Compared to stone and wooden tools, pottery had plenty of advantages, size and shape could be tailored to whatever was needed, the only real hassle was that it had to be fired first.
Bai Shuo ran back through the whole firing process in his memory, jotted down the raw materials he’d need, and realized the very first thing to do now was dig up some soil.
Soil quality varied a great deal from place to place, the mountain their tribe lived on, and the one nearby where they’d gotten stone for tools, had noticeably different soil types. Bai Shuo decided to test the soil from their own side first.
The very top layer of soil obviously wouldn’t do, it was mixed with too many coarse grains of sand and gravel, and pottery fired from soil like that would crack easily, and even if it somehow survived firing, it would still leak water.
Bai Shuo needed soil from a deeper layer, which meant he’d need his parents’ help.
“Mama, could you dig up some soil for me?” Bai Shuo pointed at the ground. “The stuff underneath.”
Bai Yun didn’t refuse, just felt a little puzzled. “What do you need soil for?”
Bai Shuo said, “I want to shape a basin, let it dry out, and use it to hold things.” He didn’t go into the entire pottery-firing process, after all, he wasn’t even sure yet whether it would actually work, and if he explained it all now only for it to fail in the end, that would just be getting his hopes up for nothing.
“Shape a basin?” Bai Yun was a little surprised, but figured there was nothing pressing going on right now anyway, and agreed, then called her mate over to help too.
Digging up soil obviously couldn’t happen right on the clearing, passersby might fall into the hole, so after some discussion, the two of them decided to dig not far from where Bai Shuo had planted his Redroot tubers.
Bai Shuo watched from the side. Once the topsoil had been cleared away, the layer underneath had noticeably less sand mixed in, exactly the clay he needed.
“This is the kind I want, Papa, Mama, and I’d also like some of the soil from that other mountain, the one where we broke up the stone before.”
“I’ll dig that up for you,” Bai Xun said at once, seeing there was still plenty of daylight left, and headed straight off with a hoe to dig.
Bai Shuo grabbed two backpack-baskets, lined them with leaves, and started loading in the soil he judged usable, planning to carry it down to the river.
Bai Xun and Bai Yun obviously weren’t going to let him carry any of it himself, one dug, the other hauled, and before long they’d transported quite a bit.
Chicks often played by the river, and both banks were pitted with hollows of varying depth. Bai Shuo picked two of the deeper ones, poured in the two kinds of clay he’d just dug up, added water, and started stirring. Any lightweight impurities, like grass roots, floated to the surface, he scooped those out and left the rest to settle naturally.
Before heading back to the cave, Bai Shuo made one more request of Bai Xun and Bai Yun. “Papa, Mama, if you come across any soil out there that’s different from what we have here, please bring some back.” In theory, any clay with low enough sand content could be fired into pottery or porcelain, but different soil compositions required different firing temperatures, and besides, once a piece was shaped, it would still need glazing, Bai Shuo planned to make his own glaze from local soil too, trying out a few different kinds to raise his odds of success.
Bai Xun and Bai Yun had no idea why their chick needed so many different kinds of soil just to shape a basin, but it was such a small request, so they agreed to it anyway.
Their chick prepared food for them every single day, plenty of which they’d never eaten before, he’d also taught the whole tribe how to grow Redroot tuber and weave tools, he rarely asked for much of anything in return, and most of what he did ask for benefited either them or the tribe. Wanting some soil was such a minor thing, of course they’d oblige, as his parents.
……
The next morning, Bai Shuo went back to check and found only clay left in the pits, the water had all seeped down. Having saved the trouble of scooping it out himself, he skimmed off the impurity-laden top layer, then dug out the clean clay underneath and set it on a nearby rock, treading it repeatedly underfoot.
Curious about what his brother was up to, Bai Le wandered over, and seeing Bai Shuo “playing in the mud,” immediately insisted on joining in.
Bai Shuo let him, Bai Le was young, but he was strong, and could actually help.
There were two kinds of soil in total, slightly different in color, the clay from around their own home leaned reddish, while the soil from the other mountain leaned whitish.
Bai Shuo thought it over, set part of each type aside separately, and mixed the rest together in various proportions, ending up with five balls of clay total, ranging in color from white through to red. Once sorted, he began pounding and kneading each one, working out any trapped air.
The commotion soon drew over the other chicks.
Playing in mud was something every chick knew all too well, looking at the enormous lumps of clay in front of Bai Shuo, they couldn’t help but feel envious. Even their own mud-play never amounted to more than a small handful, and here Bai Shuo had gathered up this much!
“Bai Shuo, can we play too?” the chicks asked.
Bai Shuo thought it over, his own strength was limited, and he had no idea how long it would take to pound and knead this much clay on his own, having the chicks help seemed like a good idea after all. He pointed toward the nearby river and said, “Go wash your hands and feet clean first, then come back.” The clay-making process couldn’t have any large impurities mixed in, or the finished piece would crack easily.
None of the chicks had ever been allowed to play with mud with this much care taken beforehand, the novelty of it all only made them dive in even more enthusiastically.
Not until nearly noon did Bai Shuo finally pull out a lump of clay and start shaping it.
