Merian then, looking at the boy, thought he might not be such a disappointment, and, when he took him into his latest scheme for the improvement of the place, was much pleased with the boy’s contributions, finding him quite natural with measuring tools and also able to imagine things before they were cast in hard reality, and — while perhaps still lazy — not at all slow.
The project, which was to be the last of the improvements for the year, was something Merian had long dreamed of but thought too presumptuous for the modest scale of Stonehouses, especially given the fact that he had already thought to give it a name. Now that he had decided on improving the place once more, he also decided his new creation was the first thing he needed for the new phase in his life, as it marked a man who took his affairs seriously and would let him better manage them.
He went into town for various small pieces and to check his designs against other examples of its kind, but found he could mostly make it himself, and with Purchase’s offers of help with the measuring and cutting he was certain of its accuracy.
When he finished, a great seal marked the center of the garden where Sanne still planted vegetables and herbs for the house. Now the movement of hours and seasons would be marked there as well, no longer a crude thing measured out in plantings and the metronome of the harvest, or the length of his shadow as the sun rode the back of his labors. For he had installed a sundial at Stonehouses, and it was more than mere decoration; he had brought time and chronology onto his property and into his possession.
What he measured that night, though, was less time than the sum of his dealings in his early days, which he did to appraise how much he had been gaining or losing. What he counted was zero parents, equal siblings, two masters and one mistress (depending on the count), an untold number of voyages, three houses built, two languages learned (though only one remembered), a solid handful of dependable friends, two male children, and two wives.
Of the future he knew not, and tried not to give much care, knowing only that he could not foresee it, but that things would pass in their time and work either for good or ill, depending on other devices.
These were the reckonings of Jasper Merian, after a half score of seasons had passed at Stonehouses, in the ancient days of Columbia, in one of those districts named for Carol Rex, before the nameless Indian battles, in the beginning, second immemorial age, in America.
II. age of fire
one
He is a forger of metal with no interest in the ground except its hidden ores and nothing of the plow except the strength and sharpness of its blade. He stands bare-chested from the waist up and, you can see, he is black as pig iron, or molten just after it is quenched. All except his eyes, which are light as wheatcorn. They belong to no one anybody around here has ever seen except he himself, and it comes down that he was not born with them but that they turned so from the intensity of his gaze into the furnace. He seems blind standing there — mute. Preachers will come one day to lay their hands on him, to release whatever has taken possession of those orbs, and women as well, who hope to know what lies behind them.
He keeps his stare fixed to heaven just now, as a cluster of white comets passes over the sky like angels, before turning fiery bright and speeding toward the lower reaches of the divine universe, right to the illuminated edge of this world, where they become blue-lined and red centered as God’s own heart worked in a blast furnace, before burning out and disappearing somewhere in the forestlands below.
He marks the spot well, etching in his mind the exact position in the mountains where the specks of light were last seen, then saddles his horse and sets off in discovery of the fallen bit of sky.
* * *
He journeyed three days and two hundred miles through the woods, without food or water for either man or horse. The trip, so says the lore of that country, would have taken a mere two days at the clip he rode and the animal flesh he made it upon, but the horse did fall of thirst in the last thirty miles and the man would not abandon it but carried him the rest of the way. This much was not true. The people of that country are well-known liars, though, especially as regards their history — making everything reflect well on themselves and region, but castigating all that might betray any secret weakness or want.
He arrived at the place he had marked, deep in an uncharted desolation of black pines and walked through their shadow nearly blinded, so little light penetrated those branches to reach the earthen floor. For what he searched, though, he did not need light but could find it even in the bosom of the darkest cave with his eyes bound. He sought as much by his nose as his eyes. When he smelled the odor of iron he knew his hunt was nearly complete, and he kept on until he saw the first dark rock, two fists in size, with a blue scrim from Heaven all around it. He touched the grooved surface and found it still cool as the roof of Heaven itself. He picked it up, placed it in his bag, and went on, until he had collected them all like a goose hen shepherding her flock. The bag weighed near a hundred pounds when he finished, as he lifted it up like a hay bale over his head. He went back then to the exhausted horse, whom he led at a gingerly pace, no matter how much he desired to be back home with his newfound treasure.
He knew the value of the rocks from the first, but not yet what he would make with them. That night as he rested it was revealed to him in a dream, and he rose and woke the horse, and the two of them began to fly toward home.
When he arrived back in town it was morning on the clock but not yet in the world, and he went on to his workshop, where he barred tight the door. The oven was still warm from the day before, but not hot as he needed it, and he spent hours stoking it back up to its maximum hotness. By the time he judged the furnace to be ready it was dawn, and one of the apprentices knocked at the door. He warned him off, to be left alone with his labor. The others came soon after, but he no longer bothered responding to their knocks and whistles, because he had started the rocks and watched them steadily without moving. When they were melted down he separated out the impurities, which were miraculous few, then fired the metal again. It was pure steel, like nothing the earth produces. When it was ready to be molded, he took it to his anvil and began working it into form with all the passion of force he possessed, raising and lowering the hammer onto the fired rock until it began to have shape and meaning beyond heat and mere metal. The sweat on his brow poured from his concentrated thought as much as from the furnace, but both commingled forms of perspiration evaporated almost instantaneously. He felt dry there in his cocoon of work, but to an outsider looking on he seemed to be covered in a cloud of steam.
After he had beaten a rough shape, he added to it a thin strip from another of the treated rocks, then hammered them until they were fused as hand and arm. The sound of his hammering, a familiar noise in the town, rang out that morning with a clarity and intensity that made passersby stop on the sidewalk to listen as he worked. Each time he drew the steel from the fire the metal screeched as it was being taken away, as two solids or else two similar elements crossing each other. Indeed, men who were later cut by it invariably described both the blade and the resultant sensation as a deep, mineral scalding.
Satisfied, he quenched it all in oil and left it to cool. In time he removed the blade and studied his effort, then fired portions of it again at various temperatures, hammering away the minuscule flaws and imperfections but also strengthening the metal a thousandfold more. He repeated the cooling, this time slackening the heat in water that had been mixed with certain liquids from his workbench.