TGR, Chapter 56
It just gets longer and longer.... hopefully it's staying interesting. There's an illustration but it's not finished.
I've been having a lot of problems with the Mac version of Naturally Speaking. It does not allow you to type in a word and say, "This is how it's pronounced." You are allowed to select a word from a text file and add it to the vocabulary -- and then guess how the program would pronounce it. So instead of Rumau being "Roo-Mao" she is now "Rum-aww" and hannu rhymes with ham instead of calm... and Yre... it still has no idea how to pronounce Yre (maybe I should have spelled it "Yirreh"). But it got Mignette and Aurrigne immediately. Go figure...
Chapter 56.
Knights
“Do you require us all still?” Mignette asked.
In front of them, the kiln was firing with an almighty roar. Flames burst from the top, and the heat was so great that the kiln could only be approached for a few moments. Rumau considered this a miserable, apprentice’s fault. But she had done the best she could.
She was sure she’d heard several things go “pop!” but tried to tell herself it was just her imagination, combined with the great roar of the fire itself.
“RUMAU!”
“WHAT?” Rumau grabbed Mignette by the arm and pulled her away from the kiln, to a spot where they could speak normally. “What? Sorry I snapped at you, what did you want?”
“I have an idea.”
“Oh?” Rumau turned around, and waved a “Yes!” at a hannu who was asking (via gesture) whether to keep adding fuel to the kiln. “What is it?”
“The hannu and I have watched you carefully. The hannu remember everything they see. Everything, no matter what details. They can build a kiln and-”
“Oh, no, oh no! There’s a lot more to it than just what you see watching!”
“Time, Rumau! We have so little time! Let me take some of them ahead. You said yourself we don’t have enough armor, and some will break. Let us go ahead and build a kiln. You fire here and meet us there. If can fix what you find when you get there. They can find clay and have it ready.”
“I’m going to need everyone, Mignette. This stuff-” was that another pop?
“Who’s going to carry all this stuff!”
“I wasn’t going to take everyone.”
“Mignette... I’m not even sure if this is going to work. Why should you run ahead and build another kiln if I open this one and nothing worked?”
“I believe it will work.”
Rumau looked down. She had no idea whether Mignette was sincere or not.
“If it turns out we don’t need it, then it will just have been an exercise,” Mignette went on earnestly. “But what if it works, Rumau, and we do need it? What then! Think about it!”
Rumau sighed. “If it does work, Mignette, it needs to be done right! That’s what makes it work!”
Mignette put her hands on her hips. “Well, I’m off, then, and I’m taking Emma and half of the hannu with me. Kaukiy will lead you to us when you’re ready.”
Rumau hung her head and swished her tail. “Fine. Whatever you want. We’ll see you when we’re done here, then.”
Mignette patted Rumau’s arm. “I’ll see you then! Good luck!”
“Fair going to you,” Rumau said. “And leave Perennet here!”
Mignette waved without turning around, and began rounding up hannu.
... b ...
The fire roared on, so hot that the stones of which the kiln was made began to show signs of melting. Rumau could tell by the color of interior how hot it had become. She was only guessing the necessary temperature for these wares, not having had the time to do a proper series of tests for this clay. But Rumau had been at this for a very long time, and was reasonably assured her guess would be correct.
The hotter the kiln became, the more carefully Rumau coddled it. More and more frequently, she pulled a plug, a very long piece of hard quartz that one of the hannu had found at the last Rose, out of its hole and peered into the kiln. Cherry red, then scarlet, then a pale orange, and finally, when it reached a very pale yellow, Rumau decided that the firing was done. Calling together all the remaining hannu, and Yre, who had stayed behind as well, she covered the top hole of the kiln with large slabs of sandstone, and poured more sand on the top of that to deprive the fire of air. She hadn’t really wanted to do it this way, as this method ensured that there would still be some heating even after she’d wished it to stop. Heating like this often darkened the clay; but in her experience, often made the clay somewhat stronger. On the other hand, sometimes it had far less desirable effects on clay depending on the type. No point wondering about it now would just have to wait and see what developed.
