The Forge: Fire and Ice

ADOLESCENT REBELLION Ann Bupryn

It wasn’t what Officer Sellet expected to see as he burst into the house, mere seconds behind the suspect, and with his colleague Officer Glenny at his shoulder.

Tanz, the gangly youth they’d been chasing lay slumped in the corner of a settee, glaring up at them, trying to look like someone who’d just woken up, rather than someone who had leapt desperately into the leather upholstery a quarter of a second previously.

Officer Sellet let out a sigh as he looked at the fresh rain in Tanz’s hair. The room’s only other occupant was Tanz’s grandmother hunched in a high-backed chair way too close to the open fire. She took no notice of them as she picked at the threads of a flimsy garment in her lap.

‘Now then, Tanz,’ said Sellet.

Tanz glowered. Sellet recognised the look; he had adolescents of his own. Part strop, part sulk but mainly indignation at being caught red-handed.

‘Where is it, Tanz?’

Another glower… a bit of a grunt.

A mumble from the fireside. ‘He’s a good lad, our Tanz.’

Sellet wasn’t worried. In the quarter of a second Tanz had had to stash the stuff, he was unlikely to have got it beyond this room. He glanced round. OK, Tanz had got it further than simply hurling it to one side. The device had started to emit its distinctive glow even as they’d chased him. If it was in this room, the walls would be pulsing green by now.

But even supposing a level of preplanning and an accomplice ready and waiting, they had officers round the back. No one could have left unseen, certainly not with that bulky contraption.

‘Where’s your mum, Tanz?’ asked Officer Glenny.

‘Out.’

Sellet and Glenny exchanged a look. They needed a responsible adult. Tanz’s grandmother didn’t count. Her hooked crochet needles were now flying to and fro, making a worse tangle of the threads that pooled colourfully in her lap, outliers escaping in glittery tributaries down her legs. As he watched she gave an irritated shuffle and flicked at the garment as though to shake it out. He cringed. The silvery lines snaked towards the open fire.

The large grate’s only flame was a scant flicker licking around half a fire-lighter. Close though she’d crammed herself, there was no danger.

‘Let’s nip this in the bud,’ Glenny said. ‘No one wants a youngster going to the bad.’

Not when it’s only adolescent rebellion, thought Sellet.

‘No rebellion in our Tanz,’ the old woman rumbled, as though he’d spoken aloud.

Unexpectedly, Tanz looked Glenny in the eye, and said, ‘Yeah, that’d be good.’

‘Ice! I need ice.’ The tone from the fireside was imperious, the movement of the crochet hooks lost fluidity.

Tanz made as though to rise. Glenny said, ‘You stay right there.’

‘She wants ice,’ Tanz muttered, then snapped, ‘There’s a bowl on the hearth, Gran, right beside you.’

Sellet moved to look. A glass bowl half full of water tucked in beside the chair, a few floating ice cubes bespoke the meagre heat from that inadequate flame.

The old woman lifted it clumsily to her lap, resting it wetly on her crochet. The fibres rippled out from the pressure, glinting sharply, a sudden kaleidoscope of colour. Sellet tensed, certain for a moment that fire had leapt right up the threads to the bowl.

Just a trick of the light.

She’d somehow sewn shiny fragments into the cloth. The refracted light from the floating ice bounced off the flicker of the tiny flame, rippling hues up and down, running into the old woman’s skirt, merging into the fabric of the chair.

‘I need more ice!’

‘It’s your fire needs topping up, not your ice,’ murmured Glenny.

Sellet dragged his gaze from the dancing colours and saw that Glenny too was fascinated by the undulating shades of the cloth.

The old woman dipped pinched fingers into the ice bowl and flicked them towards the grate. The tiny flame hissed and spat, almost vanished under the onslaught before sputtering to life again.

Then the chase converged, from front and back. Doors banged open. White-suited agents crowded in. Uniformed officials brought Tanz’s mother with them, pale and shaking.

The old woman muttered a furious monologue as white coats surged amongst them, tracker rods waving over and around everything and everyone in the room. They all knew it wasn’t here but the search must be painstaking. At the open grate, the rod was pushed up the chimney, the searcher swore as the diminutive fire speared out a tiny but potent shaft of heat. Sellet saw exasperation in the gesture that knocked the rod against the remnant of firelighter to smother the flame, which flickered at the point of extinction but then caught again at the edge of its almostspent fuel supply.

The searchers moved on. Glenny told Tanz’s mother to sit. The hunt clattered through the house and garden.

‘Tell them, Tanz, tell them,’ his mother pleaded. ‘Don’t let them pull our house apart.’

Any second now, a green glow would begin to pulse, to betray the hiding place. But where…? Lead-lined box, concrete bunker…?

‘You tell them!’ Tanz demanded of Sellet and Glenny. ‘Tell them I never went upstairs, I never went nowhere but in here.’

‘That’s true,’ Glenny said, ‘but they’ve not found it yet, have they?’

Tanz heaved a theatrical sigh and shifted to face Glenny. ‘What you said about nipping it in the bud, you mean settle down, join the family business.’

‘Look I know it looks boring at your age, but that’ll change. You’ll get really good…’

‘Really good,’ echoed the old woman as the crochet hooks flew.

‘And don’t keep bad company,’ finished Glenny. ‘It’ll only hold you back. You’re young, Tanz. Rebellion doesn’t work.’

