The dagger has always been mine.

 

It’s a foot long. The hilt has changed many times. Gold decorated it first, I think, cloisonné glass inlay, and a crystal as the pommel. My recall is distinct, but only has a snapshot of someone handing me the dagger. I felt its weight but had no context for the image. My continuous memory goes back about sixty years. I remember the 1980s. That’s when Judith passed. The 1940s are mostly gone.

 

The bladesmith at Edgar’s Edges turned the dagger over. He was elderly, with wispy gray hair, thin moustache, an interesting scar starting behind his right ear and ending on his neck.

 

“Are you Edgar?” I asked.

 

“My great-grandfather. We’ve been in business a hundred years next year. Not much I don’t know about knives.”

 

I had to agree. Sabers, rapiers, cutlasses, katanas, falchions decorated the walls. Even a claymore so large that only a great warrior could wield it. The swords needed dusting. Knives of every sort filled his glass display cases.

 

I put my hands in my pockets and relaxed. I like a family that goes way back. “It needs a new hilt.”

 

“I agree. A bit worn. Antelope antler?”

 

“I don’t remember.”

 

“And this blade.” He rubbed his index finger down its length. “It’s good you keep it oiled, but man, this pitting, the patina. Looks like iron, not steel. Museum iron. Do you know its provenance?”

 

I shrugged. “I’ve had it since I was a kid.”

 

“Whew! I believe you, but you don’t look over thirty. Even the hilt is older than that. The blade, though. It’s been around.”

 

Actually, I knew more than I told him. Every once in a while I become interested in who I am. My remembered bits don’t help. The dagger is all I have. Two years ago I visited the metallurgy department at the University of Colorado. The tech had told me, “More nickel and manganese in this than regular iron. Bit of sulfur too. I did extra tests. There’s Widmanstätten patterns in the metal.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

He shook his head. “They’re formed by metallic crystals found in octahedrite meteors. The blade can’t have been smelted. Someone pounded it into shape from an iron meteor.”

 

“Good to know,” I'd said as I took it back.

 

“Might be worth something,” the tech had said. “Are you looking to sell? Walk over to antiquities. They might have an idea of its worth.”

 

“Do you know how old it is?”

 

“Hard to tell. It could be King Tut old.”

 

Later I looked it up. King Tut goes back to 1341 B.C. Archeologists found a dagger like mine in his tomb. It predates the iron age.

 

Who gave me the dagger?

 

It’s saved my life more than once, I believe. In an image, I’m pulling the blade from a soldier’s chest. German uniform. I have my hand on the man’s face. I can’t see his expression. Just a blue eye looking at me from between my fingers. The eye dulled and he was gone.

 

And in an older moment, it’s night, or maybe I’m in a cavern. The light flickers. Shadows shift. Are there torches? I hold the dagger before me. Two bearded men with cudgels threaten me. Their breath reeks. Their rough clothes stink. My other hand is behind me, pushing someone back. I’m protecting them. Was it a loved one?

 

In another snippet, I fall asleep in a fine bed. I’m tired, so tired, but the dagger is beneath my pillow. I grip it and listen to the room’s silence breathing in and out while a candle flame wavers on the table beside me.

 

I asked the bladesmith, “Can you suggest a hilt that lasts, one that won’t be slick if it’s wet, that won’t stain? And the edge needs sharpening.”

 

Once the blade was longer and wider. Every grinding takes a bit away. I suppose one day there’ll be nothing left.

 

He scratched his head. “A bone hilt will grip, and it’s sturdy, but I like Mircata. It’s a composite, practical and beautiful. Totally customizable. Here’s samples in this case. Are you interested in an upgrade on your sheath too?”

 

We dickered over the price, not that money bothers me. I’ve invested. I suspect I’ve buried treasures in the past, but I have no records. No diaries. Money, like my life’s sixty-year shadow, never grows old, but it can be forgotten and lost.

 

I recall holding Judith’s hand in the hospital as she slipped away. The nurses were kind and left me alone with her for hours after they turned the machines off, while the sad, faltering rhythm of her heart still echoed in my ears.

 

If only I could preserve my past. I long to remember. Time takes all away.

 

There were others before her, many. The fragments remind me, jumbled together, without context. No names left.

 

I wish I knew when we met. An image remains, a slender, youthful Judith serving cake at a USO dance. It might have been the USO. What city? I must have been in the service. Was this before or after I ended the German soldier? Judith’s fingers brushed mine and in that instant, we were wed. Who knows how long I’d been alone before her; who else had faded?

 

She’ll go too.

 

Only the dagger has been forever. Cold. Sturdy. A starting point and beacon to the long ago.

 

I walk away from Edgar’s Edges. Traffic rumbles by, and for an instant I live in a memory of a dusty street, the rich smell from horses as they pull carts and carriages, and from behind a vegetable stand a vendor’s cry.

 

No clouds marked the sky then, as none do today. It’s beautiful, and the moment is suspended in senses, as are all moments.

 

But the touch of an absent hand fills my mind.

 

Oh, Judith, my love, I miss you terribly.