Sterling Forge's Arc

Chapter 21 of 31

Sterling knelt at the base of the tree. He wanted to understand the light before he tried to use it. Linny painted behind him. He watched a ribbon of blue climb the bark, then split into pink and gold. He put a finger near it. The light did not burn. It did not feel like anything. He pulled his hand back anyway. If he broke this, he broke the only fire in the world that might teach his forge. "Are you going to touch it?" He turned. A small girl stood behind him in a green dress. No shoes. Brown hair to her waist. She looked about seven. She was not there a moment ago. Sterling stood up slow. His hand went to his knife and stopped. She did not look like a thing to stab. "Who are you?" "Sage." She smiled at him like she knew him. "This is the place of dreams. You have one too. Don't you?" Linny had lowered the brush. She watched but did not move. "A sword," Sterling said. It came out before he could weigh it. "I want to forge a sword. My fire won't hold the heat." Sage walked past him to the tree. She reached up and pinched a thread of gold light between two fingers, the way a person pinches a needle. She pulled. The thread came away with her, still glowing, thin as hair. She knelt and laid it on the grass. The grass under it began to burn without smoke. A small clean flame stood up from the ground. Sterling stared. The flame did not spread. It sat there, steady, hot on his face. "You can do it too," she said. "I don't have tools." "Don't you?" She stood and walked around the trunk. Sterling followed. Linny came behind him with the chipmunk on her shoulder. On the far side of the tree, laid out on the grass, was an anvil. A hammer. Tongs. A bellows. Bar stock of good steel, stacked. A quench trough already full. His own leather apron, folded, with the burn mark he knew. He stopped walking. "How." "I told you," Sage said. "The place of dreams." Sterling knelt by the anvil. He touched it. Cold iron under his palm. Real. He picked up the hammer. His hammer. The nick in the handle where he had dropped it two winters ago. He looked at the tree. He reached up the way she had. He pinched. The light gave. A blue thread came away in his fingers, warm, alive. He laid it in a small ring on the grass. It caught. The flame stood clean and even, no cold side, no hot side. He looked at Linny. She was already smiling. "Make it," she said. Sterling pulled on the apron. He fed the fire a second thread, then a third. The heat held even down the whole ring. He picked up a bar of steel.