Page 1 of The Fire Apprentice (Sylvania #5)

“T here’s a new village blacksmith,” Maryanne said with a grin at Jane from the doorway. She’d returned from her errands in the village.

Jane’s face heated. She shoved her fists extra hard at the dough she was kneading on the wooden table. Why did Maryanne have to tease her? Was Maryanne teasing her? Maybe not. Maybe Maryanne was simply excited about having a new smith in the village.

Maryanne stepped into the kitchen and unloaded the parcels from her arms onto the table opposite Jane’s floury mass of bread dough. Maryanne’s cheeks glowed as she smiled. She pushed the dark strands of hair off her face, tucking them behind her ear as more strands fell out of her bun. “He’s just your type, too.” She pinned Jane with her dark eyes and planted her stocky frame beside the table. “Dark and glowering.” She winked.

So Maryanne was teasing her. Teasing her for being pathetic and chasing after every new man who came to Woods Rest. Maryanne didn’t mean anything by her teasing. She just didn’t realize how her words stung.

“The chairmaker wasn’t glowering,” Jane said, punching the dough. “He was friendly. And his hair was sandy colored.” The apprentice chairmaker had arrived last summer. She’d found any excuse to pass by his shop, slowing her steps and peeking in the windows to catch his eye. She’d wasted three moons swooning over him before Maryanne convinced her to be more direct. But when she invited him to go on a walk, he mumbled excuses like a flustered drunkard and left town the next day.

“True,” Maryanne conceded. “But he was... I don’t know. He had that mysterious air about him. He didn’t talk much.”

“He was a good listener.”

“And he certainly brought us enough mending work—the man wore out socks faster than a soldier on the march.”

Sometimes Jane had returned the finished socks to him one pair at a time.

“Well,” Maryanne went on, “you can’t argue that Wells’s apprentice wasn’t dark and glowering. That one had more glower than the forest at midnight.”

She meant the tinsmith’s apprentice—he’d arrived last winter, shortly after the chairmaker left. Maryanne was right: he’d had an unbelievable scowl, fierce eyebrows, and dark hair down his back. Any rational person would have steered clear. But he’d had a scar across his cheek that fascinated Jane. It made her want to run her fingers along it—or her tongue. Whenever she passed him in the village, he glared at her, and she found herself hurrying home and sneaking upstairs to shut herself in the linen closet, away from all her housemates, so she could continue her fantasy in private.

“I still can’t believe you asked that one out,” Maryanne continued. “I was terrified of him.”

“I was too.” But she’d seen him through the window one day, pulverizing a piece of tin laid across an anvil. She’d been staring, her lips parted, as each strike of the hammer jolted inside her and thinking she might have an orgasm right there in the lane. When he’d glanced up, staring back, she’d been so sure the flash of heat and longing that shot through her couldn’t be one-sided that she’d gone into the shop and walked right up to him. He’d been alone, holding the crumpled bottom of a candle holder against the anvil with a pair of tongs and gripping the hammer in his tight fist. She’d stood in front of him and gazed up into his eyes—brown—and seen some sort of helpless longing.

“Come for a walk,” she’d said.

He’d blinked and his eyes had hardened, then shifted to disinterest as he stared down at her. “Absolutely not.” He’d dropped the mangled tin onto the nearby table and stalked out the back door, still clutching the hammer. She’d never seen him again.

Helpless longing indeed. She was a fool. She imagined what she wanted to see and couldn’t tell her imaginings from reality.

“Anyway, he’s gone now,” Jane said. She paused her kneading and looked up. “And I don’t have a type.”

“Ehn,” Maryanne said, tilting her head. “The ones you notice might appear different, but they’ve all got something in common.”

“What?” Jane asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

Maryanne grinned again. “They’re all good with their hands.”

“Stop!” Jane couldn’t help smiling back.

Maryanne made a crude motion with her hand in front of her hips and jiggled her body, laughing. “And they have big tools and like to hammer things.”

“You’re one to talk,” Jane said, shaking her head, “the way you and Wells go at it.”

