Outside the smithy, the world was dark and cold and still. Inside, the smithy was an inferno of heat and noise, the automaton working the bellows providing a rhythmic beat of hiss and click while Taric’s pounding hammer banged out the clanging melody.

Sparks few up into the dimness as Taric pulled a new piece of heated scrap metal from the forge, the orange light flickering across his sweaty, scarred, and scruffy face.

He fed the metal to his hammer, letting it beat out the old shape to make way for the new, muscles and mind working in familiar rhythm to take the shapeless band of iron and draw out the blades and veins of a curving, leafed branch. Anything to clear his mind and drive his body until everything was consumed and nothing remained but blessed oblivion.

But tonight it wasn’t working.

You’re going to go back. Because she’s still lost.

Taric almost - almost - fed the little straw doll to the forge. Nothing good could come of this. The past was passed. No fae did “favors” for nothing.

And yet.

And yet, the little straw poppet sat on his drafting table, between the thick glass jar of ink and his pens.

Taric’s swinging arm faltered. The hammer bent a leaf out of shape.

Under his absent shaping, the curving, organic lines had turned into a bracelet. Delicate at first glance, but strong enough to wear into battle.

She would have loved it.

Taric stood motionless as the metal slowly lost its deep orange glow, fading to its natural flat grey.

Her hands had always seemed so small. The undersides of her wrists were always pale, no matter how sun-browned and freckle-spattered she became every summer. Her slender fingers were nearly as calloused from climbing trees as his had been, learning ironwork at his father's side.

Had she aged in Underhill, in all this time? Or did her fae captors keep her preserved like a butterfly in amber, trapped in a body just past the first blushes of young maidenhood? 

Would she even look at him now, with his broken body and scarred face? Would she still smile at him? Would she recognize him?

The bracelet felt heavy as lead in his tongs.

He would not allow himself to question her survival.

The puca wouldn’t have shown him the doll if she hadn’t survived.

When Taric finally moved, his joints had stiffened up. His prosthetic felt like a lumpen brick hanging from the stump of his thigh. Ghosts lingered like shadows at the corners of his mind.

Taric tossed the unfinished bracelet into the scrap bin. Perhaps one day it would become a horseshoe.

He fired a new piece of steel and lost himself in the shape of a hunting knife instead.

The door to the smithy blew open on a blast of air so cold that the sweat froze on Taric’s back. The half-finished knife in his tongs instantly cooled and cracked. The automaton died with a groan as its boiler lost steam. The smithy fell into deafening quiet.

Taric cursed. Damn winter fae.

Jaw set, Taric slapped the ruined iron against the anvil. It shattered like glass. He slung the last fragment at the wall as the smothering cold killed the flames of the forge.

Taric knew better than to ask what the thing darkening his doorway wanted, or worse, ask that all too human question: “How can I help you?”

“You are the man who made this,” the winter fae said when the silence stretched on.

Taric didn’t have to turn and look to see what the fae held. It wasn’t asking a question.

Instead, Taric took up a poker and stabbed at the coals of the forge, looking for any signs of life.

The quiet lingered.

Taric gave up the effort as a loss and tore off his apron, tossing it aside. He casually shoved up his sleeves, revealing the blue inked tattoos that marked him as a fae killer, and closed his hand around the handle of one of his larger iron sledges. He swung it onto his shoulder before turning to face the winter fae.

The winter fae’s skin was the piercing void-black of a cloudless, frozen night sky. His brows and lashes were frost on his face, and the hair swept up and back from his forehead was sculpted snow laced with the iridescent blues and greens of deep ice.

The autumn thus far was mild, but the fae wore black wool and white fur befitting the full depths of winter, with a cloak that draped down to brush the ground. From the folds of the cloak emerged a leather clad arm, an object hanging from his gloved palm.

Taric recognized the piece. It was a leg brace Taric made for a local farmer’s aging plowhorse in exchange for a pot of soup last winter; a device that not only supported the plowhorse’s aging joints, but also, through springs and gears, relieved the pressure of weight. The farmer needed one last, good harvest to afford a new animal and the aging beast desperately needed the extra support.

Taric’s nostrils flared. “You will put that back where you found it.”

“The creature no longer needs it.” The fae tossed it down, ignoring the way Taric’s grip tightened on the sledge. 

Despite what many humans believed - or used to believe - iron didn’t burn fae, but it could get past magical defenses, which meant it sure could put a dent in them and Taric badly wanted to do so now.

“You will make shoes for me,” the fae said flatly. Not a request. Not even a demand. Simply statement.

“The cobbler is downtown. Two streets to the left,” Taric said flatly.

“These will be no ordinary shoes of leather or satin,” the fae said with a sneer that exposed fangs like clouded ice. “You will make me twelve pairs of steel dancing shoes. Unlike anything ever created before.”

“Steel dancing shoes?” An incredulous laugh burst from Taric’s lungs. “Metal shoes would be too heavy for dancing.”

The fae scowled. “You will do this. You will make them beautiful and light as dancing butterflies, and they will never wear through. You will do this, or every harvest for a hundred years will be blighted by frost.”

Taric bristled, though a cold trickle of sweat traveled down his spine. The fae could do it. “I don’t respond well to threats,” he growled.

The concept of handing over dancing shoes that wouldn’t wear out left a sour taste in his mouth. Steel might take longer to wear down than cloth, but flesh did not. Visions of mortals forced to dance away their feet filled Taric’s head. The treaties that ended the Iron Wars stipulated that every mortal who wished to leave Underhill must be allowed to do so, but there were ways.

She never came home.

“Then give me cause to reward you,” the fae said mildly. “Name your price.”

Taric shook his head. “I won’t make anything that may cause harm to mortals.” Even if the fae offered a king’s ransom.

The winter fae’s pale eyes narrowed. “Very well.” He gestured sharply and Taric felt the icy bite of frost encase his body. One sharp gasp and it was done; the frost melted, leaving Taric damp and shivering and utterly outraged.

“From this day forward, nothing you make will harm a mortal,” the winter fae said, tucking its hand back beneath its cloak - though not before Taric noticed a slight tremble.

“That is not -” Taric’s roar began.

“I will return for the shoes at the next full moon.” The winter fae turned and swept out of the smithy. The door swung shut on a sharp gust.

Damn winter fae! Taric pitched the sledge across the room with a roar - because he had to do something. 

Taric rubbed a shaking hand over his face and the old scars gouged into it. Twelve pairs of dancing shoes, and the “price” already paid. If he didn’t make the shoes he may as well cut his own throat. Better that then to be dragged back to Underhill as a faery thrall. His fists clenched and unclenched. He’d already lost so much of his life to the fae. 

Weary and broken, he’d returned from the Iron Wars to find the world changed, his village lost to time and all he knew dead and scattered to the winds, his people nothing but distant memory. He spent frenzied months searching for any vestige of what he’d left behind and found nothing. 

He’d lost everything he’d fought to save.

In this industrious age full of invention and innovation, gears and sprockets and springs, how on God’s green earth had a winter fae caught wind of Taric, of all people? Why dancing shoes? And what was he to do about it? 

Make the damn shoes, he supposed.

Taric slowly bent to collect the discarded brace from the floor, feeling the burn and ache of each of his war injuries. Taric paused on a thought. Dancing shoes as beautiful and light as butterflies?

That could be arranged.

Taric smiled a wicked grin.