A Feather Clan member’s claws grew remarkably long, a single strike could go a dozen-plus centimeters deep, and with some of them digging their claws all the way into the soil purely for fun the night before, the shallowest depth now already met Bai Shuo’s standard everywhere, and the fallen branches and leaves on the surface had all been turned under. It was ready for planting, no further prep needed.
Bai Shuo called on Bai Su, Wu Yan, and Caihong to help, the four of them used branches to draw a series of straight lines across the ground, then had the rest of the chicks scatter seed along each line, to make weeding and harvesting easier down the road.
Scattering seed was a simple enough job for the chicks, each one followed a single line, spreading the wheat in their hands evenly across the ground, and the job was done once they reached the far end.
A dozen-plus chicks finished sowing the wheat well before noon, this one plot used up most of the wheat Bai Shuo had saved up the day before. What a shame the Feather Clan didn’t need to file their claws every single day, Bai Shuo felt a small pang of regret, if they filed their claws once a day, he’d never need to till the soil specially again.
This particular plot had fewer trees than most, and even the biggest tree here was only two or three years old, its crown too small to block much sunlight, no threat to the wheat’s growth.
On the way back, Bai Shuo pulled up a few grass seedheads in passing, food for the little cluck-birds at home. The night before, plenty of Feather Clan had seen the little cluck-birds and assumed he was just keeping them for fun, some had even quietly told Bai Yun to go ahead and kill them for meat now, before they got any thinner.
As for how Bai Shuo knew about this, it was simply because the Feather Clan speaking hadn’t bothered lowering their voices much. Even a Feather Clan member’s idea of “whispering” was only a touch quieter than normal conversation, no real attempt at discretion at all.
Whatever anyone else said, the little cluck-birds had been doing just fine these past two days. The night before, he and Bai Su had pulled up some grass seed for them, and this morning, every last bit was already gone, a healthy appetite, and the birds looked lively too, showing no sign at all of refusing food or water. Probably because the first thing they’d laid eyes on after hatching had been him, the little cluck-birds seemed especially delighted whenever they saw him.
Worried the little cluck-birds might dirty the cave, Bai Shuo had penned off a simple enclosure at the cave entrance for them, everyone else in the tribe already knew this was their family’s flock, so no one would bother them.
They were eating and drinking fine, none of the disasters everyone had feared, Bai Shuo already felt he was more than halfway to success, as long as they made it safely through these first few days, they’d basically be raised to full size.
The little cluck-birds were still too small to be left alone down at the base overnight, but carrying them up and down the mountain every day would be far too much trouble, so Bai Shuo decided to keep them housed up on the mountain for now, and move them down once they’d grown a bit, carrying food down was much easier than carrying little cluck-birds around.
Once Bai Shuo brought the pile of grass seed up the mountain, he found the little cluck-birds ambling about in leisurely fashion. The tribe assigned caves based on combat strength, so their family’s cave was big, with a spacious entrance, the area fenced off the day before was quite generous, plenty of room for the little cluck-birds to run around in.
Probably hearing his footsteps, the little cluck-birds all started chirping at once, craning their necks to look outside. The stone ring was too tall for them to see over unless Bai Shuo came right up close.
Bai Shuo walked over and scattered the grass seed evenly into the feeding trough. Bai Xun had made the trough the night before, using a fist-thick branch, split down the middle with a stone knife, then hollowed out down the center with a claw to form the part that would hold the food, he’d made two in one go, just enough for a dozen-plus little cluck-birds to eat from at once.
“Cheep cheep cheep—” The little cluck-birds ate happily.
Bai Shuo added a little water to the leaf beside them too. Right away, the little cluck-birds that had already had their fill went over to drink, dipping their heads down for a sip, then tilting back to swallow.
Watching them run around so lively and active, there was no way anyone would guess they were on the verge of starving themselves to death.
Just as Bai Shuo was feeling pleased with how well the little cluck-birds were doing, Bai Le came rushing over from down the mountain.
“Brother, brother—”
Bai Shuo was just about to answer, when he saw the little cluck-birds, happily eating and drinking a moment ago, abandon their water, abandon their grass seed, and scatter into a panicked mess, scrambling desperately into the corners. The biggest one, the very first to hatch, even craned its neck up toward Bai Shuo, chirping as if urging him to hide too.
