Cerené cleaned the iron broom with the tip of the red dress Shew had dressed her with in the Field of Dreams—she was wearing a ragged blue servant’s dress Tabula had given her today.
After cleaning it, Cerené pulled the broom up to her mouth and blew into it, producing a sound like a heavy fart. She blew into it one more time then peeked with one eye into the hole of her tool. “You still don’t know what it is?”
Impatiently, Shew shook her head into a no.
“A blowpipe,” Cerené whispered. “The first part of the tool, the Brains, is the furnace we came all the way for. The second part is the blowpipe, a magical one, in fact.”
“What does a blowpipe do?” Shew said.
“It’s better than a magic wand!”
14
A Breath of Magic
“Better than a magic wand?” Shew wondered.
“A blowpipe is even better than a magic wand. I’ll show you in a minute,” Cerené held the blowpipe underneath her armpit and clapped her hands together three times. The furnace lit up. “This isn’t my magic by the way. I saw Baba Yaga do it.”
“At least she didn’t say ‘Open Sesame,’” Shew mumbled—another thing she’d read in one of her victims’ books. Cerené didn’t quite get what she was talking about.
Under the shimmering fire of the furnace, Cerené smeared one end of the pipe with the Heart’s purple and sticky mix. It stuck to it looking like a liquid lump. She gazed one last time toward Shew, winked at her, and pushed the sticky end of the blow pipe into the furnace, holding the other end with the two folded layers of the red dress.
Swoosh went the mixture once it met with the fire from the furnace. Slowly, it turned into a molten concoction, and the purple color turned into a hellish orange like the surface of coals on fire.
“Beware!” Shew warned Cerené as the fire flickered.
Although the blowpipe was too long and a bit heavy for Cerené, she titled her head back, smiling with a sweaty face at Shew.
“Why are you smiling in God’s name?” Shew’s face knotted.
“You care about me?” Cerené asked, almost losing balance.
Shew shrieked, but Cerené adjusted her small feet awkwardly as if walking the tight rope in the circus.
For the first time, Shew finally understood what was so strange about Cerené’s shoes. They were made of … glass.
Shew furrowed her eyebrows.
The black texture she couldn’t identify before was as flexible as rubber but looked like dirty glass in the shimmering fire. She could tell they were glass because of the way their surface reflected the shimmering light of the fire from the furnace. Momentarily, she thought the shoes were made of Obsidian stones, but no, this was glass, an unusually flexible type of glass that fooled the observer into thinking they were poor quality leather.
There was something else about the shoes, nonetheless. It was what had caught Shew’s attention here in front of the furnace. When Cerené was about to lose balance from tilting her head back and holding the heavy blowpipe, the shoes helped Cerené keep her balance. Cerené’s shoes were not ordinary in any way.
“Don’t you worry, Joy,” Cerené gritted her teeth, gripping the blowpipe with both hands as if she were pulling a stubborn fish out of the water. “I’ve done this many times.”
Having gained balance again, Cerené pulled the blowpipe out and placed it on what looked like a butcher’s table, the glowing molten mixture glued to the blowpipe’s far end.
Cerené knelt down and started blowing from her end into the blowpipe, shaping the molten into a bubbly looking mold. The molten breathed like a frog’s throat when she blew. The fiery substance looked as if it were alive; submitting to the amount of air Cerené blew into it through the pipe.
“Wow,” Shew said. “How do you do that? What is that?”
Cerené took a deep breath, tired after blowing, “You’ll see in a second,” she said. “Could you pull a rock from the floor and run it over the mold?”
“What?”
“Just do it,” Cerené said. “While I blow into the pipe, shape the mold however you like. Did you ever carve wood or work with clay?”
Shew said nothing. She felt embarrassed that she never had.
“Don’t worry,” Cerené understood. “Use your imagination to make this into whatever you like. I will see what shape you’re thinking of and then I will breathe into it to create what you’re imagining. I’m very good at it.”
“I can’t.”
“Just think of something. Make it into a vase or cup,” Cerené’s cheeks had reddened like coals from under the sticky ashes on her face.
Although Shew didn’t know what this was, she picked a rock and started molding the fiery clay-like thing. She worried briefly about the unbearable heat, but then started doing as Cerené had directed her.