'Will we ever be safe again?' I asked her.
She shook her head. 'Never. Better get used to it.'
It struck me how different she was from Katherine, how much more independent. But then Katherine was looking after our daughter, which rather put a dampener on the independence thing.
Something had changed, though. Usually when I spoke with Katherine there was a bitterness from things unsaid or things that should never have been said that our separation hadn't salved. Like an open wound, it festered between us and leaked poison into my relationship with my daughter. But this morning had been different. I found myself worrying about Katherine and Alex, their safety and welfare still forward in my thoughts, but I wasn't left with the feeling that I had failed to meet even the basic standards of fatherhood. I didn't feel bitter about what she'd said, or not said. I was just worried, scared even.
I realised I loved them both. I loved Alex, of course, she was my daughter and the centre of my world, but it was a shock to realise I still loved Katherine. I had thought all of that had been burned up in the conflagration that was our divorce. Instead I found I still cared for her and it still mattered to me that she was safe, and if possible, happy. It was like putting down a burden I hadn't realised I been carrying. Perhaps I had finally begun to heal.
I had been daydreaming and came back to myself looking down into dark green eyes full of sky. She was watching me.
'You were miles away,' she said.
'I was thinking.'
'What about?'
'About how a woman I've known for a little over fortyeight hours could turn my life upside down and hand it back to me.'
She shoved me playfully in the chest and, unbalanced, I rolled backwards. She scrabbled to her feet and leapt on top of me landing on my stomach. Catching hold of my wrists she pinned them to the grass with unexpected strength and then pressed her lips to mine until I stopped struggling and started cooperating.
She rubbed the end of her nose against mine. Shadowed by her hair, I looked up into her eyes seeing the green spark in them rekindled.
'You're insatiable,' I told her.
'Impossible,' she agreed, nodding slowly and brushing my nose with hers. That look of proprietary possessiveness came back into her eyes.
'Don't say it,' I told her.
She leapt to her feet and grabbed her bag in one fluid movement and was walking off across the field while I was still getting to my feet.
'You'd better get used to it,' she called over her shoulder.
I trailed after her, shaking my head and wondering what on earth I had got myself into.
The lane to the farm was bright with sunshine and filled with wildlife. A fox trotted casually across our path and we saw clouds of starlings circling overhead until they wheeled away. Kestrels hovered overhead searching for tiny prey in the grass, ignored by the sheep grazing in the fields beyond the wire fences. Blackbird curled her hand in mine and I was able to pretend for a while that we were simply walking.
As we approached the farm, though, the mood became more sober. The air downwind of the farm was tainted by the smell of charcoal and the hint of iron on the air had my breath catching in the back of my throat and so I avoided breathing in the smoke that was turned, twisted and swept away by the fickle breeze.
The dogs announced our arrival with a frenzy of barking; the smaller bitch would come nowhere near us but barked from the safety of the kitchen door. Jeff Highsmith came down to the gates for us, looking tired and smudged with charcoal and soot from his labours.
'It's almost done,' he told us. 'Dad's just finishing grinding off the edge.'
He took us across the courtyard and into the kitchen, where his wife was waiting and then left us with her to go and see how the work progressed. Meg Highsmith greeted us formally but politely in a way that made me wonder what her husband had said to her. She offered us lunch but we declined on the basis that we had so recently had breakfast.
'A cup of coffee would be most welcome, though,' Blackbird suggested.
Blackbird and I sat at the kitchen table as she busied herself around the kitchen preparing lunch for her family and coffee for us.
After a few minutes Jeff, his father, and his daughter filed in.
'There,' he said. 'Done.' He placed the newly finished knife in the centre of the table with a flourish.
Blackbird and I looked at each other. The knife sat there, inert, innocuous, unremarkable.
'Something's wrong,' we said in unison.
TWENTY-ONE
We sat around the table in the kitchen, Ben, Jeff, Lisa and James opposite Blackbird and I, while Meg fussed around us.
'I still don't see the difference,' Ben Highsmith repeated, scratching his head.
'Believe me,' I told him, 'We would not be sitting here talking like this if it was remotely like the Quick Knife.'
'But we made it the same,' he protested.
'And it's definitely iron,' Blackbird said. 'But not like the Quick Knife. Rabbit is right; we would be able to tell straight away if it was the same. We would know as soon as you brought it anywhere near us, either of us.'
Our hopes of restoring the knife to this year's ceremony and reinforcing the barrier against the Seventh Court were melting away.
'Do you know anyone else, anyone you could recommend?' I hated to ask, but it was all I could think of.
Ben Highsmith blustered, but it was his son who answered.
'There's no one else does the kind of work you need. That's why we've kept the skills alive all these generations. And there's none alive that's better with iron than Dad. Dad, sit down, he's only asking what you'd ask in his place.'
Ben had stood up ready to defend his honour, but then sighed and slumped back into his seat, resting his chin in his hands. 'I s'pose,' he admitted.
'Are you sure there's no way of mending the old one? I mean, it's potent enough, it's just not in one piece,' Blackbird asked him.
Ben answered. 'No, No. It won't take a weld and it can't be braised. Melting down the metal will return it to solid iron, but not in the way you want. Broken is broken with cold iron.'
We lapsed into silence again.
'Can I see the broken one?' Lisa asked.
She hadn't said a word until now, sitting close to her grandfather as if she dwelt in his shadow. He was as startled as we were that she'd spoken.
'Fetch it out for her, will you?' he asked me.
Blackbird unzipped her bag and extracted the box with the knives in it, sliding it across the table towards them. 'If you don't mind, Rabbit and I will go and stand in the yard while you look at it.'
They waited while we stood and trooped outside into the yard. Even then, the prickling sensation down my spine, the ache in my bones, told me the moment the box was opened.
'What are we going to do now?' I asked Blackbird.
'I don't know what we can do. Get them to make another? Is there any reason it would be better than the one they've already made? Maybe they've lost the art, in which case we can only ask them to experiment and try and regain it. Whatever happens it will be too late for this year, maybe too late for all of us. If the barrier collapses…' She let the words trail away and kicked a stone across the yard. It bounced unevenly across the concrete.
I felt the dull ache subside and knew they had finished examining the knife before Ben Highsmith emerged, his granddaughter trailing behind him, her father following her out to stand watch behind them.