Bai Shuo glanced at the little cluck-birds, then at his little brother, still a dozen-odd meters away, and suddenly understood something, the little cluck-birds refusing to eat or drink hadn’t just been about fear, it was the exact same reason they’d refused to hatch back in the cave, both times, they’d been sensing danger.
Bai Shuo confirmed the theory through a few repeated trials using Bai Le.
If Bai Le stayed quiet and walked to within about five meters of the little cluck-birds, they’d stop eating altogether. If he was talking, that distance stretched to about thirty meters, and the louder his voice, the more pronounced the effect.
If Bai Le, just a chick, already had this much of an effect, then an adult Feather Clan member’s intimidating presence would surely be even stronger, which meant, in everyone else’s experience, every little cluck-bird ever caught had appeared to be on a hunger strike, when in reality they’d simply been terrified out of their minds.
The little cluck-birds, thoroughly spooked by Bai Le, huddled together in a clump, Bai Shuo gave them a comforting pat, and the biggest one, seeming to sense something, let out a burst of chirping, and right after, as if the all-clear had sounded, the little cluck-birds went right back to eating and drinking.
Bai Shuo gave the biggest one a few extra pats, he couldn’t make out what the little cluck-birds’ calls actually meant, but the rest of them clearly took their cues from this one.
The little cluck-bird nuzzled affectionately against his hand.
……
That afternoon, Bai Su led the chicks out to search for the plants Bai Shuo needed, while Bai Shuo himself stayed down at the base of the mountain, trying his hand at making tools.
The tribe’s existing tools were limited in variety, and the raw materials were mostly just roughly-shaped stone and bone, the upside being the materials were everywhere and easy to get, the downside being they took a lot of effort to use. An adult Feather Clan member could manage fine, but the chicks struggled with them, especially Bai Shuo, weaker even than the other chicks his age, if he could get a tool to help, he’d save some effort, and be able to accomplish more too.
Bai Shuo wanted to make a simple hoe for digging soil, the handful of small scallions they’d dug up the other day had taken quite a while to get out, with a hoe, it would go far more smoothly. And once the wheat sprouted, they’d need a hoe to clear weeds from the field too.
Bai Shuo tried to recall the structure of a hoe, the ones he remembered from his past life had been iron, but obviously there was no iron here now, so the material would still have to be stone, with a branch for the handle.
Neither of these would be hard to find. Bai Shuo pulled out their family’s stone knife, its surface bore signs of grinding, chipped off a larger stone and then shaped by hand.
With the knife in hand, Bai Shuo went to rummage through the branch pile. The tribe burned through a huge amount of branches every day, so oddly-shaped ones of every kind were nothing unusual, finding one with a fork in it was practically effortless.
Both materials found, Bai Shuo then realized he’d forgotten something important.
Rope.
The tribe’s rope was made from strips torn from animal hide. When making clothing, not every piece of hide came out a nice regular shape, so the elders in the tribe would use bone or stone knives to trim away the excess from oddly-shaped hides, the pieces that could still hold things got folded up and tied off to make hide sacks, and the pieces that couldn’t got cut into strips of rope, used for tying up clothing or prey.
Because of the limited tools available, the tribe’s hide rope always came out fairly thick, not well suited for binding a hoe.
Bai Shuo decided what he really needed was hemp rope.
Hemp rope’s raw material was hemp, was there anything similar here…? Bai Shuo thought it over, and realized there actually was.
It was a plant roughly as thick as sugarcane, though inedible, its outer skin had a good deal of toughness, and its core was something like slightly firmer sponge. Every dry season it withered, and it caught fire more easily than most other branches. Between that outer skin and the core, there seemed to be exactly the kind of fiber he needed.
With that thought, Bai Shuo went right back to searching through the branch pile. This plant grew in large numbers, and chicks who happened to snap one while playing would bring it back along with everything else.
This hemp-like plant grew remarkably straight, nothing at all like the crooked, twisted branches around it, easy to spot, and Bai Shuo pulled out several without much trouble at all.
Peeling back the outer skin, sure enough, a layer of fiber clung to the inside, this was last year’s growth, having weathered a dry season, a rainy season, and a snow season, leaving fiber that could be used straight away with no further processing. Bai Shuo gathered it all up and started twisting it into rope, but after just a couple of turns, his palm already ached.
