Chapter 1: The Jeweller

What does a girl do when the fantastical creatures she creates for a charm bracelet come to life?

 Emily questions her sanity when troll lifts his mace and wizard defends with his staff, and hightails it out of her studio. When her dad phones the next morning to say he’s coming over, she is beyond relieved. In the light of day, with her dad present, her imagination can’t play tricks … right?

Holy smoke! Even Dad is gobsmacked by what he sees. Elf brandishes his flute like a knife and fairy bites troll … how is this real?

Only one thing to do now.

Call in the cavalry because Mom will know what to do … right?

 

ONE

HOLY SMOKE!

My chair screeched as I shoved away from my workbench. Right, seriously, I’ve burned the midnight oil a few too many nights now; how else to explain my current hallucination? Ha, chances were, it might also be fury making me see things. Yeah, definitely. When a girl was angry, the real world was out there behind a haze of righteousness, and only her own mutterings and, face it, visions, made any kind of sense.

You know the state, am I correct? Even your favourite pasta ends up tasting like crap because it may be something you once enjoyed with the one making you so mad in the present, and right now you need no bloody reminders. Yeah, you know the feeling. So, you know where I’m at.

Still.

Weird.

Inhaling one of those mighty breaths that folk tell you will calm your heart palpitations, I stared at the scarred bench I inherited from my dad. Oh, he was still very much in the land of the living, but he gave it to me a few years ago when he and my mom downsized. I think he was secretly relieved his favourite bench wouldn’t end up as firewood somewhere.

I was ecstatic. This workbench was part of my childhood, and I adored the solidness and loved every scar, burn, and hole drilled in error when a project went a mite haywire. How we laughed when the metal bit scored the bench rather than the dollhouse’s roof, the printer’s tray’s corner piece, the cat caves we made, birdhouses, until the day Dad nearly drilled through his thumb. He screamed, and given I had never heard him do that, I burst into tears. Man, Mom nearly floored both of us with her withering looks, which I now know were all about anxiety, not anger. She was in such a huff that the next day Dad and I giggled for hours about it. Dad’s thumb ended up wrapped for weeks, but it didn’t stop him from finishing the trellis for the sweet peas.

This old thing had stories to tell.

So, maybe old memories and my cocoon of anger now played tricks. I had been thinking about asking my dad to come over to fix the old sander - another item he passed to me - or more correctly, whether if I could get him to come over before his stated day next week - needed to sand the cabinet in my bathroom - while also swearing repeatedly about Pierre and his stupidity. Really, such a goddamned idiot! Had he been lying on the bench right now, I’d drill multiple holes in his nether parts, and then I’d start on his thick skull. Dick and head. Ha.

Rubbing my eyes, I stood up from the high stool I used when doing finicky work. Standing was for power tools and hectic wrenching and stuff but led to unsteady hands when engraving or creating the small details. Dad and I made the chair from an old wrought iron railing, and the damn thing was heavy, shrieked when dragged across the untreated concrete floor, but it did the job. It grew roots and held fast when I needed to be as unmoving as possible. Mom rolled her eyes every time she saw it; I nearly sliced my thumb off in the making of it. Bet the foam below the now threadbare seat upholstery still sported a blood splash or two.

Deep breath, Emily. Deep. Slow. Breathe.

Focus.

Approaching the bench, I breathed, in through the nose, out through the mouth, slow …

Holy smoke!

What was the matter with me? Yes, I had an over-active imagination, had to, to create bespoke jewellery, my passion and my income, but certainly not of the kind that had tiny metallic creatures come to life.

The commissioned charm bracelet would adorn the wrist of a little girl on her twelfth birthday in about three weeks, and her mother had asked for a host of tiny beings to link to the silver chain because her daughter loved the magical realms, ever had her nose in a fairy tale or fantasy book.

So far, I’d cast, sculpted and engraved a silver troll hefting a mace, an elf playing a flute, a fairy with spread wings, a dragonfly wearing a crown, a cat with a bushy tail, a wizard and his staff, and tonight I intended to put the finishing touches to a penguin cradling an orb on its webbed feet. The tiny characters, the size of a thumb nail, waited in a line at the edge of the toughened glass expanse embedded into a section of the old bench’s scarred top - finicky stuff required a smooth work surface, after all - while I ironed out the small sphere at the penguin’s feet - just know the girl would thumb it much like one rubbed a tiny buddha’s belly, I’d bet anything she wouldn’t be able to help herself - and caught, peripherally, a flicker of movement.

The troll swung his mace …

… and the wizard countered with his staff.

Nope. Uh-uh, oh no, not happening.

Life-like renditions wasn’t life.

The high stool screeched.

Next, I breathed like an expert at meditation. In. Out.

Seeing things, too tired - had spent many nights creating moulds, melting silver, and so forth, before starting on the details that made a piece come to life - ha! - while wrapped like a comfortable blanket in my fury thinking of my best friend Pierre and his idiot moves that might lose him the love of his life. Nicola, my other best friend, did not deserve his suddenly cavalier treatment. Pierre, meanwhile, acted the innocent …

Argh. Stop it!

Chatterbox mind, you know it, right? The thing that happens when you seek to distract yourself from something you’d prefer not to think about too much? Round and round your thoughts go, an insane rollercoaster and merry-go-round all in one, until you cop what you’re doing, and basically scream at yourself to stop being a nincompoop. Yeah, that. My chatterbox, if you haven’t yet noticed, was in overdrive.

So.

Where was I? Oh, right. I breathed, nose, mouth, et al, and moved closer to my workspace to check on the state of my sanity.

The cat bared its claws …

… and the fairy took to wing.

Nope, nope, nope. Seeing things. So not doing this. Gonna warm up the left-over pizza, guzzle a mug of strong coffee, and to hell with this.

Can you hear how hard the door slams as I leave the garage converted into my studio? Yeah, that.

JEWELLER