Born in Beauty

by Melody Rose

  I lost my footing and tumbled forward on the platform. Ansel opened his arms and caught my falling self. He wrapped me up in himself. I let myself stay there for a moment and caught a whiff of his scent: pine and sweat and campfires.

  Suddenly, I felt his arms wrap around my back and press me closer into him. Then the steel of the blade, the flat end pushed against my spine, trapping me in.

  We were breaths apart, sharing the same air. My eyes met his green ones, and I swam deep inside them. I lost myself in them. There was no more arrogance there, no more determination. It was compassion, kindness, and a question.

  “Cheyenne,” he whispered. I felt his breath on my lips, and I licked them to get rid of the tingling that lingered there.

  Reality crashed around me. This wasn’t real. This look he was giving me, no matter how much it made my insides burn with desire. It wasn’t real. It was a trick. Fear twisted in my stomach. I didn’t want it to hurt any more than it already did.

  So I kneed Ansel in the groin and dashed out of the training facility.

  20

  My legs pushed me all the way to the forge. I ran away from Ansel, from Oliver, from the tension that swirled between the two of us. I tried to run away from my own thoughts, but they pounded against my skull as hard as my feet pounded the pavement.

  I couldn’t believe Oliver. What was he thinking, having the two of us reenact Achilles and Penthesilea? It was a stupid love story, anyway. It could barely be called a love story because all they did was fight. They pummeled each other until the man ended up winning, and then when he realized she was pretty, he ‘fell in love with her.’ The only thing it led to was the requirement that every great hero had to best an Amazon warrior in order to be considered a hero. Or so one of the myths went, anyway. So a man had to best a woman in order to show his superiority. Yeah, that was definitely something I wanted to participate in.

  Who did that son of Dionysus think he was? Trying to play matchmaker? It wasn’t right. It wasn’t his place. That big, dramatic teacher was messing with everything with his stupid show. It was a dance! Why did we need a show in the first place? We had music, food, and dancing. We didn’t need some dramatic performance in the middle of it all.

  I burst into the doors of the forge and found it surprisingly empty. No students practicing for their exams or Ruby were in sight. The concrete floors stretched out with possibilities, the fires ready to be started, and the metal ready to be bent.

  I didn’t waste a minute. I jogged to my favorite station and fired up the forge. Flames blazed through either end with a violent blast as I turned the propane tank up a little too high. I blindly selected the metal, not caring what I was going to bang out. I just needed something to hammer into little pieces, to bend to my will. I needed something I could be in control of.

  So I buried myself in blacksmithing. I left all of my thoughts and feelings about Ansel, the dance, Love Struck, and the rest of it at the door. My whole world shrunk to the hammer, the metal, and the fire. There was no image in my head. I had no idea what I was creating. I simply created.

  When the metal stopped talking to me, I ventured to grab another piece. I picked something challenging, a collection of ball bearings, and threw them into the forge with my bare hands. Even though I could resist fire, I often wore gloves and goggles to keep up the appearance of safety. Here, though, completely alone in the forge, I worked with reckless abandon. I relished the feeling of the fire on my skin, the heat that radiated up my arm.

  I held the white-hot metal between my fingers and felt none of the searing heat that sizzled off the substance. Vibrations rocketed up my arm as I pounded, pounded, pounded on the metal. Sparks flew in every direction with each strike of my hammer.

  I dug through the scrap metal pile and made weapon after weapon. I didn’t pay attention to the details. I only turned the grinder on once but quickly abandoned finishing any of the blades. All I wanted to do was hammer out everything I was feeling. All of my exhaustion, confusion, and frustration came out with every blow.

  I was in the zone, losing track of my own mind and the time of day. I curled into the comfort of repetitive motions. My heart rate slowed into something more manageable. My mind cleared, filled with only thoughts of metal and heat. The hiss from the oil when I quenched each blade marked the satisfying end of each project, a sign I got to move on to the next piece of metal.

