by Resa Nelson
“He told Randim you were likely to face a dragon roaming near the crops.” Trep vaulted out of the cart, landing lightly on his feet. Tall and fair, he wore his fine blond hair in small braids twisted together in a long ponytail.
Astrid turned toward Randim. “When did you see DiStephan? He’s been with me all day.”
Randim shrugged. “Earlier. He said you were rambling on and wouldn’t notice if he popped out for awhile.”
Trep beamed, gesturing toward the cart. “Ain’t she a beauty? We call her the Girly Cart, after you. We made it just for hauling dragons.” Trep paused. “Dead ones, that is.”
Longer than most carts used on the farmland surrounding Guell, its wood was roughly cut. After all, blacksmiths made up most of Guell’s population. Unsurprisingly, instead of simply nailing the cart together, they’d forged iron fittings that clung to the cart like a lover’s embrace. From each corner, tendrils of iron extended from a solid corner, intertwining in intricate patterns along the cart’s exterior.
Astrid stepped forward, touching the iron and taking in its beauty. Her fingers traced one path of the design, which turned and weaved among other tendrils of iron. The blacksmiths had borrowed the design used by jewelers who made brooches inspired by dragons. When she’d first come to Guell as a little girl, DiStephan had given her such a brooch.
Happily, Trep nudged Randim. “Girly likes it!”
The last blacksmith, 16-year-old Donel, tied the reins he’d been holding to a nearby branch and walked to Astrid’s side. “I wanted to call it Mistress Dragonslayer’s Cart, but everyone says it takes too long to say.”
Astrid looked at him in surprise. “You’ve grown!”
Donel grinned, now standing an inch taller than Astrid. “A bit.”
“And you cut your hair!” Astrid ran her fingers through Donel’s berry-brown hair, which had been long just months ago. Now each strand measured shorter than the length of her thumb. Previously straight, his hair now curled, like wood shavings. Astrid poked at one of the curls. “How do you make your hair do this?”
“He’s become a pretty little thing, hasn’t he?” Trep teased.
Embarrassed, Donel pulled away from Astrid and muttered, “It does it on its own. I can’t help it.”
Astrid said, “You look very handsome. And manly.” Turning her attention back to the cart, she said, “Thank you. It’s the most beautiful cart I’ve ever seen.”
“Good,” Randim said, clapping her back. “Let’s put it to good use. Trep, grab the lizard’s tail—”
The wind swooshed between them, whipping Astrid’s hair across her face again. “Wait,” she sputtered, fighting her own hair.
Randim continued, pretending he hadn’t heard her. “Donel, guide the horses and back up the cart so we can slide the beast onto it.”
“Please.” Astrid raised her voice. “Someone cut my hair off.”
Trep laughed. “Girly wants to look like Donel!”
Astrid gazed at Donel’s new, short locks. “I need it shorter.”
Trep laughed harder, while Randim gave her a disapproving look. “There is just enough light left in the day for us to load the carcass and cart it back to Guell. You can amuse everyone once we return.”
Before Randim could turn away, Astrid grasped his arm. “I’m serious,” she said. “I walked into camp and the lizard attacked. My braid snagged on a branch and it tore the tie. My hair came loose and blinded me. My hair nearly got me killed today. It has to come off.”
“But it’s pretty and womanly.” Trep brightened. “I’ll teach you how to braid it tiny, like mine, and twist them braids together tight. They’ve never caught fire. That’s what happened to Donel, his hair catching fire in the smithery and all.”
“Donel!” Astrid looked him up and down with concern. “Were you hurt?”
“Only his pride,” Trep said, laughing.
Sighing, Donel stared at the ground and took the reins to the horses, finally following instructions while Randim walked toward the dead lizard.
Astrid withdrew her dagger and offered it to Trep. “Please cut my hair.”
Trep looked at her as if she were holding a poisonous snake. “Why not just wish your hair shorter?”
