Tristan left Luna's hut and made his way down the street to where Jayce leant against a fence munching on a red apple.

“So how did it go, hoa?” he asked.

Tristan shrugged and stared up at the sky and swallowed the growing sense of panic that was threatening to overwhelm him.

Jayce nudged his shoulder. “Don't worry, hoa. These things take time. I'm sure it’ll all come right soon enough.”

Tristan knew that everything wouldn't just come right. He hoped Master Fannen could help him get home, but he wasn't sure he’d want to go home or that his family would even want him back.

Luna left her hut, nodded a greeting at Jayce and then turned to talk to a curvy girl with long red hair.

Maybe this place wasn't all bad after all, Tristan thought as he watched the two girls talking. The redhead glared at him and then shook her head in disgust when Tristan didn't look away.

“Who’s the redhead?” he asked.

Jayce laughed. “You don't want anything to do with her. You’re in enough trouble as it is.”

“Fair enough,” Tristan said, raising his hands defensively.

“Bonfires are a village tradition,” Jayce said. “If you’re a commoner and you’re planning to eat with us then you’re going to need to pull your own weight.”

Tristan didn't bother telling him that he’d been in three near death experiences that day and by all rights deserved the rest of the day off.

“What do you need?” Tristan asked.

“Chopping wood, lots of it.”

Tristan hefted the iron axe, he spread his legs apart and swung. He missed the wood, sliced the side of the chopping block and buried the axehead in the ground.

Jayce snorted. “This is going to be a long night, hoa.”

***

They carried the wood to the giant shell building.

“What do you use this place for?” Tristan asked, as he ran a hand down shell.

“It was an old temple of the Nine,” Jayce said. “People in Westwind stopped worshiping the Nine a century ago when the hero arrived. Nowadays it's used for local gatherings and weddings.”

Jayce set the wood down carefully and wiped his hands on his shorts. He still wasn't wearing a shirt.

“Don't you feel the cold?” Tristan asked.

“No this is nothing,” he said. “I usually go for a swim this time of night.”

An aged woman, so short that Tristan’s eyes had barely noticed her until she stood hunched over beside them.

“He's just too lazy to do his laundry,” said the old woman. “That's why he wears those same shorts everyday.”

Jayce laughed. “Mayor Pearl.” He hugged the old woman.

“Careful,” she said. “You could take an eye out with those nipples.”

Jayce laughed as he let the old woman go.

“Mayor Pearl, this is my new friend Tristan.”

The elderly lady raised her walking stick at Tristan as a greeting.

“So you’re the young man that's got the village all stirred up?”

“I'm just a traveler,” Tristan said quickly.

The old woman harrumphed and pointed her stick at him.

“We don't get many of those around these parts. We aren't superstitious folk but we ain’t fools either.”

She pointed her stick at Tristan’s head. “With hair like that and those clothes you’re definitely more than just a traveler.”

“Do you want me to leave?” Tristan asked.

She harrumphed loudly. “I said we ain’t fools. We don't want any trouble.”

“No trouble,” Tristan said, raising his hands defensively.

She nodded slowly. “I'm not sure what you’re looking for, young man. Here in Westwind what you see is what you get.”

She bobbed her head. “Now let me be on my way. I've got to make a mountain of coleslaw for dinner.”

Jayce wrinkled his nose at that.

“Later boys,” she said as she hobbled off again.

“She seems nice,” Tristan said once the old woman was out of sight.

Jayce laughed. “Don't mind her. She's just looking out for the village.”

Jayce arranged the wood in a pyramid pattern and then handed him a long striker.

“You can do the honors, milord,” he said whilst giving Tristan a lopsided bow.

“What’s all this nobleman stuff?” Tristan asked. “Luna mentioned it and that mayor acted like I was threatening her somehow.”

“Your hair,” Jayce said. “The hero had white hair. It's been a tradition since, the royal family and all nobles have white hair. It's their way of claiming to be related to the hero. But nobody is born with white hair these days. The nobles use expensive magical dyes but don't say that to them unless you want to spend the rest of your life in a cell.”

“Well I’m no noble that's for sure. If I was, I wouldn't be smelling like seaweed and chopping wood.”

Jayce shrugged. “Maybe you aren’t, hoa. Maybe you forgot. Time will tell.”

“So what’s this bonfire for?” Tristan asked as he bent down and lit the striker.

“Each evening all the villagers make a tray of food,” Jayce said. “They bring the food to the bonfire and share it amongst everyone. It used to be a sacred ritual but now it's so sloppy that cooks like me don't have to eat bad food every night.”

***

The villages arrived one by one and soon food and stories were being swapped. People laughed and had a great time.

Tristan listened to the villagers' stories. Most of them were light hearted stories about fish they’d caught and crazy animals they had seen. However, every now and then a story about a war in some distant land or a storm off the coast somewhere came up and he saw tension in the villagers' faces. It was clear to him that Westwind might be a utopia but the world around it definitely was not.

