The Hammer That Couldn’t Dream
by Anna Madden
There were few souls who didn’t consider visiting the Night Moth in a desperate hour. Hers was a legend old as the moon, a light drawn from falling shadows.
In my youth, I was no different than most boys: eager for renown, for glory and conquest. I wanted to become a Hammer with a set of clawplate armor. I hoped to carve my name into metal and bone—its legacy a collective memory before my twilight years.
I had a dream to live a tale that wouldn’t be forgotten. I didn’t see the nightmare paired with it, spun on silken thread.
The youths I trained with by day would whisper their dreams at night. Our wildest hopes revealed beneath the soft haze of starlight, our words like seeds. Some were grounded to dust by the first strike of an opponent. Others grew into small green leaves on a sapling’s trunk, reaching skyward.
And always there was the allure of the Night Moth. With her old magic, gains were possible without patience. A temptation, for I was unforged, the metal of my soul soft. But a Hammer needed to learn his limitations before striking against them.
One eve, a boy who couldn’t afford his next season of training whispered his dream to find the silver he needed. His eyes took on a strange glint. He left at daybreak and took the gray road to the valley of the night. When he returned, he had the silver.
Those who visited the Night Moth got what they asked for, but slept their nights in a restless, splintered kind of slumber. The boy who’d plucked silver from a dead aspen branch wasted away, purple-bruised crescents beneath eyes that once shone so brightly. He never became a Hammer, like me.
I grew tall and strong. I learned to strike hard, to disassemble my opponents with the fewest hits, to shatter their strength with my own.
We paid our master to teach us how to fight. Few of us were worthy to become a Hammer like him, our individual skills as variegated as the seasons. Still, a few tried to claim his glory for their own. Ambition fractured their bones and bruised their egos. Defeated, they took lesser roles as guardsmen and night watchers, even common mercenaries.
I was the last to voice a challenge. The master sparred with me. His form excellent, his technique flowing, but his strikes had dulled with time, unable to match the youthful edge of mine. I bested him, earning his set of clawplate armor. When he took it off, he sighed in relief and turned to dust.
I became a Hammer, the rarest of warriors, when I put it on. If I received a severe wound, the armor sent out spines, curved and serrated, holding torn muscle and skin or shattered bone into place. The spined claws released spores into my veins, suppressing pain.
It made it so I didn’t feel anything.
I remembered the boy I’d once been, my truths whispered into the night. Even the strongest metal could break. With each fight, my clawplate earned spiderweb cracks, tearing itself apart even as it held more and more of me together.
I grew restless. My victories were hollow. My name was sought out by queens and usurpers alike. Still, there were limitations to a Hammer, I realized. I was a tool serving other’s hands. I’d lost my dream somewhere, fighting while completely numbed, unfeeling.
There was rust flecking inside me. Life wasn’t worth its breath without a spark to chase. I thought of the Night Moth, drawn to a light of what-ifs while surrounded in darkness. Perhaps she granted men their deepest desires because she couldn’t do the same for herself.
My path, once true and bright, was lost.
I took the gray road to the valley of night, the dirt smooth and ethereal and boundless as the dusk-kissed horizon. I found a shadowed wood filled with silken threads and half-eaten aspens, their dead branches shivering in the breeze.
I stood before a legend as a victim, a hunter, a beggar. I hoped to reclaim what I had lost. I had no dream for her to grant, but I flocked all the same like a god to a burning offering.
The Night Moth was not what I expected.
A woman without wither, crowned by raven hair and half-formed wings that would never fly. Black eyes framed skin like the petals of a snowdrop after a late May frost. A cluster of white-satin moths swarmed her, bright as seed pearls against the night sky.
I saw in her eyes I’d never best her in a fight. If I split open her veins, I doubt blood would’ve seeped free.
I bowed, waiting for a strike, but she leaned close, kissing the back of my helmet. The act held empathy for what I’d become. I felt sure of it.
White-satin moths landed on my armor. They laid pale eggs on my clawplate, sealing off the cracks. Perhaps my blood would feed their young like the sap of the aspens they’d already partially devoured.
My dream had been a nightmare in the making from the start, the silken threads of my own tangled weave, unraveling. But I’d realized too late the truth of any dream’s full realization: whether granted by old magic, or earned without it—there was always a cost in obtaining what we craved most.
I was the Hammer that couldn’t dream, so I gave myself to the Night Moth, willingly. I pledged myself as a guardian, my vow to protect the lesson she taught over and over: to see nightmares mature to fruition. To watch the sharp thorns grow alongside the flower.
About the Author
Anna Madden lives in North Texas, where the prairie reaches long tallgrass fingers toward the woods. Her fiction has appeared in Hexagon, Zooscape, Orion's Belt, Medusa Tales, PodCastle, Metaphorosis, and elsewhere. She has an English degree from the University of Missouri—Kansas City. In free time she gardens, mountain bikes, and makes birch forests out of stained glass. Follow her on Twitter @anna_madden_ or visit her website at annamadden.com.
© The Hammer That Couldn’t Dream by Anna Madden. 2022. All rights reserved.
