What Remains in the Fire

Ashes to Ashes

The forge was dying.

It hadn't been obvious at first — just a crack in the chimney, soot collecting faster than usual, the old bellows taking more effort to squeeze. But Chris knew how things ended. He’d spent his life making things from fire and iron. Everything breaks, given enough time and heat.

Still, he didn’t think she would break.

The forge wasn’t just a workshop. It was her. Her voice in the hiss of quenched metal. Her breath in the smoke. Her strength in the anvil’s song.

He sat on the stone bench outside the forge, the sun low and angry behind the hills. He wasn’t old, not yet, but the years had thickened his fingers and turned his hair to ash. He’d built this forge with his wife, Rebecca, twenty-three years ago, brick by brick, hammer by hammer. She died six years back. The forge had become something else after that. Not just a memory — something alive. Possessed, maybe.

He didn't talk about it with the townspeople. They came for his blades, his horseshoes, his hinges. Not his grief. But sometimes, when he worked too late and let his mind go blank, the flames would flare with no wind. Tools would shift on the walls. Once, when he sliced his palm open on a shard of steel, the forge hissed so violently the chimney cracked down the middle.

He should have left then.

But love’s a kind of madness. Especially when it’s all that’s left.

Tonight, he’d closed early. No orders. No hammering. Just silence, and a wrapped package in his lap. Inside — the deed to the forge and a letter for Dana, his apprentice, who thought he was just a grumpy craftsman with nothing better to do than teach a girl how to temper iron.

She didn’t know the forge hated her.

Maybe “hate” was the wrong word. But the way the flames dulled when she stepped inside. The way tools vanished around her. She was meant to take over, but the forge had other ideas.

Last week, Dana came in early. Chris was out back chopping kindling. He found her on the floor, barely breathing, the air thick with smoke. She said it was an accident. That she tripped. But her eyebrows were gone, and her hands had red fingerprints across them like the forge had grabbed her.

He didn’t tell her what he suspected. What he knew.

Instead, he made a choice.

He would destroy the forge. The last piece of Rebecca. The thing that had kept him alive. The thing that wanted to keep him only for itself.

Chris stood, knees cracking. He walked into the forge. The coals still glowed in the hearth. The walls creaked like they were listening.

He lit the oil lamp, then the others, until the room was golden and alive. Every tool hung in its place. Every surface scrubbed clean. The forge looked… content.

He’d spent the day preparing. The far wall was lined with barrels of pitch and kindling. The chimney stuffed with rags. He’d salted the corners with sulfur, just to be sure.

He stepped to the center of the room.

“I loved you,” he said, his voice steady. “But this isn’t love anymore.”

The flames sparked. The coals burned a shade too red.

“You tried to hurt her. You tried to keep me.”

A whisper stirred behind him — no sound, just the sense of breath on his neck.

“You’re not her.”

He struck the match.

The silence snapped. The forge howled. Flames burst up the chimney, despite the rags. Tools flung themselves from the walls. A hammer hit him in the shoulder, and he staggered.

“Rebecca's gone!” he shouted.

The fire surged, licking up the walls, catching the barrels. Smoke choked the air. The forge screamed — metal against metal, shrieking. He backed toward the door, arm over his face, feeling the heat bite at his skin.

The forge roared her name.

He paused at the threshold. The flames silhouetted everything they’d built. The hearth they laid brick by brick. The stool where she used to sit, humming while he worked. The bent tongs she refused to throw away.

He saw her.

Just for a second.

Standing in the fire. Not burning. Just… watching. Not Rebecca. But something shaped like her. Something made of smoke and memory.

He almost stepped back in.

Instead, he threw the matchbook into the blaze.

The fire bloomed. The barrels went. The roof followed. He stumbled outside, coughing, tears streaking through soot. The night lit up behind him like a funeral pyre.

Neighbors came running. Someone tried to go for water. Chris waved them off. They didn’t understand.

Dana was there, barefoot and terrified, eyes wide as plates.