Astrid had met Randim, Trep, and the other blacksmiths who now called Guell their home several months ago. None of them had tasted lizard meat before, which meant that none of them had ever known how to shift shape. The blacksmiths were still learning the nuances, even now as they made their muscles larger so they could lift the lizard onto the cart.
“Color is one thing,” Astrid said. After all, she had naturally blond hair, but once she’d grown old enough to master shapeshifting skills, she’d changed the color of everything about her: her blond hair to dark brown, her light eyes to black, and her skin from scarred and pale white to smooth and brown. “But changing anything else about hair is tricky. I’ve tried, and it’s always gone wrong.”
Astrid hesitated, remembering how her changed feelings about her lifelong friend Mauri had turned the woman’s hair dry and stiff like hay. When Mauri had shaken her head, her hair had cracked and bits of it had broken off. “It has to be cut.” Astrid raised the dagger to her head. If no one would help her, she’d do the deed herself.
“Girly!” Trep protested. He pried the dagger from her hand, sighing heavily. With his free hand, he held Astrid’s chin, tilting her head one way, then the other. Grasping one small strand at a time, he carefully sliced off her hair.
Donel guided the horses and Randim lined the cart up next to the lizard. He called out, “Trep! Stop wasting time and get over here!”
Trep hesitated and called over his shoulder. “No girly who can twist iron into a dragonish sword should cut her own hair. She can’t walk around looking like a barbarian.” Quietly, to Astrid, he said, “Just because your hair is short doesn’t mean you can’t be stylish and beautiful.” He paused and studied his handiwork. “It might look quite nice if we left it a bit long in back.”
“No!” Astrid tempered her rejection when Trep’s expression sank. “Thank you. I need it short all over. I don’t want to take any chances.”
Trep returned to slicing off her hair. Nodding, he said, “I understand. That dragon spooked you. We’ll see to it that none of this misbehaving hair troubles you again.”
“Trep!” A frustrated Randim stormed to his side, then paused and stared in dismay at Astrid. “What are you doing to her?”
Frantic, Astrid reached for her head, feeling that the hair on one side had been cropped, while the other side hadn’t been touched yet. Running her fingers through the cropped side, she smiled at Trep. “It feels perfect.”
Randim gazed in horror at her. “Have you gone mad?”
Trep waved the back of his dagger hand at Randim to shoo him away. “It’s only half done. Give us a moment. I’ll be hauling dragon carcass with you soon enough.”
Open-mouthed, Randim stared from Astrid’s half-cropped head to Trep and back to Astrid again. Shaking his head, he walked back to the cart in defeat.
Minutes later, Trep finished the job, handed the dagger back to Astrid, and ran both hands through her short hair, admiring his work. Giggling, he said, “Now everyone will call you Girly just to tell you apart from the boys.” He patted her back before he joined Randim and Donel to load the lizard onto the cart.
Astrid marveled at the way she felt, cool and clean and light, running her own fingers through her freshly cut hair. She’d never realized its weight until she found herself free of it.
But when she looked down and saw the mass of her long, dark hair on the ground, surrounding her like seaweed that had washed up on the beach, someone might as well have stolen her dagger and driven it through her heart.
Her hair had always been a part of her, an announcement to all the world of her womanhood.
Her crowning glory.
Every woman cherished her own hair as a source of pride and beauty, and Astrid had rid herself of it willin
gly.
“Oh, no,” Astrid whispered, her blood pounding against her skin. “What have I done?”
CHAPTER 7
Sitting by Randim’s side at the front of the cart, Donel drove the horses, while Trep and Astrid rode in back next to the dead lizard. Absent-mindedly, Astrid pulled at her newly cut hair, shorter than the length of her thumb.
“Stop playing with it,” Trep said. “What’s done is done—and you’re the one who asked for it.”
Astrid nodded and put her hands in her lap. Trep’s words were true. She’d begged for someone to chop her hair off, and she didn’t want him to regret helping her.
They arrived at the outskirts of Guell in time to see the sun sink to the treetops, casting long shadows and deepening the chill in the air. Randim and Trep jumped out of the cart, striding toward the village gate.