After about an hour, Rumau pulled the plug from the spy hole again, and was very pleased to see that the color within the kiln had cooled to a dull brick red. Normally, she would now go away for at least a day, and spend an inordinate amount of time making sure her students did the same. Patience did not become a virtue to them until, in their enthusiasm, they opened a kiln too early, and something in which they had invested a great deal of time and effort immediately cracked and fell to pieces. Now, Rumau found herself in a position of knowing that not only would she have to open the kiln before she would rather have done so, but that she would have to let rapidly as well. Rapidly cooling the kiln him was something about which she had railed so very often in her lifetime that she felt miserable about having to actually do it herself now - especially since, to tell the truth, she could no longer remember the best way to do it.
She resigned herself to getting some sleep that night, explaining to herself that after a good night’s sleep, it would all come back to her.
Problem was, the next morning, nothing had come back to her except a very eager group of hannu, who somehow seem to expect that the killing was going to be open today. Perennet in the lead, they descended upon her the minute she had woken up, and tried to drag her off to the kiln.
Blearily, she pulled out the plug from the spy hole, peered in, saw that all was black, and noted carefully how much heat came out from the hole. It was still quite hot in there. She insisted on breakfast first, but afterwards, she gathered a bunch of long grass and twigs, out of which she made a broom, and began sweeping off all the sand she had used to stop the firing. As soon as she did so, she could really feel heat rapidly leaving the kiln through cracks in the stones which made up its walls.
She got the feeling though that she had not actually fired this kiln very high.
It should have been quite a bit hotter than it was. Perhaps the color she had seen was just the result of the kiln heating unevenly, which could hardly be helped considering how quickly it had been made. “Honestly,” she said to Perennet, “if anything from this film turns out correctly, I, for one, will be very amazed.”
As she waited for the kiln to cool, Rumau gave more thought to the armor that was (hopefully) cooling, uncracked in the kiln. One thing of which she was sure. It was going to be uncomfortable. She had tried to make it form-fitting, but still, it was unglazed clay. Hannu had short coats like horses. Had they had thick coats like Mignette’s, Rumau would not have been concerned.
It was really too bad that Mignette had taken Emma with her. Emma probably didn’t really know how to make the blankets she had brought with her, but she had probably seen it done often enough to have enough of an idea to give Rumau an idea where to start. Ideally, Rumau thought what she really would like to use was leather. But again, it was a matter of time. There just wasn’t time to prepare leather, much less make anything out of it.
Though she did have some leather blankets with her.
And, after all, it was getting warmer.
And if it didn’t get warmer, she could always cuddle up against Yre...
With some trepidation, Rumau pulled out her least favorite blanket, and began to cut it into vests for the hannu.
By that evening, the heat coming from the interior of the kiln was notably less than it had been in the morning, so, very carefully Rumau began to remove some of the outer slabs which made up the kiln walls. The hannu were definitely no lovers of heat; thankfully, they stayed well out of the way of the hot stones which she occasionally threw down.
No point trying to do anything else tonight, Rumau thought. She pried off one, then another, last slab from the kiln, reckoning to let it cool naturally overnight and open it in the morning.
A small voice in her mind rebelled. She snarled at it, and it went off somewhere into its own corner to sulk.
Rumau went out to check on the horses. The hannu were already able to approach the western mares, so long as they didn’t try to touch them. Rumau was impressed. They might indeed make horsemen someday.
Gadrin was lying on the ground resting. Her stomach, and the foal inside, were beginning to become a burden. Rumau sat down beside her. “For your sake, and for the love of you, my prize, I really should leave you behind.”
Gadrin turned her great head and placed her nose on Rumau’s stomach, nickering softly. Somehow, Rumau could almost hear her say, “Where you go, my friend, I go. My foals are strong and swift.”
Rumau very earnestly hoped that were true.
... b ...
The two of them were laying there companionably when the stars-and Yre-came out. Yre had actually spent most of the day sleeping, or playing with Túo. Tonight he came out with his lenses and sticks, and paper.
Rumau got up and went to him once he’d settled down. It took some effort not to say, “Ahh, took my advice, did you?” But he did notice that she was glancing at the paper.
