Category: Lifting Voices

That night, Minette sat at the dinner table already dreading Paw and Maw’s imminent interrogation. She didn’t want to hear them call her a boy or a suitor. She wanted to ignore her fate. They were all huddled around their little round table, knees knocking, toes fighting. 

Rhys was humming to himself, gnawing on his porridge spoon, and Irma was devouring her food like a mouse who’d found its way into the cookie jar. Minette hid her anxiety by chastising her siblings’ manners as usual and teasing them as much as she could without starting a ruckus.

Maw and Paw were, predictably, surveying the table and its inhabitants like a king and queen on a haughty dais. They noticed any green beans hidden under a napkin, any elbow pinching of an irritating sibling.

This evening, try as Minette might, each child received their time in the sweltering spotlight.

Irma came first. Paw leveled his molten stare at her, and she looked up, swallowing, even though her eyes couldn’t see it.

“Irma,” Paw said, in that deceptively quiet, even tone. “You went to the shop with Rhys today.”

“Yes, Paw,” Irma said. Minette glanced at Rhys and found him observing his peas with altogether too much fascination. Uh-oh.

“Well? How did it go, then?”

“It was… fine,” Irma said, with just a squick of hesitation. “Rhys was there the whole time. He helped me count the copper Drunes.”

Paw’s head swiveled like an owl’s to peer at Rhys. “Is that true?”

Rhys nodded, his moppy hair falling into his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “We got the bread and the flour, like Maw asked. Irma did great, Paw. You should really let her–”

“Really?” Paw interrupted, and Rhys’ jaw clamped shut. “I should let her do what? Overpay for Thom’s clumpy flour again?”

Irma opened her mouth to respond, but Paw dropped a bunch of copper-colored Drunes onto the middle of the table before she could say anything. They rang out and clattered against one another. “You gave me two Drunes short. Two Drunes we could have saved longer. Two Drunes your father worked hard for.”

Irma lowered her head. “I’m sorry.”

“This is why you can’t be doing things like this, Irma. You’re just not like the rest of us.”

Minette flinched. She looked to Maw for any protest, any resolution, but Maw was silent.

“It was my fault,” Rhys interjected quickly. “I was the one who should’ve–”

“Quiet,” Paw barked.

The ladies carried themselves without a second thought, but with a hearty heaping of grace. They moved differently from Minette. Their dresses weren’t royal or anything, weren’t attire for a ball, but their simplicity was beautiful. Minette wanted to feel the black buttons in her hands, slip her arms through a shapely sleeve. Maw could make a dress like that. But not for Minette.

Paw clapped a giant, calloused mitt on her shoulder, startling her. He nodded his chin out toward them with a grunt and a grin. “Nice to look at, ain’t they?”

The ladies scurried off at the sight of Paw’s scruffy mug. Minette watched them go, face going hot. She didn’t know what to say.

Paw chuckled, finding something funny about her silence. “I remember those days with your mother,” he said. “Courting is fun, but marriage is work. You don’t want the prettiest girl, you want the one that can keep house. Remember that, boy.”

Minette wanted this conversation to be over. “Yes, Paw.”

“And go out for once,” Paw said, brow wrinkling. “One drink wouldn’t kill you. You need the experience, the hair on your chest.”

“Yes, Paw.”

“We’ll find you a good woman. Summer’s end. Guaranteed. It’s past time, Mort. We’ll get your hair cut and your shoes polished. Your mother and I will sort it out. Don’t you worry.” Paw clapped her on the back hard enough to make her cough and turned around, wheeling back into the forge and leaving Minette alone.

Minette tightened her jaw, watching the skirts bounce lightly above the ground as the girls turned a corner and disappeared out of sight.

Summer’s end, Paw had said. Brushing her hair out of her face, she looked at the sun-burned hills, the broad Oaks with some leaves already littering the dappled sunlight at their roots

Summer’s end was already here, along with the end of Minette’s freedom.

The real fantasy was how delusional she’d been. She’d assumed she could put it off forever, keep training, keep to herself, and maybe fall into something worthwhile, something that didn’t make her want to scream.

But reality was knocking, and she had to answer the door sooner or later.