Bai Shuo used the coil-building method, first forming a flat, even base, then rolling the clay into an even, rope-like coil and stacking it upward, ring by ring, smoothing each layer as he went, until the vessel gradually transformed from a flat disc into a jar shape.
Watching Bai Shuo’s technique, the other chicks tried imitating it too. There was plenty of raw clay to go around, and even after the chicks pounded and reshaped it, it could still be reused without waste.
Once he’d finished one and set it aside in a shaded spot, Bai Shuo moved on to the next.
At first, Bai Shuo had been crouching on the ground to work, but as time wore on, he stopped caring about how it looked, he was only eight years old, after all, and no one was going to hold an eight-year-old to any particular standard of dignity. He simply sat right down on the ground and kept working.
Shaping the clay demanded enormous patience, Bai Shuo did his best to keep the walls of each vessel even in thickness, since thickness affected the odds of a successful firing, too great a difference in thickness in one piece made it prone to uneven heating and cracking.
After playing for a while, the chicks quickly lost their initial burst of excitement and gathered around Bai Shuo instead, watching him work. What he made was much bigger than anything they’d managed, and the shapes varied too, some like wooden buckets, others like bowls, just smaller than either. A few chicks wanted to reach out and touch, but the others quickly stopped them.
“What if you break it?”
Bai Shuo, busy rolling out another clay coil, glanced up at the sound and said, “Don’t touch it, wait a few days, once I’ve fired it, you can touch it all you like.”
“Firing mud?” The chicks were startled.
Bai Shuo nodded. Since the chicks had no idea what he was actually firing, he could tell them whatever story he liked. “Once it’s fired, the mud will turn hard, it won’t warp out of shape the second you touch it, the way it does now, and it’ll keep for a very long time.” That explanation was really just meant to fob off the chicks, after all, even mud that had simply dried out, without any firing at all, wouldn’t easily lose its shape either, and would keep for quite a while regardless.
Clearly, most of the chicks hadn’t thought that far ahead, only Bai Su and Wu Yan, looking at the pile of raw clay still in front of Bai Shuo, suspected he had further plans for it.
One chick, holding up something he’d shaped himself, asked, “Can mine be fired too?”
Bai Shuo took a look, small, hardly taking up any space, and agreed. “Yes, anything smaller than this can be fired too, so remember to gather up plenty of firewood, and pick thick pieces.”
Yet another new activity the chicks had never tried before, they immediately went off to find their own creations, and brought every last one to Bai Shuo.
Bai Shuo took a thin twig and wrote each chick’s name on their piece, to anyone else, it just looked like a simple marking, but only Bai Shuo could actually read what was written.
Learning that what they’d made could also be fired, the chicks grew even more excited, and, without knowing exactly what would come of it, happily ran off to gather firewood.
Watching their cheerful little backs disappear, Bai Shuo once again reflected on just how easy it was to win these chicks over.
Bai Su told his little brother he was heading off too, joining the others, Wu Yan had originally planned to go gather firewood in the back hills, but seeing he wasn’t with the other chicks, Bai Shuo went ahead and asked, “Wu Yan, want to stay and help me instead?”
Bai Shuo needed someone to hand him clay and move finished pieces, he’d originally hoped his own brother could stay, but Bai Su and Caihong needed to watch over the other chicks. Wu Yan didn’t seem to enjoy being around the other chicks much either, Bai Shuo just wasn’t sure whether Wu Yan, aware it would only be the two of them here, would feel comfortable with that either.
“Sure,” Wu Yan said, agreeing before Bai Shuo could even finish thinking it through.
With help on hand, Bai Shuo went back to shaping vessels. To compare how well the different clay ratios fired, Bai Shuo made several spoons and small dishes of identical size from each batch of clay, using the same finished shape made it much easier to judge quality across the different mixes.
Bai Shuo spent the better part of the day by the river, the whole time, Wu Yan kept helping without pause. With an extra pair of hands, things went noticeably faster, Bai Shuo had originally thought this would take him until evening.
The finished pieces needed to be moved somewhere shaded and well-ventilated to dry, some went for now into the cave where the tribe stored its food, to air-dry naturally, the rest were set near their cooking spot, to try drying by fire for two days instead. Left to air-dry naturally, it would take ten-plus days, possibly longer, and Bai Shuo was a bit too impatient to wait that long.
Bai Shuo started a fire and arranged the pottery pieces near it, watching their color gradually shift under the heat, keeping track of the time, at this rate, two days of firing by the fire should be enough, the chicks had already brought back plenty of thick branches, so he had fuel prepared in advance.
That evening, Bai Shuo received five different bundles of soil, each a different type, after examining them all carefully, he picked out two, and asked his parents to dig up more of just those two the next day, the other three he ruled out entirely, no need to dig any more of those.
“Should I dig up another basketful?” Bai Xun asked. The two kinds they’d dug yesterday had each been about one basketful.
Bai Shuo nodded. “One basketful each.” Fittingly, one of them had found each of the two types.