“You — what happened?” she cried. “What did you—?”

He sank to his knees. The heat kissed his back like a lover’s last touch.

“I let her go,” he said.

Six months later, the land was still blackened, but the town helped clear the debris. Dana was building something new on the ashes — her own forge. Not a replacement. A beginning.

Chris didn’t forge anymore. He watched. Guided. Taught.

He kept a lump of half-melted iron on his windowsill. A reminder.

Love isn’t supposed to hold you hostage. Even if it burns warm. Even if it whispers in a voice you used to know.

Sometimes, to keep something sacred, you have to burn it down.

Chris moved slower now, but his hands still remembered. Mornings found him on Dana's construction site, measuring beams, setting stone, showing her how to build a chimney that wouldn’t crack in the cold. She asked questions. He answered most of them.

Not all.

He never talked about that night. Not the voice in the fire, not the shape in the flames. Not the way the forge had screamed her name. It stayed locked behind his ribs, tight as a blacksmith’s grip.

But sometimes, in the new stillness of his days, he’d reach for a hammer that wasn’t there. Feel the ghost heat of the forge on his neck. And wonder — what was she?

Not Rebecca. Not really.

But something tied to her. Something drawn from his grief, or maybe his guilt. He didn’t know. Didn’t want to. Some questions were better left unanswered.

“Hold this steady,” he said one afternoon, as Dana braced a support beam. “Don’t let it lean or the roof’ll buckle come winter.”

“Got it,” she said, jaw tight with focus. Her hands didn’t shake.

She was good with her hands — better than he’d been at her age. More patient. Less angry.

Afterward, they sat under the half-framed roof and shared tea from a tin cup. She passed it to him, eyes still searching.

“You’re not going to rebuild it, are you?” she asked.

He shook his head slowly. “That forge was never meant to last,” he murmured. “It stayed long enough to teach me what it needed to.”

She traced a knot in the wood with her thumb. “It taught me, too.”

He gave her a sidelong glance. “It tried to kill you.”

“It also made me realize I don’t want to be anyone’s apprentice forever.”

A smile threatened the corner of his mouth. “You’ll do better than me.”

She sipped the tea, then set it down. “I don’t think it hated me,” she said after a pause. “I think it was afraid. Afraid of change. Of someone else taking over. Afraid of being forgotten.”

He stared into the horizon. A flock of birds scattered above the hills.

“Maybe,” he said. “But love that clings becomes something else.”

Dana didn’t argue. She pulled her coat tighter, then nudged his boot with hers.

“You ever think of quitting while you’re ahead?” she asked, lips quirking.

Chris raised a brow. “This your subtle way of saying I’m in the way?”

“No,” she said, smiling faintly. “Just wondering when you’re going to admit you actually like helping.”

He grunted. “Ask me when the chimney’s finished.”

That night, Chris dreamed of fire again. But this time, it didn’t rage. It flickered gently, like a candle in a room long dark. And in the center, she sat. Rebecca. Not the specter. Not the heat. Just her. As she was.

“You did the right thing,” she said.

His voice caught. “Then why do I feel like I buried you again?”

“Because you had to.”

She stood, walked to him, took his hand. It felt solid. Warm. Real.

“I was never in the forge,” she said. “You were.”

He woke before dawn, heart hollowed and light.

By autumn, Dana's forge was nearly complete. Sleek, clean lines. Good airflow. A strong chimney. She’d carved her name into the cornerstone, a simple D.H. Nothing fancy.

Chris brought over a gift on the last day of building — a hammer, old but balanced, handle smooth from years of use. She looked at it, then at him.

“Yours?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Hers,” he said.

Dana didn’t ask which “her.” She didn’t have to.

Instead, she placed it on the wall above the new anvil.

“Then it’ll be the first tool hung. The first remembered.”

That night, Chris stood outside, watching the smoke rise from her first fire. It was clean. Bright. No whispers. No shadows.

Just heat, and craft, and promise.

And for the first time in years, Chris turned and walked home without looking back.