“You would like to see what I have done, yes?” Yre asked with a hint of a snicker.
“Yes, in fact,” Rumau said.
“Well, look you here then. What do you think this is?” He pointed a long, tapering finger an oval shape with a dark, horizontal line through its center, surrounded by many notes made in Heyu’s alphabet. Some of the notes had already smudged.
“Really, Yre, I couldn’t say. What is it?”
Yre looked up and pointed at a particularly bright star. “That one,” he said. “Not always. But just now and then. I get a clear glimpse of it, and, you see, it looks to me something like that. Do you know, it looks to me something different, whenever I see it, and I say to myself, ‘Does it change then? Or are my lenses...’ Well, you can see, they are not in the best shape. I don’t believe they were made this way. I think perhaps you know that they were all clear throughout when they were made. Like the glaze on your pots, all clear.”
“It took a long time to figure out how to make that all-clear glaze,” Rumau said.
“A shortage of time,” Yre reflected, “is not possible in the long run. There has always been time, and there always will be. Anyway, look you at this. Here is the Moon’s Dog.”
He pointed at an oblong he’d drawn. There were no markings on it, but some scribbles around it which seemed to indicate that it tumbled end over end.
Rumau asked him about this and he agreed that this was indeed the case.
“But this is not what is impressing me right now,” he said eagerly. Look at this. I have drawn the moon, you see?”
It was not at all a bad drawing, showing the light and dark areas where Rumau recognized them, and a few dark flecks added here and there.
“Now this to me is very curious. I have wondered about this from the egg, you know. Why is it, that, at night, when you see the moon, it is white and grey? And during the day, when you see the moon, why, it is never a color darker or less blue than the sky? You have noticed this, yes?”
Rumau tried to think back. “I probably did, yes, but I never really thought about it.”
Yre smiled broadly (or as broadly as he could). “I think I know why this is!”
“Oh yes?”
“Yes! Do you know what I think? It is that the sky is in front of the Moon!”
Rumau considered this and realized that she could not have cared less about the sky or the moon. But it was good to hear Yre speak so eagerly.
“I have always wanted to touch the sky. I have always wanted to know what it’s made of, and what it feels like, and why it’s there. Has it ever occurred to you to say to yourself, ‘what is that doing there’?”
Rumau did not admit that such a question had never occurred to her, not even fleetingly. But she did know what it was made of. “ The sky is made of smoke, I know that much.”
“You do? How did you learn this?”
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Whenever you burn anything, you get a lot of smoke. You can see it, and then it dissipates, and it just... well, I’m not exactly sure about this part, but it... it dissipates, and it goes up and becomes the sky.”
Yre Looked quite dubious. “So how does it become blue?”
“I regret, Yre, that I just don’t know. But when we get home, I’m sure you’ll be able to find all sorts of people who’ll be able to answer that question for you. In much, much more detail than you could ever want.”
“That will be impossible,” Yre laughed. “You have taught me well to want to know everything!”
Rumau leaned down and snuggled next to her friend. “You don’t mind me resting here, do you?”
Yre made a noise that Rumau had never heard him make before. It didn’t sound threatening, so Rumau made herself comfortable.
Yre got on with his map of the stars, purring in his way.
... b ...
The next morning, Rumau was once again awoken by the hannu. Rumau wasn’t sure they had any idea that what was in the kiln was for them, but they had seen her pay so much attention to it that they seemed to realize how important it was, and were eager to keep up with what was going on. Even Yre and Aurrigne were up early to await the opening.
All the outer sandstone slabs were cool to the touch, more or less. Clambering around the kiln, Rumau simply picked these up and toss them away. The next layer gave a little more difficulty, as it seems that in places some of the sandstone slabs had fired together. these needed to be cracked or pried apart, and Rumau did this carefully to prevent anything from falling into the kiln and breaking anything that, by some miracle or other, had not itself exploded.
As more and more slabs were removed, Rumau was able to get a peek here and there at the armor plates in the A few had, indeed, exploded. That was pretty much unavoidable. But remarkably, most were intact.
The clay had fired a grayish pink color that Rumau really didn’t like. nevertheless, once she had finished deconstructing and unloading the kiln, she had full sets of armor for four hannu and partial armor for at least another eight.
