by P. D. Kalnay
— End of Book 2 —
Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading Ivy’s Bind. I hope you enjoyed the story. If you did, and have time, please take a moment to rate or review the book online. It’s nice to hear from people who enjoy my books, and it makes a big difference in how visible they are to future readers. (Note: If there are thousands of reviews by the time you read this… maybe just move onto Ivy’s Blossom;)
Thank you again,
P.D. Kalnay
The Legend of the White Sword continues in…
Ivy’s Blossom – 2016
Ivy’s Blossom
Legend of the White Sword – Book 3
Legend of the White Sword:
Ivy’s Tangle
Ivy’s Bind
Ivy’s Blossom
Knight’s Haven (forthcoming)
Other books by P.D. Kalnay
The Arros Chronicles:
The Spiders of Halros
The High Priestess
Jewel of the Empire (forthcoming)
The Alien Documentaries:
Resurrection
Retribution (forthcoming)
Redemption (forthcoming)
Children’s Books:
Burn Bright
Ivy’s Blossom
Legend of the White Sword – Book 3
P.D. Kalnay
Misprint Press Publishing
Copyright © 2016 P.D. Kalnay
ISBN: 978-0-9950515-2-2
Cover Design by P.D. Kalnay
Author Website: www.pdkalnay.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed by a newspaper, magazine, or journal.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is coincidental.
Chapter 1 – Leaf and Hammer
My second year of high school was almost indistinguishable from the first. Once again, I did my homework on the long bus rides, and everyone, from my teachers to my fellow students, left me alone. I’d added another inch of height over the summer. Now, I was filling out, mostly due to Mr. Ryan’s weight training regimen. It was also partly the result of the time I spent swinging hammers, both the kind I used in the old smithy out back, and the sledgehammer I practised with in place of a real war hammer. I’m not saying I was scary, but I definitely didn’t look like a safe target for school bullies. Admittedly, I spent no time trying to make friends at school. My extracurricular activities at Gran’s consumed all my free time and most of my thoughts. If Gran had let me… I’d have stopped going to high school altogether.
Before he left, Mr. Ryan taught me two katas using a hammer instead of a sword. One of them also used a shield, and I’d appropriated the plain black shield from above the fireplace in the library. Holding the heavy, ironbound wooden shield in one hand, and swinging the hammer with the other, was challenging. Mr. Ryan had said that a shield was the natural partner for a hammer—so I kept at it. With practice, I grew stronger and got used to the awkward weight of holding both. Those practices, which filled my evening hours during the week, inspired my next project. I still had most of the materials from the little case I’d found in Gran’s workshop; she hadn’t revoked her permission to use them. Mr. Ryan had practically told me to get to making stuff. That’s what I did.
My first project used up the remaining platinum bars from the case and took until the Christmas holidays to complete. I spent a couple of weekends doing nothing but flattening the bars into paper-thin sheets. Then I cut most of those sheets into hexagonal pieces. Cutting was easily accomplished with a pair of tinsnips; the platinum being ridiculously thin. Next, I engraved each of the palm-sized hexagons. I drew the same kinds of geometric shapes on the metal as I’d done when making the knife and necklace. The difference being… now, I tried to direct my thoughts while I did it. The first few tries were unsuccessful (I knew they were wrong) and I had to recycle those pieces. But after that, I got the hang of it. I hoped. There was no way for me to tell if I was really adding the qualities I wanted. I figured even if it had no extra enchantments, the shield I was making would still be super strong and incredibly light.
Once I had enough individual pieces, I began the careful job of soldering them together into a full-sized shield. My shield wouldn’t be kite-shaped, like the one from the library, but round instead (more like Captain America’s shield). After the basic shape was together, I added partial hexagons to the perimeter, completing the circle. I rolled the edges on three quarters of the shield, so I wouldn’t slice myself on the razor thin metal, but left the bottom outside quarter sharp. That way, it could be used as a weapon. There was an endless amount of straightening and adjusting as it all went together. The thin metal warped easily with the heat from soldering. Finally, I added handle and arm strap to the back of my shield. They were fashioned from braided links of platinum wire and a tube made from leftover sheet metal. Leather and wood might have been my first choices, but I wanted to make sure the whole thing could travel with me down the World Tree, when the time came. The assembled shield weighed about five pounds, which was less than half the weight of the library shield.
