April 17, 2018

PodCastle 518: Iron Aria

42 minutes

* Author : Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

* Narrator : Kate Baker

* Host : Summer Fletcher

* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh

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First published in Fireside Fiction.

Rated PG for vengeful mountains and the accursed dead.

Iron Aria

Merc Rustad

The mountain dreams pain. Cold iron vibrates purple-blue deep in the stone, while tongues made from rot and rust bite and gnaw and hunger ever deeper.

The dam, buried like a tooth in the mountain’s narrow gums, holds back the great burgundy ocean. Otherwise it would pour into the Agate Pass Valley and swallow up the mining town at the mountain’s toes.

From an owl’s eye, the dam is almost as big as the mountain, built five hundred human-years ago. The infesting tongues burrow in from the sea, sent by angry water-memories. The sea cannot see its children in the lakes far beyond the dam. So it sends corrosion into the mountain, into the infinitesimal pores of the dam.

The mountain is being devoured from the inside and it screams.

Kyru squints up at the mountain in the moonlight.

It slopes massive and muscled against the ice-black sky. The mountain’s dream-noise woke him from his own nightmares — the loudness of steel blood breath, of his mother’s last words — and he shivers in the late autumn night. Snow will come soon, blown in salt-scented gusts from across the ocean on the other side of the dam.

He sits on his windowsill, the shutters thrown open. It is only one floor’s drop to the burlap-covered garden below and then twenty steps to the forge, where his heavy boots and thick gloves hang on pegs, where his rucksack, stained from coal dust, waits with his leather apron.

He has never trod up the mountain, so he doesn’t know how many steps it would take.

The miners’ cart trails are well-worn and wide, easy to walk. He could be gone before dawn and not missed until —

That is where his plan falls to pieces like shattered crockery. His aunt would know he had disappeared within the hour. He apprentices to her in her smithy; and the only routes away from town are up the mountain or down the valley.

He hates the valley. Its floor is littered with unknown graves, mournful bones, his last memories of his mother and sister. He craves escape and does not know how to unearth it.

Dawn chips away the clouds and it is once again too late again to run.

“Kyra?” his aunt calls from the kitchen. “Get dressed. It’s a long forge day.”

He flinches at the wrong-name, slipped like a needle under his skin. He climbs from the chill window and grabs the heavy leather belts he uses to flatten down his chest before he pulls on his shirt and trousers.

In the kitchen, his aunt straps on her leather apron as her husband scoops warmed day-old oatmeal into trenchers for the three of them.

Kyru shuffles to the table, his sketchbook under his arm. Mint and honey spice the breakfast. He gulps his warmed cider to keep from having to speak.

His aunt shovels her oatmeal in huge bites, saying around mouthfuls, “We got a big order from Brynu down at the farrier’s. He’s armoring some new plough horses for hauling ore through the Crags. He doesn’t want to take chances on the wolves being hungry this winter.”

Kyru nods.

“Kyra,” his uncle says with a sigh, “what are you wearing in your pants? Another bunch of sackcloth?”

Kyru scoots his chair closer to the table so his uncle can’t see his lap.

His aunt shakes her head and shoves her empty trencher aside.

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