Roseth
The bell sings wrong.
Not the tone. The tone is perfect. The mistake is mine.
I lift the hammer too soon. The metal still holds heat. The strike slips. The bell jerks sideways on its hook. My elbow bumps the hanging rack behind me.
Three finished bells collide.
The note explodes across the forge.
Clear. Bright. Too strong for the small space. The sound ricochets between brick walls, spills through the open doors, skims the lake beyond. My hands fly up on instinct, palms out, as if I could push the sound back into the metal.
Silence follows.
I stand still, listening for cracks. Listening for the dull tremor of damage. Nothing answers. The bells sway gently, embarrassed by their own outburst.
My breath slips out in a long slow stream.
“Careless,” I mutter.
I turn to unhook the newest bell, ready to inspect the lip for warping.
Movement catches my eye across the street.
Khaivor stands frozen. Atleast that is the name the children call him.
Not watching the forge. Not watching me. His eyes are shut, face tilted slightly upward as if he stands in sunlight instead of late afternoon haze. Shoulders relaxed. Hands loose at his sides. Stillness settles around him like glass.
He looks peaceful.
The realization unsettles me more than the mistake with the bell.
People do not look peaceful near the forge. They are usually hot, irritated, and impatient.
The bell beside me gives a final soft sway. The fading tone dissolves into ordinary town noise.
Khaivor exhales.
He notices me staring but of course he does. He always seems to notice everything.
I jerk my attention back to the bell hook, heart beating faster than the moment deserves. Heat crawls up my neck. Ridiculous reaction. He is only a traveler. A strange one, yes. Still only a traveler.
Across the street, footsteps retreat and I glance up again to see him leaving.
Annoyance sparks sharp enough to surprise me. He arrives every autumn. Buy one bell. Leaves. This year he lingers. Watches. Reacts to sound like a struck string. Then disappears the moment I look at him.
No, not today.
I hang the bell back on its hook, wipe my hands on my apron, march straight out of the forge before doubt catches up.
Khaivor stands at the far end where the noise thins. He watches the water as if expecting it to speak.
Good and nowhere to escape.
I stop beside him without greeting. The dock creaks once beneath my weight, announcing me before I can choose otherwise.
"You flinched," I say, leaving no room for dispute.
He turns his head slightly. No surprise in the movement. Only patience, deep and practiced, like a man accustomed to being watched.
"Many sounds cause reactions," he answers, as though the words have been waiting a long time to be used.
"Not like that," I say.
Silence lingers long enough to become deliberate. A heron lifts off the far bank, wings beating slow and heavy against the morning air.
I cross my arms. "You looked like the bell struck you," I press, leaning into it. "Like it reached… inside your chest and grabbed… something."
His gaze shifts back to the lake. Mist curls across the surface in thin drifting ribbons, slow and indifferent to both of us.
"I experience sound differently than most," he offers, like a man sliding something small and insufficient across a table.
"That… explains nothing," I mutter.
Another pause. Longer this time. Wind rattles loose ropes against wooden posts somewhere behind us. Water taps the dock in soft repeating beats, patient as a question nobody is answering.
"I did not intend to be noticed," he admits at last, the words coming out slow, reluctant, like something pulled from deep water.
"That also explains nothing," I shoot back.
His mouth moves, stops and moves again. As though weighing words before allowing them air, testing each one for what it might cost him.
"My magic responds to resonance," he utters, and the steadiness in his voice makes it sound both simple and enormous.
The answer lands heavier than expected. Heavier than he perhaps meant it to. I feel it settle somewhere behind my sternum.
I lean closer before I realize I am doing it. "Respond how?" I ask, too quickly, too openly.
He hesitates. The kind of hesitation that isn't uncertainty — it's a door being held shut from the other side.
The refusal sits quietly between us, stubborn as stone, immovable and faintly maddening.
"That is not an answer," I say, though the evenness costs me something.
"It is the only one I am offering," he replies, like a man who has rehearsed exactly this conversation and knows how it ends.
"You come here every year. You buy one bell every year — always from my stall, never anyone else's.
You watch my forge like you're waiting for it to explode.
Your magic reacts to sound," I say, letting each fact fall separately, like stones dropped one by one into still water. "You expect me not to ask questions?"
"I expect you to ask many questions," he says, and there is something almost gentle in it. Almost rueful.
"Then answer them," I say.
"I cannot," he replies, with a kind of sorrow that sounds well-worn, like grief that has learned to sit still.
The simplicity of the words steals the argument clean from my mouth.
I study his face, searching for mockery and maybe evasion, for the small tells of a man arranging a comfortable lie.
I find none of it.
Only restraint. Tight as pulled wire, and just as close to snapping.
My arms drop slowly to my sides. Something in my chest does the same.
"That is inconvenient," I mutter, to the lake, to the unhelpful morning.
The corner of his lips shifts. Not quite a smile. Close enough to count, and somehow worse for being so small.
We stand there until the wind changes direction and the mist begins to thin and the festival noise from the square grows louder and more insistent. The world reminds me it exists.
Then I remember myself.
I step back first. It feels like a concession I haven't agreed to make.
"Enjoy the festival," I say briskly, tucking everything behind the word like folding laundry.
I leave before he can answer, and I tell myself that was the sensible choice.
Sylvi finds me before sunset.
She appears from behind a stack of lantern crates with the timing of a hunting cat and the grin of a criminal mastermind.
"You were staring."
"I was not," I shoot back, not breaking stride.
"You were absolutely staring," she counters, falling into step beside me like she was invited.
"I was assessing a customer."
She chuckles, "You were assessing his cheekbones."
I shove past her toward the forge. She keeps pace without effort, which is its own kind of irritating.
I continue walking, faster.
Sylvi laughs loud enough to wake the lake.
"You like him," she announces, with the confidence of someone delivering a verdict.
"I do not," I mutter, eyes forward.
"You absolutely do." She pushes on.
I'm slowly getting triggered by her persistence. "I absolutely do not."
"Roseth—"
"I have work," I cut in, leaving her to her deductions before she can finish whatever devastating thing was coming next.
Her laughter follows me anyway, bright and relentless, like it has nowhere better to be.
The storm arrives without warning.
I rush outside to secure the hanging racks. Bells clash in sharp frantic bursts as the first heavy drops strike the roof.
Rain turns violent within seconds.
Thunder cracks overhead. The sound punches straight through my ribs. I grab the ladder, climb halfway to the roofline, fight the ropes securing the support beams.
The wind howls louder than the bells. Wood groans above me. One of the old roof-supports shudders, shifts, slips half an inch from its brace.
My stomach drops.
“No, no, no—”
Another gust slams into the forge. The beam jerks downward and the entire roof lurches.
I freeze halfway up the ladder, heart slamming against bone, certain the next movement will bring everything crashing down.
Then the sound changes. Becomes a vibration beneath the loud thunder.
The air hums, buzzing like bees.
Not from bells, definitely not from wind but something deeper.
The beam stops moving.
The groan fades into steady trembling. The wood settles as though invisible hands press it back into place.
I turn slowly and there he is.
Khaivor stands in the rain, eyes closed, palms lifted toward the roof. Water pours from his hair, his cloak, his fingertips. The air around him ripples like heat above a forge fire.
The hum deepens and every structure in the forge answers.
Every loose joint tightens. Every strained nail stills.
The forge breathes again.
My ladder slips from numb fingers. Boots hit the ground. I notice him through sheets of rain, my heart still racing too fast to speak.
He lowers his hands and the resonating sound fades.
Thunder returns to fill the silence he leaves behind.