  The first interruption came when all of the lights went out in the smithy. Suddenly, I was plunged into darkness. The hum of the electric lights ceased, and not only was I surrounded by black, but silence accompanied it as well. The only source of light came from the fire in the forge itself. It wasn’t enough to see by, but luckily, I wasn’t without sight for long.

  The lights buzzed back on, but the spell was broken. The jarring change to my environment threw me off my groove. I stood frozen as the lights clicked back on, the overhead lamps zapping to life. My eyes found the source of the interruption, and I didn’t say anything.

  Ruby didn’t offer any words, either. She simply leaned against the door frame, one hand on the light switch that controlled all of the lights in the smithy. Her lips were pursed, and one eyebrow was raised in a question.

  I was sure I looked ridiculous. I didn’t have an apron on and was covered in soot and sweat. My hands were red from the exertion, and piles of random blades littered the ground, each project only semi-finished and promptly abandoned for the next one. I had a hammer in one hand and a curved blade, waiting to be quenched in the other.

  Ruby wore loose jeans and a long sleeve gray shirt with holes for her thumbs so she could keep the sleeves at her wrists. She pushed herself up off the door frame and sauntered towards me. With a steel-toed boot, Ruby kicked a stray blade and let it skitter across the floor with the sound of nails on a chalkboard.

  I winced at the sound and finally took a real look at my carnage. At least twenty blades littered the floor. All of them were curved, some at different lengths than others, but they all shared the same shape. It was one I was all too familiar with. It was the weapon I worked on relentlessly last year: a scythe.

  I had never been told what the Ultimate Weapon was supposed to be. From the vague prophecy I’d received, I had a couple of guesses as to what it was. Unfortunately, there wasn’t really a way to confirm my suspicions, but the scythe was my first thought. I hadn’t made any since Christmas break last year, but here I was, with twenty rough prototypes.

  “I didn’t mean…” I started, the words spilling from my mouth, but then they trailed off like a puff of smoke.

  Ruby’s eyebrows perked up at my admission. She crouched down and picked up a longer blade. She put the tang in her hand and twirled it around lazily. My mentor straightened her legs and refused to meet my eye. As if she were grading my work, she ventured around the room to the scattered piles of scythes and gazed down at all of them. Ruby’s face remained still and stoic, giving away nothing as she examined my work.

  Nerves prickled up my arms. I didn’t know why I was so nervous. It wasn’t as though I had tried on these weapons. Maybe that was the reason. I hadn’t expected anyone to see these. They weren’t my best work, not by a long shot, and I didn’t want to show anyone anything other than my best. These messy, lopsided, cracked scythes were definitely not it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice weak.

  “For what?” Ruby asked. She stuck her hands in her front pockets and looked at me quizzically.

  “For wasting materials,” I murmured, unable to come up with another reason I should apologize.

  Ruby pushed air out of her lips, making them flutter. She waved her wrist at me, like the two dozen types of metal on the floor was no big deal.

  “Do you know what time it is?” Ruby asked though I could tell from her tone that she already knew my answer.

  “No,” I said slowly, dragging out the word into two syllables.

  “It’s ten forty-two,” Ruby recited.

  “It’s wha
t?” I blabbered. I rushed to the window and flicked down the blinds. Sure enough, it was dark outside, near pitch black in the fall evening. There was a faint glow from the Eternal Flame lanterns, but most everything else was indistinguishable in the dark.

  “Oh gods,” I groaned. I rubbed a soot-stained hand over my face and then spat out the taste as it got on my lips. Ruby passed me a tissue, and I used it to get the rest of the dirt off my face. “I didn’t even realize…”

  “Clearly not,” Ruby said as she gestured around at my mess. “You were distracted.”

  “Yeah,” I admitted.

  “What did you need distracting from?” Ruby asked, her voice tentative and testing the waters.

  “I don’t want to--” I began, but Ruby cut me off with a stern look and a sharp finger.

  “Don’t tell me that,” Ruby said sharply. “I’m not going to let you keep this all bottled up. Pushing it out through half-assed scythes.”

