Free A Wizard Abroad, New Millennium Edition by Diane Duane

far: in fact, she sounded like an American who had been here for a long time. “Oh, you again is it,” she said to the chestnut as the groom led it up and fastened its reins to a loop on the back of the pickup truck’s tailgate. “We’ll do better than we did last time.” And then the farrier looked up as Nita wandered over. “And you’ll be Miz Callahan’s niece, won’t you.”

    “That’s right,” Nita said, and put her hand out to shake. She was getting used to the ritual by now, and was becoming relieved that no one was in a position to offer her any tea.

    The farrier held up her hands in apology: they were covered with honest grime. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m Biddy Ó Dálaigh. How are you settling in?”

    “Pretty well, thanks.”

    “Have you seen this done before?”

    “Only on TV,” Nita said. “And never out of the back of a truck.”

    Biddy laughed. “Makes it easier to get a day’s work done,” she said, rooting around in a box in the truck and coming out with a horseshoe. She looked critically from it to the horse’s feet, then bent down to push it into the aperture of the furnace-box. “Used to be all the farms had their own farriers. No one can afford it now, though. So I go to my work, instead of people bringing it to me.”

    Nita leaned against the truck to watch. “You must travel a lot.”

    Biddy nodded and walked around to the front of the horse, stroking it and whistling to it softly between her teeth. “All over the county,” she said. “A lot of horse shows and such.” With her back to the horse’s nose, she picked up its right forefoot and curled it around and under, grasping it between her knees. With a claw-ended tool like the nail-pulling end of a hammer, Biddy went around the horse’s hoof loosening the nails and prying them up one by one: then changed her leverage and knocked the shoe completely up and off. With another tool, a smaller one with a sharp point, Biddy started trimming down the rough edges of the hoof.

    “Tell Derval,” Biddy said to Aisling, the blond groom who’d been handling the chestnut, “that he won’t be needing the orthopedic any more; the hoof’s cleared up.”

    Nita was surprised. “Orthopedic horseshoes?” she said.

    “Oh yes,” Biddy said. “Horses get problems with their feet the same as people do. Tango here’s been wearing a booster until this hoof grew back in straight—he hurt the foot a few months ago, and that can make the hoof go crooked. It’s just an overdeveloped toenail, after all.” She patted Tango as she got up. “We’re all better now, though, aren’t we, my lad? And you’ll have a nice run tomorrow.” She reached into the truck and came up with a pair of tongs.

    “He’s in the hunt?” Nita said.

    Biddy nodded. “He belongs to Jim McAllister up on the Hill.” She rooted around in the forge, stirring and rearranging the coals in it. Nita peered into the opening of it.

    “Lava rocks?” she said.

    “Oh aye, like what you get for barbecues. They work as well as charcoal unless you’re doing dropforging or some such.”

    She turned her attention back to the hoof, scraping its edges a bit more. Then Biddy picked up the tongs again. “Here we go, now,” she said, and took hold of the hoof again. With her free hand she plucked the horseshoe out of the furnace and slapped it hard against the hoof, exactly where she wanted it. There was a billow of smoke, and a stink like burned hair or nails.

    Nita waved the smoke away. “Foul, isn’t it,” Biddy said, untroubled. After removing the shoe from the hoof briefly and dunking it in a bucket of cold water, she replaced the shoe, dropped the tongs, took a hammer out of another belt loop, reached into a pocket for nails, and began tapping them in with great skill, each nail halfway in with one tap, all the way in with the next.

    Nita watched Biddy do Tango’s other three shoes. Then another horse was led out, and Nita turned away: this