by Simon Archer
I worked all day to focus on other things, put my mind in a place it was familiar with. But Hailey represented reality, and I didn’t want to face that right now. I wasn’t ready.
“Cameron,” Hailey said, her voice so soft and her tone so tender I almost broke down right there.
Instead, I cleared my throat and reached into the side opening in the rectangular forge. I stuck my hand into the green flames and placed the steel ball bearing in the dead center of the forge. I blinked as I looked at the solid ball bearing, wondering what the hell I was thinking when I picked that up. Ball bearings were one of the hardest steels to manipulate.
Well, it would at least be a challenge, I conceded to myself, as I waited for the Eternal Flame to heat the metal up to a reasonable temperature.
“Well, the dogs were wrong,” I said, keeping my gaze firmly trained on the flames. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” Hailey said, taking a tentative step forward.
“That’s what you want to hear from your girlfriend,” I tried to joke, but my voice was hoarse, and the words didn’t come out right.
“Cameron,” Hailey said my name in that same soft tone as before. “It’s okay not to be okay. You suffered a great loss--”
“Spare me the lectures.” I held up a hand to physically stop her words. “I don’t need them, alright? I’m just trying to go back to normal.”
“This is not your normal,” Hailey pointed out. She stepped among the broken blades as though she were walking through a minefield. “You’re a better blacksmith than this.”
“I know,” I said firmly. “But I’ve been a little distracted, and I’m just trying to get back on track.”
“So, you admit that you’re not fine?” Hailey said, catching me with my own words.
I leaned my head back and sighed, finally looking away from the Eternal Flame. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” I admitted. “Every time I go to quench something, it breaks or cracks or warps. I’ve been at it for hours, and I can’t get anything to turn out right.”
“Maybe it’s time to call it a day, then,” Hailey suggested. She reached up towards the pipes that normally shut off the forge, but I quickly caught her hand to stop her.
“No,” I said sharply, “the Flame doesn’t like it when you turn it off before it chooses to leave. It’ll get mad.”
Hailey’s eyebrows rose at my answer, but she slowly took her hands off. She stepped back from the forge, consequently coming closer to me as she did so. My girlfriend took my hand in hers, and when I tried to pull away, she held onto me tighter.
“Cameron, don’t,” she warned, as though she knew what I needed more than I did. “Don’t do this.”
“Do what?” I snapped.
“Run away from your feelings like this,” Hailey said urgently. “You can’t just dive right back into everything. You’ve got to give yourself time to heal. Maybe you should take a break from the forge. Not come back until you’re really ready.”
“I can’t just stop making things, Hailey,” I protested, my voice creeping into horror. “That’s a different type of torture.”
“Well, making things clearly isn’t helping right now,” Hailey argued with a pointed look. She squeezed my hands once. “Give yourself a break, Cam. You deserve that much.”
I lowered my chin to my chest and hiccuped in an effort not to cry. I knew she had a point. This wasn’t helping. Being here, in the space that Sarah and I shared seemed to only make it worse. It didn’t help that anything I tried to forge was complete and utter crap.
“It doesn’t feel the same,” I lamented to the floor, though I knew Hailey could still hear me. “Being here without her. I’ve often come here on my own, but something about this time… it’s just different. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get used to it.”
“You will,” Hailey encouraged. She pulled me into her, a real hug from a real human. I didn’t hug her back right away. Instead, I let my girlfriend wrap her arms around me and lean into my chest.
“Time heals everything,” Hailey whispered to me, continuing with her positive words. But I didn’t quite hear this particular affirmation because my eyes caught something unusual.
When Hailey pulled me to her, she forced my head to turn so she could lean her ear on my chest, which directed my gaze at the workbench. As my eyes lazily looked about, searching for a place to land, I noticed something out of place. I hadn’t seen it before when I first came in because I was too focused on finding my tools and getting started. But there it was. Plain as day.
“Holy shit,” I muttered.
“What? What is it?” Hailey said as she pulled me away from her so she could look into my eyes. But I didn’t give her the chance to meet my eye.
Instead, I moved out of her grip and ventured to the workbench, my eyes never leaving the anomaly on the table.
Sarah’s hammer sat lopsided on the workbench, out in the open for everyone to see. Amazed, I approached it and pointed as my mouth opened and closed wordlessly.
“Cameron,” Hailey said, this time her voice no longer soft, but full of worry. “What is going on?”
“I knew it,” I whispered to myself. “I knew it.”
“What did you know?” Hailey asked over my shoulder.
“There’s no way Sarah committed suicide,” I said with confidence as I stared at the first piece of true evidence I had to support my theory.
5
“Okay, wait, explain it to me again,” Beth said as she held her hand to her forehead like an exhausted movie starlet.
I exhaled deeply and rolled my eyes at my girlfriend’s dramatics. I knew she heard me the first time, so I wasn’t sure why I had to go over all of it again.
We were in Hailey’s apartment, which was one of the most private places on campus for us to meet, considering the rest of us had roommates we had to share our dorms with. Ever since Jade, Daniella, Beth, and I had been drafted into the four different branches, Vreg, Oura, Eda, and Enka, we had to live with other students in our branch, and not each other like we had during the first year. While all of us got along with our roommates rather well, I didn’t trust anyone else but these three and Hailey with this level of information. Bella being a new addition to our group, I didn’t trust her yet with this level of information.
