Free Shoggoths in Bloom by Elizabeth Bear Page A

his hand when he hammered. “And if’n ‘tis mending I’m paid for, I’ll mend what’s flawed.”
    She came across the knotty turf in little quick steps like a hobbled horse—as if it was her lamed, and not him—and while he turned to thrust the bent metal that would soon be a steel horse-collar into the coals again she passed her hand over his bench beside the anvil.
    He couldn’t release the bellows until the coals glowed red as currant jelly, but there was a clink and when her hand withdrew it left behind two golden coins. Two coins for two hands, for two pockets, for two eyes.
    Wiping his hands on his matted beard, he turned from the forge, then lifted a coin to his mouth. It dented under his teeth, and he weighed its heaviness in his hand. “A lot for a bit of tinkering.”
    “Worth it if you get it done,” she said, and upended her sack upon his bench.
    A dozen or so curved transparent shards tumbled red as forge-coals into the hot noon light, jingling and tinkling. Gingerly, he reached out and prodded one with a forefinger, surprised by the warmth.
    “My heart,” the woman said. “ ’Tis broken. Fix it for me.”
    He drew his hand back. “I don’t know nowt about women’s hearts, broken or t’otherwise.”
    “You’re the Weyland Smith, aren’t you?”
    “Aye, Miss.” The collar would need more heating. He turned away, to pump the bellows again.
    “You took my gold.” She planted her fists on her hips. “You can’t refuse a task, Weyland Smith. Once you’ve taken money for it. It’s your geas.”
    “Keep tha coin,” he said, and pushed them at her with a fingertip. “I’m a smith. Not never a matchmaker, nor a glassblower.”
    “They say you made jewels from dead men’s eyes, once. And it was a blacksmith broke my heart. It’s only right one should mend it, too.”
    He leaned on the bellows, pumping hard.
    She turned away, in a whisper of black satin as her skirts swung heavy by her shoes. “You took my coin,” she said, before she walked back into the shadows. “So fix my heart.”
    Firstly, he began with a crucible, and heating the shards in his forge. The heart melted, all right, though hotter than he would have guessed. He scooped the glass on a bit of rod stock and rolled it on his anvil, then scraped the gather off with a flat-edged blade and shaped it into a smooth ruby-bright oval the size of his fist.
    The heart crazed as it cooled. It fell to pieces when he touched it with his glove, and he was left with only a mound of shivered glass.
    That was unfortunate. There had been the chance that the geas would grant some mysterious assistance, that he would guess correctly and whatever he tried first would work. An off chance, but stranger things happened with magic and his magic was making.
    Not this time. Whether it was because he was a blacksmith and not a matchmaker or because he was a blacksmith and not a glassblower, he was not sure. But hearts, glass hearts, were outside his idiom and outside his magic.
    He would have to see the witch.
    The witch must have known he was coming, as she always seemed to know. She awaited him in the doorway of her pleasant cottage by the wildflower meadow, more wildflowers—daisies and buttercups—waving among the long grasses of the turfed roof. A nanny goat grazed beside the chimney, her long coat as white as the milk that stretched her udder pink and shiny. He saw no kid.
    The witch was as dark as the goat was white, her black, black hair shot with silver and braided back in a wrist-thick queue. Her skirts were kilted up over her green kirtle, and she handed Weyland a pottery cup before he ever entered her door. It smelled of hops and honey and spices, and steam curled from the top; spiced heated ale.
    “I have to see to the milking,” she said. “Would you fetch my stool while I coax Heidrún off the roof?”
    “She’s shrunk,” Weyland said, but he balanced his cup in one hand and limped inside the door to haul the stool out,