His grating voice shattered her dreams. This was not the man with a voice like music.

His hand that smelled of burning metal grabbed her doll and sent it flying toward the kiln. She rushed to catch the doll. Flames licked the cotton face and devoured the wool dress. Rebekah leaned over the ledge that faced the kiln and thrust her hand into the fire. Jumping back, she stuffed her fingers into her mouth to soothe the burnt flesh. Her doll sizzled into black smoke, gray ash, nothing.

Jacob the Fatherless bowed in mock courtesy and straightened, lifting his stomach with a groan. Spidery legs sprouted from his swollen body, and dark, knotted curls framed his bloated cheeks. “I am a blacksmith—a creator,” he said, his crossed eyes struggling for balance. “I melt iron into any shape and alloy I want. All my life I’ve worked toward a day when everything I melt will turn into gold.”

Her mind reeled, trying to contain the scream that choked her. Why had her mother abandoned her to this man?

He spat into the fire, tilted his head, and paused to relish the sizzle. “Your mother negotiated a bargain. She married you to Jacob the Fatherless. A man born without a father.”

Her mother’s lessons came to her rescue, and she gazed at Jacob with wet, violet eyes, blew on her hand, and fluttered her lashes, pretending fascination.

“Soon I’ll become the richest man in the Jewish Quarter. Do you know why? I’m one of the few who endures this fire. The heat has ignited a permanent furnace in my heart. Even in my sleep, flames lash behind my lids.” He shot another stream of spittle into the flames, then stared back at her. “I know a secret that will make me eternal like gold—remain forever in one form or another, liquid or solid. Then, like God, I’ll never die. Do you understand, Rebekah?”

Rebekah did not.

But that evening when she watched him melt objects in the man-sized furnace in the bedroom, she understood fear. Fear of the kiln, the fire, the madness in his eyes, the heat that turned into beads of sweat on his face while he molded metals into knives, cauldrons, and pots. In the kitchen, he nailed metal sheets on the counter and the wall behind the wood burner, in the dining room over the table and stools, in their bedroom on top of the baked-mud floors.

Past midnight, his eyes raked the house for scraps to feed his voracious flames. He formed ornamental trinkets from the remnants of metal and locked them in a box. He dangled the key in front of her face.

“Who are the trinkets for?” she asked, curiosity overcoming her fear.

He unbuttoned his coat and dropped the key in the secret pocket of his vest, stroking the place where it was buried. “One day you’ll know.”

When dawn glanced through the window, he nodded toward one of the pallets that flanked the kiln in the bedroom. “You may retire now.”