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more, and a great deal of effort, Sand managed to raise one of the anvils into place on the only ash log left mostly whole in the smithy.
    Sand almost danced a little jig as he untied the rope from his new anvil, then stepped back to examine his nearly orderly corner of the smithy.
    â€œWell, you’re nothing special,” he told the anvil, grinning. “Just a plain, square anvil, and one worse for wear.” He rubbed the corner that had been sheared off in the sundering. “But you have a smooth face, and you’re ready for hot metal and heavy hammers.”
    His grin faded slowly as he realized something.
    â€œAnd you’re ready for cold metal and lighter strikes as well,” he said, smacking his forehead. He picked up his hammer. “I—I’m an idiot.”
    He strode away from the forge, stomping into the kitchen with anger that was directed only at himself. He collected a half dozen broken copper things, and whacked them quickly into a shape. Copper required no heat to reshape, just a strong hammer—and he could have had a strong hammer his very first day in the castle, if he’d taken the time to mend one.
    â€œIdiot,” he said again, sighing, even though he was glad to have a cup to drink from, and a proper cooking pot. Coppersmithing was no less an art than blacksmithing—he just hadn’t thought of it.
    His ill humor faded as he took his first drink from a proper cup. Then he returned to the smithy and fired up the forge. He set to work on repairing a set of tongs, dreading how slowly the work would go. He would have to let the metal completely cool every so often—for he had no tongs to save his fingers. But once he was striking orange-yellow iron again, and watching black scale crowd to the surface of the steel and fall away, he felt like himself for the first time since he’d awakened in the ashes of that long-dead fire.
    The hammer blows seemed to match the beating of his heart, or maybe his heart was timing itself to the hammer. It didn’t matter which. He had a smithy, and everything he needed to do some proper mending.
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    D AY BY DAY , S AND’S wrist improved, and by the time he had a working forge, all he could see of his wound was a raised, red-purple scar where the thorn had gone in. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he would awaken with a start, as a flash of pain shot through his wrist. But for the most part, his scar was quiescent.
    It was time to challenge the thorns again.
    He tried burning them a few more times, but it didn’t matter how big he made the fire, the thorns immediately extinguished it.
    Now that he had a forge and an anvil, though—he could mend a shovel and dig underneath the wall.
    But he did not dig far before he realized that the thorns had roots as deep as the branches were high, and as lively. He backfilled his hole of squirming, reaching roots as fast as he could, and turned the shovel to another purpose.
    Spring warmed the ground, and outside the castle, signs of new, green life dotted the distant trees and fields. Sand harvested seeds from inside dried apples and pears, whole kernels of grain on wheat sheaves, partial onion bulbs and garlic sets, and peas in broken pods, all dried. He planted them carefully in the gardens and watered them, hoping he might someday have fresh food.
    But the next day, it snowed, a return to winter in the midst of early spring.
    The chill in the air wasn’t very intense, in spite of the layer of wet snow. The early spring mud hadn’t hardened at all underneath the layer of white, and Sand left dark footprints everywhere he walked in the wetness.
    Sand scooped up a handful of snow and packed it into a ball. His fingers numbed quickly, but he held onto the ball for a long moment, wondering to what purpose he could put it. If he had a pressing need for ice in midsummer, he could take a bunch of these snowballs to the dungeons and store them layered with cloth