One Winter in Taldora
The Riders of Florin, twelve in all, found themselves stalled at the Twin Peaks of Greenvale. Winter had closed the pass two weeks ahead of schedule. The closest town of Taldora was small but well known to travellers caught by untimely seasons, so it was no surprise when the Riders came to call in the afternoon. Only hours before, the villagers had watched, shaking their heads, as the Riders made their slow progression up to the pass. Taldorians knew better than to try to convince them otherwise, having learnt over the years that travellers weren't easily persuaded with words. Travellers needed to see the ice with their own eyes.
Tau didn't like travellers. Travellers were a blight upon the land, consuming wantonly without thought given to the sustainability of the lands they passed. Who was to pick up the rubbish that littered the road to the pass? Yet, this close to mountain top, the realities of surviving the winter meant that Tau couldn't muster the same dislike for their coin. Unlike the others, however, Tau would not put signs in the street or stand outside and beckon to the travellers. He would not offer meals and laundry to entice them to stay. If one happened to knock on his door, then they would negotiate service and price, but he wouldn’t be out there to welcome them. He had more important things to do.
Tau sat at his potter's wheel, throwing clay remnants into small cups and dishes. He was known to mould a sculpture or two at the muse's descent, but today he couldn't see any interesting shapes in the scraps of clay. The cups and dishes would fill up the gaps in the kiln between the pots and jars. The fillings he had made the other day would go between those. Nothing was wasted.
The sun was setting over the mountains by the time Tau finished packing the last of his day's work into the kiln outside the front of his house. He fired up the kiln and poked the charcoal into place with the end of an old, broken sword. Not all the creations would survive, some would crack in the fire, but at least it wouldn’t be due to uneven heat.
The streets were busier than usual for this time of evening. The commotion in the town meant that the Riders had arrived. Tau saw signs of occupation in his neighbour's house. An extra horse in the shed. Snow boots hung up to dry. The children were out in the street, laughing and chasing each other with handfuls of slushy snow.
One gave a shout when she saw Tau and ran back indoors. A moment later, she emerged with her mother and they approached the potter together.
"Tau, a favour please?" Ellie was a small, stocky woman who married a tall, pale man. As such, even her daughter was almost her height.
Tau set the broken sword down beside the kiln and nodded.
"We've got a pair of Riders with us insisting on separate rooms, which means that Bowman and I will stay with the kids, but…" she cast a glance back at her children, the ones on the street, and looked at Tau with a helpless shrug. "We're full to bursting. Say, would you mind taking my two girls? The Riders are men, see, and they have a strangeness about them…" she trailed off.
Tau looked down at the girl who stood as tall as her mother's shoulders. Laia, was it? And what was her sister's name? The one born only a few winters ago? Leith?
He had no children of his own and he didn't know how to look after them, especially not girls. It was an odd request, given that some of the town thought that Tau was one with a strangeness.
"A bed's all they need," Ellie was quick to say. "I'll bring over the meals, enough for all three of you, and Laia can do the cleaning. They're good girls. They won't get in your way."
Tau gave a weak smile. The woman had thought of everything. He nodded again and watched Ellie thaw with relief.
"Thank you," she called back over her shoulder, already hurrying back to the house.
Before Tau knew it, there were two girls and a hot meat pie arrayed around his modest hearth. Some of the houses had tables and chairs and a fireplace for cooking, but Tau preferred the traditional ways: a tiled platform around an open fire. The tiles warmed by the fire made good for sleeping at night.
He lit a small fire to see by and set some ice to melt. He selected colourful cups that had not yet managed to sell at market and poured them each some water before sitting opposite the girls and watch them eat. They stared right back, eyes as wide as the moon. Tau wasn't sure who felt more bewildered. The girls devoured the whole pie and looked like they could have had more, so Tau hastily made some gruel flavoured with nuts and dried mushrooms. He managed to snatch a few mouthfuls before the girls ate that too.
He left the girls to their own devices as he cleared the spare room to make space for their bedding. It put a smile on his face to hear some hushed chatter followed by giggling. The sound was a relief after the terse silence at dinner. Once the room was ready, he beckoned the girls through and retreated to his own room. There were no doors inside his house, and it hadn't mattered before, but Tau wondered if he should set up some screens to section off the space.
