Mysterion, October 26, 2026

“Fourteenth Century Metalwork Techniques for Breaking Your Own Heart” by Cara Masten DiGirolamo

Reviewed by Wendy Vidlak

In the story “Fourteenth Century Metalwork Techniques for Breaking Your Own Heart” by Cara Masten DiGirolamo, we see three modern people in a love triangle: Mathilde, a medievalist; Amelie, the teacher; and Christophe, the doctor. The story starts mundane enough, a children’s field trip to a medieval museum in France, with Mathilde the professor as guide and Amelie the teacher of the grade school class. The story starts to hint at secrets fairly early on, secrets both from each other and secrets they hold as a group. “The modern French came easily to her tongue now, but she relished the few terms that remained the same.” Odd thought for a modern tour guide.

We follow Mathilde through her work as she crafts a crest for Christophe and Amelie for their engagement and a bad date with a woman. We learn how the three met and some of the secrets they keep through flashbacks throughout the story. This was a fun story in the end. The flashbacks provided a lot of excitement as we saw the three as kids and learned how they met. But the strength of the story lay in the character conflict that lived beneath the surface of three people who loved each other dearly as they kept looking for their proper time and place in the world.