  “Hey!” I said defensively. “They’re not that… okay yeah, they’re terrible. But I just needed to… I don’t know what I needed to do.”

  Ruby ventured to one of the stools by a workbench. She patted the stool next to her and invited me to sit next to her. I slumped over to the spot. My butt hit the metal stool, and I swiveled lazily. I stalled as I waited for Ruby to begin the conversation with questions. When she didn’t speak, I realized she was waiting for me. I was still such a mess. I didn’t even know where to begin.

  “I don’t really want to sit and talk,” I said honestly. “Can we make something and talk?”

  “I think you’ve been making plenty of things,” Ruby commented with a stank eye towards the scythes.

  “I know,” I said as I rolled my eyes. “I want to make something worthwhile. I have to work on these stupid rapiers for Oliver and this stupid show. Do you want to help?”

  Ruby slapped her thighs and rubbed her palms up and down on them. She popped her lips, making a slippery noise. My mentor pushed herself off the stool with a tisk against her tongue. I couldn’t read her face, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what she was thinking. It wasn’t until she turned on the forge next to mine, letting it come to a full blaze before I realized she’d agreed to let me talk while we worked on the rapiers.

  With more excitement than I expected out of myself, I hopped off the stool and stationed myself at the forge next to hers. First, though, I cleaned up the scythe blades littering the floor. I stacked them up on the unfinished blades shelf, with a hint of shame flaring up in my cheeks.

  “I guess I can teach a unit on grinding,” Ruby suggested as she gestured to the scythe blades. “They can treat the finish on the rest of those and then make handles. Would save me some time making all the samples.”

  “Glad I could help,” I muttered as I returned to my station.

  “Now,” Ruby said, “let me help you. Start talking.”

  “I’m stressed out, Ruby,” I began, finally finding the appropriate words. “I don’t know how all of this landed in my lap, but it did. The dance is something I never thought I would do. I mean, I didn’t join any committees like this in high school for a reason. It’s a lot of work for a dumb thing.”

  “A dumb thing that was your idea,” Ruby pointed out as she slipped her hands in her large, sturdy gloves.

  “I know,” I said with a sigh. “I know the whole point is to get Eros to come, but sometimes, I just feel like a giant orgy would have been easier.”

  “Maybe,” Ruby said, her lips falling into a frown as she considered the possibility, “but a dance is a lot safer when it comes to STDs.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes at the comment. But Ruby cut me off. “That’s not really what’s bothering you. Yes, it’s contributing, but that’s not the main thing.”

  I bit my lip. “It’s Ansel.”

  “Of course it is,” Ruby said as she shook her head. “Always the boys. What did he do this time?”

  “Nothing, I mean, nothing bad,” I was quick to say. If Ruby suspected that Ansel had hurt me in any way, she would be the first in line to beat him to a pulp. “He wants to date me, wants to take me to the dance. Wants to kiss me. A lot.”

  “And the problem is?” Ruby asked. She monitored her piece of steel in the longer forge, knowing that this blade would require an even heat, and one of the smaller ones wouldn’t cut it. “I thought you liked him. Now that the campus has lifted the whole ban, I would have thought that you two would be all over each other.”

  “I don’t think he really likes me,” I said grimly.

  “Cheyenne, he so does,” Ruby said with her own eye roll. “I told you this before this whole Love Struck thing.”

  “But we don’t know that he’s not Love Struck,” I argued, finally voicing all the doubts in my head.

  “What if he is Love Struck?” Ruby shrugged. “Why should that matter?”

  “Because the love’s not real,” I countered. “It’s the result of this disease, and the minute we get Eros here to cure it, then it will go away. What’s the point of leaning into these fake feelings when everything I’m doing is to get rid of them?”

  “Oh, this is fear talking,” Ruby said with a slow nod. “I see what we’re dealing with now.”

  “It’s not fear,” I said defensively. I spoke in between my hammering. The steel flattened against my hammer and the anvil. I stretched it out into something thinner than I normally would have lived, but I knew that’s how rapiers were built.