Tau fell asleep to the pleasant sound of the girl's hushed voices.
The first thing Tau did upon waking was check in on the girls. Leith had abandoned her bedding and crawled in to sleep beside Laia. It reminded Tau of his younger sister Rava, who used to do the same. He was careful not to disturb them as he moved around the house preparing for the day's work. However, after finding himself unable to move without something banging or scraping, he picked up his crates and headed outside.
It had snowed lightly overnight and yesterday's footsteps were covered in a fine layer of white. Tau picked up the broken sword where it lay beneath a sprinkle of snow, pulling down his sleeve so that he could grip the metal without touching it. Skillfully, he pried the kiln door open.
A little forest of clay creations greeted him. The glaze he used was a trade secret. When applied, it was a runny brown no different from the clay, but the fire turned it a deep, soothing green. The earthenware was still warm to the touch.
He took his time packing the items into a crate with a bit of straw between for cushioning. Partway through his tasks, he heard the crush of heavy footsteps towards him. He looked up to see a stranger, one of the Riders.
The Rider towered over Tau, who was by no means a short man by the village's standards. The stranger was dressed handsomely in furs and leather, his long pale hair swept back into a loose bun. His eyes were the colour of winter skies, but it was the Rider's ears that Tau couldn't stop staring at. The tops curved back and ended in points, like the shape of a hunting horn.
"Good morning," the Rider greeted, though even such a normal phrase sounded odd coming from the outsider.
Tau nodded.
If the Rider thought anything of Tau's silence, he didn't comment. Instead, he gestured to the objects still inside the kiln. "May I?"
Tau nodded again.
The Rider reached in and, with a care that Tau approved of, removed two of the clay fillings that Tau crafted from scraps to fill the kiln. These were animal figurines; a ground squirrel and an owl, both accentuated by the smooth green glaze.
Tau busied himself with emptying the kiln while the Rider scrutinised the potter’s whimsical wares as seriously as the traveling stewards of the southward nobles. He tried to remain indifferent to the judgement of this pale stranger, but it would have been difficult for any craftsman to remain entirely aloof in such situations. Perhaps if the Rider was appraising the plates or jars, Tau might have kept a professional distance, but they say that a potter's fillings speak volumes of his character.
More fillings emerged as Tau placed the larger items in the crate. The Rider gathered them up one by one while staying out of the potter's way. There was a tree styled after the proud pines whose greens defied the harshest winters. A fox. A rabbit. A snow sprite. A small tray for keepsakes.
By the time the kiln was empty, the Rider had collected an armful of oddities.
"How much for these?" he asked with an enthusiasm that Tau found hard not to warm to.
Tau felt a pang of guilt taking the Rider's coin, given that the fillings were worth nothing, usually given away at the market to people who bought his wares. But the Rider seemed happy to part with his coppers and Tau reminded himself that he owed no loyalty to travellers.
Back inside the house, the girls were up and milling about by the hearth. Laia was coaxing a small fire with a stick while Leith clung to her sister's back, thumb in mouth. Their mother had not yet been with the morning's meal, so Tau scraped together some flour and butter over the small fire into a semblance of breakfast. If it was lacking in taste, Tau couldn't tell from the way the girls attacked it.
When they were almost finished, Ellie arrived, full of apologies. Both girls ran to their mother, who set down her basket of fruit studded bread, so that she could take the girls into her arms. Leith was sobbing and full of complaints: the house was too cold, the bedding too hard, there were no toys anywhere, and Laia had been mean to her. She wanted to go back home. Laia was more subdued but she did whisper something in Ellie's ear while glancing at Tau.
Tau stared, wide eyed, trying to reconcile the shy, giggling girls with the two he saw now. He watched helpless as Ellie soothed the girls and gave them more to eat. That seemed to calm them, even when Ellie told them firmly that they would be staying with Tau for a while longer.
"If you ask Tau for chores, it will make the days pass faster," Ellie told her girls. Leith scrunched her face up at the thought while Laia looked resigned.
Once Ellie had left, and the bread was devoured, it took some trial and error to figure out what the girls could do.
