PROLOGUE
LEO - 18 Years Old
The workshop breathes the way a living thing does, filling me with life and energy. I notice it every morning, the slow in-and-out of warm air through the cracked windows, the faint metallic creak of the hinges when the large wooden door settles into its grooves, the quiet ticking of cooling steel that sounds like a thousand tiny clocks ticking. The workshop smells like iron and oil and old wood soaked with years of sweat and patience. It smells like my childhood. It smells of many happy years with my dad, where he taught me everything I know about metal sculpting.
I stand at the central table with my gloves tucked into my back pocket, sleeves rolled to my elbows, palms blackened even though the day has barely begun. The sun streams through the old windows in a pretty pale gold, landing on the curls of the metal shavings like scattered stars. My sculpture sits in front of me, halffinished.
It’s supposed to be a bird, not a perfect bird with feathers, but a wide metal bird with stretched wings and a curved neck that looks up into the sky. It represents appreciating the moment and seizing the day. Everything my dad has always taught me.
I run my thumb over the edge of one of the unfinished wings, and the steel is cool and rough, sharp in places, and uneven in others. I like that. I like when the piece still shows the mistakes I made and the developing stages of love that went into it, like the places where I bent it wrong and had to start again, the seams where heat bonded the metal for a touch too long. It’s perfect in its imperfection.
I smile to myself when I hear my dad humming behind me. This is the place you will always find him. His safe haven.
I laugh as he hums in an off-key tune I don’t recognize, something he invents on the spot, typical dad behavior. He’s sorting out scrap at the back of the workshop, his large hands moving carefully through jagged pieces like he’s handling glass instead of rusted steel. Every so often there’s the hollow clang of metal against metal as he drops something into a bin, making me jump.
“Found any good stuff yet?” I ask.
“Not yet, but hopefully patience will pay off as I’ll be pissed if we end up with nothing good out of this,” he says.
I turn and pick up my hammer and test its weight in my hand. The handle is smooth where my dad has worn it down from years of abuse with his hands, many yearsbefore mine ever touched it. I can almost picture him as a younger guy, with his hair darker instead of its current gray, bent over this same table that I’m using, shaping things out of stubborn materials.
I strike the wing gently, adjusting the curve, listening to the note it makes. Too high. I shift the angle and tap again. That’s better.
A mixture of sounds fills the workshop, creating the perfect backdrop.
Dad walks over, wiping his hands on a rag, and leans against the table, studying my progress without touching anything. He never touches while I’m working. Says it’s bad luck to interrupt a conversation between an artist and his piece. One of his many sayings.
“Looks like it might take off and steal my truck,” he says, and I grin.
“That’s the goal. A mechanical thief in the making.”
“Thats ambitious,” he snorts.
We stand there for a moment, side by side, looking at the sculpture. The bird’s body is made from curved scraps welded together like overlapping scales. Its head is still in rough shape, not finished, but I’m making progress. One eye socket is empty and the wings are uneven, one slightly higher than the other.
“You give it a name yet?” he asks.
“Not until it earns one.”
“Thats a good rule to have, not to jinx it.”
I nod and go back to work, heating a thin strip of steel in the small forge. The metal glows a dull orange, like a beautiful summer sunset. I bend it slowly with precision,forming the delicate bones of the wing. Sweat slides down my temple and drips onto the concrete, vanishing into the hard surface. It gets so fucking hot in here, sweat is a side effect.
Dad watches me the way he always does, quiet and thoughtful, like he’s memorizing the motion of my hands. Standing over me with pride.
“You know,” he says eventually, “when you were five, you tried to weld your shoelaces together.”
“They were getting untied,” I laugh, barely recalling the incident. I was quite the handful back then.
“You nearly set yourself on fire.”
“Minor detail in creating a life changing creation.”
He smiles, soft and crooked, the same smile that’s patched up every mistake I’ve ever made. Comforted me when we grieved the loss of my mom. He has been my one constant. My hero.
“You’ve come a long way from that.”
“I just… like it. Being here makes me happy, like I have a purpose. An outlet,” I say, feeling embarrassed.