The wheat from the other day, aside from the small bit he’d twisted himself at first, had mostly been threshed by family members helping out, a chick’s hands were simply too tender compared to these plants. Bai Shuo looked at his own reddened palm, then at the raw material in his hands, and finally found a small stick, wound one section of fiber around it, and started rotating the stick to twist the strand, slower this way, but at least it wouldn’t hurt his hand.
Nearby, Bai Le, who’d been playing with the other chicks, spotted what was going on and came trotting over, asking, “Brother, what are you doing?”
Bai Shuo’s eyes lit up. A free laborer, right there for the taking, waste not, want not.
Bai Shuo: “Something fun. Want to try?”
Bai Le, thoroughly curious, agreed without a second thought. “Want to.”
Bai Shuo handed the stick over to him. “Here, turn it.”
His guileless little brother did exactly as told.
Bai Shuo: “Wrong way, wrong way, the other side, this hand goes here, yes, like that, keep twisting while you wind it in, right, just like that.”
Child labor +1.
With Bai Le helping, Bai Shuo’s pace picked up considerably, all he had to do was smooth out the raw material on his end and control the speed as needed.
This was Bai Le’s first time doing something like this, and he threw himself into it with great enthusiasm, his greater-than-average strength turned out to be a real asset. Bai Shuo checked what he’d twisted so far and found it was actually sturdier than his own work, just less even, but that was hardly a serious problem, a bit more practice and it would improve.
Before long, a crude but functional length of hemp rope was finished.
Bai Shuo gave it a test tug, held up nicely, didn’t unravel, and started on the next one.
Bai Le, not tired of it yet, asked curiously, “Brother, what is this?”
“Hemp rope.” Its use matched real hemp, so Bai Shuo just simply and bluntly designated this plant as “hemp”, the rope made from it, “hemp rope”, no one else particularly cared what it was actually called anyway.
He made three lengths of hemp rope in total. Bai Shuo used the longest one to bind the stone knife and branch together, then gave it a test. The angle was off on the first attempt, he loosened it, adjusted, tied it tight again, and dug down hard into the soil.
A small pit appeared in the ground.
Definitely easier on the arms than using bare hands or a plain stone knife.
After testing it a few more times to confirm it worked well, Bai Shuo pulled out every stone and bone knife the family owned and made three simple hoes total, then went off to the spot the chicks had mentioned a few days back, to dig up scallions.
They’d already used scallion in cooking the night before, whether for garnish or to cut the gaminess of meat, it had worked well, and Bai Shuo wanted to transplant them all somewhere closer to their cooking spot, so they could pick a few leaves whenever needed and the plant would just keep growing back.
The job required patience, you couldn’t snap the scallion in the process, and neither a stone knife nor a plain stick made for easy digging, the modified hoe helped, but he still had to be careful not to hurt his own foot.
Bai Shuo found Bai Su, and the two brothers dug out the scallions along with a good bit of the surrounding soil, and carried the whole clump, soil and all, down to the base of the mountain. The clearing at the foot of the mountain was large, and just past it, ringing the open ground, lay a stretch of land with nothing but grass and no trees at all, plenty of room to transplant scallions there.
Bai Shuo divided up the grassy stretch into several sections, to make room for planting different things down the road.
While transplanting the second clump of scallions, Bai Shuo suddenly spotted a plant he recognized.
Redroot tuber.
More precisely, a young seedling of a not-yet-mature Redroot tuber plant.
Redroot tuber was a food something like a sweet potato, growing underground, the big ones weighed several jin, the small ones still over half a jin, one of the few storable foods the tribe currently had.
The Redroot seedling looked a bit different from a sweet potato sprout he remembered, but after all this time spent finding common ground between the plants of the two worlds, Bai Shuo had gotten quite good at cross-referencing, and he recognized it right away.
To confirm his guess, Bai Shuo dug down a little, and sure enough, what came up was a shriveled Redroot tuber.
The surprise had come so suddenly that Bai Shuo nearly failed to react.
Bai Su hadn’t noticed what his little brother was up to at first, but the moment he saw the dug-up Redroot tuber, he was startled badly. “Shuo, quick, put it back!” he said, already burying it again, glancing around to confirm no one else was nearby before finally relaxing.
Bai Shuo didn’t expect this reaction from his brother at all. “Brother, this is a Redroot tuber.”
