Forge

[laltieri0]

Overall, this is fantastic.  Quite an entertaining read.  You do a great job with contrasting her/brother in the opening part, and the end brought an empty longing to mind. I like the subtle scent-imagery with "sawdust and candyfloss". The two comments I made are the only issues I have with it. You're talented! Don't think it needs to "go anywhere" after the ending you have.

            She was a contortionist sword-swallower and a failure. Her brother, estranged, was a contortionist sword-swallower and strongman with a business, producing bespoke throat bent ironwork.
            He'd won prizes. He had a profile in the New Yorker, he was an artist. She was just a performer, touring cross country under a shroud of sawdust and candyfloss.  
                Every evening she draped herself around a blade, bending with the crowd's ooos. She was a candelabra of cutlasses, a human vane in the night-wind.  But no matter how good her act, she was not satisfied. For each time the supple metal righted itself, impressed only with the ghostly slick of her gut.
                The tent was put up and taken down. The people blew in then out. The blade inserted and withdrawn. Limbs switched and returned. Her pointless manoeuvres left no imprint upon the sword.   That line tripped me up a little.  It read, for me, with two different subjects. The blade was inserted and withdrawn, or the blade inserted and withdrew?
                 The taste of metal lingered. She billowed and bloomed like a jellyfish, transparent and torpid. Her coiled body a fallow tract, a whorl to nowhere, animated only when she put her sword in.    something about this last part bothers me.  I think ending on "in" weakens it a little.