‘I’ll rebel if I want to,’ Tanz grumbled.

‘Do the right thing,’ urged Glenny. ‘You want to, deep down. So does your mum…’

Sellet heard the pause. The old woman by the fire continued to mutter as the crochet hooks flew back and forth, the ice bowl wobbling on her lap, threatening to spill. Glenny had been going to say ‘your mum and your gran,’ but that would have been tactless; no one knew what the old woman wanted these days, herself included.

As though to contradict him, she shouted, ‘Ice! I want ice.’

‘Oh Ma, be quiet! Can’t you see we’re–’

‘Ice! More ice!’

‘Look, we’ve to see to Tanz… oh, wait a minute then. Officer Sellet, may I get ice from the freezer? We’ll get no peace if I don’t.’

He looked around. Tanz’s accomplice must have been in the kitchen. He pictured Tanz bursting in, a fraction ahead of him and Glenny, slamming the door, throwing the contraption into the waiting arms, then diving for the settee. No one had got out of the house, front or back.

‘Ice!’

A freezer would suppress the glow.

‘I’ll go with her,’ he said to Glenny.

‘Ice! Ice! Ice!’

‘For pity’s sake, Ma, give it a rest. The officer’s letting me get you some.’

The complaints subsided to a low grumble. Water sloshed in the bowl as she flicked it irritably at the grate. The fire spat back the droplets as steam, but it would be overwhelmed before long; a garrison under siege, at its last desperate stand.

Sellet dragged his fascinated gaze away from the miniature firework display and ushered Tanz’s mother to the kitchen, watching closely as she opened a large freezer.

The search team had been thorough. One of them stood at her shoulder as she reached for ice trays, alert for weapons, for the threat that came from well-resourced hardened criminals, not a wayward teenager and his longsuffering parent. Sellet too had upped his guard to a point that felt ludicrous for Tanz and his mother. But how could that contraption have disappeared?

The frosty rocks of ice in the new bowl cracked and crackled. She took them through and handed them to the old woman, taking the bowl of meltwater and looking helplessly at Sellet.

‘Give it here and sit down.’ He sniffed it – just water – then set it on a side table, ignoring her pained look as it clunked on the varnished surface.

Glenny gave him a look of quiet triumph. ‘Tanz has something to tell us.’

‘Tanz…? What have you done?’

‘Don’t worry, Mum. It’s like Officer Glenny said, if I don’t stop now I’ll be in it forever.’

‘Now, Tanz, I don’t know if this is a good idea. Maybe we should get someone.’

Sellet sensed Glenny’s tension and gave an almost imperceptible gesture to stop her from intervening. There must be no question of coercion. He hadn’t expected Tanz’s mother to go soft on them, but she was the responsible adult and if she stopped him talking, so be it. It was what he would do if it was one of his own hunched in that settee.

A crash sounded from the room above. Perfect timing. She’d begged him to tell, to prevent the house being pulled apart. It was a useful reminder.

He took his focus away from mother and son, saw Glenny do the same. No pressure. Let no one say they’d applied undue pressure. He watched the old woman. That bowl of fresh ice must be burning her thighs the way it nestled in her lap. The cloth she was crocheting was too flimsy to provide protection. The hooks were working in unison, placidly gliding back and forth, weaving tiny glinting lines of thread with what looked like coloured glass. Her bent fingers reached claw-like into the bowl snagging a lump of ice, fracturing it. Those fingernails had some strength in them. She flicked a mini-cascade of ice particles. Sellet watched it skitter down the cloth, leap to the grate, smother the flame. A thin ribbon of smoke curled upwards. Garrison defeated, he thought, but it fought to the last.

Glenny’s gaze too was intent on the ashes in the grate.

‘Why not?’ said Tanz. ‘I want to be normal. Truth can’t hurt, that’s what you always say.’

Wrong again, thought Sellet, truth can hurt like hell, but it seemed that Tanz’s mother felt cornered. She shrugged and said, ‘Do what you have to.’

‘You want to know where it is?’

Glenny nodded.

‘Gran put it on the fire.’

Sellet rolled his eyes at Glenny as Tanz’s mother jumped to her feet. ‘Ma, what–?’

‘Sit down,’ said Sellet easily. ‘No one put anything on the fire.’ He stared pointedly at the grate; clean and polished; empty but for that sliver of firelighter and curl of smoke. He noted with interest that a tiny flame had re-emerged. The garrison fighting to the end. ‘It would barely fit in that grate.’

The old woman chuckled. Sellet watched as she crushed more ice in her claw-like hand to administer what must be the coup de grace for the hard-pressed garrison. As she flicked the ice, she gave the cloth a shake. Its colours rippled outward as light caught the trapped beads.

The hiss of ice hitting fire threw out a spray of colour. As though she’d shaken out a blanket, a wave cascaded from her lap down over the hearth to roll across the grate. And for a fraction of a second, as the crest of the wave rolled high, it seemed like a roaring fire had been exposed, pulsing green at its heart.

He blinked and it was gone.

Trick of the light.

The search team were packing up. The first murmured suggestion floated by that Officers Sellet and Glenny must have been mistaken. Officers Sellet and Glenny exchanged a glance, taking a first step towards accepting this new version.

Sellet heard Tanz mutter, ‘Spose I’ll have to get good at the family business.’

As they turned to leave, the youth glared at Glenny. ‘You’re right,’ he spat out. ‘Rebellion never works.’

the end