Laia was set to the task of cutting slabs of damp clay to size. Tau showed her how to do this with a thin string, applying even pressure on both ends as the string was brought down over the clay. Leith rolled the pieces of clay into rough balls to prepare them for the wheel. She handled the clay more than necessary, which made the clay more susceptible to cracking, but Tau told himself that it was a small thing that he could compensate for on the wheel with more water. After all, the girls seemed to enjoy themselves. They watched, fascinated, as the lumps transformed into pots and vats under the guidance of Tau's hands. They cheered when large bits of discarded clay flew from the wheel. Tau didn't have a chance to sculpt these scraps into smaller items, let alone fillings; the girls got to them first. They made twisted shapes which they claimed were flowers and Riders and babies.
During the girls’ midday nap, Tau snuck out to gather essential supplies. From the villagers’ reactions, it seemed that word of Tau’s encumberment had spread. Even those who usually eyed Tau suspiciously for his strangeness approached him with something for the girls. Laia, especially, was quite beloved by the others for her fair face and the lovely songs she sang during festivals.
When he returned, Ellie had come to visit the girls again, this time the three of them laughing at the girls' morning adventures. The four of them shared a meal of chicken and rice before Ellie returned to host the Riders and herd the rest of her brood.
After lunch, Laia helped Tau clean out the dust and broken clay from within the kiln while Leith took an afternoon nap. The older girl worked with a quiet efficiency that pleased Tau. The tune she hummed when she worked made the afternoon even more agreeable. Leith had the insides cleaner than Tau could have ever managed; her slender hands reached corners and holes that Tau could not. They found a bird shaped filling that had been fired to within an inch of its life, it's surface a chalk white. Laia pocketed it as her own.
When the girls ran out of chores, they found games of their own in the snow behind the. Tau felt dutybound to watch them, and he was right, because he stepped in just in time to save Leith from tumbling off a snow mound the two girls had built. He dived forward with a speed he didn't know he still possessed and snatched the girl just as she toppled.
Their mother came for another visit in the evening to find Leith again bursting with tears. In contrast, Laia took the stew happily from her mother and heated it over the fire. Ellie didn't stay long. Her guests had their compatriots visiting for dinner. Apparently, Tau's fillings were a source of much discussion amongst them. By now, Tau was prepared for the girls' appetite and supplemented Ellie's stew with a whole extra loaf of nutty bread. He gave Laia extra bedding and blankets for the two girls to use. When it was all set up, it looked to rival the towns leader's quarters, and worth it to see Leith happy.
The next day passed much the same, except this time when their mother came over Laia gave Ellie some butter biscuits to take back. Packing the kiln was a novelty for the girls. They handed each piece to him with a care only girls could possess, saving him the effort of going back and forth. Leith squealed with delight when some of her twisted shapes, the ones Tau thought could handle firing, were placed in the gaps of the kiln. He included some of Laia's more complete creations too while pretending to ignore the excited gleam in her eyes.
The girls went inside when a Rider came to speak with Tau, the same one from yesterday. He wanted more fillings if Tau had them, but the potter shook his head. There would be no fillings tomorrow; all the clay scraps had been commandeered by the girls. Tau suspected this would be the case for the entirely of the Riders' stay. After that day, the Rider didn’t visit Tau again.
Winter blurred.
One day, without permission, the Twin Peaks of Greenvale were suddenly restored to their namesake. Or at least, it seemed sudden to Tau. Living with the girls brought more grief and joy than Tau thought himself capable. Leith had developed the bad habit of climbing up Tau's back when he least expected it and covering his eyes, or simply latching onto him by the throat and laughing manically. Laia, on the other hand, proved to be an excellent potter's assistant, though that wasn't surprising given that Laia was good at anything she put her mind to.
On the morning the Riders left, Ellie and Bowman came to Tau to collect the girls, both pleased and relieved with the winter's work. The coin from the Riders would help feed and clothe their brood, which would be increasing yet again before next winter.
Leith expressed her feelings about moving back home most outwardly. She was yet to grow out of her tears and tantrums. The logic that Tau would still be across the road could not placate her. She cried for him as if he had died. It almost infected Tau with a tear or two of his own.
Laia was more practical in her assessment of the situation. She both liked and was well suited to pottery; her care and precision, along with her dextrous and increasingly toned hands, made her the ideal candidate to continue the craft. When she asked Tau if she could be apprenticed to him, it brought tears to his eyes for real.
