Old iron

A gate overrun with iron on Mergenthaler Street.

Nagspeake's ****O******ld iron** is iron that moves and changes by its own accord. Not many understand it, but quite interesting to see. It mostly moves underground, but in some places, such as the Liberty of Gammerbund, it can be seen moving and changing above ground. Madame Grisaille is the iron queen and its avatar.

## History

### *Bluecrowne*

* Trigemine commented on how much weird, old iron there was in the Quayside Harbors, wrapping around the buildings, fences, and lamp-posts.

### *The Raconteur's Commonplace Book*

* Madame Grisaille told a tale which included a secret graveyard. People said that iron behaves badly in graveyards, she said.
* A boy called Pantin lived in a place with old iron—a significant amount, though not quite as much as the Quayside Harbors or Shantytown.
* There was an iron gargoyle outside Pantin's bedroom window, which changed its shape often, leading Pantin to name it after a changeable toy, Troublewit. Pantin thought of the gargoyle as his friend, and, Madame Grisaille said, the iron did indeed listen to him.
* When a thief called Trigemine came to take something that had been buried in the secret graveyard, Pantin turned to his gargoyle friend Troublewit for help. Troublewit managed to create a voice and tell Pantin what was going on.
* Troublewit, being part of the intertwined mass of old iron in the city, moved the box the thief wanted out of his reach.
* The old iron agreed with Pantin's plan and raised the bones of the buried hero, with iron to hold them together.
* After scaring the thief off, the hero spoke for himself (perhaps his ghost had taken possession of his body) and asked Pantin and Troublewit to come down. The iron, Troublewit said, agreed to travel with him.
* Sorcha showed Maisie a map of Nagspeake that had a compass made to look like old iron.
* When Sullivan and Captain Frost went outside of the tavern and stood in the rain, Madame Grisaille touched the old iron lamppost and watched as the iron reached up and created an arch over the two to keep the rain off.
* Madame Grisaille manipulated the mechanism on a music box instead of using a key.
* Reever compared the pattern on Jessamy's gloves (given to her by Sorcha) to iron.
* Maisie wondered if High Walkers had come from a land far below Nagspeake, which could be accessed by climbing up the old iron.
* When Masseter (now revealed to be Foulk Trigemine) tried to take something from Petra by force, the iron nails in the floor reached up and grasped his boots, keeping him from moving. It became evident that Madame Grisaille was controlling them. The iron held tighter when Madame clenched her fingers.
* Madame threatened to imprison him in an iron statue if he did not cooperate.
* When Masseter agreed to help Petra, the nails released him.

### *Ghosts of Greenglass House*

* Georgie noted that there was a lot of old iron in the Quayside Harbors, and that there were stories, which seemed to have some truth to them, that said the iron was constantly shifting.
* An iron structure had worked its way out of the ground and damaged Gilawfer's warehouse. Violet Cross said that it had been in an entirely different place when she'd stashed her things there. She had thought it safe, as she knew more about underground ironworks than almost anyone in Nagspeake, and while she'd known they shifted she had not expected them to work up to the surface.

### *The Thief Knot*

* The Ambrose Bank has an old iron facade. The previous day, according to Marzana, it had been in the shape of vines, flowers, and lily-shaped bells that rang. This day, it had big columns with capitals.
* Marzana noted that the iron that makes up the Marymead fence always shifts, and took the locks that Marymead students left on the fence with it. The fence later was made up of bells with the locks as clappers.
* Milo mentioned the interference of the iron with the Belowground Transit System.
* After riding a dumbwaiter between two rooms not vertically in line with each other, Emilia explained that there were probably horizontal shafts between floors, but no one in the Commorancy had found any. The Commorancy Kids' theory, however absurd, was that the old iron could shift around entire rooms to make way for the dumbwaiter.
* The Marymead Library had iron that shifted subtly, such as the bark and leaf decorations on the staircases, which were all different types of trees and changed based on the seasons, with buds in the spring, leaves in the summer, and bare branches in the winter.
* The Belowground Transit stations, Ciro said, had been built where they had been in order to avoid the old iron, which interfered with the train lines. Emilia believed this, noting that no one knew what made the old iron move.
* The old iron also, according to Ciro, messed with his mother's cell towers.
* Meddy commented upon how much old iron there was in the Liberty, and touched one that looked like a vine but was actually metal that had come from a fire escape. Meddy watched out the bus window, agape at the metal climbing the houses, the odd lampposts, and mystical fences.
* Marzana noted how much old iron there was in the Quayside Harbors.
* There is a clock suspended by old iron over a street. Marzana noted that she and Nialla used its position to decide whether they would get pizza or ice cream.
* Inside Cotgrave Wall Station, there was an old iron bench that had changed to appear more akin to a shrub.
* The map of the Belowground Transit System inside the station had been pierced with old iron in some places. The members of the Thief Knot realized that the iron poking through the map somehow showed the actual iron interference throughout the train lines.
* Mergenthaler Street Station was inaccessible from the train lines because the old iron had cut off all the transit tunnels to it, despite the station being set less far underground in the hopes of having less iron interference.
* In the station, iron was hanging down from the ceiling. It was all over, wrapped around the stairs, around the overhead lights so that they hung at odd angles, and around the steel gate.
* Brandon mentioned the relationship between iron and other supernatural things, but Meddy did not think it was a problem for her even though she was a ghost. Brandon warned her of how wild the iron above them was.
* The iron had changed the train tracks into something roller-coaster like, with iron holding them up from the bottom or hanging from the ceiling and holding it from the top. In another place, the track had been torn up and used to build some sort of sculpture.
* The train schedule display had become a sort of metal garden.
* The chairs that had once been bolted to the waiting room floor hung from the ceiling, swinging even though there was no wind.
* The big information desk was held up by what looked like an iron tree, as if it was a treehouse. Iron branches reached out around it. Above the desk, a clock stuck out of the metal trunk.
* Some places the iron had curiously left alone, such as a collection of chairs around a table, and paths around the stairs to train platforms, and empty shops.
* Plumbing spilled out of the restrooms in odd configurations.
* The iron had left the rows of lockers alone.
* Moth and Kit Fletchwood were amazed by the iron and wondered whether it was the cause of their backpack moving (it wasn't), or why the locker was empty. Thad wondered at the iron as well.

## Trivia

* Kate Milford's first book set in Nagspeake, unpublished as of yet, was titled *Wild Iron.*
* Kate Milford came up with the idea for Nagspeake's old iron before she even considered writing a book set in Nagspeake.
* The special green glass made from Nagspeake sand is colored green because of iron oxide.

## Gallery

**Take a look at our **gallery for Old iron****.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 https://stonesoup.com/post/interview-with-author-kate-milford/