“Perennet!” Rumau called, “Come here! Aurrigne, please bring some of that string you made.”
When Perennet appeared from the crowd (Rumau could only recognize her by a purple stain that Rumau herself had “accidentally” gotten on the on the hannu’s hand), Rumau went to work carefully putting first the leather vest on, and then carefully tying the plates together until Perennet was wearing a full set including helmet.
The other hannu stared in amazement! They didn’t speak, and Rumau was beginning to believe that ultimately, hannu couldn’t speak. But they made noises redolent of wonder, and jealousy.
“This will stop an arrow, you think?” Aurrigne said as he examined Perennet carefully.
“I certainly hope so,” rebel set if nothing else, it will stop the first and maybe the second. We’ll just have to hope that that will be enough. In any case the way I made this, should a narrow break one of the plates, there is another plate under it and anyway the broken plate can be easily replaced.”
“I will be very interested to see if it works as you say,” Aurrigne seemed to mumble.
“I think we should test it,” Yre said.
“Absolutely not!” Rumau said. “There isn’t enough of it, and besides, nobody’s shooting at any of us!”
“Just test it on a broken piece,” Yre said, taken aback.
“No,” Rumau snarled at both shimeyu, “and I’ll tell you why. Do you really want the hannu to imitate us, as they always do, and start shooting at these plates, while other hannu are wearing them?”
Almost on cue, other hannu brought plates to Rumau and clearly, though wordlessly, asked for them to be fitted to themselves.
Perennet mounted one of the foals, and all had to admit she looked quite stunning there, in her armor. The other hannu clamored even more loudly.
“All right, all right! I’ll get you all dressed up and then we’ll be off to the next Rose!” Rumau gathered up more vests and started outfitting Túo. “Say,” she said, suddenly stopping and looking up. “Cookie was supposed to come back and show us where the next Rose is. Anybody seen her?”
“Not since Mignette left, no,” Yre said.
Aurrigne shook his head.
Rumau decided not to think about how disturbing this news was.
(c) 2008 Fara Shimbo
To Be Continued....
I've been having a lot of problems with the Mac version of Naturally Speaking. It does not allow you to type in a word and say, "This is how it's pronounced." You are allowed to select a word from a text file and add it to the vocabulary -- and then guess how the program would pronounce it. So instead of Rumau being "Roo-Mao" she is now "Rum-aww" and hannu rhymes with ham instead of calm... and Yre... it still has no idea how to pronounce Yre (maybe I should have spelled it "Yirreh"). But it got Mignette and Aurrigne immediately. Go figure...
Chapter 56.
Knights
“Do you require us all still?” Mignette asked.
In front of them, the kiln was firing with an almighty roar. Flames burst from the top, and the heat was so great that the kiln could only be approached for a few moments. Rumau considered this a miserable, apprentice’s fault. But she had done the best she could.
She was sure she’d heard several things go “pop!” but tried to tell herself it was just her imagination, combined with the great roar of the fire itself.
“RUMAU!”
“WHAT?” Rumau grabbed Mignette by the arm and pulled her away from the kiln, to a spot where they could speak normally. “What? Sorry I snapped at you, what did you want?”
“I have an idea.”
“Oh?” Rumau turned around, and waved a “Yes!” at a hannu who was asking (via gesture) whether to keep adding fuel to the kiln. “What is it?”
“The hannu and I have watched you carefully. The hannu remember everything they see. Everything, no matter what details. They can build a kiln and-”
“Oh, no, oh no! There’s a lot more to it than just what you see watching!”
“Time, Rumau! We have so little time! Let me take some of them ahead. You said yourself we don’t have enough armor, and some will break. Let us go ahead and build a kiln. You fire here and meet us there. If can fix what you find when you get there. They can find clay and have it ready.”
“I’m going to need everyone, Mignette. This stuff-” was that another pop?
“Who’s going to carry all this stuff!”
“I wasn’t going to take everyone.”
“Mignette... I’m not even sure if this is going to work. Why should you run ahead and build another kiln if I open this one and nothing worked?”
