Anne Kelleher - Silver's Edge

In spite of her obvious resolve, Nessa grimaced as she gingerly touched the clammy flesh which hung slack on the goblin’s face, and this time, the look she shot him was one of utter disdain. “What do I care what they think? Those old biddies do nothing but whisper about me, but they were all quick to rush to the house tonight, weren’t they? Bothersome hens—it was just a chance to poke their noses into the pantry and the kitchen and the bedrooms and make nasty comments about you and me. They don’t care about Papa, they care about sticking their faces in other people’s troubles—not so they can do anything, but so they can talk about it. And the Duke just raised his standard against the King. How much time do you think he’ll spare a missing smith?”

“I should think he’ll make time for a dead goblin. If he doesn’t come himself, you know he’ll send some—”

“Maybe, eventually. But by that time, it may be too late. My father could be dead. Or lost forever, like my mother.” Her mouth hardened and she reached into the leather sack for the small ax.

“What are you doing, Nessa?” Griffin stared at her in horrified disbelief. These last few hours were like a long bad dream that refused to end. It had started when Jemmy, the herder’s boy, had run up from the lake shouting that a goblin lay floating in the water.

The village had reacted as one body, men and women and children, all running pell-mell to the sandy shore, where the thick, hide-clad corpse bumped up against the traps set just at knee depth. The men had waded in, dragging it away from the traps with branches, teasing it ashore. A general gasp had arisen when they’d turned the body over, and the stuff of nightmare and legend lay revealed. Long rows of serrated, jagged teeth in a wide leathery maw, slitted eyes and ears like bat wings, and a hard, leathery hide that ended at each hand in three-inch claws. A jagged wound, curiously singed around the edges, disgorged the contents of its entrails, purplish and glistening with foul-smelling slime.

It was decided that despite the lateness of the hour—the last rays of the sun had long since been swallowed up by shadows—a messenger must be sent to Killcarrick Keep, where it was hoped that the Sheriff, if not the Duke himself, would be in residence. It was during the discussion as to who should go that Nessa had raised her clear voice in one anxious question. “Where’s my father?”

But Dougal, who had left the smithy much earlier that afternoon than was his custom, ostensibly to check the very traps that his apprentice, Griffin, had set just that morning, was nowhere to be found. Despite their usual censure, a flock of clucking women descended on Nessa, while the men patted Griffin’s back and muttered encouragement. He’d been left standing at the smithy gate, while the tide of women swept past, bearing Nessa inside in a swirl of skirts and a flutter of shawls, watching it all with a growing sense of foreboding. It was common knowledge that Nessa’s own mother had been swept into the OtherWorld, carried away by a knight of the sidhe who’d induced her to remove her silver, and Nessa had always been regarded as slightly touched, slightly tainted, as if she had possibly inherited some susceptibility they did not want to share. Dougal’s unorthodox method of raising his daughter had drawn harsh criticism, too, for while the goodwives of the village were inclined to be sympathetic to the motherless girl, they strongly disapproved of the freedom he allowed her, the smithing he’d taught her. Each of them had approached the blacksmith about taking the girl under a wing; all of them had been rebuffed. Dougal was above noticing most of it, but these last few years had been hard on Nessa. Griffin had watched her bear it, with the same sort of silence as she watched them argue that there was only a coincidental connection between the goblin and the smith’s disappearance, since there was no sign of Dougal’s amulet.

But Griffin could well imagine the emotions swirling behind Nessa’s shadowed eyes. At nineteen, she was part sister, part rival, part secret love. She adored her father—that had been clear to him from the very beginning, when he’d joined the household as a twelve-year-old apprentice when she was barely ten—and endured the growing distance between herself and the other villagers stoically. In a world without Dougal, Griffin wondered what would become of Nessa. Under Dougal’s tutelage, she had gained much proficiency as a smith, and was, to Griffin’s mortification, his equal in skill if not in strength. The smithy would of course be hers, someday, on Dougal’s death. But was she truly equipped to make her way in the world, he wondered, as he shooed a gaggle of curious giggling girls from her tiny bedroom. She was so different from all the other girls, possessing only what knowledge of housekeeping as Dougal had—what villager would marry her? And how many of Dougal’s customers would frequent a female blacksmith? She would need a man to handle the heavier jobs. That thought gave him a grim satisfaction, for he had fallen in love with Nessa years ago. But now was not the time to think of any possible future. Here was an opportunity at last to show how much he cared for her. And so he hung back, hovering, watching, listening, wondering how best to help, turning the possibilities over in his mind.

The day had begun badly, for something was clearly weighing upon Dougal from the moment he got up. At breakfast, Nessa asked her father who the two visitors were late last night, two visitors Griffin hadn’t even heard come in. Dougal replied with the same hard look as the one with which she’d just answered Griffin. At Griffin’s first opportunity, as he was putting the breakfast dishes to soak, and Nessa was hauling in a sack of coal for the fire, he asked her, “What visitors? When?”

“Last night—long after you were snoring. If you hadn’t been so quick abed you’d have heard them, too.” She answered him in a quick whisper, for Dougal had said little at breakfast. His eyes were hooded, his mouth grim.

“I hauled ore all day,” he protested. “Did you get a look at them? How long were they here?”

“Not long. Papa knew one of them, for I heard him cry ‘You!’ Then they lowered their voices, and spoke a while but I couldn’t hear what they were saying underneath your snores. Then they left—and I heard him working, long into the night.”

“What was he mak—” he started to ask, but Dougal bellowed for the coal, and Nessa hefted her burden. There was no further opportunity to ask more, and when Dougal left the smithy, earlier than normal, muttering about the traps, they had watched him uncover a narrow bundle wrapped in cloth from beneath a pile of gear, and looked at each other with questioning eyes. “That’s what he was making last night,” Griffin had said, as the smith disappeared down the lane in the direction of the lake. “Let’s follow him, and see where he goes with that.”

“Let’s not,” said Nessa, smarting under the rough side of her father’s tongue, for his mood had been dark all day. Griffin could only imagine what she thought about that now. If only they’d followed, they might have a better idea of Dougal’s fate.

As the dinner hour approached, Griffin had laid down his tools, expecting to go down the lane to pick up the evening loaves from the herder’s wife, Mara, whom Dougal paid to bake, since Nessa didn’t know how. It was yet another reason the goodwives whispered, and a chore Griffin assumed to spare her their sometimes ill-tempered comments. But then Jemmy had come charging down the lane, heralding the news about the goblin, and the bread was forgotten, along with everything else, save Dougal.

As the night lengthened, Griffin stayed on the periphery of the activity, fetching wood and water as required, watching over Nessa from afar. She sat at the rough kitchen table, stone-faced and calm, accepting a knocker-full of hard corn whiskey, tossing it back with such ease even Griffin was astonished. Out of Nessa’s hearing, the women argued amongst themselves in lowered voices, alternatively scolding and silencing each other until Griffin wondered how Nessa could sit with such silent dignity. When the last of them had finally departed, it was well after midnight. But instead of going to her bed, she had risen to her feet and rolled her shoulders back in the same stretch with which she approached fire and forge, and reached for the small ax which hung beside the door.