“Right, it’s a Redroot tuber, that’s exactly why we have to bury it back quickly.” Bai Su nodded, then explained to his little brother, “You’re only supposed to dig up Redroot tubers once the growth season ends, that’s when they’re biggest. Right now, they haven’t grown enough to be worth eating.”
This was something every chick in the tribe understood, the older chicks always warned the younger ones not to touch these, dig them up now, and there’d be no food for the snow season. Bai Shuo, having spent his early years mostly in feather form, cooped up in the nest, had missed out on the chance to learn all this.
But even without having been taught, hearing Bai Su’s explanation now, Bai Shuo could piece together the logic himself. If Redroot tubers left over from the previous year got dug up early in the growth season, there’d be far less harvest come the late growth season, a lesson the Feather Clan had learned over many years. The leaves of Redroot tuber seedlings were edible too, but the gathering party never picked them, precisely so there’d be Redroot tubers left to dig up later.
Bai Shuo looked at the Redroot seedling in front of him. Very few kinds of food could keep until the snow season, the rainy season’s damp conditions caused huge amounts of food to mold and rot, but Redroot tubers resisted spoilage and grew large besides, a rare and valuable food indeed.
And yet the gathering party rarely came across Redroot tubers at all, Bai Shuo only got to eat it a handful of times each year.
It looked like a sweet potato, lived like a sweet potato, by rights, its yield shouldn’t be this low. But looking at the plants surrounding the Redroot tuber, Bai Shuo understood why: Redroot tuber had vigorous vitality, sure, but so did the plants around it, everything had to reproduce as fast as possible within these few months of growth season, and some plants managed two whole growth cycles in that window. Add in deep-rooted trees and omnipresent weeds, and no single plant could dominate an environment like that.
If someone cleared out a dedicated plot just for growing Redroot tuber alone… Thinking of sweet potato yields per acre, Bai Shuo found his breath catching for a second.
Had to plant it. No question about it.
This year’s snow season, they absolutely would not go hungry.
Bai Shuo grabbed his brother’s arm. “Brother, I want to move it down to the base of the mountain, same as those scallions! Water it more down there, the yield’ll be even higher.” Redroot tuber, just like sweet potato, could be propagated from cuttings, left to grow wild on its own, this one seedling would max out at a dozen-odd jin, but brought back and grown a bit bigger first, then propagated by cutting, that turned into countless dozen-odd-jin harvests. Even if the yield per plant fell short of what grew wild, the sheer number of plants would more than make up the difference.
Bai Su hesitated. “What if someone doesn’t allow it?” He agreed with what his little brother wanted to do, but there was no guarantee everyone else would.
Bai Shuo thought it over. Scallions could be dug freely, wheat picked at will, because neither was on the gathering party’s list, no matter how much you took, no one would say a word. But Redroot tuber was different, the gathering party had an explicit rule against digging it up early, and if he did…
“Brother, you go back first. I’ll dig it up, if I get caught, I’ll say I didn’t know any better.” That wasn’t even a lie, exactly, before Bai Su had brought it up, he genuinely hadn’t known. If he moved these over before the gathering party got back, and someone happened to spot it, that would be his excuse.
Bai Su didn’t expect this angle, but only froze for a moment before making up his mind. “I’ll help you dig them out first.” Since his little brother was determined to dig them up regardless, he might as well help dig them out now, then, once back at the tribe, he’d say he’d only found them already dug up. Buried here or buried there, it was all the same either way, once he’d worked out the logic, Bai Su stopped hesitating either.
The two brothers exchanged a look, both turning at once toward the Redroot tuber in the ground. Time to dig!
“What are you two digging?”
Just as the brothers were digging away enthusiastically, a voice suddenly cut in, startling them both.
Bai Shuo looked up and found it was Wu Yan, and let out a breath of relief, offering a quick explanation. “I want to dig these up and move them down to grow a different way. Oh, and if anyone asks, just say you only saw me, and please don’t mention my brother at all.”
Bai Shuo went ahead and coordinated their story with him, hands never stopping the whole time he talked, the hoe was better than using a knife directly, but it was still a crude tool, he needed to move fast, finish digging this one and move on to the next.
Wu Yan made a sound of acknowledgment, glanced at the tool lying beside the two of them, and pointed at it. “Can I use that?”
Bai Shuo nodded. “Sure, go ahead.” The reason he’d brought all three hoes along was in case the rope snapped partway through, he’d brought spares just in case, and as it turned out, the hemp rope had held up quite well, there was no reason not to lend one to Wu Yan if he needed it.