“Wells can wield his hammer, that’s for sure.” Maryanne stopped her suggestive movements and reached over the table. She pinched off a handful of Jane’s dough and rolled it in her fingers.

“Why do they all leave then?” Jane asked, her voice small. “It’s like the mere thought of me being interested in them is so horrible it drives them away.” Those men who rejected her hadn’t even known about her other issues.

Maryanne lowered her hand with the dough. “Jane. It’s not you. Wells said that last apprentice was a disaster. He couldn’t even make a tin cup without bashing it all to pieces. He had no finesse at all.”

“But he didn’t give up trying to do the work until I propositioned him.”

Maryanne’s eyebrows rose. “You propositioned him? What exactly did you say? I thought you asked him to go on a walk.”

Jane shrugged before pushing her hands back into the dough, pounding it harder. “Maybe he thought I planned to tumble him in the fields outside the village.” Maybe she had planned to.

Maryanne laughed. “He did save Elle that time she fell in the mill pond so we’ll always be grateful to him for that.” She stretched the dough with her fingers into a thin sheet. “That dough is done,” she said, holding up the evidence. Jane’s hands slowed.

Maryanne mushed the test dough back into the mass on the table and scooped it away from Jane. As she turned for a bowl, she jerked her chin toward the door.

“We’ve been needing a few more door hooks now that the children are getting bigger. Maybe you could run over to the smithy and ask for some?” She peeked over her shoulder and lifted her eyebrows innocently.

Jane shook her head slowly and sighed. She was curious. Dark and glowering... she didn’t want it to be her type, but those were the type of men she was attracted to. That had been her type from the first man she’d ever been with through the most awful: Cedric. The fairy.

The one who’d betrayed her and broken her heart, and worse.

“Fine,” she said, rubbing the dough bits off her hands and taking off her apron. She’d pushed her bracelet up her arm so it wouldn’t get messy, so now she worked it back down until it hung at her wrist. It was made of a long strip of fabric from Elle’s first blanket that had ripped off one day when the corner caught on a tree branch. When Cedric abandoned Jane and stole their daughter away with him, the bracelet was all she’d had left. She’d wrapped it around and around and tied a knot. For two long winters it was all she had had of her daughter, until her friend Rose had rescued Elle.

Jane glanced out the window overlooking the back garden. Beyond the rows of vegetables, the children were on the grass playing some kind of game. The older ones gave orders, running back and forth from the apple trees by the stone wall to the row of daffodil stalks by the tool shed. As Jane watched, Elle tried to follow the other children, making it only half the distance before the crowd swooped by, going in the other direction. Baby Jacob didn’t even bother trying to toddle after them; he sat on his bottom, watching the action.

Elle was tough for being three winters old. Even from the distance, Jane could see the red in her cheeks from the exertion of running in the spring air. A whoop rose from whoever had won the race. The mob of children moved off toward the back meadow, scooping up Jacob as they went. Elle watched them retreat, pushing a wisp of hair off her face. She turned away instead of following, walked toward the shed, and plopped down beside the lone clump of late-blooming daffodils. She lay back beside one of the flowers and began talking.

Jane smiled as she turned away from the window. She checked that her long, dark hair was up in its bun and wiped her sleeve over her forehead under her bangs.

“What are they up to?” Maryanne asked, covering the bowl of dough with a damp towel and placing it on the stovetop to rise.

“They’re heading for the meadow. Except for Elle. She’s talking to a daffodil.”

Panic flashed in Maryanne’s eyes. Drat. Jane shouldn’t have said that to Maryanne.

All the children had fathers who were fairies—fairies who’d seduced human women, fathered a child, taken the child, and disappeared. Jane’s friend Rose—also half fairy—had rescued the children last spring after falling in love with a fairy prince and following him into the fairies’ hidden caverns. Prince Dustan had helped Rose rescue the children and bring them to Woods Rest, where Jane and Maryanne had lived with three of the other mothers.

As half fairies, the children shouldn’t be able to do the magic that came naturally to most fairies. But Rose had mastered some of their tricks and said it might be that no one had ever bothered trying to teach the children. Half-fairy children weren’t common. Theirs had been sired under the orders of a horrible queen who’d wanted to use them as servants. Jane still shuddered to think of the first two winters of Elle’s life.

