"That's right, Teja," Gil says. "It's used for grating things very finely. A simple effective piece of equipment that needs neither fire nor electricity - ideal."
"You put this part in here, then turn the handle - if the handle is not broken off?" Teja guesses. "So I will fix that handle. Your rats brought me that wheelbarrow full of things; I have repaired many of them already, yesterday and today. Did I fix anything wrong? I can easily set it right."
He gestures to the neat little stack of things already fixed, to his right.
Gil looked and smiled. His kitchen was well provided with the machinery of cuisine but for his own cooking, for the little treats he prepared for Sooty or for his friends, he much preferred the old fashioned hand driven engines for grating, chopping, dicing.
"They all look fine to me," he said then took a knife from his pocket. It didn't look much, being old and worn, but it was his favourite and that morning he had nicked the edge when he had dropped it. Too deep to sharpen out. And the knife knew nothing of magic so that was out as well.
He offered it to Teja as if handing over his first born child.
"I wondered," he said, "if you could do anything about this?"
Teja takesit, recognising the way a craftsman touches his favourite tool when he sees it. Not bright and shiny and new, but familiar, a knife that a soldier would skin a hare with, or divide an apple among his friends, or cut a length of thong.
He turns it in his hands.
"Yes, I can do that," he says. "Some gentle heating, a few beats with the middle-sized hammer, then re-sharpening, and it should be good as new, without the inconvenience of being new. I can repair it first, if you like, and return to the grating device later?"
"Oh please," Gil says. "I have a mountain of Bramley apples to pare and slice and blanche ready for canning and that's a long old job with an unfamiliar knife."
Indeed he is sporting two new, magically healed cuts on the ball of his thumb from having made minor miscalculations in trimming rhubarb.
Teja got up from the stool by the anvil and turned to the forge-fire proper, just a good arm's length away in this small workplace. He wrapped a bit of leather around the knife handle, grabbed it with a pair of tongs, and then pushed it into the fire which he encouraged by treading the bellows a few times, but not too much - he didn't want to melt the metal too far.
"Anything goes better with a familiar tool," he agrees. "I used to have these impossible old thin pliers..."
"And I bet they fitted the hand better than anything here," Gil agrees. There was a box in the corner and Gil hopped up onto it, goat legs bunched up and little hooves folded over the edge. He rested his arms on his knees and his chin on his arms and watched the fire intently.
"They did," Teja agrees. "My hand grew on them, acquiring new sword-calluses and harp-calluses and axe-calluses and rein-calluses, but the pliers always fit my fingers, all the years."
He trod the bellows a few more times, turning the little knife this way and that in the flames, then pulled it out, turned to the anvil, and started hammering in long, steady beats.
And indeed, he heated the knife three more times, flattening the blade until he was satisfied the nick was gone.
The he heated it again, and pushed it into the bucket of cold water.
Then, he turned to the whetstone and started moving that, and started talking again while he was sharpening the knife.
"I will have to find new tools here," he says, "for however long I have to stay in this place. I will make another forge, with Iorek Byrnison, the great armoured bear. He is a smith as well - and the forge is rather full when he is in here. It is not a large place, and there are two smiths working here already, one days, one nights."
"You'll need an oak stump for your anvil," Gil said. "Iron always works better on oak. I know where there is one, uprooted last storm. The bear would be able to lift it."
"We do indeed," Teja says, "and if we can find one that we will not fell a tree for, or pay for, that would help very much. Thank you, faun Gil Whimple."
"The root," Gil said. "Strong and knotted. There was one in the smithy at home." He shuffled his hooves and swapped arms, raising one hand to pus his hair away from his neck. It was warm in the forge.
"There was a smithy where you are at home?" Teja says. "I wonder what a faun smithy would be like. And yes, the strong knotted roots can absorb the pounding of the hammer on the anvil for a long time; the strength of the wood is all whorled and does not splinter like straight beams would as the force beats into it."
It is indeed hot in there; Teja has shed his cloak, which hangs by the door. Under the borrowed leather apron, he still wears his armour, though.
He knows how inconvenient it can be to have one's concentration broken.
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Teja is working on an implement that he has no idea about. He can see that handle appears to be broken off, but that is all.
He looks up from fiddling with that metal thing. "Greeting, faun Gil," he says. "Am I fixing this right?"
He holds the pieces up the way he would think they belong.
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He gestures to the neat little stack of things already fixed, to his right.
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"They all look fine to me," he said then took a knife from his pocket. It didn't look much, being old and worn, but it was his favourite and that morning he had nicked the edge when he had dropped it. Too deep to sharpen out. And the knife knew nothing of magic so that was out as well.
He offered it to Teja as if handing over his first born child.
"I wondered," he said, "if you could do anything about this?"
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He turns it in his hands.
"Yes, I can do that," he says. "Some gentle heating, a few beats with the middle-sized hammer, then re-sharpening, and it should be good as new, without the inconvenience of being new. I can repair it first, if you like, and return to the grating device later?"
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Indeed he is sporting two new, magically healed cuts on the ball of his thumb from having made minor miscalculations in trimming rhubarb.
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"Anything goes better with a familiar tool," he agrees. "I used to have these impossible old thin pliers..."
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He trod the bellows a few more times, turning the little knife this way and that in the flames, then pulled it out, turned to the anvil, and started hammering in long, steady beats.
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The he heated it again, and pushed it into the bucket of cold water.
Then, he turned to the whetstone and started moving that, and started talking again while he was sharpening the knife.
"I will have to find new tools here," he says, "for however long I have to stay in this place. I will make another forge, with Iorek Byrnison, the great armoured bear. He is a smith as well - and the forge is rather full when he is in here. It is not a large place, and there are two smiths working here already, one days, one nights."
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Gil doesn't approach bears.
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He is still sharpening the knife.
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It is indeed hot in there; Teja has shed his cloak, which hangs by the door. Under the borrowed leather apron, he still wears his armour, though.
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