“Make sure it’s balanced. Need to take heads off with one clean heft.”
The one-sided conversation continued into the night, all the way until I took an eye drift, and I punched a hole through the steel. Then I quenched it in a barrel of oil, the steam raising up and singeing the hair on my arm not protected by the leather glove. The blade didn’t crack. Then came the fitting of a handle. I had little to shave down because there were wooden handles already in the shop, many prepared for the weapon I was forging.
“Now the gold.”
“Gold on a weapon is useless,” I argued to myself. “It’s too soft.”
“Need the gold.”
I saw the original in my mind and knew that I could never gold plate the axe to the same degree as the original blacksmith had.
But I did it anyway.
And without even knowing what I was doing, I chiseled out runes along the blade’s edges. My hands moving of their own, matching the image in my mind, carving out a name of the owner.
Then came the grinding. Sitting at the stone wheel, I hummed under my breath as I sharpened the edge of the double-sided blade. When it was completed, I looked for a scroll or horsehair to test the blade’s sharpness.
“Dwarf hair is the best for testing a blade’s sharpness because our hair is strong and wiry, but that won’t work since you’re obviously not a dwarf.”
I stared at the axe and blinked in surprise. Many times I would speak to myself as I forged, asking myself questions, arguing with myself, trying to push my magic and talents to new heights. But that wasn’t what happened here. Someone was speaking to me.
“Hello?” I said softly into the air.
“Yeah?” the voice replied.
I stared at the great axe I’d made. “You’re really talking.”
“I’ve been talking for a century, but you’re the only one who ever listened.” The axe had spoken audibly, and it wasn’t in my head.
The runes. I rubbed my hands over the runes and read the name I had engraved. “Who are you?” I asked, my hands shaking as I lifted the axe into the air. “Or I mean, who were you?” For there wasn’t a doubt, I had not just used the echo to recreate the weapon, but I had—using magic—imprinted a memory into it.
The Book of Eld.
I gasped, remembering what I’d learned as I’d read it. I’d accidentally used dwarven magic when creating a dwarven weapon.
“You know who I am. Or can’t you read? You put my name right there on the blade,” the axe huffed at me. “I’m Rumple Stiltskin.”
“. . . impossible,” I breathed out, staring at the weapon.
“Improbable, but not impossible. Nothing is impossible when you’re me.”
“If you are really Rumple Stiltskin, then how are you here?”
“You really are daft, aren’t you? And here I thought you’d be a powerful sorceress, that you’d figure it out. Shut your mouth, company is coming, and you look crazy talking to nobody.”
I promptly snapped my gaping mouth closed as a retinue of soldiers passed by the forge. Grabbing the nearest ingot of metal, I put it into the forge with tongs and prepared to heat treat it.
“Working through the night, Molneer? I thought you were done with your jewelry. What else you doing?” A soldier with the captain emblem on his collar asked.
Before I could turn and answer, Rumple called out for me. “Off you go. Dwarf business, and you’re not a dwarf,” he said gruffly, in an almost perfect likeness of Molneer.
I slammed my hand onto the handle of the axe in warning, hoping to silence it.
That seemed to make the captain laugh. “Same old Molneer, as secretive as ever.”
I squeezed the handle, and the axe didn’t have another comeback. The soldiers passed on by and I let out an anxious sigh. “What did you go and do that for?” I hissed. “You could have blown my cover.”
“Girl, as soon as you would open your mouth, you’d have given yourself away. A real dwarf wouldn’t sound like a mouse.”
“I don’t”—I coughed and lowered the tone of my voice—“sound like a mouse.”
“S-u-r-e,” Rumple dragged out. “Want some cheese?”
“You’re not a nice dwarf,” I snapped. “And my name’s Rheanon, or Rhea—not girl.” Pulling the ingot back out of the fire, I tossed it onto the anvil where I ignored it. I picked through the leather scrap piles and began to fashion a bandolier with a leather tie to carry the axe.
“Dwarves aren’t nice. We don’t have tea parties and offer scones and crumpets. We are dwellers of the earth, protectors of the mountain and Ter Dell,” Rumple boasted loudly.
“Well, you’ve done a lousy job of it,” I said. “Because Ter Dell is gone, or have you forgotten? And there are hardly any earth dwellers left to protect the mountain, except for Grimkeep, and he seems to have his hands full protecting what’s left of the city from goblins.”
Rumple fell silent.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice sounding very mousy with remorse. I measured the leather across my shoulders and added a buckle from a wooden crate sitting on a shelf. I found an awl and punched holes into the leather to make it adjustable.
“I had forgotten.” Rumple’s voice was filled with sadness. “My home is no more.”
I scooped up the axe and measured the ties to attach it to the molded leather holster. Slipping the axe into the bandolier, I used the leather ties to tighten the holster before sliding it onto my back. Immediately, I was impressed by how light the weapon was.
“You’re extremely light,” I said in awe.
“You take that back! Dwarves are not light. I weigh at least eighteen stone.”
“Maybe you did as a dwarf,” I said with a smirk. “But as a weapon, you are indeed light.”
A sputtering came from behind my back. “Well, that’s because I’m made of the silven ore from the mines of Ter Dell. Looks like steel, but ten times lighter. Dwarf secret.”
“It’s not a dwarf secret if you tell people,” I said.
“You don’t count. I’ll dub you an honorary dwarf because of the fake beard.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Want to know another secret?” Rumple asked.
“No,” I answered as I snuck across the snowy field, heading to the tent that was set up for Velora to spin gold.
“Our beards have pockets!” he said smugly. “Hidden ones. You won’t believe what we can pull out of them in times of trouble. I once hid a small throwing axe, a pint of ale, and a meat pie in mine. It was so grand and long. All the ladies wanted to run their hands through it.”
“You’re pulling my leg.” I stopped and tried to imagine Grimkeep’s beard with hidden pockets. Granted, their beards were long, ornate things with many runes and beads braided throughout. I wondered if that’s what the braids were for, to help hide the pockets.
“No, one time I—”
“Shh,” I whispered. “This is serious. I need you to be quiet.”
“But you’re the first person I’ve talked to in a century. I can’t help it if I’m chatty.”