Doubleborn by Toby Forward

repelled by it at the same time. It fascinated her and filled her with dread.
    “Why is it so hot?”
    She felt it was a stupid question and wished she could take it back. Smith smiled.
    “You’re right,” he agreed. “It’s not like a normal fire, is it? The forge concentrates heat, builds it up so that the iron melts.”
    He thrust an iron bar into the depth of the fire to demonstrate.
    Tamrin had never felt so useless. She had always learned everything so easily that it was not like learning at all, more like remembering. She couldn’t learn how to use the forge, how to strike the metal, how to twist the hot iron.
    Smith stood back and folded his arms.
    “I’ve never seen anyone so bad at it,” he said.
    Tamrin clamped her teeth tight shut to stop herself from saying something angry.
    “No magic,” he had said. “Not in here. If you try, it will hurt you. Badly. Understand?”
    “Of course I understand what you’re saying. I just don’t understand why you’re saying it.”
    And now they looked down at the things she had fashioned without the aid of magic. They were hopeless. Poor, twisted and uneven things. However hard she tried the hot metal would not move the way she wanted it to. It seemed to twist away from her like a snake. The hammer was heavy in her hand. The heat from the furnace made her brow sweat and turned her face red. Her hair grew wet and stuck down to her head. She looked and felt wretched.
    Smith leaned his backside against a workbench and tapped a file against the top.
    “You’re like a cat in a river,” he said.
    Tamrin had had enough of failure and was in the mood for an argument.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    He didn’t laugh at her.
    “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not judging you. Cats are good creatures, but they can’t swim. They can run and hunt. They can fall from a tree and land on their feet and be all right. They can climb where dogs can’t. But, put one in the river and it’ll be dead in no time. Cats and water. That’s you and fire. It’s not a good thing or a bad thing.”
    “I tried.”
    “You did. You tried hard. But it’s never going to work.”
    Tamrin searched for a reason that would be to her credit.
    “It’s because of the magic,” she said. “If I hadn’t got such strong magic I could do it.”
    This time he did smile.
    “I don’t think so.”
    He moved to a row of shelves.
    “Come and look at these,” he said.
    He handed her a small iron bird, perfect in simple design and the very barest of detail, yet Tamrin had never seen anything that so perfectly captured what it was to be a bird. He gave her a frog, in one way just a casual sweep of curves and lines, yet the most exact impression of what it is to be a frog. A snail. A flat, curved object that was handle and dull blade of a letter opener all in one unbroken line. A spoon, the bowl perfectly rounded. Tamrin held them one by one, loving the perfection of what they were, their simplicity, grace and accuracy.
    “So?” she demanded. “You’ve been making things like this for years. It’s your job. And anyway, you haven’t got any magic.”
    She reluctantly allowed him to take them from her and replace them on the shelf. She longed to keep one, to own it. The frog, perhaps. No, the bird, wings folded, head down, like an egg in her hand.
    “I didn’t make them,” he said. “A girl did. A girl your age, on her first day at the forge.”
    Tamrin shrugged.
    “I’m not just a girl. I’m a wizard. It’s the magic that stops me.”
    Smith looked for something else on the shelf. Tamrin kept her eyes on the bird, wondering if she couldn’t just borrow it for a while. He need never know.
    “So was she,” he said. “She was full of magic. It poured out of her, into the fire and back again into the iron, hot as hate, soft as love. Everything she touched she formed into something wonderful. She made things on her first day at the forge that I’ve never been able to make in