Tristan stayed over at Jayce's house. It had one room which was a combination of kitchen, living room and bedroom. Tristan didn't dare ask him where the toilet was. Jayce said he could sleep next to the door which he assured Tristan was the best spot. It was not the best spot, as Tristan quickly realized after the fifth cockroach crawled over his face.

As he lay awake listening to Jayce snore he thought about everything that had happened that day. It was clear to him that this new world, that Jayce called Umbra, was as real as his own world and he wasn't sure he wanted to return home. He could reinvent himself in Umbra. Nobody knew him and he could be anyone he wanted to be. Tristan wasn't sure what the new him would look like but he knew it would definitely look a lot different from his old self and that was a reassuring thought as he drifted off to sleep.

***

Tristan decided he would treat Umbra like it was a video game. There were dragons in Umbra and he needed to be able to defend himself. He needed to make money, arm himself and figure out what was going on. To start he needed a job.

“What do you do for money around here?” Tristan asked Jayce as they ate breakfast on a log outside Jayce’s hut.

“I'm a fisherman,” he said.

“Is the money good?”

Jayce shrugged. “If I went fishing only to make money. I think my fishing trips would have ended a long time ago.”

“Ok, cryptic answer,” Tristan said.

Jayce smiled. “I know some people that might be willing to hire someone with no work experience and no skills.”

“Who says I have no skills?” Tristan asked.

“Am I wrong, hoa?”

Tristan shook his head. “That's besides the point.”

Jayce laughed. “I can get you a job as a fish packer on the docks,” he said. “Or mucking out pig pens. That job’s available all year round. The farmer can never find someone willing to do the job two days in a row.”

“Really pack fish or wash pigs?” Tristan asked. “There must be something better. Isn't there an office job? Maybe managing a bookstore or maybe a pretty healer’s assistant?”

Jayce snorted. “I know a guy that has a blacksmith’s forge. He’s a bit crazy and it's hard work but it pays well.”

Tristan had played enough games to know that being able to forge your own gear was a great starter profession.

“Ok blacksmith it is,” he said.

***

The blacksmith's lodge was on the edge of the woods beside a small stream. It was a small squarish squattish building with gray walls, a gray slated roof and a slightly darker shade of gray front door.

The door was closed when Tristan arrived and a sign swung lazily above the door.

The sign read.

Back in five minutes.

If I'm not back, read the message over and over again until I arrive.

Tristan banged on the door but there was no response.

“Really.”

He sat down and took out the lunch Jayce had given me. Spicy fish kebab and a ball of rice wrapped in banana leaves. It looked tasty. As Tristan took a bite and had his mouth full of fish the door behind him opened up and a one-legged man leaned against the door frame. He prodded Tristan with one of his crutches.

“You late boy!”

Tristan looked up at the blacksmith’s face, it looked like a cooked ham with hair sprouting out of it in all directions.

“The sign said you were out,” he said around a mouthful of food.

“Ignore the sign,” said the blacksmith. “That's to keep the salesmen away.”

Tristan was willing to bet his bathrobes on the fact that there were no salesmen on the island.

The inside of the lodge looked like it was decorated to match the blacksmith’s stoney personality. The walls were painted black and had grim looking tools hanging from sharp hooks on the wall. A drawing of a strange device was spread across a table with a dagger stabbed through the parchment. A painting of a ship, with a squid enveloping it, hung above a roaring fireplace in the corner of the room.

“Cozy,” Tristan said.

“What do you say?” grunted the blacksmith. “Speak up, my ears are ringing from the forge.”

“So I have deafness to look forward to,” Tristan mumbled.

“Ha?”

Up close Tristan could see that the blacksmith’s left eyebrow had been burnt off.

“What happened to your eyebrow?” he asked.

“Oh that's nothing, just a bit of a misunderstanding.”

The blacksmith hobbled across the room and closed the front door, all the while muttering under his breath about ‘those damn salesmen.’

“They’ll stand out there banging on the door all day if you let them,” he said louder as he turned to Tristan. “Have to pay ‘em just to leave.”

Tristan nodded and forced a smile, already regretting not choosing the fish packing job. He decided that the blacksmith was definitely crazy.

"Gabbro Basalt," he said as he tipped an imaginary hat at Tristan.

“Tristan Bell.” He extended a hand towards Gabbro.

Gabbro ignored his hand and hobbled towards a passage that led to the forge. He stopped and waved his crutch at Tristan.

“Don’t just stand there with your teeth in your mouth and your elbow halfway up your arm.”

“What?” Tristan asked.

“Keep up, boy.”

Tristan had never seen a forge before except in video games and movies, but in his mind he imagined it would be about the size of a computer table. Maybe with a comfy chair to sit on and a desk fan to keep you cool.