Wu Yan picked up the hoe, watched the two of them work for a moment, then, without any hesitation, started digging into the nearby Redroot seedling himself. The brothers had assumed he was just passing by and were a little surprised.
Wu Yan paid the looks no mind at all, his motions matching theirs closely enough.
An extra pair of hands was always better than none, Bai Shuo didn’t stand on ceremony with him. The three of them finished this patch, then moved on to search the surrounding area.
This part of the woods, Bai Su knew well, even if he couldn’t recall every single spot, there were still plenty he remembered.
The three of them dug up more than a dozen plants in total. They stopped there, not because there weren’t more, but because digging up any more would be hard to explain, after all, if they got caught, the story was supposed to be that Bai Shuo had done it alone, and too many plants would give the game away, plus, more plants meant a higher chance of someone noticing.
The Redroot tubers already dug up had all been left in the shade under a tree, covered with leaves, now they carried them all back together.
The three of them quietly planted the Redroot seedlings in a spot not far from the scallions, ringed with a border of scallions on the outside, you couldn’t tell what was underneath unless you got up close. Whatever the hunting party or gathering party brought back as a full team belonged to the tribe, but anything gathered by individuals acting on their own, like fruit the chicks picked for themselves, belonged to that person. So no one else would touch the scallions Bai Shuo had planted. This particular spot was also off any beaten path, tucked away and out of the way, so hardly anyone ever came through, reasonably safe.
The chicks had been unusually busy these past couple of days, the adult Feather Clan had already grown used to it and hadn’t paid much attention to what exactly they were up to. Following Bai Shuo’s instructions, Bai Su and Wu Yan laid the Redroot seedlings flat and buried them in the soil, then watched Bai Shuo cut off a few side shoots to plant nearby, using bamboo tubes to carry water and give every seedling a thorough watering.
“Shuo, will this actually work?” Bai Su looked at the frail-looking stems and leaves and couldn’t shake the feeling they’d all be withered dead by tomorrow.
“Let’s try it and see, I don’t actually know if it’ll take either,” Bai Shuo answered honestly. Theory and practice were never quite the same thing, he’d thought through everything he could think of, and if it still didn’t work, there wasn’t much more he could do. If his luck was really that bad and even the transplanted ones died, he’d just have to make it up to the tribe with the wheat he’d grown, Bai Shuo thought to himself, on the quiet.
Wu Yan studied Bai Shuo. From the very start, he’d felt Bai Shuo was different from every other chick he’d ever met, and that feeling had only grown stronger now.
“Big Brother, Brother, what are you all doing?”
A voice suddenly cut in, and the three of them, all staring fixedly at the Redroot seedlings, jumped in fright, Wu Yan, who’d been watching Bai Shuo, jumped right along with them.
This scene felt a little familiar somehow, the three of them thought, all at once.
The three turned and found it was Bai Le, and relaxed a little. Even though the secret would inevitably come out eventually, being found out now still felt different from being found out a few days from now.
Bai Shuo patted his own still-pounding chest and started working his little brother over. “We’re planting vegetables, I’ll make you something delicious later, but you can’t tell anyone else, or if other people find out, you won’t get to eat any.”
Hearing this, Bai Le immediately clapped a hand over his own mouth, shaking his head furiously to show he’d never breathe a word.
Bai Shuo knew his little brother well enough, he might forget plenty of other things, but when it came to food, he’d remember every detail with perfect clarity, and wouldn’t say a word no matter who asked or how.
Crisis averted, and they’d even gained another helper, even if this particular helper was only three years old.
Still, worried the secret task force might grow from four members to five, the group of four, three big, one small, quickly relocated, agreeing to meet again the next day to water the plants.
The next day, a few of them mid-watering got caught by Caihong. Team size +1.
Day three, the watering team expanded to six.
Day four, the watering team became a watering brigade.
For chicks who had nothing else to do once they’d finished gathering branches for the day, the tribe held no secrets at all. They could turn the entire tribe upside down, dig up anthills just to look inside, never mind Bai Shuo’s transplanted seedlings. Every time he got caught, all Bai Shuo could do was repeat the same line: keep it secret, don’t tell anyone else.
Good news: the adults still didn’t know.
Bad news: everyone except the adults already did.