’s apprenticeship with a Hatfield blacksmith was an appropriate eighteenth birthday present, Scarlet can’t imagine. But it’s another pitiful example of how far and fast her grandmother’s mind is declining—her birthday isn’t till the end of the month. Even so, what could she do but go along with it?
The blacksmith, Owen Baker, is the sturdiest man Scarlet has ever seen, with a head as bald as her belly, a neck as thick as her thigh, and hands almost as broad as hers are long. He could throw her over his shoulder and disappear into the forest in a flash. Not that she can see the forest. The forge is located in a courtyard, adjacent to a pig farm. Yet when Scarlet thinks of blacksmiths, if she ever has since the age of eight, she thinks of fairy tales involving forests and vulnerable girls—or perhaps that’s huntsmen?
“All right then, what is it you’ll be wanting to make now, Miss Thorne?”
Scarlet looks up, momentarily blank. She’d been tuning out the blacksmith’s introduction, with its potted history of the noble art of crafting rivets, but hadn’t expected it to be over so soon.
“Sorry?” Scarlet starts twisting her hair into a bun. The thick dark-red curls spring like flames from her head, framing her eyes, brown as the wood that feeds the fire. “I didn’t think I’d be . . .”
“Well, as I say”—the blacksmith rests both broad hands on his anvil and leans forward—“You’ll be making whatever you want. A rivet, a nail, a sword . . .”
Scarlet stares at him, releasing her grip on her hair. “A sword?”
“Oh, yes.” The blacksmith grins, eyes suddenly bright as a three-year-old boy’s. “You want to be making a sword, Miss Thorne?”
Scarlet considers this curious proposal. “No, not really.”
“Fair enough.” He straightens himself, the light in his eyes dimming. “So, then what’ll it be?”
Scarlet reaches for her hair again. “But I thought you’d tell me what to do.”
Owen Baker shakes his head. “What’s the fun in that now? No. It’s up to you.”
Scarlet’s thrown. She fingers her hair, chews her lip. Then, all at once, it comes to her. “Okay, I know.” She grins, delighted by her inspiration. “I want to make a gate.”
“A gate?”
“Yeah.” Scarlet warms to her theme. “One of those fancy gates, with all the pretty swirls and curly bits. You know what I mean?”
“The finials and curlicues?” The blacksmith folds his arms. “Well, I admire your ambition, Miss Thorne, I do. But I’m afraid that might be a tad much for a day’s work. We’ve only got five hours.”
“Oh, right.” Scarlet glances at a hammer hanging on the stone wall. “I see.”
“But we could make a part of a gate,” he suggests. “How’d that be?”
Scarlet brightens. “Great.”
“So, what d’you favour?” he says. “A curly bit or a pointy bit?”
“Yes, that’s right, use the corner when you’re drawing down—good, that’s good technique. Yes, that’s it, bit slower now.” He nods. “You’re a dab hand with the hammer, Miss Thorne.”
Scarlet looks up, grinning, face flushed. “Really? I’ve never—”
“No, don’t stop now!” the blacksmith says. “Don’t let it cool. That’s it, not the flat, the corners—you’re wanting to push the metal along, like a rolling pin does to dough, or so the wife tells me.”
This comment misses its mark, so intent is Scarlet on the pull of her arm, the upswing of the hammer, the crack as it hits the burning metal bar, the shock of hammer on anvil if she misses her target.
“Right, bring it back to centre, that’s it—remember the flat of the hammer now, start refining the shape. Lighter blows, or your point’ll snap.”
Scarlet tumbles the bar, tapping out the slope—first one side, then the other—stretching the metal thinner and thinner towards the point. She hopes they’ll have time to make another, to plunge more metal into the furnace, to see the flames leap and spit with delight to have a thing to burn. Scarlet wants to watch the fire till it’s embers and ash. She wants to strike hammer to anvil, again and again, to feel the power of the blow as she brings it down, the glorious crack that shudders through her from tip to toe. Strangely, Scarlet finds she wants to immerse her hand in the flame, wants to feel the scorch on her skin. She believes, impossibly, that the fire will be kind to her. That it will lick her warm, that the warmth will spread and rise, till she’s white hot at her core.