Once again, he’d lost track of time. Oh, the man knew it was winter. Winter was the only season the sizzling heat of the forge was merciful; when the blanket of silence, like the snow, brought him respite from the hammer.

Without a clock, though, he had no idea how long he’d been bent over the filigree. When he raised his head, however, the stiffness of the great muscles of his back and neck told him it had been too long. Rolling his shoulders, he stood to check the fire, add a log, press the bellows, keep the embers glowing.

The man moved his head from side to side, listening to his joints pop. He stretched his arms upward, over his head, feeling in the rafters for his cache of weapons – sword and knives.

He paced to his living space to the left of the great fire pit and smoke hood. The man felt his age in his knees and ankles. He crossed the threshold and walked forward to the furthest wall. He checked the curtain across the window above his cot, held down by fishing weights in the hem.

He turned and walked to one corner of the great room where stood a sink with its pump and drain rack. He squatted before the sink and stood upright several times, working the stiffness from his joints. He rubbed his stomach and considered his hunger.

From the shelves above, he grasped a clean but battered pot and filled it with water. Looking to his right, he eyed his rocking chair with its low table and lamp. A battered book lay – he no longer remembered where he had found it, but it had become an old friend.

Retracing his steps back to the smithy proper, he eyed the project on his workbench, ignoring the empty corner where he would eat his meal, should it arrive.

Thinking of which, he turned and paced to the covered opening, twitching the heavy curtain back to see if anyone had left food on the broad sill. Leaning into the frigid air, he looked down to find the project box empty.

Sighing, he returned to the forge, put the pot on a trivet he’d crafted for it, and placed a pinch of tea leaves into his mug, in preparation for boiling water. He ran scarred hands over his face, feeling the beard that hid old wounds. Later he would boil more water for his bath, checking his body’s signs of healing, counting again the remnants of past injuries.

The forge had been stone cold when he crawled into the vacant smithy and found refuge. But, he suspected the needs of those who waged war overcame the needs of those who waged peace. He’d answered a similar call from a similar smithy in another time and place. Now, he was grateful for the empty shelter.

His injuries from a long string of brutal skirmishes, the hallmarks of his profession, overwhelmed the medics. Having done what they could, they’d left him to his own devices. He didn’t blame them – they followed the men of war. The smithy, battered in its own way, was a welcome relief from spring rains. He’d thought only to stay until death summoned him.

Lying in the alcove cot, his breathing shallow and filled with pain, he waited for eternal darkness and listened to the pitiful cry from his heart.

“Too soon,” it said. “You cannot quit now. You fought for others, now fight for yourself.”

The cold light of the first morning after his arrival found him still alive and with scant energy – but it was enough to start a fire. The flames that heated the stone hut against the damp and the chill also sent a signal to the nearby village. Soon, he found worn and broken tools in the box beneath his window and willed himself to repair them one-by-one. His reward was a basket of vegetables, a small hare, and a loaf of grainy bread. With food and work, his wounds, great as they were, began to heal.

Word spread throughout the countryside that a smith had come. The steady stream of customers needing his services brought him food, reclaimed metal, and firewood. He repaired all manner of metal and, once, someone left a broken spinning wheel. When he left the mended object in the box, he found heavy cloth to cover windows and the great smithy gates.

His reputation grew – a smith who fixed everything. Rain or shine, in all seasons, he had work. He took it as a signal that he could forge a life here as easily as he forged plowshares. As he regained his strength, though, he realized he wouldn’t be allowed to stay. When word reached it that a forge was lit, War would come to call again.

Ready or not, he would have to leave.

Setting aside the pot, he wrapped his hands around his mug and breathed in the fragrance of the steeping leaves. He turned to his workbench, walking with measured footsteps so as not to spill his drink, and set the cup on another trivet engineered to keep the liquid warm.

His head snapped toward the door at the sound of little grunts, the tearing of cloth, and the cracks of popping wicker. Something, or someone, was wiggling through the steel gate guarding his doorway.

“Help,” a tiny voice called out. “My basket. I.” Grunt. “Can’t.” Pop. “Get it inside.” The curtain across the gate billowed as the something, or someone, fell with a plop to the floor.