Whenever any of the children did anything that seemed fairy-like in nature—like talking to daffodils—Maryanne panicked. Maryanne hated fairies. She never said a kind word about them and the barest mention of them raised her hackles. The other mothers were different. Ladi had made friends with fairies who lived in her new home, Woodglen, and Kitty now lived with a fairy in Cliffside. But Maryanne was always uneasy around fairies, even Rose’s mate. She didn’t want the children—her little baby Jacob and the four whose birth mothers hadn’t yet been found—to learn magic.

Jane didn’t mind the idea of magic, although she didn’t encourage it in Elle since it upset Maryanne. Everything about fairies did. Around Maryanne, Jane avoided the F word at all costs.

Maryanne was picking at the edges of the towel on the stove.

“You know Elle’s like that,” Jane said gently. “The others aren’t so fanciful.”

Maryanne nodded.

“They’re probably going treasure hunting again. You can’t get more human than that.”

Maryanne forced a wobbly smile. “Those coins they found last autumn certainly came in handy.”

“It’s odd no one ever claimed them,” Jane said to keep her distracted, even though they’d been over this a dozen times. “A whole sack like that. And how did it get into the meadow?”

“Someone stumbling home drunk through the fields, I guess.” Maryanne’s shoulders relaxed a little. “I’m glad no one claimed them.”

“And glad the grange elders let us keep them.”

“That’s for sure.”

“Didn’t you want another cultivator for the gardening?” Jane asked. “A small one the children can handle?”

“Yes,” Maryanne said. Her shoulders had fully relaxed. “You’re going to the smithy now?”

“I might as well,” Jane replied. “If the apprentice blacksmith is going to flee the village, we might as well get it over with before people start to like him.”

Maryanne smiled and shook her head. “You’ve not met the right man yet. Maybe this’ll be the one.”

“What did you say his name was?”

“I didn’t. I didn’t go in to meet him. I peeked through the window and saw him.”

“And you could tell he was dark and glowering from a peek through the grimy window at the smithy?”

Maryanne grinned. “Darkness was oozing out of the smithy, he was so dark and brooding.”

“Mm, just how I like them—oozing.” Jane wrinkled her nose at Maryanne before leaving the room.

On the front porch, she inhaled the warm late spring air. Mouser opened an eye where he lay sprawled on the floorboards, then closed it. Jane didn’t even need a shawl with the day warming up so nicely. She shed her house slippers and donned her shoes, leaned down to scratch the striped fur between Mouser’s pointed ears, and jogged down the steps.

The trouble was, Jane mused as she ambled around the blossoming peony bush and up the lane toward the village center, even if one of these apprentices did want to walk with her, or to tumble her in the fields, no one could compare to what she’d felt with Cedric. Cedric—or Larch, as the fairies called him—had taken her breath away.

When she’d met Cedric—Larch—or maybe calling him Cedric was correct if she meant the sham person she’d fallen for? She had tried to think of him as Larch ever since she’d learned his real name. Cedric was a human she’d fallen in love with, a man who was kind and loving and attentive and gazed at her adoringly. She’d had to accept he was gone. He’d never even existed in the first place. He’d been a phony person created by Larch to trick her.

Anyway, when she’d met Larch, he’d treated her like she was the most special, the most perfect woman in the world. Before him, she’d tumbled a few of the fellows on nearby farms. The kissing and petting had been lovely, but the culmination had hurt a lot more than she’d expected. And the pain didn’t recede with different partners over time. None of her girlfriends had similar issues and no one could explain why she did.

Her father and brothers had expected her to bond with one of the neighbors’ sons and become a farmer like everyone else in the southern region where she’d grown up. They said the romantic stories she imagined were unrealistic, that she was naive.

And then Larch stepped out of the woods like one of her daydreams. She followed him away from her home without a second thought. Being with him felt better than anything—her whole world expanded into an exciting adventure.