Astrid remembered when Guell had no gate, leaving itself open to anyone who wished to enter, even when other villages were digging trenches around their borders to discourage attacks. Guell’s proximity to Dragon’s Head and the dragons it attracted once provided all the safety its residents needed.
As Randim and Trep unlocked the gate and swung it open, Astrid gazed at the masterpiece created by the blacksmiths who now lived in Guell. First, they’d forged long iron pikes to set into the ground, shackled close together in a row to form a fence encompassing the village. Next, they’d fashioned thin ribbons of iron to wrap around hundreds of broken bones and twist onto a pike or shackle.
Although intended only to protect Guell, the fence provided a constant reminder of where she came from and why most of its past villagers had been murdered: her brother Drageen had planned the raid to create the circumstances and ingredients needed to conjure valuable bloodstones from Astrid’s body. He’d intended to use them to protect himself, never imagining that Astrid would stop him. She’d never wanted to harm any living thing, but she’d killed her brother and his alchemist by letting them be consumed by the fires on Dragon’s Head, and their deaths haunted her.
Fighting back guilt, she stared at the dead lizard next to her, ignoring the fence while Donel drove the cart through the gate and Randim locked them inside.
* * *
The sight of the village Guell startled Astrid even though she considered it home. In some ways, it seemed the same. In other ways, it had become something entirely different.
Years ago, no trenches or barricades surrounded Guell. Now an iron fence bearing the bones of its former residents protected the village. Situated on a peninsula just beyond the forest, a stretch of trees divided the crops from a half-moon of cottages. Oak and pine trees formed a towering canopy over the village, letting the sun dapple through. Their roots gnarled up through the ground like the toes of giant birds, covered with old, brown pine needles and cones. The trunks looked like the skinny legs of monstrous cranes or storks.
Some cottages looked like thatched roofs sitting on the ground, because the houses were hidden underneath. The wealthy, like Astrid, lived under large thatch roofs covering thick stone walls, dividing each cottage into one main room and two alcoves between the walls and the place where the roof sloped down to meet the ground. The less fortunate had no walls: a smaller thatched roof covered a single room dug into the ground. Day and night, smoke emerged from the hole in the peak of each roof.
Other homes were wattle-and-daub houses built by the blacksmiths’ wives. A new blend of homes and faces replaced the former symmetry of Guell.
Donel backed the cart up to a long iron table covered by a thatched roof. Trep lowered the back of the cart, and the men dragged the lizard onto the outdoor table.
Her interest piqued, Astrid hopped around them, content to let them do all the work. She’d killed the thing, after all. “This is new,” she said, running her fingertips across the tabletop.
Trep grinned. “I figured we should have an easy way for Donel to butcher—”
“I told you!” Donel scrunched his face up, pulling mightily on one of the lizard’s legs. “I’m a blacksmith now, just like you. Someone else is going to have to learn how to butcher.”
With a mischievous twinkle in his eye, Trep continued as if he hadn’t heard Donel speak. “Considering the boy’s expertise, his father being a true butcher and all—”
“And he wasn’t my real father.” Donel beaded with sweat, struggling with his grip on the lizard, despite the cool autumn air. “He bought me from a childseller, just like Blacksmith Temple bought Mistress Dragonslayer.”
Holding back his laughter, Trep continued with his story about the new butchering table. “I figured stone wouldn’t do, because all the dragon blood would fall between the stones and be soaked up by the ground, which is troublesome because we all know Girly needs to drink it. Not to mention this ground’s seen too many troubles already. Wood ain’t useful for the same kinds of reasons. So I says, let’s forge a table top, and we’ll cover it with sheep’s wool in the winter to protect it, just like the wool inside the sheath that protects the blade of a sword.”
Trep winked at Astrid. “It was my idea and all, and you’d think the butcher’s boy would show some thankfulness.”
With one final heave, the men dragged the lizard’s corpse onto the iron table, a simple tabletop with raised edges and supported by blocks of stone. Astrid recognized them. They were the stones that had formed the supporting walls of finer houses like hers. Those other houses had burned to the ground, leaving nothing behind but the blackened walls.
