The Art of Happiness And Other Short Stories

An Act of Bravery

The way Wale the blacksmith saw it, he could do one of two things: keep his extraordinary tale to himself and the entire village died, or tell the queen the tale and the entire village died, beginning with his death. Ordinarily, his preference was for the first. The second would be a foolish act of bravery.

The talk or act of anything out of the ordinary was forbidden in the Black-Avenue-Crescent village. Farmers were expected to farm, fishermen to fish, blacksmiths to work the metal and so on.

Wale's father and his father's father were blacksmiths. There was nothing extraordinary about his being a blacksmith or in fact anything about him.

That changed two days ago when he went down to the stream to fetch a pail of water. He didn't wake up to the sound of the first crow like he usually did and he found himself cutting through the forest to save some time. At the stream, he whistled away as he bent down to scoop some water into his pail to wash away the dirt at the bottom.

That was when something out of the ordinary caught his eye. There was a little boy playing with fire, not in the ordinary sense, but rather with spurts of fire shooting out his hands. Wale dropped his pail, moved forward to get a closer look and found something even more extraordinary. There were several other boys standing closely in a circle, all wearing green cloaks, and a flat black cap with fire shooting out of their hands. Their eyes were rolled into the back of their heads as though there were in a trance.

Wale dropped his pail and ran as fast as his legs could carry him back to the village. He bumped into the grumpy old man who lived next to him. The man picked himself off the floor and whacked Wale in the head with his walking stick. He deserved it. He forgot his manners, failed to apologize and dashed for his hut.

A few days ago, touch-me-not, a village on the outskirts of Black-Avenue-Crescent was burned to the ground with no one left to tell the tale. All signs pointed at the boys as the culprits and were most likely headed to Black-Avenue-Crescent to destroy them. He could tell the queen the village was in danger, and they could all run for their lives, but that wasn't how things worked. He was supposed to be a simple blacksmith and not tell wild tales of boys who could control fire. Such talks would only see him lose his head.

He put the thought of out his mind and settled down to eat breakfast when he felt something wrong. The air around him got thicker and hotter. The boys were very close. Telling the queen now would do no good and dead men showed no bravery. He stuffed his chisels, hammers and tongs into a sack and ran for his life.