“I believe it will work.”
Rumau looked down. She had no idea whether Mignette was sincere or not.
“If it turns out we don’t need it, then it will just have been an exercise,” Mignette went on earnestly. “But what if it works, Rumau, and we do need it? What then! Think about it!”
Rumau sighed. “If it does work, Mignette, it needs to be done right! That’s what makes it work!”
Mignette put her hands on her hips. “Well, I’m off, then, and I’m taking Emma and half of the hannu with me. Kaukiy will lead you to us when you’re ready.”
Rumau hung her head and swished her tail. “Fine. Whatever you want. We’ll see you when we’re done here, then.”
Mignette patted Rumau’s arm. “I’ll see you then! Good luck!”
“Fair going to you,” Rumau said. “And leave Perennet here!”
Mignette waved without turning around, and began rounding up hannu.
... b ...
The fire roared on, so hot that the stones of which the kiln was made began to show signs of melting. Rumau could tell by the color of interior how hot it had become. She was only guessing the necessary temperature for these wares, not having had the time to do a proper series of tests for this clay. But Rumau had been at this for a very long time, and was reasonably assured her guess would be correct.
The hotter the kiln became, the more carefully Rumau coddled it. More and more frequently, she pulled a plug, a very long piece of hard quartz that one of the hannu had found at the last Rose, out of its hole and peered into the kiln. Cherry red, then scarlet, then a pale orange, and finally, when it reached a very pale yellow, Rumau decided that the firing was done. Calling together all the remaining hannu, and Yre, who had stayed behind as well, she covered the top hole of the kiln with large slabs of sandstone, and poured more sand on the top of that to deprive the fire of air. She hadn’t really wanted to do it this way, as this method ensured that there would still be some heating even after she’d wished it to stop. Heating like this often darkened the clay; but in her experience, often made the clay somewhat stronger. On the other hand, sometimes it had far less desirable effects on clay depending on the type. No point wondering about it now would just have to wait and see what developed.
After about an hour, Rumau pulled the plug from the spy hole again, and was very pleased to see that the color within the kiln had cooled to a dull brick red. Normally, she would now go away for at least a day, and spend an inordinate amount of time making sure her students did the same. Patience did not become a virtue to them until, in their enthusiasm, they opened a kiln too early, and something in which they had invested a great deal of time and effort immediately cracked and fell to pieces. Now, Rumau found herself in a position of knowing that not only would she have to open the kiln before she would rather have done so, but that she would have to let rapidly as well. Rapidly cooling the kiln him was something about which she had railed so very often in her lifetime that she felt miserable about having to actually do it herself now - especially since, to tell the truth, she could no longer remember the best way to do it.
She resigned herself to getting some sleep that night, explaining to herself that after a good night’s sleep, it would all come back to her.
Problem was, the next morning, nothing had come back to her except a very eager group of hannu, who somehow seem to expect that the killing was going to be open today. Perennet in the lead, they descended upon her the minute she had woken up, and tried to drag her off to the kiln.
Blearily, she pulled out the plug from the spy hole, peered in, saw that all was black, and noted carefully how much heat came out from the hole. It was still quite hot in there. She insisted on breakfast first, but afterwards, she gathered a bunch of long grass and twigs, out of which she made a broom, and began sweeping off all the sand she had used to stop the firing. As soon as she did so, she could really feel heat rapidly leaving the kiln through cracks in the stones which made up its walls.
She got the feeling though that she had not actually fired this kiln very high.
It should have been quite a bit hotter than it was. Perhaps the color she had seen was just the result of the kiln heating unevenly, which could hardly be helped considering how quickly it had been made. “Honestly,” she said to Perennet, “if anything from this film turns out correctly, I, for one, will be very amazed.”
As she waited for the kiln to cool, Rumau gave more thought to the armor that was (hopefully) cooling, uncracked in the kiln. One thing of which she was sure. It was going to be uncomfortable. She had tried to make it form-fitting, but still, it was unglazed clay. Hannu had short coats like horses. Had they had thick coats like Mignette’s, Rumau would not have been concerned.
