Stars in the Slag

*A quick note: the "salamander" in this story refers to the build-up of solid and liquid matter that collects at the tap hole of a blast furnace. Removal of the salamander is necessary for repairs. This story was inspired by a salamander preserved in a park near my home. It's maybe two-three feet high and approximately four-five feet in diameter, and weighs about 13,000 pounds.

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The foreman pinched a tension headache from his nose while our dowser stood firm. Workers shuffled nervously in the furnace heat.

“What do you mean ‘interference?’” the foreman growled.

The dowser remained stoic.

“Exactly that. Interference. What kind? Who knows. But I cannot find a good tap.”

A boiling moment passed.

“Fine!” he blasted. “We’ll do this the old way. Karlson! Grab a team and hit a spot that looks good. We clear that salamander tonight! Hop to!”

Dismayed affirmations all around. Men geared up, taking shifts at the drill, swapping out as men ran coughing from smoke. It took twelve hours to drill the tap hole, and then the salamander was slow to spill.

It was Dag who spotted the oddity. Crew gathered round the skimmer as a glistening blue fluid trickled through the red. The fascination was more than curiosity. Somehow, it compelled one’s gaze.

“Gods asunder,” cried the foreman, “That’s star iron! Don’t look if you value your eyes! Dag! Get your team up top! We’ve got to keep this hot!”

The furnace was brought to raging, and the blue streamed like searing ice. As men struggled to keep the furnace stable, the foreman was feverishly reckoning profits while shooing away the dowser’s protests.

The explosion hit some time after the dowser ran away. Some workers on-site survived, supposedly, but no one knows their fate. All paths to Thogham are now closely guarded, and none are allowed to enter… or leave.

The Price of Memory

 “It can’t be helped,” Alora thought. 

Down dawn-lit loggia, she led her patient, Reicha. The girl of eleven had not spoken a word since entering Asyla three years prior. Stopping at an indigo doorway, Alora produced a gold key.

“We’re here,” she told the child. “The way is scary, but it will help.”

Reicha’s eyes remained unfocused, nodding more of habit than acknowledgement.

The doors unlocked to a room of granite and blue stained glass. Sunlight angled towards a leather tome floating above a wooden pedestal. Alora paused before it, Reicha’s too-small hand in hers.

“It can’t be helped,” she whispered, unfastening the manuscript. Reicha’s gaze landed on empty vellum. For a moment, nothing happened. Silence, and light. 

Then, Reicha’s eyes shot wide, wailing. Alora held the convulsing child as memories wrote themselves frantic on the empty page - cadels decorating violence, pigments coiling rinceaux around grotesques of fallen friends and family. The child’s eyes went white.

Alora perused the other leaves. The tome contained many memories removed from many minds, and too disparate a transplant risked schism. A suitable memoir from another girl: brother leaving town for work; parents succumbing to illness; an aunt adopting the orphan. Alora read it aloud, then again, then again. Slowly, color returned to Reicha’s eyes. Slowly, she refocused.

Reicha regained consciousness, confused, but clear. Looking at Alora she asked, “Auntie? What are we doing here? I thought we were visiting home today.”

Alora smiled sadly.

“My heart, the season is cold, and travel difficult. We will pray for your parents at the temple.”

Reicha nodded, disappointment in her cheeks.

“I guess it is far…”

“Yes…” Alora sighed, closing The Manuscript. “Farther than you know.”

The two left the vaulted room, Reicha babbling away, Alora silent, the morning light white on marbled tiles.

A Special Occasion

I spent a good ten minutes delicately placing the Bluebug Wine bottle into its new cellar home. Once a year, I allowed a splurge for my tavern, something to save for special occasions, or special patrons, and Bluebug Wine was a splurge above the rest. How Old Krenek’s Dry Goods had come by it is a mystery I decided would be best unsolved. Krenek wasn’t known to be a fence, but there have been a couple times his careless purchases and sales have landed him, his patrons, and indeed the whole town in hot water.

Any case. It was ten minutes of careful unpacking almost ruined by the boisterous arrival of Krahj and Company. Krahj was less about opening doors as he was about breaking and entering, and this entrance rattled the roots of the cellar, near knocking a dozen bottles off the rack. Like to have broke my door bell again, too.

“Barkeep! BAAAAAAARKEEEEEEP!”

Muttering in half dismay, I braced myself. I put my service smile on and ascended. Already seated was the odd assortment of Krahj’s merry band - a pair of teasing halfling twins, an elf of distant attitude, a half-mad human wizard… and the great half-orc himself, Krahj, 6 feet tall sitting, skin the shade of an evergreen, and a body like an obelisk.

“Your finest, if you please!” Krahj said with mock nobility.

I brought a couple bottles of Thickland Brandy to the table, and was surprised by the generous tip thrown casually back at me. It was not long before the party was drunk with raucous laughter, and I was secretly glad of it. Money is good, but good cheer is not easily bought.

There came a time when Krahj needed to ruin the outhouse for everybody, and the tavern fell into a torpid silence. The group, draped in various contortions on the table, left me with time to clean up a bit. 

The next moments happened very quickly, but I’ll recount them best I can. Krahj had indeed broken my doorbell, otherwise I would have heard the robber’s entrance. I was cleaning a glass when a hand covered my mouth and a knife pressed against my throat. A slurred exclamation behind me was followed by a not-quite-correctly recited spell, and an explosion rocked the building, blasting a hole in my roof, and me and my assailant to the ground. Released, I scrambled behind the bar, wondering what Krenek had gotten me into this time, but the robber was in quick pursuit.

I was easily apprehended, and the hooded burglar flicked the knife towards the wine cellar. My smile must have been misinterpreted as confusion, because he repeated the gesture. What he didn’t know was Krahj had come running - barreling full force into the bar, pants around his ankles. Baring all to god and country, Krahj landed a fist the size of a cinder block on the back of my attacker’s head, his skull splitting with a thick crack. The burglar fell like a sack of barley, and there stood Krahj, the big oaf, with a worried look such as I never thought possible of his scarred face.

“Apologies, Krahj,” I said, recovering my breath. “I just remembered, my finest actually arrived only today. Didn’t cross my mind.”

Krahj relaxed with a warm smile and, after he hiked up his pants, we entered the wine cellar. The explosion had rocked the very foundations of my bar. Racks and boxes had been upended, broken glass and spilled spirits everywhere on the ground. Not one bottle had survived, except, miraculously, the Bluebug Wine.

Ah… Never had a wine tasted sweeter, and never a laugh more fully savored.