Isaac loved the Forge. It had been set by the beach so that the constant, stiff breeze could keep the fires stoked and hot. He didn’t quite understand how they dug crap out of the craggy mountains and then turned it into red molten rock, and he didn’t really care. It was that point in the process—and everything after—that consumed him. He loved the heat and the steam, the deep, glowing reds and the blinding, white-hot brilliance of the sparks. He loved the smell of ozone and burning cinders, the smoke, the constant clanging of metal against metal.

Yep. He wanted to be a blacksmith, and had been training under Captain Sparks for almost a month, now. No one else joined him in calling Rodrigo that ridiculous name yet, but Isaac had set a goal for the moniker to stick by winter. It was next-level genius and no one could convince him otherwise.

Today was Isaac’s day off. He had plans. Miyoko, Dominic, Trish, Sadina, a few others—they’d been planning for two weeks to row the kayaks out to Stone Point and swim through the caves and jump off the cliffs. Chances were Dominic would strip naked and belly flop from the edge they called the Dead Man’s Brow, and hilarity would ensue. Isaac couldn’t miss out on such festivities and still feel like a respectable knucklehead. After all, Stone Point had been forbidden after the third drowning in five years, and he himself had never actually been that far. Which just made it all the more appealing. Kind of.

But none of these thoughts lessened his itch. Hearing the clank-clank-clanks, regular and rhythmic, like the beating of an iron heart, drew him as if a rope had been tied around his waist. He loved to watch Captain Sparks in action, and rowing, swimming, jumping for hours suddenly seemed like a lot of work.

Like an old sailor succumbing to the lustful call of the sirens—a story his grandpa had told him over the protestations of everyone else around the fire at the time—Isaac quickly got dressed and headed out the door of his yurt. Headed toward the flames and the molten metal.

His yurt. He still hadn’t gotten used to that. He had his own yurt, the one-room dwelling in which most people of the island lived—except the ones crazy enough to have more than a couple of kids. Isaac had built and moved into his yurt just three months ago and still basked in the sense of accomplishment.