Fire in the Forge

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.

There’d been a time when the smokestacks were quiet at night. There’d been a time when people fled when they saw wings overhead, taking shelter under rocks. There’s a reason all our roofs are made of slate, all our walls clay.

There’s the whistle. Shift change at the foundry. You can hear it all the way to the edge of town. I’ve got my new boots and work gloves on. Dragonhide - the best you can make. There’s fresh masks in my pocket for mid shift; the one I’ve got on now won’t last long so close to the source.

The walk to the foundry takes you past the school. On a day like this, the windows are cracked open. Though the smoke filters keep you from seeing inside, you can hear the kids at their lessons. My steps fall into pace with them, hearing the kids chant along to the teacher rapping out the rhythm.

I remember when I first learned the rhyme in school:

We have no fear / of dragons here / not since the peace / made by Sir Reese

The dragons send / them that must bend / to dragon laws / and fix their flaws

It makes an excellent skipping rhyme, or a time-chant to determine who gets the last piece of dessert. As we got older, we wrote essays in a bid for the Sir Malic Reese Award, given to the author whose essay most clearly demonstrated the value of the human-dragon alliance. Each year, the oldest students get a trip to the foundry, and their first up-close glimpse of the Treaty’s legacy.

Ask any adult in the village, and you’ll get the story we learned after the rhyme, chanted in cadence, together.

The-Treaty-was-signed-in-blood-and-fire-and-bound-the-humans-and-the-dragons-in-an-eternal-alliance-of-mutual-benefit.

The foundry is tucked behind some of the larger government buildings. You have to know how to get to it. You can’t just follow the smoke. In the Before Times, it stood in the center of what was then the town, but as we grew it got shunted off to the side, in a way. The foundry gave us everything we had, but we grew away from it.

We tell each other stories of the Before Times to scare one another, a mix of memory and myth. Stories of children plucked from their cradles and used as barbarian bait. Of noble explorers who returned from their journeys faceless, burned from head to hips. Of the way dragon blood burns through the skin like acid, so even those who could fend off their attackers would find themselves scarred.

The Before Times ended when the Shackling began.

The stories and songs all credit Sir Reese, but it was actually his father’s brother that made the Treaty possible. Lord Reese the Elder Brother worked in the foundry, developing new and stronger metals. He discovered the alloy that, when forged into shackles or cage bars, could hold even the hottest dragon. The unmeltable steel. Diamond steel, they called it, and the first thing they did with it was take hostages.

Just like they’d taken ours, we took their children.

We put two of them in cages that could be neither melted nor bent, then put them to work in the forge, using diamond steel chains and cuffs to keep them at their task. Within a month, the foundry’s production had tripled, and the leader of the dragons - funny, how we never learn her name - was ready to talk trade. The two young dragons were replaced with older dragons that had dishonored some dragon law, and the foundry went into 24-hour production.

There’s already two people waiting at the foundry gates - classmates of mine. Jalia and Rimon are obvious choices for the job - both former essay contest winners with impeccable responsibility scores. Responsibility matters more than intelligence for this job.

On the other hand, when you’re the great-great-great grandson of Sir Malic Reese, nothing much else matters.