It was really too bad that Mignette had taken Emma with her. Emma probably didn’t really know how to make the blankets she had brought with her, but she had probably seen it done often enough to have enough of an idea to give Rumau an idea where to start. Ideally, Rumau thought what she really would like to use was leather. But again, it was a matter of time. There just wasn’t time to prepare leather, much less make anything out of it.
Though she did have some leather blankets with her.
And, after all, it was getting warmer.
And if it didn’t get warmer, she could always cuddle up against Yre...
With some trepidation, Rumau pulled out her least favorite blanket, and began to cut it into vests for the hannu.
By that evening, the heat coming from the interior of the kiln was notably less than it had been in the morning, so, very carefully Rumau began to remove some of the outer slabs which made up the kiln walls. The hannu were definitely no lovers of heat; thankfully, they stayed well out of the way of the hot stones which she occasionally threw down.
No point trying to do anything else tonight, Rumau thought. She pried off one, then another, last slab from the kiln, reckoning to let it cool naturally overnight and open it in the morning.
A small voice in her mind rebelled. She snarled at it, and it went off somewhere into its own corner to sulk.
Rumau went out to check on the horses. The hannu were already able to approach the western mares, so long as they didn’t try to touch them. Rumau was impressed. They might indeed make horsemen someday.
Gadrin was lying on the ground resting. Her stomach, and the foal inside, were beginning to become a burden. Rumau sat down beside her. “For your sake, and for the love of you, my prize, I really should leave you behind.”
Gadrin turned her great head and placed her nose on Rumau’s stomach, nickering softly. Somehow, Rumau could almost hear her say, “Where you go, my friend, I go. My foals are strong and swift.”
Rumau very earnestly hoped that were true.
... b ...
The two of them were laying there companionably when the stars-and Yre-came out. Yre had actually spent most of the day sleeping, or playing with Túo. Tonight he came out with his lenses and sticks, and paper.
Rumau got up and went to him once he’d settled down. It took some effort not to say, “Ahh, took my advice, did you?” But he did notice that she was glancing at the paper.
“You would like to see what I have done, yes?” Yre asked with a hint of a snicker.
“Yes, in fact,” Rumau said.
“Well, look you here then. What do you think this is?” He pointed a long, tapering finger an oval shape with a dark, horizontal line through its center, surrounded by many notes made in Heyu’s alphabet. Some of the notes had already smudged.
“Really, Yre, I couldn’t say. What is it?”
Yre looked up and pointed at a particularly bright star. “That one,” he said. “Not always. But just now and then. I get a clear glimpse of it, and, you see, it looks to me something like that. Do you know, it looks to me something different, whenever I see it, and I say to myself, ‘Does it change then? Or are my lenses...’ Well, you can see, they are not in the best shape. I don’t believe they were made this way. I think perhaps you know that they were all clear throughout when they were made. Like the glaze on your pots, all clear.”
“It took a long time to figure out how to make that all-clear glaze,” Rumau said.
“A shortage of time,” Yre reflected, “is not possible in the long run. There has always been time, and there always will be. Anyway, look you at this. Here is the Moon’s Dog.”
He pointed at an oblong he’d drawn. There were no markings on it, but some scribbles around it which seemed to indicate that it tumbled end over end.
Rumau asked him about this and he agreed that this was indeed the case.
“But this is not what is impressing me right now,” he said eagerly. Look at this. I have drawn the moon, you see?”
It was not at all a bad drawing, showing the light and dark areas where Rumau recognized them, and a few dark flecks added here and there.
“Now this to me is very curious. I have wondered about this from the egg, you know. Why is it, that, at night, when you see the moon, it is white and grey? And during the day, when you see the moon, why, it is never a color darker or less blue than the sky? You have noticed this, yes?”
Rumau tried to think back. “I probably did, yes, but I never really thought about it.”
Yre smiled broadly (or as broadly as he could). “I think I know why this is!”
“Oh yes?”
“Yes! Do you know what I think? It is that the sky is in front of the Moon!”
Rumau considered this and realized that she could not have cared less about the sky or the moon. But it was good to hear Yre speak so eagerly.
