Novel-Verse

For forty years, Judith had forged the town’s regrets into cold iron padlocks, but she had never seen a regret that glowed.

Usually, they came to her as heavy, grey lumps of cold ash—the kind of grief that settles in the stomach after a word is left unsaid or a gate is left unlatched. She would take the ash, wrap it in scraps of scrap metal, and heat it in her bellows until it became soft enough to beat. On her anvil, she would shape the sorrow, hammering the sharp edges of guilt until it became a smooth, heavy lock. The villagers would take these locks, snap them onto the iron chains in her back garden, and walk away with lighter chests. The garden was full of them: thousands of locks, rusting in the damp sea air, holding fast the memories of old arguments, forgotten promises, and unrequited love.

But the boy who stood in the doorway of her forge on a rain-slicked Tuesday evening did not carry ash. He carried a small, brass pocket watch, its hinges warped by an intense, internal heat. Through the cracks in the brass, a brilliant, gold-orange light pulsed like a miniature star. When the boy placed it on the counter, the wood scorched instantly, a thin wisp of sweet pine smoke rising between them.

“My name is Thomas,” the boy said, his voice barely louder than the patter of rain on the tin roof. “I was told you could lock things away. I need this bound in iron, Judith. Before it burns me to the bone.”

Judith peered at the locket, squinting through her thick leather goggles. “That is no ordinary regret, child. What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Thomas whispered, holding up his hands. His palms were blistered and red, patterned with fine, glowing lines that mirrored the cracks in the locket. “That’s the problem. I didn’t stop her. My sister, Clara, she wanted to go to the Silver Forest to find the Star-Tree. I told her it was a foolish myth, that she would get lost. She asked me to come with her, to hold the guide-lantern. I refused. I went back to sleep. The next morning, her room was empty, and the only thing left on her desk was this locket, burning hot. She has been gone three weeks, and the light inside this brass keeps growing brighter. It’s the memory of her asking me to go—the last words she spoke to me. It’s burning through my thoughts. If I sleep, I see the forest on fire. If I wake, my skin blisters. I can’t carry it anymore.”

Judith sighed, the sound like bellows drawing air in the dark. She picked up a pair of long iron tongs and lifted the pocket watch. The heat radiating from it was intense, making the skin of her face tighten. “I cannot forge this with ordinary iron, Thomas. Regret that burns this hot will melt standard metal like wax. To hold a fire like this, the iron must be tempered with something just as warm. It needs a memory of equal heat.”

“What kind of memory?” Thomas asked, his eyes wide in the glowing light.

“A sacrifice,” Judith said, her voice dropping to a low rumble. “To build a cage for a burning regret, I must draw a memory of my own fire and blend it into the forge. I must remember the night I let my own brother go. Only then will the iron understand how to hold your sister’s ember. But the price is high. I will lose the detail of that memory. It will become nothing but soot and shadow in my mind. Are you prepared to share that weight?”

Thomas looked at his blistered palms, then at the glowing brass locket. “Please,” he said. “I have no strength left to hold it.”

Judith nodded. She turned to her hearth. With a heavy iron poker, she stirred the coals, bringing the forge to a brilliant, roaring white heat. She retrieved a bar of black, raw iron—iron mined from the deep roots of the mountain where the earth’s blood ran slow and cold. She placed the bar in the heart of the flame.

As the metal heated, Judith closed her eyes and reached back into the dusty corners of her mind. She found the memory of a summer thirty years ago: the smell of dry hay, the sound of crackling timber, and the face of her brother, Jack, waving to her from the deck of the merchant ship that would sink in the Great Crossing. She had argued with him that morning, refusing to give him the silver ring their mother had left behind. She had held onto the ring out of stubborn pride, letting him sail with a bitter farewell. That ring was still in her drawer, cold and heavy. The memory of Jack’s face was sharp, clear, and painful. She took that pain, that white-hot guilt of a final argument, and pulled it forward.

With a deep breath, Judith opened her eyes. The iron bar in the forge was glowing cherry-red. She pulled it out with her tongs and swung it onto the anvil. Thomas watched in silence as she raised her heavy hammer.

The first blow sent a shower of golden sparks across the dirt floor. Judith closed her eyes with each strike, channeling the memory of Jack’s laughter, the color of his eyes, and the sound of his voice into the metal. With every impact of the hammer, she felt those memories slipping away, dissolving into the iron like salt in water. The face of her brother began to blur, the sharp lines of his nose and mouth softening into an unrecognizable shadow.

The iron began to shape, bending under her blows into a small, delicate birdcage, no larger than an apple. The bars of the cage were thin as wire, but they were dark and dense, humming with a quiet, solemn resonance. Judith took the glowing pocket watch and placed it in the center of the iron cage. With her tongs, she snapped the door shut and struck the latch with a final, heavy blow, sealing it forever.

The effect was instantaneous. The white-hot glare of the ember was suddenly subdued, trapped behind the dark bars of the iron cage. The light softened to a gentle, pulsing amber glow, like a firefly resting in a lantern. The intense heat vanished from the room, replaced by the comforting warmth of a dying hearth.

Thomas let out a long, ragged breath. He looked down at his hands; the glowing red lines in his palms had faded into thin, silver scars that no longer stung. “It’s quiet,” he whispered. “The heat in my head… it’s gone.”

“It is bound,” Judith said, placing the iron cage on a cold stone slab. “The iron will hold it. But you must never open it, Thomas. If the latch is broken, the regret will return twice as hot, and no iron in the world will be able to cage it a second time.”

Thomas reached out, his fingers brushing the cool, dark iron of the cage. “Thank you, Judith. What do I do with it now?”

“Take it to the garden,” she said, pointing toward the heavy wooden door at the back of the forge. “Hang it on the willow branch near the stream. The water will keep the iron cool, and the wind will carry the warmth away.”

Thomas picked up the cage by its cold iron loop. He nodded, his eyes bright with tears of relief, and stepped out into the rain-slicked garden. Judith watched him go through the window. She saw him hang the small cage from the low-sweeping branch of the ancient willow. The amber glow pulsed softly among the green leaves, a quiet beacon in the rainy twilight.

When Judith turned back to her anvil, she looked at the silver ring resting on the shelf. She picked it up, running her thumb over the tarnished metal. She tried to remember Jack’s face when he had asked for it. She tried to remember the color of the sky on the day he sailed away. But there was nothing—only a vague, grey outline of a ship, and the quiet sensation of a cold wind on her face. The details were gone, forged into the bars of Thomas’s cage. She had saved the boy from his fire, but she had left herself a little colder.

She walked to the hearth, picked up a fresh bar of iron, and placed it in the coals. The rain continued to fall outside, tapping a rhythmic beat against the windowpane, as Judith waited for the next regret to walk through the door.

Explore more magical realism and fantasy from Novel-Verse: A Crown of Thorns and Ivy, The Clockwork Dragon, and Star-Stitched Skies.