Taric leaned against the smithy’s doorway and eyed the twelve blocks of clouded ice on his stoop with narrow suspicion. Each was rectangular and easily the size of one disembodied foot.
The winter fae’s “models” for the princess’s shoe sizes had arrived.
He cautiously lifted the first ice block from the stack. Or “ice” block, perhaps, because it didn’t melt at all from the heat of his hand, remaining cold and dry. On first impression, Taric wondered if he was supposed to use the entire ice block to measure with, but at second glance, the slant of the morning light through the clouded block revealed a shadowed shape inside it.
After a long pause, Taric decided not to wonder how the winter fae had brought this about.
Thirty days to make twelve pairs of individualized steel dancing shoes.
That meant drafting, building, fitting, and finishing a shoe each day, with only two to spare. Impossible. Drafting alone could take a day, much less forging the shells and fitting gears and springs - all customized to each design. He’d finished the little clockwork butterflies in time because they were all identical; he’d needed only one functioning design. But this?
Impossible.
Impossible… for only one man.
Taric quickly replayed the winter fae’s demands. At no point did Taric agree that he would be making the shoes solely with his own hands. He hadn’t really agreed to anything at all.
He began brusquely collecting the blocks of ice from his doorstep to stash them in the smithy to figure out how to work with them later. First, he had some errands to run.
It turned out, the “ice” melted away without leaving a trace by the time Taric returned to the smithy. Which left him with a far more disturbing pile of twelve disembodied feet. Or “feet,” as it also included a hoof and a webbed… foot? That would be a challenge.
Taric gingerly pried out the vaguely foot shaped, webbed… fin? Technically, he supposed there were enough non-cartilaginous bones to qualify as a foot. It had to be murder to walk on; it was clearly more suited to water. But as Taric handled it, meditatively turning it over in his hands as he considered the problems presented with trying to design a steel shoe for such a thing, it was like the disembodied foot started whispering into the back of his mind. How she walked, where the pressure points were, how her “ankle” needed extra support…. The shoe itself started to take shape in his mind’s eye.
Taric jerked back, the “foot” falling back among its sisters. The whispers faded. But the image of the shoe remained.
Curiosity piqued, Taric picked up another at random. This one was much smaller; delicately boned, with translucent, almost pearly pale skin, and neatly trimmed blue nails. “Flighty” was the first word that came to mind, and the impression was reinforced with every second. No callouses, no specific weight patterns - this one could (and preferred to) fly. And now that he was alert to it, he felt the subtle creep of fae magic seeping from it. An unexpectedly helpful turn of events.
Nevertheless, Taric was glad he’d already taken his measures, because he hadn’t underestimated the amount of work it would take - even with extra hands involved.
Taric’s extra hands arrived early the next morning, with a polite knock at the smithy door.
“Morning, sir.” Cyrus Weller, the clockmaker’s apprentice, swept his cap off his head. The bright morning sunlight gleamed off of his tawny hair. “Mr. Hennesy sent me.”
Beside him, Pip shot her hand in the air. “Papa didn’t send me, but I came anyway.” She grinned.
Taric’s first impulse was to send her home - getting her involved in fae matters wasn’t exactly safe - but her nimble fingers were deft, and he couldn’t deny that she’d be helpful. He let them both in.
“Is there enough light to work here?” Taric led them into his living space. His table was filled with sketches, broken charcoal ends, and crumpled papers, but his apartment was a better place to put clockworks together than the soot and charcoal dusted smithy.
Taric scooped his sketches aside and swept off the crumbled bits and ends. Since figuring out the trick to the disembodied models, Taric had been drafting like mad. He’d hardly slept the night before.
He turned back to find Pip and Cyrus looking around his small, two-room apartment attached to the side of the smithy with near identical expressions of vague horror.
“You live like this?” Pip said with the boldness of youth, wrinkling her nose in the direction of the closest spiderweb. Young Cyrus shot her a quelling look that she cheerfully ignored.
Taric clicked his tongue. “There are more important things in this world than bothering the local pest control.” All things considered, despite the insane deadline looming ahead, he was feeling practically cheerful.
“These are the plans I’ve drafted,” Taric said, singling out the relevant sketches. “Take a look, and let me know if it’s enough to work with.”
“What’s this?” Pip picked up a sketch that had escaped under the table. One that didn’t belong with the shoes.
“That -” Taric plucked the sketch from her hand. “That’s for me.”
Pip quirked a brow. “But what for?”
Taric hesitated, but there was no harm in answering the child. He shrugged. “So I don’t have to drink the wine?”
He grinned at Pip’s confusion. “Sometimes, the difference between winning and losing a battle is knowing when a shield is more important than a sword.” He ruffled the girl’s hair. “Shall we get started?”
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