The man walked to the woven cloth and brushed it aside, revealing a small person – a child – kicking at the barrier. She looked up at him and pointed toward the outside where a light snow fell.

“Your soup,” she said. “It will get cold.”

He stooped and lifted her to her feet, setting her aside like a vase or a lamp. Opening the gate, he retrieved the basket and one of her boots. Ensuring the gate was latched, he dropped the curtain back into its protective position against the cold and turned to face his unwanted guest.

“Why is there a door?” she asked, putting on her boot. “There never used to be. How is a body supposed to get in? Besides, it cracked my basket.”

“You were supposed to leave your basket there,” the man said, pointing at another curtain on the wall to the left of the forge.

He watched as she turned her head to eye the woven cloth that moved with the wind.

“Oh,” she said, frowning. She walked to the cloth and lifted it above her head. Looking at the broad sill, she backed away as a gust of wind blew her golden curls away from her face. “Why can’t people just come in? They used to. Is there a bell? How do you know when someone leaves you work or a basket?”

The man raised an eyebrow but considered her questions. “No, there’s no bell. I hear customers walk up and leave work. When I’m hungry, the food is there.”

“That’s silly. You shouldn’t eat cold soup. Mama says hot food should be eaten hot.”

“Your mother is a wise woman, poppet,” he replied.

“Not poppet, Poppy,” she insisted. “What are you called?”

“I am called Smith.”

“You should eat your food while it’s hot, Mr. Smith,” she said.

“Very well, poppet.” Smith, smiling at her indignant little face, set the basket on the small table next to his workbench and opened it. Removing a pot of soup, a loaf of bread, and dried apples, he placed the food near a bowl and spoon. Feeling a small body leaning against his leg, he looked down and saw her eyeing his meal.

“There’s enough for two. Will you join me?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, please.” The child sighed, untied her cloak, and dropped it on the floor.

“That’s no way to treat your coat, poppet. You should hang it up.” He looked at the hooks near the door, realizing they were too high for the little girl to reach. Smith shook his head and looked at Poppy. Understanding his intent, she stood with her cloak lifted to him. He took it from her and hung it. When he turned back, he found her perched on his chair, hands folded in her lap, eyes steady on the food.

He observed her for a moment without speech. Her dress spoke for her. Too large for her slight frame, it resembled a hand-me-down, well-worn but clean. The embroidered poppies across the skirt proclaimed the garment had been made for her and expected to be grown into. If it survived repeated wear.

Smith rubbed his beard, then walked to the chest at the foot of his sleeping pallet. Amongst his meager belongings, he found a handkerchief. He tied the large square around her thin neck, pulled the stool from his workbench over to the table, and spooned soup into his bowl. He handed her the spoon and sat back.

Watching his meal devoured by a voracious child no larger than the water barrel near his forge brought an unusual smile. Her need was greater than his.

She ate with relish, licking her lips after each bite. He couldn’t recall consuming food with such pleasure. On the battlefield, there was little time to savor food. Time to enjoy the flavors passing over the tongue. Time to feel the warmth enter the belly. Time to acknowledge the fullness that signaled a need met.

When she saw her empty bowl, she looked around for more. So he pushed the apples toward her and she popped a morsel into her mouth, this time licking her fingers, one by one. Smith found himself awestruck at the care she took to pull in every drop of flavor before she reached for another bite.

Surviving the battlefield required a measure of dissociation. With each engagement, he found more inner grit, using it to hone his spirit until he was as hard as the steel he forged. With chilling indifference, he remained aloof – even from his brother soldiers and the youngest of them, a smith himself, who arrived one day and, without a word, picked up the hammer to help with the onslaught of work.

Unlike a village smithy, the battlefield forge, temporary and easily moved, was the place where soldiers came to repair weapons damaged or dulled in combat and get back to their business. In a village, the forge, a permanent fixture, was the place where folks came to gather information – about crops, the weather, the soil – and make plans – to raise a barn, lay a fence, till the soil for the families of the men who had gone to war – while the smith repaired the damage inflicted by the previous season.