Everywhere else on campus was open to the rest of the students and to the teachers. Since Hailey was the soldier representative for the Enka Branch at the Academy, she was privileged with her own room. And since she was our girlfriend, my friends and I could use it when we needed to talk about potential conspiracies. Like how my mentor didn’t, in fact, commit suicide.
“After the funeral, instead of going to the makaria meal, I went to the forge,” I began again, setting up the scene for my discovery.
“Which I’m still rather pissed at you about,” Jade said from her perch at the small two-person table near the kitchen. She crossed her arms and looked at me pointedly.
“I already said I was sorry,” I said exasperatedly.
“I worked really hard on that meal for you,” Jade argued. “And in Sarah’s memory.”
“And I’m sure considering the wonderfully talented chef you are, it was absolutely delicious, and I’m an ass for not coming, okay?” I said in a rapid rush so we could move on. “We good?”
Jade pursed her lips and shifted a bit in her chair. But then she released her crossed arms and said, “We’re good. For now.”
“I’ll take it,” I said, continuing on. “I went to the forge because, you know, it’s my happy place. I decided to take the Eternal Flame with me--”
“You said before that it wanted to come with you,” Beth jumped in, pointing her finger in the air like she was popping a bubble in my story.
“Either way, the Eternal Flame, Khryseos, and Argyreos were with me, okay? You with me so far?” I said with a pointed glance at Beth since she had asked for this story again.
My friend nodded her confirmation as s
he stroked Khryseos’s head, who sat next to her on the floor while Argyreos sat loyally at my feet. The Eternal Flame had refused to go back into its lantern when Hailey and I raced back to the quad to gather up my friends. So, as a compromise, I scooped it up into a jar without a lid so the Flame could dance about when it wanted, but it had to stay inside when we transported it and when we were inside.
I had no idea how it understood these stipulations, but the little flame, which had returned to the happy blue color, seemed to comply. At least for the time being. I still wasn’t completely comfortable carrying around a live piece of the Eternal Flame, but I had other things to worry about at that moment.
“It’s kind of cute,” Jade said as she cocked her head and gazed at the Flame.
As though it heard the compliment, the Flame buzzed about in the jar gleefully. Jade giggled, and I rolled my eyes so hard I thought they were going to come out of their sockets.
“Yes, it’s adorable,” I relented with a sigh. “Jade, focus. Please.”
Jade straightened her spine and stayed silent, permitting me to continue.
“I started trying to make things, but they were all breaking, and the whole process wasn’t going well,” I continued, trying to glaze over the uninteresting parts. “Khryseos and Argyreos, then, went to get Hailey when I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Thank goodness they did too,” Hailey stepped in this time. She leaned against the doorframe that led to her bedroom, blocking it off from the rest of the group.
I stood in the center of the living room, unable to sit down. Jade tucked one leg up on the chair and hugged it to her chest, while Beth sat on the floor and leaned against the couch for support. Khryseos draped himself across Beth’s outstretched legs. Daniella sat on the opposite end of the couch, one arm on the armrest, holding her head up in her hand. She looked like she was at a business meeting, with an uncomfortable stiffness in her muscles.
“Yes, they ended up doing the right thing,” I conceded as I reached out and patted the top of Argyreos’s head. He smiled cheekily in response. I continued on with my relay of the story and my theory. “Then, when Hailey was there, I noticed something I hadn’t noticed before. Sarah’s hammer was still left out on the workbench.”
The silence stretched into a level of awkwardness uncommon for the five of us. I looked around at them and realized that no one remembered what this essential piece of information meant.
“Sarah was meticulous when it came to her workspace,” I reiterated. I leaned forward a little to emphasize my point and took a moment to look at each of my girlfriends in the eye. “It was something she was really picky about. She said we had to respect the space of the forge for the other blacksmiths who used it. There is no way she would just leave her hammer lying around.”
“So what are you saying exactly?” Jade prompted, wanting me to voice my theory aloud again.
“That there’s no way Sarah committed suicide,” I said with hesitation. “Between that and her desire to be with Marsella in the afterlife, it’s just not possible.”
Beth sucked her teeth. “I hear you, Cameron, I really do, but isn’t there a chance that Sarah was too distracted to put her stuff away? I mean, she was clearly focused on other things.”
“Even if Sarah did… do what everyone says she did,” I theorized, “she would have taken the time to put her affairs in order, including her hammer. She would have written a note. She wouldn’t have just… done it like this.”
“We know you knew Sarah better than anyone,” Hailey said gently, “but even if you’re right, I don’t think these things are going to hold up.”
“Why not?” I persisted, confident in my own argument and my beliefs.
“Because the Stratego found her,” Hailey continued, trying to refute my logic. “And Daniella even helped with the autopsy. They ruled it a suicide, Cam. Are you going to doubt our girlfriend’s judgment?”