The town of Taldora thawed into its next routine. Crops were planted, markets were held, and children played freely in the streets. The Taldorians all agreed that their potter looked happier with his new apprentice. The children had lightened his silence.
Tau didn't like travellers. Travellers were a blight upon the land, consuming wantonly without thought given to the sustainability of the lands they passed. Who was to pick up the rubbish that littered the road to the pass? Yet, this close to mountain top, the realities of surviving the winter meant that Tau couldn't muster the same dislike for their coin. Unlike the others, however, Tau would not put signs in the street or stand outside and beckon to the travellers. He would not offer meals and laundry to entice them to stay. If one happened to knock on his door, then they would negotiate service and price, but he wouldn’t be out there to welcome them. He had more important things to do.
Tau sat at his potter's wheel, throwing clay remnants into small cups and dishes. He was known to mould a sculpture or two at the muse's descent, but today he couldn't see any interesting shapes in the scraps of clay. The cups and dishes would fill up the gaps in the kiln between the pots and jars. The fillings he had made the other day would go between those. Nothing was wasted.
The sun was setting over the mountains by the time Tau finished packing the last of his day's work into the kiln outside the front of his house. He fired up the kiln and poked the charcoal into place with the end of an old, broken sword. Not all the creations would survive, some would crack in the fire, but at least it wouldn’t be due to uneven heat.
The streets were busier than usual for this time of evening. The commotion in the town meant that the Riders had arrived. Tau saw signs of occupation in his neighbour's house. An extra horse in the shed. Snow boots hung up to dry. The children were out in the street, laughing and chasing each other with handfuls of slushy snow.
One gave a shout when she saw Tau and ran back indoors. A moment later, she emerged with her mother and they approached the potter together.
"Tau, a favour please?" Ellie was a small, stocky woman who married a tall, pale man. As such, even her daughter was almost her height.
Tau set the broken sword down beside the kiln and nodded.
"We've got a pair of Riders with us insisting on separate rooms, which means that Bowman and I will stay with the kids, but…" she cast a glance back at her children, the ones on the street, and looked at Tau with a helpless shrug. "We're full to bursting. Say, would you mind taking my two girls? The Riders are men, see, and they have a strangeness about them…" she trailed off.
Tau looked down at the girl who stood as tall as her mother's shoulders. Laia, was it? And what was her sister's name? The one born only a few winters ago? Leith?
He had no children of his own and he didn't know how to look after them, especially not girls. It was an odd request, given that some of the town thought that Tau was one with a strangeness.
"A bed's all they need," Ellie was quick to say. "I'll bring over the meals, enough for all three of you, and Laia can do the cleaning. They're good girls. They won't get in your way."
Tau gave a weak smile. The woman had thought of everything. He nodded again and watched Ellie thaw with relief.
"Thank you," she called back over her shoulder, already hurrying back to the house.
Before Tau knew it, there were two girls and a hot meat pie arrayed around his modest hearth. Some of the houses had tables and chairs and a fireplace for cooking, but Tau preferred the traditional ways: a tiled platform around an open fire. The tiles warmed by the fire made good for sleeping at night.
He lit a small fire to see by and set some ice to melt. He selected colourful cups that had not yet managed to sell at market and poured them each some water before sitting opposite the girls and watch them eat. They stared right back, eyes as wide as the moon. Tau wasn't sure who felt more bewildered. The girls devoured the whole pie and looked like they could have had more, so Tau hastily made some gruel flavoured with nuts and dried mushrooms. He managed to snatch a few mouthfuls before the girls ate that too.
He left the girls to their own devices as he cleared the spare room to make space for their bedding. It put a smile on his face to hear some hushed chatter followed by giggling. The sound was a relief after the terse silence at dinner. Once the room was ready, he beckoned the girls through and retreated to his own room. There were no doors inside his house, and it hadn't mattered before, but Tau wondered if he should set up some screens to section off the space.
Tau fell asleep to the pleasant sound of the girl's hushed voices.
The first thing Tau did upon waking was check in on the girls. Leith had abandoned her bedding and crawled in to sleep beside Laia. It reminded Tau of his younger sister Rava, who used to do the same. He was careful not to disturb them as he moved around the house preparing for the day's work. However, after finding himself unable to move without something banging or scraping, he picked up his crates and headed outside.