Smith managed this forge as he did on the battlefield, without regard for the conversation of men or the needs of their families. He stood ready to leave when war called to him.

Or so he thought. Watching the little soul before him, he found his heart speaking to him once again. Like the last time, it sought to save him.

When she was done, she sat back with contentment and put her hands on her rounded tummy. Looking up at him, she smiled.

“That was good, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, poppet, it was very good,” he replied.

The only thing left on the table was half a loaf of bread, but neither the table nor the basket interested her.

Instead, she looked around the room and yawned. She hunched her shoulders and clapped a hand over her mouth.

“It’s very warm here. Not like my house.” She slipped off the chair, walked to his cot, climbed up and closed her eyes. Before he could put a blanket over her, soft snores filled the room. He covered her and turned to what was left of his meal.

Smith finished the bread, cleaned the soup pot, and placed it inside her basket. He cleaned his dish and spoon and put them on the rack. Moving his stool back to his workbench, he returned to his earlier task.

He thought about her statements – the way the forge was once. As though she knew it. Perhaps she did, like most villagers knew a smithy. Perhaps she knew it better? He bent to his work, listening to her breathing and to the beating of his heart, the sounds merging into a single, happy, melody. It was a tune he’d never heard.

Time stood still.

As he crimped a difficult link onto the filigree, he felt her tiny hands on his leg and her body leaning against him. Looking down at her golden head, he realized she was standing on tiptoe, straining to see what he was doing.

Not wanting to touch her dress, he held up the garment for her to look at.

“It’s a shirt.”

“Yes. It’s a hauberk. Soldiers wear it for protection against swords.”

“It’s pretty.”

Smith looked at her in wonder. No one had ever called chain maille pretty. He tried to see it as she did.

“Perhaps it is,” he said. “We’ll see when it’s finished.”

“Can I hold it?” she asked.

“Not yet. When it’s clean, you can.”

She nodded.

“Are you a soldier?”

“Yes.”

Her eyebrows gathered together.

“My daddy is, too. Did you wear this?”

“Not this but something like it.”

“It didn’t help.” She reached up and pushed at the grizzle of his beard, exposing the remnants of sword marks. With her index finger, she followed one down his neck. He captured her hand at his collar.

“Yes, it did.” He smiled at her. “I lived.”

Her face, at first solemn, lit up with happiness. She nodded and patted his face. Smith felt his heart swell.

After she left, he sat at his workbench chin in hand, rising only to stoke the fire. As he walked between bench and forge, he looked about his house, realizing how inhospitable it was.

The moment he thought that thought, though, Smith was stunned. When he searched his memory, he realized that his notion of ‘home’ wasn’t defined by objects that he couldn’t recall but rather by sound – laughter, poetry, and music – that he could.

As the oldest child, he apprenticed early, to help feed the family he left behind. His life became work and school, for Master Smith expected him to be at the bellows or the books. Unlike many, and in fulfillment of a promise made, the Master demanded excellence at letters and numbers as well as metal and wood.

Smith didn’t think of the Master’s forge as ‘home.’ Was ‘home,’ then, something that demanded laughter, poetry, and music? He shrugged. His forge didn’t include any of those things and his life would revert to places where they would be beaten down.

Was that a life to which he needed to return? He halted in the center of the room and considered his future. Smith laughed. A harsh, unpracticed sound, it grated in his ears. Shaking his head he realized he’d found the whetstone needed to take the rough edges from the hardened steel he had become.

Smith set to work.

Smith had opened the curtains to let out the worst of it. But, smoke hung so thick in the rafters that Poppy could read shapes in it.

She had rung the bell he’d hung on the gate, but the pounding within was so great, she knew he wouldn’t hear it. Squeezing through the gate, she stood motionless near the door, waiting for him to stop his work.

Her eyes took in the changes for he had been busy. She found the hook he’d placed for her cloak. Removing it, she hung the garment by the little loop her mother had sewn into the collar.

