Five tries, and the knife was sharp.

Sarah drew it along the edge of her thumb, drawing blood, too sharp to sting.

It was her twelfth.

She wiped it on her sleeve, wrapped it in flannel, put it in the drawer beside the rest of them. She was creating an arsenal, really, and it unnerved her.

A boning knife, a hunting knife, a serrated knife. A double-bladed knife nearly long enough to be a short sword. A flat-ended knife, the cousin of a machete. All of them made from railroad spikes, heated and beaten and ground down.

She sucked the pad of her thumb, tried to feel the accomplishment and fulfillment of a job well done, but already she could feel the new knife forming in her head – a curved blade, a forked tip, like a wicked cheese-knife.

There would be no rest until this new little knife was realized; Sarah took a spike from the pile and started the bellows.