Mike Shevdon - Sixty-One Nails

As we approached the farm, though, the mood became more sober. The air downwind of the farm was tainted by the smell of charcoal and the hint of iron on the air had my breath catching in the back of my throat and so I avoided breathing in the smoke that was turned, twisted and swept away by the fickle breeze.

The dogs announced our arrival with a frenzy of barking; the smaller bitch would come nowhere near us but barked from the safety of the kitchen door. Jeff Highsmith came down to the gates for us, looking tired and smudged with charcoal and soot from his labours.

"It's almost done," he told us. "Dad's just finishing grinding off the edge."

He took us across the courtyard and into the kitchen, where his wife was waiting and then left us with her to go and see how the work progressed. Meg Highsmith greeted us formally but politely in a way that made me wonder what her husband had said to her. She offered us lunch but we declined on the basis that we had so recently had breakfast.

"A cup of coffee would be most welcome, though," Blackbird suggested.

Blackbird and I sat at the kitchen table as she busied herself around the kitchen preparing lunch for her family and coffee for us.

After a few minutes Jeff, his father, and his daughter filed in.

"There," he said. "Done." He placed the newly finished knife in the centre of the table with a flourish.

Blackbird and I looked at each other. The knife sat there, inert, innocuous, unremarkable.

"Something's wrong," we said in unison.

We sat around the table in the kitchen, Ben, Jeff, Lisa and James opposite Blackbird and I, while Meg fussed around us.

"I still don't see the difference," Ben Highsmith repeated, scratching his head.

"Believe me," I told him, "We would not be sitting here talking like this if it was remotely like the Quick Knife."

"But we made it the same," he protested.

"And it's definitely iron," Blackbird said. "But not like the Quick Knife. Rabbit is right; we would be able to tell straight away if it was the same. We would know as soon as you brought it anywhere near us, either of us."

Our hopes of restoring the knife to this year's ceremony and reinforcing the barrier against the Seventh Court were melting away.

"Do you know anyone else, anyone you could recommend?" I hated to ask, but it was all I could think of.

Ben Highsmith blustered, but it was his son who answered.

"There's no one else does the kind of work you need. That's why we've kept the skills alive all these generations. And there's none alive that's better with iron than Dad. Dad, sit down, he's only asking what you'd ask in his place."

Ben had stood up ready to defend his honour, but then sighed and slumped back into his seat, resting his chin in his hands. "I s'pose," he admitted.

"Are you sure there's no way of mending the old one? I mean, it's potent enough, it's just not in one piece," Blackbird asked him.

Ben answered. "No, No. It won't take a weld and it can't be braised. Melting down the metal will return it to solid iron, but not in the way you want. Broken is broken with cold iron."

We lapsed into silence again.

"Can I see the broken one?" Lisa asked.

She hadn't said a word until now, sitting close to her grandfather as if she dwelt in his shadow. He was as startled as we were that she'd spoken.

"Fetch it out for her, will you?" he asked me.

Blackbird unzipped her bag and extracted the box with the knives in it, sliding it across the table towards them. "If you don't mind, Rabbit and I will go and stand in the yard while you look at it."

They waited while we stood and trooped outside into the yard. Even then, the prickling sensation down my spine, the ache in my bones, told me the moment the box was opened.

"What are we going to do now?" I asked Blackbird.

"I don't know what we can do. Get them to make another? Is there any reason it would be better than the one they've already made? Maybe they've lost the art, in which case we can only ask them to experiment and try and regain it. Whatever happens it will be too late for this year, maybe too late for all of us. If the barrier collapses…" She let the words trail away and kicked a stone across the yard. It bounced unevenly across the concrete.

I felt the dull ache subside and knew they had finished examining the knife before Ben Highsmith emerged, his granddaughter trailing behind him, her father following her out to stand watch behind them.

"This Quick Knife is useless, right?" He questioned Blackbird, brandishing the box.

"The broken knife can't be used for the ceremony," she confirmed, "unless it can be repaired well enough to cut a hazel rod?"

"Nah, but Lisa spotted something neither Jeff nor I had seen. I'd show you but…"

"We'll take your word for it," I told him.

"The blade of the knife has been hammered after it cooled. You can see it if you hold it up to the light. Jeff and I didn't believe her at first. We didn't even look for hammer marks, but sharp-eyes here spotted it." He smiled down at her and ruffled her hair affectionately. She grinned up at him, basking in his praise.

"So why don't you hammer the new one?"

"It looks like the original has been hammered cold and we know that if you hammer cold iron, it shatters. The metal's too brittle to take it. That's why we weren't looking for hammer marks."

"Then how could it have been hammered in the first place?"

"That's what Lisa wants me to try. She wants to see if the old knife can be hammered. If it can, then that might explain the difference between the knives. Or it could just shatter."

I looked at Blackbird. She nodded. "Do it," she told him.

We followed them to the back of the farm being careful to avoid the plume of smoke being whipped off the top of the chimney by the stiffening breeze. The forge was there, the bed of coals still burning from their night's work.

"Unlike copper, iron isn't usually hammered cold," Ben told us. "The knife we made for you was heated in the forge until the iron became ductile and then it was hammered into shape. Keeping it hot and hammering it drives out the impurities so you end up with something you can work with. That's wrought iron."

He went through the low arch into the forge. Neither Blackbird nor I made any move to follow him. He raised his voice and moved about in the dimness within, donning a leather apron and collecting things together while he continued explaining, raising his voice to be heard through the open doorway of the forge.

"Cold iron is harder to make," he called out to us. "A very particular ore is put though an ancient process to produce a lump of coarse iron called a bloom. The bloom is reheated and then hammered to drive out the impurities. It has to be cooled slowly enough to allow the crystals to form, but hammered enough to drive out the impurities. Hammer it too much and it'll shatter, too little and the impurities will make it brittle and it won't take the shape. Cool it too fast and it'll develop fracture lines, too slow and it'll be soft and never take an edge. It's all in the making."

He picked a hammer from a rack and hefted it, standing in the shade of the doorway. "You'd better stand back in case it shatters," he told us, picking a safety visor from a hook.

Jeff pulled his daughter away behind him, standing at an angle to the doorway. Blackbird and I moved well back behind a stone wall, well aware of what flying fragments of cold iron would do to either of us. From our position we couldn't see into the forge, but we knew when he took the broken blade of the Quick Knife from the box.

There was a long pause and then a characteristic sound

'Tink… tink… tink… tink… Thonk!'

Then a pause.

'Tink… tink… tink… tink… Thonk!'