She was so screwed.

The forge wasn’t far from home. She could see their huddled little roof and stone chimney from here. There was a nice view of town, too. The smithy sat alone on a hill on the outskirts of town, but still inside the great stone walls, observing the cramped, messy streets from above. From this perch, Minette had done quite a lot of people-watching, guessing at the lives of the little ant-sized citizens that rushed to and fro down below. Droz wasn’t massive, but it wasn’t empty, either; it teemed with life. There were districts and people Minette had never ventured to or met. She’d been relegated to her little corner, her little life.

She’d never made it past the walls. The gates were always guarded, and if she went too close, her parents screamed at her about the dangers of the Outside World. Drozians rarely left, and when they did, it was for essential reasons, not because of some secret, hard-to-describe yearning.

Her parents had set her up on playdates with other children in town, but the boys she’d played with were all so rough, so violent. She didn’t understand them or their equally brutish fathers. Some of the people in Droz motivated Minette to just stay home, cooped up inside of walls upon walls.

Maybe her parents were right. If she could barely handle Droz, would she even be remotely prepared for what lay beyond its walls?

Minette admired the tenacity of the weary blue sky and the stubbornness of the dying, tawny grass stalks, the exhausted bumble bees searching bravely for the last of the late summer flowers to pollinate. They all persisted despite the heat and dryness. She understood them, the effort it took just to grow.

A titter grabbed her attention.

A real, actual, dictionary-definition titter.

She looked up and found two ladies walking past, staring right at her. What they were doing all the way out here where the streets were mud was a mystery. They stood out in this tired landscape like gemstones among pebbles.

She didn’t know how old they were, or who they were, or where they were from, only that they wore maroon dresses and high stockings and boots. They carried a parasol between them, keeping fair, unlined skin from the sun, and they smiled over at Minette when she caught their eyes.

Minette was enthralled. Just like with Sir Edric, the sight of them drew her into vivid, rose-tinted fantasies. Their very existence spoke of a different world, a different reality that called to Minette in dulcet tones.

She couldn’t see any alternatives, though, as she was the eldest Coppersmith, their proud “son,” their strong heir. She’d worked in the smithy for years already and knew it well. Paw never smiled, except for when he talked about when Morty would take over the family business one day. 

One day soon.

And, of course, Minette could only do that with a good wife who had child-bearing hips.

Those were the thoughts that made her particularly dizzy, and being dizzy in a tiny dark room full of liquid copper was not a winning combination.

Minette forced herself to ignore her brain once again, grabbing one of the broad mallets from the tool bench and putting her smithing helmet on. Paw poured copper into the cauldron above the flames, and off to work they went.

It was silent in the smithy, the way Paw preferred it. He considered words a woman’s tool, and was expertly talented at never giving voice to the worries and grumps that ran around inside his head like hungry voles. Trying to talk to him about anything important was like trying to stuff your hand into the dirt and catch one of those voles without looking.

So Minette worked in silence alongside her father.

The process was, of course, all strength and brutishness and griminess, but Minette didn’t really mind the end product. The delicate, beautiful art they wrought from tough, raw, hot metal was something to behold.

Their first order today was one they’d done together millions of times: a weathervane.

Farmer Foster wanted a cow-shaped weathervane to sit atop the barn on his dairy farm. Paw did all the grunt work, slamming and shaming copper into delicate sheets, and Minette helped work it into art, into something tangible: two interconnecting pieces that looked like delicate cows with the cardinal directions sitting atop their backs. She etched the fine details, drawing twin, smiling faces on the cows.

It was an everyday item, something so commonplace that most people never gave it a second glance, but Minette appreciated it. She found it beautiful, magical, even, knowing the work and care that went into it. They made a lot of household items and decorative pieces, things that others saw only the utility in, but she saw the art in them.

Plus, they were getting paid to make it. Nothing fostered a sense of appreciation more than a gold Drune.

All that was left was the crafting of it: heaving it onto a stake, adding decorative marbles, and all that. Paw did that work–he was still too particular about it to let Minette do it on her own–so Minette wandered to the forge’s mouth for a breath of fresh air.