Karsten Knight - Afterglow

Ash took extra care to scan the lines at the archery and knife-throwing games, since she figured those would be the first logical places a typical twenty-year-old guy might go at a fair like this.

However, it wasn’t until after she wandered past the sword-swallowing act in a circular amphitheater that she heard a suite of sounds that caught her attention.

Hammering.

The crackle of open flames.

Ash wasn’t sure if it was the rhythmic clank-clank-clank of metal striking metal, or if the fire was somehow calling to her, but she felt herself magnetically drawn to the blacksmith’s open-air hut. Even despite the shade of the roof and the tall oak trees surrounding it, the boy inside was sweating profusely, thanks to the furnace glowing in the back. Perspiration dripped off his curly ringlets and onto the anvil where he was stationed. He gripped a hammer in one hand, which he was using to repeatedly strike the blade of a glowing metal sword he held in the other.

Modo was wearing a sleeveless tunic, which revealed a detail his picture had not: Modo was ripped. His bicep bulged every time he brought the hammer down. From the size of his forearms, Ash guessed this whole blacksmith thing was more than just a part-time gig. He certainly didn’t get those muscles from ringing church bells.

The word “blacksmith” triggered something in Ash’s mind, and she experienced a tremble of excitement. There was little that Ash knew about her own Polynesian mythology, but she had retained a few random facts about Greek mythology from Mr. Carpenter’s ancient history class.

The reason she was excited was because the Greeks had a god of metallurgy . . . one who was exceptionally good at weapon making and forge working.

One who was characterized by a wizened face and a lame foot.

“Hephaestus . . .” she whispered.

Just then, Modo looked up from his smith work. His hammer was cocked back, ready for another strike. “Did you say something?” he asked in a faux English accent, with a historical lilt. He sounded like he’d stumbled out of one of the Lord of the Rings movies.

Ash cleared her throat and stepped under the straw roof. “I, uh, said ‘how festive.’ As in, the sword you’re making is festive to the, uh . . . festival.”

Modo gave her a once-over, from her T-shirt down to her jeans. “Well someone around here has to look festive. Can I presume that this is your first trip to our fair kingdom?” He smiled, just slightly baring his pointy teeth. “If you feel like slipping into something a little more comfortable, I can recommend a talented corset maker just a few huts away.”

“I treasure my ability to breathe too much.” And my dignity , she stopped herself from saying. “But I’ll remember to bring a pair of pantaloons next time.”

She was struggling with how to broach the “So you’re a god too, huh?” topic, but Modo kept right on going in character. He pointed to her forearms. “Quite the sinewy arms for a maiden . . . This leads me to believe you’re used to wielding a short-range weapon—a quarterstaff or an archer’s bow, perchance?”

“Tennis racket,” Ash replied.

“Ah, yes,” he said musically. “Difficult to master, but deadly in the right hands.” He hammered away at the sword a few more times and then held it up to the light to inspect the blade. “So, stranger—if you haven’t come to King Edward’s realm to fit your person with clothing befitting of a lady, and you’re not here to engage in close-quarter combat like a man, then why have you come?”

“I came here to find you,” Ash said, then added, “Modo.”

At the sound of the name, Modo’s arm once again paused on its way down to the blade. When he finally spoke, the medieval inflection to his voice faltered, and she could hear a distinctly Canadian accent. “Where did you hear that name?”

She stepped farther into the tent and put a hand on his arm. “Listen, we don’t have much time, so just for the sake of efficiency, let’s drop the whole Renaissance act and stop pretending like we’re not gods.”

“Gods?” Modo stared at her as though she were a complete lunatic. He tilted his head to the side. “Who put you up to this? Was it my frat brothers at Delta Psi? Or was it the Bellringers?”

“Nobody’s putting me up to anything. You need to come with me.” She tried to tug him away from the anvil.

He wouldn’t budge. Instead he let out a short, husky laugh. “Wait a minute—it’s my birthday tomorrow. Did the guys hire a stripper to come here and do some sort of weird, fantasy role play?”

Ash punched Modo in the arm, eliciting a whiny “ow” from him. “I am not,” she enunciated, “a stripper. I am a god like you who has come here to save your ass from a group of other gods who are far less friendly.” Every time she said the word “god,” his confusion deepened, and it was then that she had an epiphany.

Modo honestly had no idea what the hell she was talking about.

“You seriously don’t know?” Ash asked. “I figured it out within five seconds of seeing you, and you have no freakin’ clue what you are? Who you are?”

He just stared blankly at her.

“Hephaestus?” she said, sounding less sure now. “You know, the Greek god of the forge and metallurgy?” Maybe the forward approach wasn’t the brightest plan after all. Modo was starting to look like a rabbit that had been backed into a cave by a coyote.

He shrugged free of her grip, and his hand tightened around his hammer, as though he might need to defend himself. “Are you completely off your rocker?” he rasped. A group of boys chowing down on turkey legs gave them weird looks as they walked by, so Modo switched back into his theatrical voice. “I mean, what sort of strange sorcery is this, mage?”

Ash slapped him on the back of the head. “Modo, I know you’re under the impression that I’m a nut job, but take a moment to connect the dots: You’re a Greek boy . . . with a crippled leg . . . and despite the fact that it’s well into the twenty-first century, you’re a fucking blacksmith.”

“Listen, cupcake,” Modo said. “It’s no secret that I like women who are into the whole fantasy role-playing thing, too. But even if I didn’t have a girlfriend already, you are seriously starting to freak me out—and that’s saying something.”

Ash growled in frustration. It was never easy—but then again it had taken some convincing two months ago for Ash to finally accept the truth about her own identity.

Well, she’d just have to convince him, too.

She snatched the hammer out of his hand, grabbed him by the wrist, and forced his fingers down onto the flat of the blade. Then, with her free hand, she touched the other end of the sword.

He yelped and jerked his fingers away. Where the blade had almost completely cooled down before, Ash had heated it right back up so that the metal glowed orange against the anvil.

“If I’m not a goddess, then how the hell did I do that?” Ash ran her finger along the length of the sword, which whistled under her fingertip. “And if you’re not a god, then why aren’t you burned? I bet you’ve never been so much as singed a day in your life. You’re just conditioned to associate heat with danger . . . when it holds no danger for you at all.” She pointed to the smoldering furnace in the back. “You could probably stick your hands in those coals and be fine.”

This seemed to give Modo pause. He was starting to look at least a little reflective. Maybe he was reviewing the last twenty years of his life, all his time spent around fire and forges, struggling—even hoping—to remember a time that the flames had left a mark upon his skin.

“I was where you are barely two months ago,” she went on. “And unfortunately, just like me, you don’t have the luxury of taking time to let it all sink in. Of sorting through the lunacy of what I’m telling you. Of wondering why the news that will change your life has to come from a complete stranger.” She put her hand on his chest and let a swell of warmth pulse through the fabric of his tunic. “But when you start to realize how my crazy theory fills all the cracks that have been accumulating in your life, you’ll be left with four words: I am a god.”