The hexagons went together like a simple jigsaw puzzle. Many continued a pattern that began on an adjacent piece. World Tree leaves circled the shield, and the image of a simple hammer filled the centre. I was able to plate the leaves in gold, and the hammer with silver—thanks to an electroplating kit from the internet. On the first day of my Christmas holidays, I added the Blood of the World Tree. With a good-sized chunk of the reddish metal in my plyers, I applied the torch’s flame, and made with the melting. In an instant, the metal dripped from the plyers and fell onto the centre of my shield. Colour shot outwards as the Blood had its magical way with my creation. Silver hammer became deep metallic black, the platinum changed to blood-red, and the gold leaves turned green-gold. I flipped the shield to make sure everything had changed. Success! It looked awesome. The honeycomb pattern of the joints could still be seen when I moved it in the light. It was time for testing.
Part of me didn’t want to test the shield. The thought of marring the flawless surface was abhorrent, but I reminded myself that it was a tool, and a tool that can’t do its job is worthless. I grabbed a big ball-peen hammer from the bench and proceeded to pound the heck out of my shield. On the fifth or sixth strike, the head of the hammer shattered. A flying fragment cut me under my right eye. Stupid Jack, I thought… and put on safety glasses a little late. Blood trickled down my cheek. I checked the shield for damage. There wasn’t the smallest dent.
Next, I picked up the shield. I was sure it felt lighter. Not weightless, but lighter. The scale confirmed that the shield was half its original weight—while I was touching it. Laying a finger on the handle made half of the weight disappear. Removing my finger instantly returned the shield to its original weight. The making-it-lighter enchantment needed interaction before it came into effect. Even after almost losing an eye, I couldn’t help smiling. At least one, and possibly two, of my intentional enchantments had worked! Granted, I didn’t understand how… but I decided not to worry about that. As soon as I finish a project, I set it aside and move on to the next. It was that way with the shield. I propped it in the corner of the workshop and began my next project.
***
Christmas break found me missing Ivy more than I wanted to admit. I’d never celebrated the holiday, but it put me in the mood to make her another present. Nothing as grand as the necklace. Just something nice I could give her when she got back. The cheap, pink plastic butterfly hair clips, I’d bought her at the start of last summer, were my inspiration. Ivy had loved those things all out of proportion to the quality of my gift, and she’d always worn them. When she returned to the First World, the hair clips had been left be
hind because they were made of materials from the Seventh World (Earth). I decided to replace them with ones made from the precious metals and gems in the little case.
The case contained gems I’d still been unable to identify using the internet. Now, I knew why. It also contained an interesting black stone that looked similar to mica, and I’d assumed was. I took some out and used a hobby knife to pry off one layer of the mineral. It peeled apart like mica. I held the thin sheet of glassy stone up to the light. Every colour appeared, depending on the angle I looked. It was as if someone had taken a rainbow and frozen it in rock (which, by that point, I’d have believed). The mica-like rock would make perfect butterfly wings. The butterfly hair clips took me the rest of my three-week break to complete. I’d learned a lot from making Ivy’s necklace, and those skills paid off. I made moulds and cast a pair of silver butterflies. Then I cut channels and pockets in the bodies and made tiny springs for the working parts. Squeezing the wings caused the legs to open and released the clips. The wings were like tiny stained glass windows. I scored the thin stone, snapping out pieces to sit in the midst of the intricate silver filigree. I cut the thin stone, so that each piece sat at a different angle, creating multi-coloured wings, however you looked at them. Little emeralds made the eyes, and finally, I engraved symbols on the delicate insects.