And the usual pain of sex was so dulled she barely noticed it, even with Larch tumbling her every night. But it was because he’d used a love spell on her, she now understood. At the time, she’d had no idea that the reason sex seemed less painful was due to a fairy spell. Or that she’d been under a love spell at all. She’d lived in bliss in his woodland cottage for a full turn of the seasons and through the following summer with her baby girl—Bluebell, they’d named her—until Larch disappeared, taking Bluebell with him. Her family had been right. She was naive and too trusting, and her fantasies were silly. Following them had cost her everything.

She had Elle back now. Larch had helped the children escape the caverns, Rose said. But that help wasn’t enough to make up for the harm he had caused.

But as for a new romance? Larch had raised the bar impossibly high by making her feel things that didn’t exist in real life. She wanted to find a partner who’d love and respect her, and she wanted the tumbling, too, but without the pain. It seemed impossible.

And no one understood. She couldn’t explain to Maryanne that she missed being under the love spell because Maryanne would be horrified. She herself was horrified, and ashamed—what kind of person missed being under a spell? What kind of person missed the way they’d felt when they’d been with a villainous trickster?

Jane passed under the swaying apple trees along the lane. As she neared the village square, the sounds of the shops and market stalls echoed in the air—friendly shouts, the whinny of a horse, a child wailing. As the breeze ruffled her clothing, she took a deep breath of it in. Over the ubiquitous aromas of the grassy meadows and earthy gardens drifted whiffs of spring blossoms and frying dough. She passed the old smithy—someone was renovating the crumbling stone building—and walked under one last apple bough, its final petals of the spring scattered across the lane, before she entered the square.

One of the carpenters waved from the porch of the pub, and villagers passed in and out of the general store. In the village garden, hellebore and phlox bloomed in the grass under the shady trees, and heavy magenta peonies bobbed in a sunny corner. A young girl filled a bucket at the pump, and across the grass, a white-haired woman with wrinkled cheeks sat on the bench. Jane had the strangest sense they might be the same person, as if two scenes occurring sixty winters apart were both happening at once before her.

Jane crossed the square and headed into the sheltered lane where the smiths had their workshops. The ring of a hammer on iron sang out from the farrier’s stalls at the end of the lane. In the shade on his porch, Wells slouched in a chair, munching on a plate of sausages. He dipped his chin as she passed and waited to smirk until right before she lost sight of him. Drat Maryanne; if she’d seen the new apprentice before a visit to Wells, she’d probably blathered to Wells about how she had to send Jane over. Maybe the whole village was watching her approach the blacksmith’s shop, laughing behind their curtains.

Jane stopped at the corner of the second-to-last building in the lane, keeping back from the window. The hammer at the farrier’s had gone silent, leaving only the occasional shout from behind her and the creak of a door, followed by a bang as it shut. She ran her fingers over her hair, checking that no wisps had escaped. Her back had dampened in the hot sun. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath of coal smoke and horses and the dirt of the lane.

So the chairmaker hadn’t wanted her, and the tinsmith had despised her. And she’d spent two seasons pining over them. This time was going to be different. She was going to be straightforward and realistic. She was going to walk into the shop and meet the new apprentice, and if he smiled or flirted in any way, she’d invite him to go on a walk around the village at the end of the day. That was normal, right? He was new in town. Someone needed to show him around. And she wouldn’t worry about what might come later.

And if he wasn’t interested—or if he was downright rude—she’d turn around and walk away and that would be it. She wouldn’t think of him again.

She opened her eyes, then hurried to the door.

The deep, smoky smell of a coal fire engulfed Jane as she entered the dark shop. The front of the space had two large workbenches covered with tools and bits of metalwork and notes with customer orders. In the gloom, the master blacksmith hunched on a stool by a side bench, finishing a candlestick holder with a black coating he spread on with a cloth wrapped on a stick. No one else was in the shop. Windows overlooked the silent anvils out back.

Rods of iron leaned against the walls, and a coating of black grime covered every surface. Other than wanting to give the place a thorough cleaning, Jane loved the blacksmith shop. She felt oddly at home around the tools and the glowing fires. The sparks that burst out when the smiths hammered looked like burning stars.

