2. Penny #2
All I’d done was think about it. Since the moment Sayla and I found my father’s grave ransacked, his body missing with no trace left behind, I’d been considering what to do.
We knew he’d been taken by the Bone Men, those depraved cultists who haunted graveyards and picked corpses from burial plots like vultures stripping the meat off rotting carcasses.
Where they took their prizes and how to win one back from them were the questions I had brought to Kit.
Questions he proved reluctant to answer.
Gripping the tongs in his gloved hand, Kit turned and thrust the cooling steel into the coals. “Waiting for your common sense to kick in is all,” he called over his shoulder. “And don’t call me sir. Or Mister Mosel, for that matter. I’m not an old man.”
I walked along the edge of the canopy until I could see Kit’s face in profile. His sharp features glowed in the light of the forge.
“I know what I’m asking,” I told him. “I know it sounds like madness?—”
He held up a hand to cut me off. “If you want to be heard, you’ll need to come closer.”
Cringing, I ventured farther in. The air grew thicker and more stifling, and sweat formed a sheen across my skin. I wrung my hands together. “I have nine days to retrieve my father’s body and take it home, or I fear my family will be cursed.”
Kit’s incredulous laugh shocked me to silence.
Didn’t he know? My mother spoke often throughout my youth of the fate that befell those who paid homage to Eeus.
Bodies given as tribute were tainted, and the scourge passed through them to their loved ones.
For generations. If my father was sacrificed to that dark god before I could stop it, my family, my farm, and everything I cared about could be doomed.
As I stood in the ensuing silence, I squinted into the bed of embers, trying to discern the shape of the object Kit held. “What are you working on?” I asked .
He moved it from coals to anvil so quickly that I reeled back.
“A more menacing knife.” He held the glowing blade aloft. “For the next time you show up at my door.” A wolfish smile tipped his lips, predatory but posturing. He didn’t mean it.
“I should apologize for that,” I said. “It was impolite to arrive unannounced.”
Kit sniffed and set the knife on the anvil. He took up the hammer again, striking the steel and making me flinch.
It wasn’t the noise that made me want to retreat, or even the scowl that seemed permanently affixed to Kit’s handsome face; it was the smothering heat. I couldn’t breathe. Sweat trickled down my neck, and my cheeks felt aflame even at this distance.
I shifted around, trying to find a place within the stall where I could be seen and heard while keeping space between myself and the oppressive temperature radiating from the coals.
A rack of forged items lined one wall, and I moved to stand near them.
A brief survey found several farm tools I admired while mulling over my next words.
Perhaps I needed to explain why this was so important.
Kit must have known about the curse, but should I tell him that I couldn’t return home empty-handed and admit to my mother that my father’s remains had been given to a malevolent god?
My father was a good man. An honest man.
He deserved better than to have his soul committed to a god who spread plague and famine.
That was bad enough without the added knowing that our family was cursed along with him—as if they weren’t already burdened enough with the curse of me.
When I settled on a statement at last, I turned around in time to see Kit pump the bellows. The coals flared and flames swelled with a great whoosh .
Blistering heat washed across my chest and face, and I yelped, staggering back into the rack. The stand went down and so did I, taking shovels, horseshoes, hammers, and a few pieces of armor with me.
I hit the dirt and sat there, flushed from my neck all the way to the tips of my ears as Kit spun and scowled.
“What’s the matter with you?” he snapped.
I tried to swallow my embarrassment. “It’s… hot.”
Kit fixed me with a withering stare. Setting down his tongs and the knife blade, he walked forward and stooped beside me to right the wooden rack. “Move.” He flapped his gloved hands. “I need to clean this up.”
“I can help.” Pushing onto my knees, I scurried to collect the scattered horseshoes and stack them up my arm.
Kit snatched them off my wrist, then hung them on the rack. “I think you’ve done enough,” he said, as condescending as before.
I stood and stepped back as he collected the spilled items and returned them to their places.
He did fine work. My father would have been impressed by the craftsmanship of the farm tools, especially.
The sharp glint of the curved blade of a sickle caught my eye as Kit returned it to the rack, and I remembered his work in progress.
Glancing back at the forge found the knife and tongs sitting—apparently unscathed—on the stone ledge surrounding the coals. I sighed in relief and noticed Kit glaring.
“Actually, there is something you could do to help,” he said.
“Oh?”
Kit nodded, then said in a stern voice, “You can leave.”