Pathspace

by Matthew Kennedy

Lester: The Thin Ice of The New Day

  The last rays of the sun were yielding to the coming of night when the daily express from Denver pulled into the village. The team of horses clattered to a stop by the watering trough. “Inverness! Get and stretch yer legs if you want, We're movin' on in ten minutes.”

  Clem looped the reins around a knob on the dashboard and climbed out of the driver's seat. He ambled around to the passenger exit in case anyone needed helping down and stamped snow off his boots. At first, no one budged, and he was about to duck into the inn for an ale for the road when the vehicle resounded to the steps of a passenger who might have changed his mind about staying put.

  Lester stepped down carefully, leaned on his staff, and looked around the place. Little had changed in the months he had been gone. Not that he had expected it to. He brushed back the hood of his gray robe, smelling the clean cold air. “Thanks for the ride, Clem,” he said, and strode off toward the front door of the inn.

  He kicked his boots against a hitching post to loosen the snow they had picked up and reached out to open the door.

  Before he could pull on it the door flew open and his mother embraced him. “Oh my baby!” she cried into his shoulder. “You're home! I was so worried.”

  He hugged her back. “I'm fine,” he told her. “And I'm sorry I couldn't write. You've no idea how busy I've been.”

  She released him and put her hands on his shoulders. “You look taller.”

  “That's just my new boots,” he said. “How have you and Drew been? I need to speak with you in private, when you get a chance.”

  “Oh, we're all fine,” she said, ignoring the fact that he hadn't asked after Gerrold. “Where did you get that robe? But what am I doing, keeping you on the street. Come in and wash up for dinner, the stew should be ready in a few minutes.”

  “In a minute. There's something I need to do first.” He turned and strode off down the road.

  The smithy was not far. It was an old story. When coaches ran long routes and needed to stop somewhere to rest the horses, a hamlet would form. The first thing that appeared was always the inn, usually hardly more than a watering trough and roofed room with a hearth. As the inn grew, adding rooms and a larger kitchen, the next building to spring up was the smithy. Even if there wasn't enough business out in the middle of nowhere for full-fledged smith, you could usually rely on a farrier to set up shop, eking out a living from horses that had thrown a shoe or re-forging broken plows for nearby farmers.

  Once people noticed that a way station was forming, the next building to appear was the general store. It started with just feed for the horses and branched out to supply the growing inn with foodstuffs and linen and the life when traffic picked up.

  From this point on the growth of the rest stop turned hamlet would begin to accelerate. The next building was usually a small church to serve the farmers who were only too happy to stop driving all the way to the nearest town. The appearance of even a small chapel officially transformed the hamlet into a village.

  Other buildings appeared in short order, as the inn added more rooms and a stable for horses to come in out of the rain. Soon there would be a local seamstress, or even a teacher setting up shop teaching in the tiny church that doubled as a one-room school. When the size of the settlement justified it, a butcher's son would throw up a shed for farmers to bring old or extra livestock that for various reasons they were to busy to slaughter themselves. This, in turn, set the stage for a tanner and a leather worker...since no one eats hide. Just as the farmer's cast-off became the butcher's source, so the butcher's unwanted hides became opportunities for a tanner.

  His mind was wandering again. By the time he forced himself to stop following that chain of thoughts, he nearly passed the smithy.

  The sun was nearly down, and the air was already getting frosty, but Jonathan barely noticed it. The glory hole of his forge was pouring hot air out into the smithy, making it warm enough for Lester to begin sweating under his robe as soon as he stepped in. Jon was hammering a piece of iron shape Lester didn't immediately recognize, and wearing had the thinnest of shirts under the leather apron that he wore to protect his front from the occasional spark or metal sliver.

  Lester knew better than to interrupt a smith at his work, so he just leaned on his staff and waited until the metal part's glow had died and Jon stopped to grab the tongs and shove it back into the forge to reheat it. He seized the handle of the bellows with his free hand and pumped the coals brighter until he was satisfied.

  When Jon turned away from the glow of the glory hole he finally noticed his visitor. Without putting down the tongs he wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “What can I do for you?” Then he seemed to recognize Lester. “Oh, it's you. Haven't seen you 'round here. Something break at the inn?”

  “No.” Lester glanced around the smithy. “Do you happen to have any pipe on hand?”

  Jon eyed him. “I might,” he said. “What diameter do you need?”

  Lester shrugged. “Doesn't matter much to me. It's more like a case of what diameter do you need?”

  “Come again?”

  Lester pointed at the bellows. It was a small model. It lay on a square brick pedestal next to the forge, parallel to the wall, with one handle lashed down so that Jon could pump it with one hand. “What's the nozzle diameter you use?”