  “It is fear, Cheyenne,” Ruby argued, her voice firm. “You’re afraid of losing him, so you’re too scared to even try.”

  “You make it sound so simple,” I said, my voice low, almost masked by the continuous banging.

  “That’s because it is simple,” Ruby counseled. She ventured over to my anvil while her piece of steel cooked longer in her forge. “You’re the one making it complicated.”

  I stopped moving and slammed my hands down against the steel. I stuck my neck out and spoke directly in Ruby’s face, not holding back my frustration.

  “That’s because it is complicated,” I snapped. “There're gods and love potions and branches and magic powers. The whole thing is complicated and messy.”

  “No, it’s not,” Ruby said as she took my hands, now free of the steel and the tools. “Ansel likes you and wants to be with you. You like him and want to be with him.”

  “I--”

  Ruby barreled over me, not giving me a millisecond to speak. “You do. Don’t try and tell me otherwise. If it weren’t for all of this hullabaloo, you would be with him, right?”

  I didn’t reply. Instead, I lowered my eyes and glanced down at the blade of the rapier. Ruby took my chin in her hand and lifted my face to meet her gaze.

  “I’m right,” Ruby said automatically, not waiting for my verbal confirmation. Apparently, the look on my face said enough. “Even if all of this magic stuff wasn’t in the way, you still could lose him. Just like you could lose any other relationship. That’s the risk we take every single time we trust someone with our heart. Whether it’s romantic or friendship-based, we put ourselves out there. That’s scary.”

  Ruby released my chin and my hands. She leaned back on one leg and put her hands on her hips. “The point is to enjoy the time you have together. You never know what’s going to happen. Rejection. Illness. Death. Who knows? Save for the Fates, no one does. We mortals just have to live life day by day.”

  “I never took you for a cliche, Ruby,” I said, trying to insert a joke to this serious moment.

  “Cliches are based in truth,” Ruby said wisely. “You have a good man willing to be with you. Even if you only have until Halloween when you break the spell, what’s stopping you from enjoying this time with him until then?”

  “I just think it’s better if I don’t get involved at all,” I said, my voice lowering to almost a whisper.

  Ruby’s face fell. She looked understanding, but also disappointed. I shifted my gaze away from her. I heard her and understood wh
at she was saying, but the few weeks we had left before the holiday didn’t seem worth the heartache at the end of it all. The no relations rule would go back into effect, and we would be right back where we started. I would rather dream about something I never had than miss something that I could never have again. The temptation would be too great. Because, if I were honest with myself, the minute I let myself cross that line with Ansel, I knew I would never come back to the other side. To that side of my life without him.

  “Look, I know I’m older, and you have a tendency to disrespect your elders,” Ruby said as she held up a hand like a crossing guard.

  “That’s not true,” I countered quickly.

  “Which part?” Ruby said with an arched eyebrow. “The part where I’m old or the part where you disrespect your elders? Because I know how old I am, and it’s rather old.”

  I grumbled and thought back to the times I snapped at the General and other authority figures. I relented by not saying anything, but Ruby nodded knowingly.

  “That’s what I thought,” my mentor said, a half-smile curling on her lips. “So think about what this old lady said, this one who’s been around the block a couple of times, who’s had the love of her life and lost it. Every single second you get with them is worth it.”

  Ruby patted my shoulder and headed back to her station. She slid out the blade with the grace of a warrior and placed it on her anvil.

  We worked in silence for a few minutes. I didn’t lose myself in the work like I had before when I slammed through the two dozen scythes. But the detailed nature of the rapiers kept me focused enough. I managed to maintain the triangular shape of the blade, subtle but with a bendable tip. It was important for a rapier to be flexible and maintain its blade in the face of such quick and sharp movements.

  Ruby quickly realized that her skills were not made for the intricacies of the rapier. She was used to making thick horseshoes and heavy broad swords or spearheads. So she observed as I pounded the steel she started into a thinner piece. I managed to get two of the blades complete by one that morning.