She brushed her hands down the bib apron her mother had stitched for her. She thought to work the bellows for him, but knew better than to appear. She climbed the leg’s rungs of the stool he’d made for her and sat on the seat. Engrossed in the task of identifying the shapes of the ceiling clouds, she didn’t hear silence fall in the room.

“You didn’t bring a basket, poppet?” he asked. “I’m hungry.”

Her face lit up. “I am, too, Mr. Smith. But, I still can’t open the gate.”

“You didn’t find the new latch?”

She shook her head. He moved to the back of the forge, lifted his great pot, and walked it to the little kitchen. Pumping cold water in a wide basin, he ladled boiling water on top of it. He washed his face and hands. Poppy dropped off her stool and found his wiping cloth. When he reached out for it, she handed it to him.

He looked at his hands.

“That will have to do for now,” he told her. “Come, let me show you how to get in.”

Smith drew back the curtain and opened the gate. Poppy danced out to retrieve her basket and discovered he had shut the door against her. She frowned at him.

“Find the bell,” he commanded.

She put her hand on the rope handle above her head and rang it.

“Now move your hand, and your eyes, down and to the left. There’s a latch.”

Soon she was back in the smithy, basket in hand. He took the basket and put it on the table. They went back and he showed her the locking bar and how to raise it. He had her lift it and lower it into the hole, both from inside the gate and out.

“If you ever feel threatened or scared, you can come here. Always.”

Her solemn nod sealed the pact.

“Are you hungry?” he asked her.

“Always.”

Her merry laughter and his deeper chortle filled the room. He found the basket filled with extra food. Her mother knows her well, he thought.

She chattered over her meal, telling him about her days, and how she had repaired the hinges on their larder as he’d shown her. He admired her apron. She said she would pass the compliment on to her mother.

As was his custom, he pushed more of his food toward her. As the room cleared of smoke, he lowered the window curtains, and turned to find her nodding over the dregs of the meal. He lifted her with care, listened to her protests that she should work the bellows for him, and put her on the cot with the blanket over her.

“Sweet dreams, poppet,” he said.

“Sweet dreams, grandfather,” she murmured as she rolled on her side.

Four seasons passed them with the work ebbing and flowing with the shift in weather. As the latest winter waned, the work grew in preparation for spring planting. Smith longed for a second pair of hands – not a bellows boy, he had a bellows girl now, or an apprentice. Another smith, as it might have been in time past, to work a forge configured for two.

Poppy continued to bring his food, her mother providing enough for two, now that her daughter was working at the forge. The smith sent back gifts of housewifery – turning spits, pots, trivets, and cutlery for bread and game.

The two spent hours pouring over numbers and letters; she learned to read and compute. He explained the geometry of edges and how each one served a purpose – plow, knife, or sword. She soaked in the knowledge like a sponge. She logged the work in a little diary and he saw her writing become clearer and her arithmetic better.

Over time, Smith opened the great gated entry and moved the project box to the front of the building. While he still didn’t leave the smithy, he didn’t refuse the offering of friendly banter or village gossip, so long as the jester, or the informant, didn’t breach the opening.

It was the latter who offered the news that the war had ended and village men were returning home. It elicited no more than a grunt from Smith, but he felt a pang of concern. What if the rightful owner came to reclaim his forge? Could he stay on as a partner?

Late that spring, Poppy arrived bearing word that her father was home and coming to visit. Sending her on ahead, he would follow soon.

“He walks with a stick. He didn’t used to, it’s his leg. Mama didn’t want me to see, but she needed me to help hold the basin while she cleaned the wound. Shall I start my work?”

Smith told her to go back and walk her father down to the forge. She danced out of the smithy while he opened the gate, swept the floor, and put water on to boil. He heard their voices as they walked through the clearing. He turned to the gate.

Standing before him, Smith recognized the fellow soldier who had swung his hammer well at the battlefield forge. He put his fist to his chest and received a fist salute in return.

“So, you are my daughter’s grandfather Smith,” said the man, smiling. “I thought you were dead.”

Smith bowed his head and said, “It was a close thing, but your forge, and your daughter, saved me.”

“There’s a need for us both. For the forge and for my daughter,” the man replied. “Will you stay on?”

Smith smiled. “Always.”