“I have always wanted to touch the sky. I have always wanted to know what it’s made of, and what it feels like, and why it’s there. Has it ever occurred to you to say to yourself, ‘what is that doing there’?”
Rumau did not admit that such a question had never occurred to her, not even fleetingly. But she did know what it was made of. “ The sky is made of smoke, I know that much.”
“You do? How did you learn this?”
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Whenever you burn anything, you get a lot of smoke. You can see it, and then it dissipates, and it just... well, I’m not exactly sure about this part, but it... it dissipates, and it goes up and becomes the sky.”
Yre Looked quite dubious. “So how does it become blue?”
“I regret, Yre, that I just don’t know. But when we get home, I’m sure you’ll be able to find all sorts of people who’ll be able to answer that question for you. In much, much more detail than you could ever want.”
“That will be impossible,” Yre laughed. “You have taught me well to want to know everything!”
Rumau leaned down and snuggled next to her friend. “You don’t mind me resting here, do you?”
Yre made a noise that Rumau had never heard him make before. It didn’t sound threatening, so Rumau made herself comfortable.
Yre got on with his map of the stars, purring in his way.
... b ...
The next morning, Rumau was once again awoken by the hannu. Rumau wasn’t sure they had any idea that what was in the kiln was for them, but they had seen her pay so much attention to it that they seemed to realize how important it was, and were eager to keep up with what was going on. Even Yre and Aurrigne were up early to await the opening.
All the outer sandstone slabs were cool to the touch, more or less. Clambering around the kiln, Rumau simply picked these up and toss them away. The next layer gave a little more difficulty, as it seems that in places some of the sandstone slabs had fired together. these needed to be cracked or pried apart, and Rumau did this carefully to prevent anything from falling into the kiln and breaking anything that, by some miracle or other, had not itself exploded.
As more and more slabs were removed, Rumau was able to get a peek here and there at the armor plates in the A few had, indeed, exploded. That was pretty much unavoidable. But remarkably, most were intact.
The clay had fired a grayish pink color that Rumau really didn’t like. nevertheless, once she had finished deconstructing and unloading the kiln, she had full sets of armor for four hannu and partial armor for at least another eight.
“Perennet!” Rumau called, “Come here! Aurrigne, please bring some of that string you made.”
When Perennet appeared from the crowd (Rumau could only recognize her by a purple stain that Rumau herself had “accidentally” gotten on the on the hannu’s hand), Rumau went to work carefully putting first the leather vest on, and then carefully tying the plates together until Perennet was wearing a full set including helmet.
The other hannu stared in amazement! They didn’t speak, and Rumau was beginning to believe that ultimately, hannu couldn’t speak. But they made noises redolent of wonder, and jealousy.
“This will stop an arrow, you think?” Aurrigne said as he examined Perennet carefully.
“I certainly hope so,” rebel set if nothing else, it will stop the first and maybe the second. We’ll just have to hope that that will be enough. In any case the way I made this, should a narrow break one of the plates, there is another plate under it and anyway the broken plate can be easily replaced.”
“I will be very interested to see if it works as you say,” Aurrigne seemed to mumble.
“I think we should test it,” Yre said.
“Absolutely not!” Rumau said. “There isn’t enough of it, and besides, nobody’s shooting at any of us!”
“Just test it on a broken piece,” Yre said, taken aback.
“No,” Rumau snarled at both shimeyu, “and I’ll tell you why. Do you really want the hannu to imitate us, as they always do, and start shooting at these plates, while other hannu are wearing them?”
Almost on cue, other hannu brought plates to Rumau and clearly, though wordlessly, asked for them to be fitted to themselves.
Perennet mounted one of the foals, and all had to admit she looked quite stunning there, in her armor. The other hannu clamored even more loudly.
“All right, all right! I’ll get you all dressed up and then we’ll be off to the next Rose!” Rumau gathered up more vests and started outfitting Túo. “Say,” she said, suddenly stopping and looking up. “Cookie was supposed to come back and show us where the next Rose is. Anybody seen her?”
“Not since Mignette left, no,” Yre said.
Aurrigne shook his head.
Rumau decided not to think about how disturbing this news was.
(c) 2008 Fara Shimbo
To Be Continued....