He was wrong. The forge was large and hot with no chairs and definitely no fans. There were two other people in the forge, an ancient looking man with skin so translucent it looked like overcooked pasta and a freckled girl a few years older than Tristan.

The ancient man grunted something which could have been a greeting and then began hammering a piece of steel.

The blacksmith ignored them both and pointed a crutch at the bellows.

“Those are the bellows,” Gabbro said over the sound of the hammering. “They’re made from oil-soaked shark skin.”

He pointed at a pair of black twisted steel objects hanging from the wall.

“Those are the forge tongs,” he said. He continued rattling off names of things most of which Tristan had never heard of before.

“That old gnarled looking man over there is my father, Moh Basalt.”

Moh smiled a toothless grin.

“Don't worry his bark is worse than his bite,” said Gabbro.

Great, he bites, Tristan thought.

The freckled girl glared at the blacksmith and then she realized she was holding a glowing rod of steel in her pair of tongs. She quenched the steel in a barrel of water and flashed Tristan a roguish smile as steam bellowed out around her.

“Aren't you forgetting something?” Tristan asked. Nodding his head toward the girl.

“Oh, how could I forget,” said Gabbro. “That beauty over there, that’s the anvil.”

“Very funny dad,” said the freckled girl.

The blacksmith smiled and reached out an arm to hug his daughter. She ducked under his arm and walked up to Tristan.

“This is my apprentice, Tana Sol,” said the blacksmith. “She’s also my daughter so no funny business.”

Tana Sol laughed. “That's why I don't have a boyfriend, he keeps chasing them off.” She pulled her leather gloves off and tucked them under her arm. She extended a sweaty hand at Tristan.

“Call me Tana,” she said. “No jokes about my name though. I've heard them all already.”

Tristan shook her hand. No joke came to his mind but he smiled and hoped he didn't look as awkward as he felt.

“Would be a journeyman by now if my father knew how to teach,” she said.

The blacksmith ignored her comment.

“That's the tour,” he said, interrupting the girl. “Any questions?”

Tristan shook his head.

“Just glad you have a fireplace in here,” Tristan said. “Will be good for these cold mornings.”

Gabbro groaned. “That's the furnace, boy. How did I end up with the only apprentice dumber than a box of rocks?” he asked no one in particular.

“In Aressea,” Gabbro said. “Shael has a thousand farm workers. Caldor’s got an army and Arkose has a fleet of warships. All I got is an old man who’s too weak to swing a hammer, a daughter with an attitude problem and a boy in a bathrobe who doesn't know the difference between a fire and a furnace.”

“You got old Bertha,” said Tana.

Gabbro grunted. “True, she's the love of my life,” the master replied.

“Who's Bertha?" Tristan asked.

“His boat,” she answered. “Dad used to be a fisherman, before you know...” She nodded towards his missing leg.

"I cut it off myself,” said the blacksmith. “Got stabbed by a stonefish. It was either lose my leg or die.”

Gabbro scratched his stubby chin. “Sometimes I wonder if I made the right choice.”

Tristan laughed for a moment, then stopped when he realized nobody else was laughing.

“You think that's funny, boy?” asked the blacksmith.

“Kinda.”

The blacksmith looked at the gnarled man and then at the girl. His ham-like face split into a wide grin.

“Glad someone laughs at my jokes,” he said.

He patted Tristan on the back. “These two wouldn't recognize a joke if it swam up to them and bit their leg off.”

Tana waved her hand at her father. “If you’re gonna start telling jokes, then I'm out of here.”

The ancient man was already leaving the forge.

The blacksmith rested his crutches against the wall and picked up a large hammer. He swung it through the air like it was a child's toy.

“Let me tell you a story, boy,” he said. “It might help you to understand a thing or two about what we do here.”

He struck the anvil in one fluid stroke. The sound rang out sharp and deafening.

“An old blacksmith was looking to retire so he decided to get himself a new apprentice.”

Tristan leaned in, mentally taking notes.

“The old blacksmith said to his new apprentice, when I take the steel out of the fire, I’ll lay it on the anvil; and when I nod my head, you hit it with this hammer.”

Gabbro stifled a laugh and then continued.

“The apprentice followed the old blacksmith’s instructions and now the apprentice is the new blacksmith.”

Gabbro burst into laughter as Tristan stared at him blankly. He slapped his leg and then looked at Tristan as he wiped tears from his eyes.

“You can laugh, boy. It's funny.”

“What’s the lesson?” Tristan asked.

“What?”

“You said I would learn a thing or two from the story.”

The blacksmith shook his head. “It's a joke. The apprentice hit him in the head. You get it?”

Tristan spent the day sweeping the floors, repacked the shelves, and sorting the scrap metal and iron ingots. After lunch Gabbro gave him a pile of scrap metal and Tristan spent the next few hours turning the bits of scrap metal into spoons.

The day passed quickly and when the light became too dim to forge anymore Gabbro sent Tristan home.