It had snowed lightly overnight and yesterday's footsteps were covered in a fine layer of white. Tau picked up the broken sword where it lay beneath a sprinkle of snow, pulling down his sleeve so that he could grip the metal without touching it. Skillfully, he pried the kiln door open.
A little forest of clay creations greeted him. The glaze he used was a trade secret. When applied, it was a runny brown no different from the clay, but the fire turned it a deep, soothing green. The earthenware was still warm to the touch.
He took his time packing the items into a crate with a bit of straw between for cushioning. Partway through his tasks, he heard the crush of heavy footsteps towards him. He looked up to see a stranger, one of the Riders.
The Rider towered over Tau, who was by no means a short man by the village's standards. The stranger was dressed handsomely in furs and leather, his long pale hair swept back into a loose bun. His eyes were the colour of winter skies, but it was the Rider's ears that Tau couldn't stop staring at. The tops curved back and ended in points, like the shape of a hunting horn.
"Good morning," the Rider greeted, though even such a normal phrase sounded odd coming from the outsider.
Tau nodded.
If the Rider thought anything of Tau's silence, he didn't comment. Instead, he gestured to the objects still inside the kiln. "May I?"
Tau nodded again.
The Rider reached in and, with a care that Tau approved of, removed two of the clay fillings that Tau crafted from scraps to fill the kiln. These were animal figurines; a ground squirrel and an owl, both accentuated by the smooth green glaze.
Tau busied himself with emptying the kiln while the Rider scrutinised the potter’s whimsical wares as seriously as the traveling stewards of the southward nobles. He tried to remain indifferent to the judgement of this pale stranger, but it would have been difficult for any craftsman to remain entirely aloof in such situations. Perhaps if the Rider was appraising the plates or jars, Tau might have kept a professional distance, but they say that a potter's fillings speak volumes of his character.
More fillings emerged as Tau placed the larger items in the crate. The Rider gathered them up one by one while staying out of the potter's way. There was a tree styled after the proud pines whose greens defied the harshest winters. A fox. A rabbit. A snow sprite. A small tray for keepsakes.
By the time the kiln was empty, the Rider had collected an armful of oddities.
"How much for these?" he asked with an enthusiasm that Tau found hard not to warm to.
Tau felt a pang of guilt taking the Rider's coin, given that the fillings were worth nothing, usually given away at the market to people who bought his wares. But the Rider seemed happy to part with his coppers and Tau reminded himself that he owed no loyalty to travellers.
Back inside the house, the girls were up and milling about by the hearth. Laia was coaxing a small fire with a stick while Leith clung to her sister's back, thumb in mouth. Their mother had not yet been with the morning's meal, so Tau scraped together some flour and butter over the small fire into a semblance of breakfast. If it was lacking in taste, Tau couldn't tell from the way the girls attacked it.
When they were almost finished, Ellie arrived, full of apologies. Both girls ran to their mother, who set down her basket of fruit studded bread, so that she could take the girls into her arms. Leith was sobbing and full of complaints: the house was too cold, the bedding too hard, there were no toys anywhere, and Laia had been mean to her. She wanted to go back home. Laia was more subdued but she did whisper something in Ellie's ear while glancing at Tau.
Tau stared, wide eyed, trying to reconcile the shy, giggling girls with the two he saw now. He watched helpless as Ellie soothed the girls and gave them more to eat. That seemed to calm them, even when Ellie told them firmly that they would be staying with Tau for a while longer.
"If you ask Tau for chores, it will make the days pass faster," Ellie told her girls. Leith scrunched her face up at the thought while Laia looked resigned.
Once Ellie had left, and the bread was devoured, it took some trial and error to figure out what the girls could do.
Laia was set to the task of cutting slabs of damp clay to size. Tau showed her how to do this with a thin string, applying even pressure on both ends as the string was brought down over the clay. Leith rolled the pieces of clay into rough balls to prepare them for the wheel. She handled the clay more than necessary, which made the clay more susceptible to cracking, but Tau told himself that it was a small thing that he could compensate for on the wheel with more water. After all, the girls seemed to enjoy themselves. They watched, fascinated, as the lumps transformed into pots and vats under the guidance of Tau's hands. They cheered when large bits of discarded clay flew from the wheel. Tau didn't have a chance to sculpt these scraps into smaller items, let alone fillings; the girls got to them first. They made twisted shapes which they claimed were flowers and Riders and babies.