  Now Jon was staring at him. “What are you getting at? Thinking of going into business for yourself making bellows for smiths? Not much call for that around here.”

  “No,” said Lester. “But as it happens, I need a bit of pipe and since I've no money, I thought maybe we could help each other out. What's the diameter?”

  Jon's brows creased in bafflement. “Inch and a half. “Look, I guess you heard my striker's gone off to Denver to join up. But I don't think your ma can spare you long enough for you to work off the cost of some pipe. If you – “

  Lester raised a hand. “She's done without me for a few months now. But that's not what I had in mind. We both know your everflame isn't as good as it used to be, or you wouldn't have rigged up the bellows.”

  Here Jon frowned. “So? I ain't complaining. With charcoal and a bellows I do just fine. Carolyn's been helping me on the bigger jobs since she was big enough to reach the handle. When I'm between strikers, I mean.”

  “I'm sure she has. What would you say if I could give you something better than a bellows? Would that be worth, say, a dozen feet of pipe?”

  The smith pursed his lips. “Dunno what you're thinking, youngster, but decent pipe ain't cheap. It's not much fun turning it out myself, so I get mine from the guy over in Farlow.”

  Lester sighed. He could feel his patience with this evaporating. “Have you got a short piece the same diameter as the bellows nozzle? It's be easier for me to just show you.”

  Jon grumbled a bit, but he rummaged a bit on his odds and ends barrel and came up with a piece about a foot and a half long. Lester accepted it and held it in front of him, willing himself to relax and open his mind to pathspace.

  As he closed his eyes reached out to sculpt the space around and in the pipe, he became aware of a peculiar sensation. It was a kind of echo, almost as if there two pieces of pipe he was working on, except one of them was about twenty feet away. Startled, he opened his eyes for a moment and lost his concentration. When he returned to his task he felt it again, that echo, but this time it was closer.

  At this, he nearly dropped the pipe, but he forced himself to hang onto it and finish what he was doing. In a few moments it felt right. Reaching forward, he slipped the loop of rope off the bottom handle of the bellows and pulled it from the hole in the side of the forge. Before Jon could say anything, he shoved the end of the short length of pipe in.

  “I don't see how a longer nozzle will be any better,” Jon muttered. “And you'll still need leather and a couple of poles for handles to make a bigger bellows.”

  “No I won't. Watch.” Lester stroked the other end of the pip
e, moving a finger along it toward the forge.

  The was a faint hissing of indrawn air and the coals in the forge blazed brighter. He let Jon stare at it for a moment before he stroked the pipe back the other way, turning it off again. “You don't need to pump a bellows anymore, Jon. Now you have a swizzle. Much easier.”

  Jon took his eyes off the swizzle. Now he was staring at Lester. “How did you do that?”

  Was that respect in his eyes...or fear? “Something the court wizard up in Denver taught me,” he explained. “I'm his new apprentice.” He paused to wipe his own brow. “Well, isn't that worth a few feet of pipe?”

  The smith rubbed his chin. He was about to answer when the sound of boots crunching on snow made them both turn.

  Carolyn stood framed in the doorway. Lester swallowed. How had he forgotten how beautiful she was? He shut his eyes for a moment. Yes, sure enough, the echo was only a few feet away now. It was her. Well, well!

  “Are you going to be much longer?” she asked her father. Then Lester saw recognition in her eyes. “Lester? It is you, isn't it? Almost didn't recognize you in that robe. Where have you been?”

  “Apprenticing with Xander, up in Denver. How've you been? Still going out with Burton?”

  “Not really,” she said. “Not for a couple of months. That's a story for another time. Who's Xander?”

  “Set the table,” Jon told her. “I'll be in to join you in a minute.” He turned to Lester. “How much did you say you needed? A dozen feet, was it?”

  “Yes. If you don't have it on hand I guess I could always come back later.”

  “Let me go check the shed.” He hurried off to look.

  Lester suppressed a smile and shook his head. In a hurry to get rid of me, aren't you? Oh, he wanted the swizzle all right, but that didn't mean he wanted Lester hanging around his daughter.

  Carolyn laughed. She hadn't budged. “Should I set an extra place?”

  He grinned. “Thanks, but no. I just got home, and my mom would pitch a fit if I ducked out of dinner the first night back. But I do want to speak with you tomorrow, if you've time.”

  Jon came back in with two pipes. “These are six foot lengths. I suppose you'll need them joined.”

  “Yep. Sorry, I should have mentioned that.”

  “No trouble, no trouble at all,” said Jon, setting the pipes against the wall and reaching his tools. He eyed Lester. “Anything else you need before I close up for dinner?”

  Lester thought. “Actually, there is. Can you put a J bend on one end?”

  Chapter 2