Deacon finally pulled the pipe out of the warmer. “Come here, Al. I’ll show you how to sculpt glass.”
“Me?” Allison said, pointing at herself and looking around.
“You,” Deacon said. “Come on. I taught Dad, I taught Thor, I taught Ro. I can teach you.”
“Are you sure this is safe?” Allison asked as she crept from her chair over to the giant round furnace near the wall.
“Safe enough,” he said. “Long as you don’t do something actively stupid, we’ll be fine.”
“Okay, I’ll stick to passively stupid. What now?”
“Gathering glass,” he said, opening the small round hole to the crucible. As soon as that door opened, Allison felt her mascara melt and congeal. She stepped back, watching from a safe distance as Deacon inserted the pipe into the crucible and started to rotate it again. Standing up on her tiptoes she peeked in and saw a round blob of orange goo taking shape at the end of Deacon’s pipe.
“What are we making?” Allison asked him.
“You wanted a dragon, didn’t you?”
“It’ll have to be a baby dragon,” she said. “My rental car’s a compact.”
“I can make a baby dragon,” Deacon said. “Go to the jars over there and pick out a color.”
Allison eyed the jars and picked a blue halfway between sea and sky.
“Now what?” she asked.
Thora came over and took the jar from Allison’s hand, opened it and spread color chips the size of Legos on a metal table.
“Step back a little,” Deacon said as he brought the spinning orange blob of glass to the table. He dipped the ball into the color chips and they instantly melted into the blazing-hot glass.
“I’m going to do the hard part now,” Deacon said. “But you’re going to twist the tail. Ready?”
“For what?” Allison asked.
“To be impressed,” Deacon said, grinning again.
“Ready,” she said.
Deacon carried the blue blob on his pipe to a wooden stand. He grabbed giant metal tongs, dipped them into a bucket of water and before Allison could wrap her mind around his movements, he’d begun to spin the pipe and pinch the molten glass with his tongs. In seconds it seemed, the little ball turned into a vague lizard shape and then into a dragon with ears like a puppy and a scaly spine.
“That’s so bizarre,” Allison breathed. “You’re pulling glass like taffy.”
“Fun fact,” Deacon said. “Glass isn’t quite a solid or a liquid. It’s its own weird thing.”
“It doesn’t seem right that you can do that. It looks so solid,” Allison said.
“It’s already solidifying,” Deacon said. “Better make this quick.”
He dipped his tongs back into the water bucket and then passed them to her.
“What do I do?” she asked.
“Pull and twist, twist and pull,” Deacon said. “I’m talking about the glass, by the way.”
Allison grabbed the dragon’s tail with the tip of the tongs and did as Deacon asked, wincing as the glass stretched and turned and twisted.
“It’s like a piggy tail,” Thora said, kneeling at the stand to eye the creature. “He’s very cute.”
“He’s supposed to be scary,” Deacon said as he put on a large oven mitt. Using a wooden block he knocked the dragon off the end of the pipe and onto his gloved hand. “Maybe I can put some big teeth in his mouth.”
“No, I like him cute,” Allison said. And it was cute, this blue-green little beast with scales and claws and small enough to fit into the palms of her two hands. It was so cute she instinctively reached out to touch it. Thora immediately shoved Deacon so hard the dragon dropped out of his glove. When it landed on the floor, it didn’t break, but merely splatted like blue pancake batter.
“Oh, shit, I’m sorry,” Allison said.
“You okay?” Deacon asked, eyes wide.
“Fine, fine. Just...forgot it was still warm.”
“Warm?” Deacon said. “It’s nine-hundred degrees. You would have burned your hand off.”
“So much for not doing anything actively stupid,” Allison said, on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to break it.”
“I can make another one in five minutes,” Deacon said. “Can’t make another Allison. Good reflexes, Thor.”
Allison laughed that sort of relieved, terrified laugh of someone who’d dodged a bullet. But Thora wasn’t laughing. She grabbed Allison and hugged her tight again.
“You okay?” Thora asked.
“I’m fine. Except I feel like an idiot,” she said. “You saved me from a dragon. You should be knighted.”
“Sisters protect each other,” Thora said. “Right?”
“Right,” Allison said, trying to smile through her shaking. Thora had shoved Deacon so hard he probably had a bruise on his arm.
After the almost-tragedy, none of them were in the mood to keep playing in the hot shop. Deacon and Thora quickly finished up their paperwork while Allison poked around the front of the shop where Deacon’s premade items were for sale. Glass wind chimes, glass Christmas ornaments and her favorite—hourglasses filled with sand from Clark Beach.
She paused and studied one particularly strange glass sculpture sitting on a shelf—a skull with a large hole in the top.
“What’s this?” she asked. “You make a boo-boo, Deacon?” Allison pointed to the hole the head.
Deacon stood up and turned her way, his hand resting on Thora’s shoulder.
“Don’t ask what that is,” Deacon said. “Ask who.”
“Okay,” Allison said, happy to bite. “Who is this?”
“That’s Phineas Gage,” Deacon said. “He’s the guy who got the iron rod shot through his head in the 1800s. I think he was a railroad worker.”
“Oh, yeah,” Allison said, eyeing the quarter-sized hole in the glass skull. “I remember reading about him in high school. He survived, right?”
“Sort of,” Thora said. “He had a completely different personality after the accident. He was nice and polite and hard-working before. After the injury, he swore all the time, couldn’t hold a job very well. Dad said Phineas is the reason the science of neuroscience exists. People realized the personality is partly in the frontal lobe because of him. But don’t be impressed by Deacon’s nerdy art. He was trying to make a skeleton for Halloween. He popped a hole in that skull like a balloon, and then he pretended it was supposed to be Phineas Gage.”
“Hush, wench,” Deacon said. “I totally meant to do that.”
Allison rolled her eyes and let them get back to work.
What a picture-perfect life they led—a successful art gallery and studio in a quaint and scenic coastal town steps from the beach and half a mile from dense old-growth forest. More than that, however, Allison simply envied Deacon and Thora because of Deacon and Thora. Thora sat at her desk, Deacon hovering behind her chair as they quietly planned the weeks and months ahead—a gallery showing in Vancouver, a seminar Deacon would teach at a local college in summer. They were a brother-sister dream team, good partners making a successful business together. Even after Dr. Capello passed away and Roland returned to the monastery, Deacon and Thora would still have this shop and each other.
“Done,” Deacon said as he came out from behind Thora’s desk. “Sorry that took so long.”
“It’s fine. I love your store,” Allison said. “This place is like my dream come true.”
“You want to own a glass studio?” he asked.
“Bookstore, but close enough.”
“Why don’t you head home and check on Dad,” Thora said to Deacon as she switched off her computer. “I want to catch up with Allison.”
Deacon gave Thora a quick questioning look but then it was gone again in a flash.
“Sure,” he said. “See you two at home.” He headed out the door. A few seconds later, Allison heard his motorcycle rev up and disappear down the road. Thora locked up and they walked to Allison’s car together.
“I am sorry about almost, you know, burning my hand off,” Allison said once they were inside her car.
“We have liability insurance,” Thora said with a wave of her hand.
“Should I head straight home?” Allison asked. “Or do you need me to take some detours so you can drill me longer about Roland?”
“Ah,” Thora said, wrinkling her nose. “Busted. Well, you better take a detour.”