Selected Story - June, 2021
Forbidden Fruit by Rajil Ali - Pakistan
There in the woods in the suburbs of Milan of ancient Rome, laid a village Bendela by the Lake Alserio; miles away from the chaos of battles that had engulfed its civilization in the twelfth century. Mann Lorenz, a renowned blacksmith of state legions, lived there with his wife and two children. He was among the best in making swords and shields in the whole state. A skilled warrior who once escaped death by getting badly injured during the Battle of Legnano; fought between the Holy Roman Empire of Frederick Barbarossa of and the Lombard League, a small coalition of states fighting to retain their freedom. The pride they carried by defeating the royal army matched no parallel.
Lorenz was a respectable figure of the neighbourhood. A kind, courteous, forthcoming wise-headed counselor in helping people to resolve their mutual and personal issues. Then, there was a secret side of his personality; a person who would see the world with an eye of a poet, a critical observer who would feel sensitive to things happening around him. Life was busy revolving around his work, family and friends, that’s what a man needs; ample loaf of bread on his dining table to feed himself and his family, a roof to shelter everyone he needs to and a livelihood that enables him to continue doing that!
When Lorenz wasn’t working, he would ride deep into the woods, up in the mountains, play his flute for hours and write his poetry, not a word of that diary anyone had ever read; furtively saved in the saddle pockets and transferred into a surreptitious wooden chest in his workshop. This went on until that night...
It was that typical winter night of the chilled blizzard dashing down from the Dolomites’ hillocks of Alps. The sky appeared darkened like a newly widowed Astrape; trying to pour down her tears through the silent storm with her dreadful lightening; the goddess falling upon the hundreds-of-meter-high pine trees, tearing them apart in two equal halves like a waste paper - yet the blacksmith was working alone late that night in his armor smithy by the lake; a few miles away from his home, in a quest against time to finish the finest set of swords he was about to consign. His striker had proceeded to his hometown due to his mother’s illness, leaving him with no option but to work without an assistant. It was when he heard someone crazily thumbing his forge’s iron-gate; initially, mistaken to be the call of hailstorm. As the knocking got desperate, he stopped polishing the sword he was working on…..
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