I don’t remember doing that part. As with the shield, I’d intended to add specific enchantments to the hair clips, but a short way into the job my mind wandered, and I woke eight hours later. I’d fallen asleep at the work bench—waking to find the butterflies complete. In my blank state I’d even added the reddish metal. I was glad I hadn’t burned the house down with the torch. The silver had turned to black, and the wings opened sets of grasping legs, according to my design. They looked remarkably real. I could already see them in Ivy’s hair. It had been a successful Christmas vacation. My only big disappointment… was that Mr. Ryan still hadn’t come for a visit.
Chapter 2 – Broken Bonds
Shortly after the summer ended, I began another project that I only worked on in bits and pieces before Christmas. Something, Ivy had said about my knife, stuck in my brain. She’d told me the knife would cut any bond. It got me to wondering if I could make something that would form bonds instead. Two halves of a whole that might call to each other. As with everything else I was doing, I went on pure instinct. My goal was to link the first and the seventh worlds together. I felt sure that whatever I crafted, must, like my knife, be made from the stuff of both worlds. Gold was the easiest material to work with, and it felt right. I had a small fortune in gold available from the First World, but none from the one where I lived. After emptying out the bulk of my bank account, and the accumulated allowances of almost sixteen years, I bought a dozen pure gold coins online. It wasn’t the cheapest way to get raw gold, but there were limited options for a kid.
The first thing I did with the coins was destroy most of their value by mashing them into a homogenous lump. Then I pounded the lump into a rough sheet and did the same with one of the little bars of gold from the jewellery case. Now I had two similar sheets of gold. They looked identical to the naked eye. I suspected science wouldn’t have found any difference between them either. My goal was to make one interwoven piece from the two, and I began a process of folding the gold and pressure-welding the parts together. Like the steel of a samurai sword, I folded the gold into itself over and over again. It was boring and repetitive work, which I spread out over the first months of school. My method didn’t feel quite right, so I next took the bar of mixed gold out to the forge and heated it in between folds. That made the process go faster, but something was still missing. By the time Christmas break ended… I thought I knew what.
On the Saturday, following the break, I took a hunk of the reddish metal out to the smithy, along with the gold. I heated it in a crucible and dunked the hot gold into the molten metal. The reaction was less dramatic than it had been for my knife, but the gold burned a dull red, for a minute or two, before cooling to green-gold. I hit the thin bar with a hammer. It proved as tough as the other altered gold I’d made. Then I put the little bar back in the forge and worked the bellows. The gold returned to a dull cherry glow; I pulled it from the fire and folded it in half on the anvil. There was only time for a single fold, before the metal became too cool to work, but I knew I was on the right track. I spent that Saturday heating and folding… and heating and folding. Sunday would have been spent the same way, except that Mr. Ryan had finally returned for a visit.
Mr. Ryan rolled in right after breakfast. I was heading back out to the smithy when I saw his truck make the turn at the end of Gran’s drive. I jogged over through the snow to see him, my project temporarily forgotten. He’d pulled a lumpy green duffle bag from the back of his truck by the time I got there.
“Hi, Jack,” he said over one shoulder.
“Hi, Mr. Ryan. You back for a while?”
“Nope. Just today. I thought I’d check up on you and teach you a few things. What have you been up to?”
I shrugged. “You know… makin stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“I made a shield. Want to see it?”
“Definitely. You can bring it to the gym to show me. In say… twenty minutes? I need to speak with your grandmother first.”
I guess we’re working out.
“OK,” I said. “It’s still sitting in the workshop anyway.”
We both went inside, but split up in the front hall. I ran up the stairs to change into workout clothes. My brief chat with Mr. Ryan drove home how little I’d spoken to anyone in the last months. Between school being what it was, my grandmother being who she was, and my solitary hobbies, I’d become something of a recluse.
