#failboats

A tree.  A tall, narrow, sapling with bark and leaves that were both an odd metallic brown.  Growing right up out of the brick circle of the ash pit.  

The hammer hit the floor, making Brant jump.  He moved to rub his shin where a shard of something had hit him — whether from the paving slabs of from the hammer itself, he couldn’t tell — but he stopped when the other things he carried threatened to fall.  He looked around for a flat surface and settled for dumping the armload into the coal bucket.  A little coal dust wouldn’t hurt any of it.  And that was a problem for later.

The tree was a problem for now.  What was it doing there?  Was someone playing a joke?  Had he irritated a customer badly enough for sabotage?  There had certainly been the usual amount of harsh words lately about his speed and attention to detail, or lack thereof.  But a tree?  

It was definitely magical.  He stepped forward with caution, half expecting it to move and slap him across the face.  But it held perfectly still, like trees should.  

Metal trees, no less.  The shine was more obvious up close.  There were even swirls of different colors in the bark, and the leaves were a little greenish on the top side.  

Brant touched a fingertip to the narrow trunk.  Cold, smooth, metallic.  He rapped a knuckle on it and got the expected dull tone.  When he folded a leaf, he found it stiffer than gold foil, but not as soft as a regular leaf.  It was also more resistant to pulling loose than a regular leaf would be.  Brant couldn’t pluck it by hand, despite giving it his best two-handed effort.  

Annoyed, he went for the tongs, then spotted his axe on the wood pile and changed course.  Suitably armed, he approached the slender tree that had the audacity to grow where it wasn’t wanted.  He swung back to chop.

The blade bounced off the trunk with a clang, and he almost chopped his leg.  

Brant swore and glared at the tree.  There was a dent, but not much of one.  Obviously stronger methods were called for.  

A wiser man might have consulted an expert at this point — a proper magician, perhaps, someone who knew more than basic binding spells — but let it never be said that Brant Stockling was one to think things through properly.  

He had coals in the forge and a lit taper halfway there when he stopped to think it through a little.  

The tree was tall.  The ceililng was low.  Fire went upwards.  Fire on the ceiling would be bad.  Very bad.

He blew out the taper and went looking for his flaming sword instead.  

It was in the bathroom, right where he’d left it jammed in the lamp sconce when the lamp had broken the week before.  The self-contained fire did a great job of lighting up the place.  It even did something about the smell, without setting anything on fire accidentally.  It made a fine lamp as long as you didn’t touch it, which was as much as could be said of the old lamp.  

The tree was still there when he returned with the sword.  Its bark shone silvery in the light from the fire, which stuck Brant as so strange that he paused to think some more.  

He’d used the forge for silver recently: the set of spoons that the client was being cagey about.  Brant was privately convinced that the silverware would be taken and coated with something else to disguise its silver content, then used to poison a certain werewolf crime lord.  But it wasn’t his business, and nobody liked that guy anyway, so he’d kept quiet and made the things.  

What else had he made lately?  Well, there was the metal wand he’d been messing with, using a stray rail spike from the train tracks.  The project wasn’t done yet, but Brant was pretty sure he could make a useable anti-magic wand for dealing with all the blasted pixies that kept sniffing about.  Iron was toxic to the little pests, and with the right spells, the wand should be serviceable.  

Of course, he realized, the spells had been meant for … wood.

But that shouldn’t be enough for this kind of mess!  There would have to be more ingredients than that.  Which there probably were, given how rarely he cleaned his forge with nullification spells.  

Brant used the sword’s fire to illuminate the base of the tree, trying to spot any further clues.  It was hard to see past the roots into the blackened depths of the forge.  There would be ash, metal scale, leftover flux, quartz impurities from the coal…  And what made a better mage focus than quartz?  

Brant swore again and straightened up to glare at the tree.  It stood there innocently, as if to say that no, this was in fact his fault.  Brant heard the chitter of pixies somewhere in the shop.  

Normally he’d go storming after the things with whatever was at hand, to keep them from nibbling at his various magic-infused supplies.  And normally they congregated out here, near the forge.  Which he didn’t clean between projects often enough.

Brant glared at the tree, holding it fully responsible, and struck a battle stance.  With a full-throated bellow, he swung the magical sword and sliced the trunk cleanly in two.  The bushy metal folliage crashed to the floor while he held the pose, panting.  It knocked something over.  Didn’t sound broken.  

Still holding the pose, sword aimed at the floor, Brant stared at the truck … which was sprouting new branches.  In moments, the tree had grown back fully.  And the fallen part remained on the floor, taking up space and threatening to topple the stacks of spare bricks.  

Brant stood up.  Lowered the sword.  Stared, thought.  

I can work with this.  

He squared up and lopped a piece off the fallen trunk, which thankfully did not grow into a new tree.  The segment clattered to the floor, looking for all the world like an artist’s rendition of wood.  It even had rings, which was more than a little absurd.  It had all grown overnight; was it one ring per hour?  Or maybe it had been two days.  He didn’t think he’d used the forge the day before.  Anyway.

Brant picked up the chunk, gave it a good once-over, then stuck it under his arm so his hands were free to clamp the flaming sword in a vise in the middle of the room.  It would be safe there until he got around to putting it back in the bathroom.  

In the meantime, he had a friend to visit.  Well, acquaintance.  Business associate.  Someone who’d reluctantly taught him the spells for magic wands, for use on his iron wand.  

He laughed as he walked back into the shop, gazing at the segment.  “Heh.  Ironwood.”  

Ironwood that grew back; a potentially endless source of magic material.  If this was going to be as profitable as he thought it might, he’d be able to buy a new forge.