Bai Xun and Bai Yun agreed. Looking at the pieces their chick had shaped, they noticed his came out looking better than anything the other chicks had managed. Bai Xun reached out, about to pick one up for a closer look, but Bai Shuo stopped him. “Not yet, Papa, you can’t pick it up yet, not for a few more days.” Even though a fair bit of moisture had evaporated already, the clay pieces were still extremely fragile, one squeeze and they’d deform.
Hearing this, Bai Xun withdrew his hand and left it alone, not wanting to accidentally ruin anything.
Bai Shuo pointed at the pile of thick branches nearby. “Papa, could you cut these into sections for me?” He’d asked for thick pieces, and the chicks had dragged back branches that, before, they’d never even have bothered picking up, they looked plentiful, but they weren’t ready to use as-is, they needed a bit of processing first.
Hearing his chick’s request, Bai Xun immediately went over to start moving the branches.
The stone axe made a few days back had held up until now. Bai Xun took the axe and struck the thickest branch, then heaved with all his strength.
“Crack—” The branch snapped in two, and Bai Xun set the shorter piece aside, moving on to the next.
An adult Feather Clan member’s strength really wasn’t just for show, while the chicks could only manage to drag whole branches back in one piece, in Bai Xun’s hands they broke apart section by section. Watching for a while, Bai Shuo realized the axe’s role here was really just to score the wood, everything else came down to pure muscle.
Bai Shuo could only look on with envy, if only he had that much strength, he’d be able to do all this work himself. But reality was cruel: not only could he not snap a branch, he couldn’t even climb a tree. At least he had doting parents and a brother who spent every day scheming up new snacks for him, plus a little brother whose strength kept growing by the day.
Just then, Bai Le came running over with a large wooden bowl, filled with freshly washed fruit. Bai Shuo picked out the reddest one and bit into the peeled fruit.
Sweet.
Bai Shuo looked at the fruit in his hand, thought of the fruit-scarce rainy and snow seasons ahead, and suddenly had an idea.
With Redtop fruit yielding this well right now, why not dry some into dried fruit?
Except the tribe had never dried fruit before. Bai Shuo decided to try it out on a small scale first.
Natural drying would take too long, Bai Shuo eyed the pile of firewood and decided to try baking a batch instead. Burning wood directly created smoke, so it would be better to make charcoal out of it first.
Bai Shuo found an open spot by the river and used mud to build a small earthen kiln, leaving a vent at the bottom for airflow.
Once the kiln was built, he arranged the snapped branches neatly inside, the thick ones in the center, the thinner ones around the base and sides, then sealed the top, leaving one opening, and dropped a burning stick through it, letting it slowly catch.
With so little air getting in, the branches burned very slowly, it took a full night before the fire finally worked its way down to the bottom. Bai Shuo woke up, saw the glow still shining faintly at the base, and sealed off both the top and bottom vents completely.
Not until the afternoon did the kiln finally cool down enough to touch. Bai Shuo cracked open the sealed clay at one end and checked inside.
The thinner branches had all burned down to ash, the thicker ones had turned into charcoal. Bai Shuo picked out the successful pieces and set them in a backpack-basket, then, just as he was about to start dinner and try baking some fruit on the side, he suddenly felt something was off in the sky.
Even without a way to measure time, Bai Shuo had a fairly good sense of the daily schedule in his head, and the margin of error was never large. Judging by that internal clock, it should still be a while before dusk, but right now, the sky at the horizon had already begun to darken, and not in the usual way the sky dimmed after sunset, this was a thick blanket of clouds rolling in.
It was about to rain!
The instant that thought crossed his mind, Bai Shuo heard Cailin’s voice.
“It’s about to rain, everyone back to the caves!” Cailin called out, herding every last chick back inside. Chicks couldn’t be left out in the rain, they’d catch sick.
The growth season brought rain every few days, most of the chicks knew this well and reacted quickly, gathering up the food, tools, and everything else scattered across the clearing outside and carrying it all back to the caves.
Bai Shuo and Bai Su brought their family’s food back to the cave, then carried the pottery pieces that had been drying by the fire, mostly finished by now, over to the cave where food was stored. As for the stone pot and slab, they were too heavy to bother moving, the two of them left them where they were, planning to just rinse them off once the rain stopped, which would save far more effort than hauling them back and forth.
The tribe’s resources were limited, and probably the most abundant item on hand right now was all the willow-woven tools, but those were light, and could be carried in bulk in a single trip. So it didn’t take long at all before the clearing outside held nothing but a few extinguished fires and the stone pots left behind. Rain would douse the fires anyway, so Cailin had already moved the fires to a sheltered spot right at the cave entrance.
Bai Shuo carried all the charcoal up the mountain, then took a still-burning stick from the fire down at the base and lit a new fire right at their cave entrance, rain or no rain, they still had to eat, and there was no way to manage that without fire. Their stone pot and slab, though, were still down at the base of the mountain, which meant no pan-fried meat tonight. Then again, it had been several days since they’d had grilled meat, a bit of variety wouldn’t hurt.
Bai Shuo’s gaze drifted to the pile of charcoal in the backpack-basket, and it struck him just how well-timed this batch had turned out, perfect for grilling meat tonight.