I looked over at Daniella, but she didn’t meet my eye. She proceeded to hold her chin in her hand and stare at the carpet as though it were the most fascinating thing on the planet right then.
It was true, Daniella and I hadn’t talked in depth about Sarah’s body. That was mainly my fault as I wasn’t in the right headspace since coming to campus to listen to her.
“I do trust Daniella,” I said, hoping that she heard my words and knew that I meant them. “But I don’t trust the Stratego. And I know that our judgments have been clouded before. Just looked at what happened with Tainted Love.” I gestured with a stiff arm out the window as though the sexually charged epidemic was going on right outside the window.
“But that was the gods in play,” Jade argued, her voice tense. It was an old wound for her, the ordeal with Tainted Love. Because even though Jade hadn’t known her apple seeds were toxic, she still brought them to campus and planted them. No matter how much research we did, we still didn’t know how the apple seed got infected.
“We don’t know that,” I argued back. “The most we know is that Kari stole Aphrodite’s Girdle. And we’ve been tricked by her before.”
My eyes inadvertently shifted to Hailey, who had been friends with the daughter of Prometheus before she turned on the Academy in an effort to make the Ultimate Weapon herself. She felt discriminated against by the Academy who blatantly favored the daughters of the Olympic gods, giving them preferential treatment. Even the five of us in this room felt the injustice of the Academy, considering only three of us were children of Olympic gods.
“My point is our judgment can be skewed,” I continued with even more persistence than before. “We can be manipulated.”
“We know that, Cam. We’ve all experienced it,” Beth said firmly. “None more than me, but what if that’s just it? What if Sarah was manipulated into committing suicide?”
I physically stepped back at hearing her words. I had been so focused on the idea that she had been murdered that I hadn’t thought about the fact that both Daniella’s autopsy and my knowledge of Sarah’s wishes could be right. If Beth’s theory was correct, then that changed everything.
“That does seem to make sense,” Jade offered with a wince. I could tell she was hesitant to agree to either side of the argument, mainly because she was my friend and wanted to believe me even though most of the evidence was against me. “But, even if that is true, how are we ever to know?”
“Would her body give us any clues?” I ventured, thinking that I would go and dig her up right now if Daniella could discover any more evidence.
“Her body already told us that it’s a suicide,” Hailey answered for our healer girlfriend. “And I trust Daniella and the other healers to do their job well.”
“I wasn’t saying that they didn’t,” I said defensively. “I never once said that.”
“But you kind of are, Cam,” Hailey said as she stepped forward. She looked like she wanted to take me in her arms again, but I was too fired up. I stepped away from her. My girlfriend clearly got my signal and took a deep breath. “Are you sure this isn’t you searching for something that isn’t there? Because you can’t accept the fact that she’s gone?”
My breath caught in my throat. The silence from my friends intensified it, and I opened my mouth to retort, but nothing came out. Instead, my eyes darted around at the faces of Daniella, Jade, and Beth. None of them, except Hailey, would meet my eye.
“Is this what you all think?” I asked, finally finding my voice. “Do you think I’m just grasping at straws because I can’t… get over her death?”
“We just know you’re hurting,” Jade said as she reached out a hand towards me, but I pulled out of her reach as well. “It’s natural to look for another explanation when you’re hurt.”
“I know I’m upset, okay?” I said with a hand to my chest. “But I also knew… know Sarah. There’s no way. There’s just no way.”
“Okay, Cameron, fine,” Beth said as she got to her feet. Khryseos looked confused for a moment as to why he was moving up, then the dog
settled back on the ground, a little sad to have lost his pillow. “Sarah didn’t kill herself. She was manipulated into it. So what? She’s still gone. It’s not like she’s coming back to tell us one way or the other. Either way, you still have to accept the fact that she’s gone.”
“We know that’s not going to be easy,” Hailey said, taking another step forward.
I suddenly felt cornered and immediately stopped listening to what they were saying. My brain was running too fast for me to focus on them and the thoughts at the same time. I blinked several times and staggered out of the center of everything. I found my back plastered against the front door as I took in sharp, labored breaths.
“Cameron?” someone said to me, though I couldn’t quite make out who it was through the fog of my thoughts.
Beth’s words spun around and around in my head like a broken merry-go-round. Sarah wasn’t coming back to tell us one way or the other. It didn’t matter how Sarah died. She was dead. There was no coming back from that.
But what if there was?
“I have to go get her,” I said suddenly, lifting my head with a clear voice and a clear head. I didn’t look at anyone specifically, but I finally had a better understanding of my surroundings. Jade, Beth, and Hailey stood in front of me as though I were a rabid animal that needed to be cornered and put back in a cage. Daniella still sat on the couch, though she finally looked up at my recent declaration.
“What?” Beth blinked at me. “What did you say?”
“I have to go and get Sarah,” I repeated, my voice strengthening with each word. “From the Underworld.”
The four of them all had very separate reactions. Jade gasped and put a hand to her mouth, as though I’d said something scandalous. Hailey’s face burned a bright red, looking as though she were about to explode with her own opinions on the matter. Daniella pushed herself up from the couch, finally joining the rest of us in a standing position. Beth burst out into uproarious laughter.
