Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.

Writing inspired by the following Sunday Writers’ Club prompt:

The Blacksmith

Write a story or a poem about a blacksmith working at their forge. Are they making
horseshoes, a sword and a shield, maybe a crown, or beautiful decorations?

The Blacksmith

by Connie Phlipot

From the depths of the valley rang the clinking and clanging of iron against iron. The sound began before dawn, just as the birds’ twitter announced the arrival of the sun, and continued throughout the day. Some local inhabitants noted a minute-long silence around 1:00 pm, presumably as the blacksmith ate a sandwich. But others swore he never stopped until the sun nestled down behind the mountain.

The blacksmith wasn’t the village’s only mystery. You see, a hundred or maybe four or five hundred years ago, the village had been a real town, triple its current size, with a church, or the predecessor of a church, a worship place, a thriving bee and honey business (or was it candle-making?), several guest houses, millinery shops and a yearly market that drew people from all the neighboring valleys. The only evidence of such prosperity was an imposing castle ruin on the hill. Only adolescents looking for a place to get away from their parents attempted the difficult climb. Actually, it wasn’t so difficult. The mountains here were rather gentle, more like foothills to the Grand Tatras than a mountain range. Something else kept the villagers away; something that might have been connected to the near collapse of their village so long ago. What was the event that caused that collapse? A war, you might imagine, in the day of battling principalities. A struggle for supremacy over the picturesque and fertile valley. No, there was no evidence of such a fight, no sign of a victorious clan taking control, nor were there traces of violence, sickness nor epidemics. The town just seemed to have shrunk overnight, like a cheap piece of cotton washed in too hot water.

The conspiracy-minded among the villagers believe space invaders had landed in the valley, scooped up the inhabitants and transported them to a distant planet. Now on distant Planet X lived a happy colony of bee keepers and candlemakers, worshipping in a faith long abandoned on earth. The more logical minded and the Marxists among them called this theory rubbish. Simply the irrepressible forces of history. The slow collapse of the economy due to increased competition and dying demand for bees, the erosion of morality leading to lawlessness and ruthlessness, the abandonment of the traditional faith. Look at the Roman Empire, they said, we are just a mini version of this phenomenon.

Most villagers found this a bit too dull an explanation for the ruin of their town, but were also not inclined to believe in space aliens. So they went about their daily business, only dragging out the various explanations for debate when they had had a bit too much Schnapps. That is until, a few years ago, a picnicker near the castle noticed strange burnt markings on the oldest trees. They seemed to lead from the ruins down to the village center. Clearly they were made a very long time ago; the picnicker didn’t see any marks on trees younger than several hundred years. He reported, as well, that the marks were always in pairs, as if the fire had come from a double-holed gun.

“Or the nose of a fire-breathing dragon,” ventured a young girl who was known to have become totally absorbed in fairy tales of the most violent sort. “Silly head, childish talk,” everyone said. “Sillier than Martians?” she answered. The adults shook their heads and went back to work. The picnicker bought a loaf of bread from the girl’s mother and returned to the city.

Soon thereafter, the blacksmith began his incessant work. The blacksmith was the girl’s uncle, and he had introduced her to the world of fairy tales, with a special emphasis on those involving his craft. Until this time, the blacksmith worked like the other villagers, a few hours a day, making or repairing iron fences, and, of course, horseshoes, branching out now and then to create wrought iron tables or plant stands. However, something in his niece’s story changed his work ethic.

He allowed only the little girl into his workshop and made her promise not to say a word about his project. Despite bribes of cookies and honey-based sweets, she would not reveal what her uncle was working on. Just wait, she’d say, in a few months, or years, he’ll be done. And the loud clanging continued. The villagers accepted it, didn’t even think about, the same as they regarded the rising and setting of the sun.

The little girl grew up and was ready to leave the village for university in the city. In late August as she was packing, the clanging suddenly stopped. Strangely, no one seemed to notice it except for the girl. She ran straight to the blacksmith’s workshop, tripping along the way as she had been trying on new shoes and was wearing one shoe and one slipper.

“He’s done,” she announced to people she passed. They began to follow her and by the time she reached the workshop, a whole crowd of villagers, including a few hikers, had joined her.

The blacksmith was standing beside what looked at first glance like an ordinary plow, the kind that was driven by a man and a horse, and had not been used in the village for years. “Really, was this what he had been working for decades?” the villagers muttered. As the on-lookers puzzled over this underwhelming achievement, the blacksmith went back inside his workshop and returned with an enormous wrought-iron contraption and set it on top of the plow.

They gasped and drew back in surprise. A dragon’s head peered back at them, its foot-long tongue twisted upward; the villagers swore they saw flames and smoke pouring from the dramatically flared nostrils. Its talons grasped the handles of the plow with a force that threatened to drive the implement into the center of the earth.

The blacksmith was silent, letting them take in the magnitude of his work. Then he spoke. Few people had heard him speak in years. His voice was rasping, as often was the case with someone who doesn’t speak much.

“I have to thank my dear niece,” he began with a cough. “She discovered, or re-discovered, our village story. Indeed it was a dragon that destroyed our prosperous town. But that wasn’t the end of the story. The dragon threatened to come back and finish his task. Burning us all, and our houses and belongings, to ash. However, before he left the town, he told the blacksmith, my great-great-great grandfather, a secret. The dragon could be vanquished if his destructive power was harnessed for good. “How?” my grandfather asked. “That’s for you to find out,” he answered and disappeared into the clouds.

“I’d forgotten about this story that I had heard as a child, until my niece told me about the picnicker’s discovery. I knew immediately what to do. To forge the strongest and most beautiful plow – in the shape of a dragon. And there you have it! I have secured our safety.”

The dragon plow was never used because it would have required strong workhorses that didn’t exist anymore. Instead, it was placed in the town square, in the middle of what became, once again, a thriving mid-size town with a world renowned center for artistic metal working, administered by the blacksmith’s daughter after she returned from the university.

Thank you again to the LcL Institut in Vienna – situated in an actual forge from 1695.