During the girls’ midday nap, Tau snuck out to gather essential supplies. From the villagers’ reactions, it seemed that word of Tau’s encumberment had spread. Even those who usually eyed Tau suspiciously for his strangeness approached him with something for the girls. Laia, especially, was quite beloved by the others for her fair face and the lovely songs she sang during festivals.
When he returned, Ellie had come to visit the girls again, this time the three of them laughing at the girls' morning adventures. The four of them shared a meal of chicken and rice before Ellie returned to host the Riders and herd the rest of her brood.
After lunch, Laia helped Tau clean out the dust and broken clay from within the kiln while Leith took an afternoon nap. The older girl worked with a quiet efficiency that pleased Tau. The tune she hummed when she worked made the afternoon even more agreeable. Leith had the insides cleaner than Tau could have ever managed; her slender hands reached corners and holes that Tau could not. They found a bird shaped filling that had been fired to within an inch of its life, it's surface a chalk white. Laia pocketed it as her own.
When the girls ran out of chores, they found games of their own in the snow behind the. Tau felt dutybound to watch them, and he was right, because he stepped in just in time to save Leith from tumbling off a snow mound the two girls had built. He dived forward with a speed he didn't know he still possessed and snatched the girl just as she toppled.
Their mother came for another visit in the evening to find Leith again bursting with tears. In contrast, Laia took the stew happily from her mother and heated it over the fire. Ellie didn't stay long. Her guests had their compatriots visiting for dinner. Apparently, Tau's fillings were a source of much discussion amongst them. By now, Tau was prepared for the girls' appetite and supplemented Ellie's stew with a whole extra loaf of nutty bread. He gave Laia extra bedding and blankets for the two girls to use. When it was all set up, it looked to rival the towns leader's quarters, and worth it to see Leith happy.
The next day passed much the same, except this time when their mother came over Laia gave Ellie some butter biscuits to take back. Packing the kiln was a novelty for the girls. They handed each piece to him with a care only girls could possess, saving him the effort of going back and forth. Leith squealed with delight when some of her twisted shapes, the ones Tau thought could handle firing, were placed in the gaps of the kiln. He included some of Laia's more complete creations too while pretending to ignore the excited gleam in her eyes.
The girls went inside when a Rider came to speak with Tau, the same one from yesterday. He wanted more fillings if Tau had them, but the potter shook his head. There would be no fillings tomorrow; all the clay scraps had been commandeered by the girls. Tau suspected this would be the case for the entirely of the Riders' stay. After that day, the Rider didn’t visit Tau again.
Winter blurred.
One day, without permission, the Twin Peaks of Greenvale were suddenly restored to their namesake. Or at least, it seemed sudden to Tau. Living with the girls brought more grief and joy than Tau thought himself capable. Leith had developed the bad habit of climbing up Tau's back when he least expected it and covering his eyes, or simply latching onto him by the throat and laughing manically. Laia, on the other hand, proved to be an excellent potter's assistant, though that wasn't surprising given that Laia was good at anything she put her mind to.
On the morning the Riders left, Ellie and Bowman came to Tau to collect the girls, both pleased and relieved with the winter's work. The coin from the Riders would help feed and clothe their brood, which would be increasing yet again before next winter.
Leith expressed her feelings about moving back home most outwardly. She was yet to grow out of her tears and tantrums. The logic that Tau would still be across the road could not placate her. She cried for him as if he had died. It almost infected Tau with a tear or two of his own.
Laia was more practical in her assessment of the situation. She both liked and was well suited to pottery; her care and precision, along with her dextrous and increasingly toned hands, made her the ideal candidate to continue the craft. When she asked Tau if she could be apprenticed to him, it brought tears to his eyes for real.
The town of Taldora thawed into its next routine. Crops were planted, markets were held, and children played freely in the streets. The Taldorians all agreed that their potter looked happier with his new apprentice. The children had lightened his silence.