Page 30 of Dream Weaver

Bang!

Wham!

It was a rhythm. A heartbeat. A dance.

Cooper barely uttered a word all morning, and neither did I. We didn’t need to. We were that in tune.

“Five-minute break,” I finally murmured, snagging my water bottle. My full water bottle, though I’d been drinking like a fish.

I stared at Cooper’s back as he walked off to fill his.

Then I stared a little more, because, well…wet T-shirt. Muscles. Big shoulders. Sweat glistening on skin.

I whirled away and stared into the forge. For once, I didn’t feel the need to escape into it. Where I was was just fine.

In fact — much as I hated to admit it — we made a damn good team.

Chapter Nine

COOPER

My third day working with Abby started just as quietly — but a little less aggressively — as the previous two. She spent most of the morning rejigging the fittings for the new ax, making me wonder. Was she procrastinating or being really, really fastidious?

Then I thought of the portrait on the fire station wall and the responsibility she’d been saddled with. Twenty lucky axes to protect an entire fire crew.

Fastidious, I decided, wiping sweat from my brow.

By midmorning, Abby finished the fittings, assembled her glistening new ax, and headed outside, with me trailing — uselessly? hopefully? — along.

At the edge of the back lot, rough asphalt gave way to rocky ground. Abby hacked at it a few times, checking the head, then the tail of the Pulaski. Her easy handling of the tool demonstrated she really had worked as a wildland firefighter, and not just for one season.

I wondered what made her stop. Having Claire, maybe?

Either way, she had a pretty interesting — and impressive — résumé. Witch. Firefighter. Blacksmith. Loving mother. Still, so many mysteries remained.

“Here. You try it.” She shoved the ax at me.

I blinked. If she had entrusted me with her daughter, I wouldn’t have been any less surprised.

She gestured. “The balance is fine, but I think I angled the adze end a little too sharply.”

I weighed the tool up in one hand, then chopped up a patch of soil and dragged the loose earth into a long furrow. Next, I levered up a chunk of asphalt that had dribbled off a corner of the parking lot.

The ax practically sang in my hands, and I could have gone on happily hacking at the back lot for hours. This was what I was trained for. What I was born for, it felt like. But it was one thing to chop up a chunk of wilderness to protect it, and another to turn Walt’s back lot into a wasteland. So I stopped, weighing up the ax again. It was near perfect in every way. The angle was a degree or two off, but I would have been hard-pressed to identify what felt wrong if Abby hadn’t mentioned it.

So, kudos to my stubborn, antisocial boss. She had a damn good feel for metal — and firefighting.

“The balance is perfect,” I told her. “And you’re right that the angle is a little sharp, but some like it that way. My cousin had his Pulaski adjusted to an even tighter angle.”

“Cousin, huh? Which one?”

So, she’d listened in on Claire and me chatting. Interesting.

“Jack,” I said as if that meant anything to her.

But, heck. She’d actually spoken to me. Not exactly sparkling conversation, but not the stone wall she’d been yesterday.

She took the tool from me and studied it for imperfections.

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