Trep and Randim stood back, looking expectantly at Donel. With a burdened sigh, he picked up a cleaver from the tabletop and began the work he’d learned from his adopted father.
“Where is she?” Lenore called out from the throng of women and children who emerged from the village to gather around the butchering table. Lenore raced toward Randim, her long skirt brushing through the brittle fallen leaves. Normally braided tightly down her back, today Lenore’s hair was unbound and free. She caught her breath in surprise, taking in the sight of the slain lizard and Donel cutting it up into meat for the villagers.
Astrid smiled at Lenore’s approach, but Lenore’s gaze swept past her.
She doesn’t recognize me.
No one seemed to notice Lenore. Instead, they swarmed with excitement around the new supply of meat that would help them survive the winter.
Lenore raised her voice and both fists toward the sky to command attention. Although tears welled in her eyes, her voice was strong. “Where is she? Did that thing kill her?”
Everyone paused and looked at Lenore in surprise.
A sudden gust tickled her feet, spinning slowly around her body until it swirled her hair high into the air, rippling like the highest branches of a tree.
Astrid felt struck by the sight, thinking this is how Lenore must have looked in the old days when she’d begged a blacksmith for help in a life she needed to reclaim. Astrid took in Lenore’s wide and steady stance, her raised arms, her determined jaw, and the freeness with which her hair whipped in the air.
Randim laughed, and Lenore’s eyes blazed with anger.
“No troubles,” Randim said, still smiling. “She’s standing right next to you.”
Baffled, Lenore spun, glancing briefly at Astrid and then scanning the throng of villagers surrounding Donel and offering their unwanted advice to him while he carved up the lizard. “Where?”
Astrid reached out and took Lenore’s hands. “I’m fine.”
Lenore stared at Astrid until she recognized her friend. “Your face—you look so different without your hair.” Lenore tried to blink back her tears, but they spilled down her face. She held on tight to Astrid’s hands. “I didn’t know it was you.” Suddenly, Lenore stopped, studying Astrid closely. The expression fell away from her face, and her eyes filled with dread. “What happened?” She let go of Astrid’s hands and touched her cropped hair gingerly, as if it might break. “Who did this to you?”
Trep stepped up and clapped Astrid heartily on the b
ack. “I’m the one to blame,” he said happily.
Lenore turned to Trep, enraged. “What’s wrong with you?” Her face flushed with anger, Lenore slapped him.
“No!” Astrid stepped between the still enraged Lenore and a devastated Trep. “I asked him to cut my hair off. Trep did nothing wrong.”
Tears glistened on Lenore’s face again, as she stared at Astrid’s hair in disbelief. “Why?”
“I had braided my hair, like you often do. When this lizard attacked, my hair snagged in a tree. I had to fight the lizard while trying to free myself from the tree. My hair almost got me killed today.”
Lowering her voice, Astrid took a step closer to Lenore so only her friend could hear her words. “I thought about you and how you asked a blacksmith to cut off your feet so you could keep on living. I know it’s not the same, but I thought of you.”
Astrid glanced down at the hem of Lenore’s long skirt where the toes of the silver shoes she’d made for her friend peeked out from the hem. Astrid’s closest friends had been DiStephan and Mauri. She treasured the presence of DiStephan’s spirit, but Mauri was lost forever. Astrid appreciated the irony of having made a new friend with a woman who walked on the spirit feet that existed because she believed in them.
Astrid looked back up to see a seriousness in Lenore’s gaze that she’d never seen before. Lenore was the most confident woman Astrid had ever met as well as the only woman who laughed and kept the shape she desired whenever men looked at her with the kind of longing that had the power to change her body against her will.
When Lenore spoke, her voice had a gritty undertone laced with fear. “You’re not leaving Guell this winter? You’re staying in your own smithery and becoming a blacksmith again?”
“Of course.” Astrid blinked in surprise. Everyone in Guell knew her plan.