Minutes after I arrived at the gym, sweat-suited and shield in hand, Mr. Ryan showed up, also sweat-suited. I hadn’t believed it possible, but I thought he might actually be more buff than the last time I’d seen him. He carried a hammer over one shoulder that looked as though it belonged in a video game. The hammer’s handle must have been five feet long, and the head was at least four times the size of the head on the six pound sledge I’d been using for practice. The simple, boxy hammerhead looked to be made from brushed steel or aluminum. Based on how Mr. Ryan carried the big weapon, and casually set it down, my money was on aluminum.
“That’s a big hammer,” I said.
“Yup. I had it made for you. It’s as close to the size of the Black Hammer as I can recall from slightly fuzzy memory. I had to guess at the balance, and since I never picked up Marielain’s hammer, I’ve got no idea on the weight. This should give you an accurate idea—as far as reach goes.”
Mr. Ryan wanted me to practice with the giant hammer? That didn’t seem possible. He read my scepticism from my expression.
“It’s only a few pounds heavier than the sledgehammer,” he said. “You’ll have to work your way up to it, and start off two-handed.”
As if I could swing a five foot hammer one-handed.
“OK,” I said. “I’ll give it a try. Here’s the shield I made.”
Mr. Ryan took my shield and examined it closely.
“Beautiful,” he pronounced, handing it back. “That’s a work of art, Jack. Feels light too?”
“An intentional enchantment,” I said. “It knocked off half the weight. Pretty cool, right?”
“Pretty cool. You been using it for the katas?”
“No, I stayed with the shield from the library.” I pointed to the dull black shield leaning against the far wall of the gym. “It’s a better workout with the heavier shield.”
“Makes sense,” Mr. Ryan said. “Let’s get started.”
A few hours of war hammer instruction followed, and my arms felt like rubber by the end. I’d grown big and strong, but the mock war hammer was ridiculous. We had a short lunch, a couple more hours of empty-handed sparring in the afternoon, and then Mr. Ryan left again, with little more than a, “Keep practising, Jack”.
>
***
For the eight weekends that followed, I did little besides folding the same thin gold bar, again and again, on the anvil. I hoped I’d know when it was ready because the task had grown monotonous. When it cooled, I saw an incredibly faint and intricate pattern in the bar, similar to Damascus steel. On the day when that pattern disappeared… I knew the time had come to move on. I lengthened the bar until it was longer than my arm, and extremely thin, before reheating and rolling it into a loop about ten inches in diameter. Then I carefully forge-welded the layers of the loop into a solid ring without beginning or end. Weeks of fine tuning the ring followed before it was flawless. All the work had to be done on the horn of the anvil, while the gold remained hot, making it difficult. Next, the engraving began. I worked half-blind in the smithy. Usually, with the cold winter wind, and occasional snow, at my back and the hot forge fire to my front. The engraving on the ring differed from what I’d done previously. A pattern was formed by a single line that crossed over and under itself, until even I couldn’t determine where it began or ended. For all the time I engraved—I thought only of one thing—that the ring must stay whole and inseparable. When no undecorated surface remained, I moved on to the next step.
I heated the ring and twisted it until it formed a figure-eight, touching itself in the middle. That was on a Saturday morning near the end of April. I’d brought the rest of the reddish metal out to the smithy along with my knife. I placed the Blood of the World Tree in the little ceramic crucible and set it in the forge. After that, I put the twisted ring in the coals and worked the bellows until my arms ached. Quickly, I picked up the deformed ring with my plyers and dipped the bottom of one loop into the crucible. With my earlier projects, there’d always been a point of saturation when using the reddish metal. Once the limit was reached, no more would absorb into the base metal. I knew the twisted ring would take in more of the Blood. I wasn’t wrong. All of the Blood soaked into the gold, and it flared blindingly bright. I’d brought an old welding helmet from the workshop and flipped it down in front of my face. I still couldn’t look directly at the ring, but I could glance at it for a brief time. I set the ring on the face of the anvil, and drew the knife from my belt, swinging it at the point where the ring touched itself. The two halves exploded apart, and I let the knife fly from my hand, instinctively reaching out to catch the pieces…
