Father's Blade

He moved his head against the straw, moving his face from a less itchy position.
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The axe his father gave him reflected the light from three candles on the mantle place, throwing light into his face and illuminating his blue eyes. Those eyes fell next to him as they caught the reflection of steel.
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He struggled to free his left hand to run his slender fingers across the blade of the axe that lay in his straw bedding with him. The engravings of people centuries past, staring at him, fighting, running, living.
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Thick wool blankets made his legs sweaty so he moved them off to expose the rest the axe. The axe was as familiar to him as anything could be. His tanned knee pushed the hilt of the ax to the side and he propped it up next to him so he could get a better look. A small keyhole made for decoration had been etched into the hilt. The black abyss that lied within; how many times had he scratched his fingernail in that hole, probing the depths of the keyhole wondering why it was there? Too many, so it seemed.
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Just above the keyhole on the engraving was a man, holding his middle finger to his lips as if to silence him. Did this man in the axe have a secret that he did not want anyone to know? The engraving stared at the young man, never moving. The pupils on the hand carved drawing were as telling as the metal it had been emblazoned on; cold, stone-like.
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Three fingers-width above the keyhole and in between the secretive man was another such keyhole, smaller, with less detail. Inside the keyhole were three small studs protruding from the inside. He had in the past used his bedding to probe the studs and try to depress them as if they were switches to some unknown secret the man was keeping. Eyes darting back to the man with his finger to his lips, he flipped the large, wide blade over and inspected the other side tirelessly, as if he had never done so before.
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Three nude women, dancing with masks in their hand, each holding a key in their left hand, looked away from the young man laying in the straw bedding in front of the hearth. Their smooth detailed bosom was soft to the touch and very graphic. Four of his large hands could not cover the head to shield it from the rain, had the gods decided to let it do such a thing. The depiction of the women was almost life like, that the person who engraved such a thing was there, as if he saw through his hands through his engraving tools. Two parapets of stone loomed in the distanced, etched with the finest of obsidian, reaching up into the breech of the weapon. The arrow loops In the parapets themselves were smooth and deep, almost large enough to reach the smallest part of the youngsters pinky finger into if he licked it first.
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Trees, mountains, shaded boroughs rounded out the designs which almost blended in with the immense detail of the blade. He counted four separate layers, of which three separate styles had been used to render all of this masterpiece. When he shook the blade quietly, he could hear a small 'tinkling' inside. Corrosion and grime had marred the other pitted marks, some of which had not been cleaned which may reveal other key holes, openings, and arrow loops connected to even more parapets and naked dancing women holding many faceted keys to open a smattering of equally faceted locks.
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He sighed to himself and picked up the end of a piece of straw, licked it, and resumed scraping the etching along a small tower and up towards and grassy tree area. As a new etched scene opened to his touch, another door opened in his mind, revealing an idea of what might lie beyond. One of the candles flickered and guttered out, but he kept scraping all the same, smiling.