She scanned the open back windows one last time as she approached the old blacksmith. He looked up without stopping his task. He rarely smiled but Jane always felt as if he liked her—not that her instincts indicated anything. But he was polite and had helped her carry items home in the past.

“Good day, Master Smith. How is the shop?”

“Well enough, Miss Jane,” he rumbled. “Can’t say the same for the ironworks.”

Jane smiled. Everyone in the village knew about the rivalry between the master blacksmith and the ironmaster. Their quarrels lasted about a moon and alternated with the times when the two of them were tumbling. “What has the ironmaster done now?”

“Lazy bastard hasn’t fired up the furnace this spring. Hasn’t done a bit of work. He’s just scratchin’ his backside and whittlin’ to pass the time. Says he’s going to quit the iron business and write a book now that Woodglen has a printer.”

“But where will the smithy get its iron?”

Master Smith waved her words away. “He’ll never quit smelting ore. He loves it too much. Besides, no one would pay good coin for a book by that ninny. Unless it’s a guidebook to bein’ a pea-brained dolt.”

“But you said—”

“Technically it’s not his fault the furnace is down. He’s got no ore to process.”

Jane shook her head as Master Smith got around to the truth. “Why is there no ore?”

“First load of the season hasn’t come down the mountain yet. Don’t know what they’re getting up to at the mine. Maybe that’s where the party is this spring—they’re all too hungover to load up the donkeys. First wagon up never came back and the ironmaster sent a helper after it and she hasn’t come back either.”

“Should I hold off on asking you for anything?”

“We’ve got a stack of rods and plates left from last season. Should get us through until the ore arrives and is processed. What do you need?”

Jane glanced to the back of the shop again before she could stop herself. She blushed and turned back, focusing on the candlestick holder in Master Smith’s hands. “We need a few door hooks, and Maryanne wondered if you’d make her a handheld cultivator. One small enough the children can use it easily.”

He pointed to a row of tools hanging on the wall. “Do you like the wider tines, or the thin ones?”

Jane considered. “Thin would be lighter, right? That might help the children manage it.”

“I can make you a wooden handle. Might not last as long but it would help with the weight as well.”

“Thank you.”

A glint came into Master Smith’s eyes and he jerked his head toward the back of the shop. “Head out by the fires and ask Ro about the hooks. He should be finishing his lunch.”

Heat flooded Jane’s face. Master Smith had known her intentions the whole time. Was she that obvious? Or maybe she wasn’t the first visitor to come see the new apprentice. Maybe a parade of single people from the village had been visiting all morning, and the apprentice—Ro—would know exactly why she’d come.

She mumbled thanks and shuffled toward the door at the back. Through the windows, the space around the anvils was empty. And then someone stepped into view.

He looked a bit like the apprentice tinsmith from the winter, with a broad build and dark hair but his hair was shorter. From outside the shop, he didn’t notice her. He turned as he took up an iron tool and poked at the coals, reviving the fire after his break. Dizziness seized Jane and she sucked in a breath.

What was she doing here?

She was going to meet Ro and ask him on a walk. No, that wasn’t right—she was going to ask for hooks and see how he acted toward her and decide about the walk. But she’d be so flustered, she’d never be able to make the right decision about whether to ask him!

The whole idea was ridiculous. Why would he want to walk with someone he didn’t even know? Why did she even want to walk with him? Would he think she was pretty? Her hair was already sliding loose from its bun and her face burned and she sweated in her thin dress. He’d look at her and know she was sad, lonely, and desperate.

Being here this way—stalking him like prey—wasn’t normal. She should turn right around and leave, and forget the door hooks—Maryanne didn’t actually need them.

But then she’d be a coward, hiding from the possibility of meeting a new person. She didn’t want to be a coward. Talking to him didn’t make her desperate or pathetic. She had a good life and so what if she tried to meet new people? She’d lost all her childhood friends when she’d left home, and her new friends in Woods Rest were moving on and leaving. She’d be all alone if she didn’t make friends. Coming here to meet Ro was no big deal. Why did she make it into one?

What was normal behavior? And why was it so hard for her to do it?

She opened the door and stepped out.