A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park

Author:Linda Sue Park [Park, Linda Sue]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Min came to the draining site after a few days to check on Tree-ear's work. Because only small amounts were needed, Tree-ear was working with the red and white clay in bowls instead of in the pits. Min closed his eyes as he touched his fingertips to the contents of one bowl.

After a brief instant, he opened his eyes and sniffed. "You took long enough," he said dismissively. He walked back to the house carrying both bowls.

Tree-ear pressed his lips together so as not to grin too widely at the potter's departing back. It was the first time he had prepared the clay to such a fine finish without further prompting from Min.

Min made five replicas of the melon-shaped vase. To inscribe the design and then inlay each part of it with the colored slip was the work of countless hours, and Tree-ear remained at the house until well after dark to assist Min however he could. After a vase had been inscribed and inlaid, Min removed every bit of excess slip. Finally, the vases were dipped in glaze. Never had Tree-ear taken such care over the draining, and Min himself had done the final drainings and mixing of the glaze.

Min was like a man with a demon inside him. He ate little, slept less, and whether he worked by daylight or lamplight, his eyes always seemed to glitter with ferocity. Tree-ear felt that the very air in the workspace under the eaves was alive with whispers and hisses of anxiety: the emissary would be returning very soon.

At last, the day came when they would load the vases into the kiln. Each vase was placed carefully on three seashells set in a triangle atop one of the clay shelves, in a position near the middle of the kiln where Min determined it would fire best. Then the wood was precisely arranged in a complicated crisscross pattern of many layers. The kindling of twigs and pine needles was lit with a spark from a flint stone, and when the fire was well on its way, the door of the kiln was sealed.

The heat in the kiln was extremely difficult to control. The kiln had to heat up slowly—too rapid a rise in temperature at the start, and the vessels would crack. This warming process took a full day. Beginning on the second day, more wood was added from time to time through openings in the kiln walls. On the third or fourth day, when a potter hoped that the correct temperature had been reached, the openings were sealed with clay plugs. The fire blazed at its hottest then, until it had eaten all the air within the kiln and began to die. And it took two or three days for the kiln to cool down.

Min preferred to fire his replicas in at least two different batches whenever possible. But with the emissary's return nearly at hand, there was time for only one firing.

While Min always stayed at the kiln during the

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