A Single Shard: Chapters 10–13

The countryside custom of hospitality to travelers was a great comfort to him. He walked the main street of the village until someone—usually a child—inquired about his health and his journey. Tree-ear would accompany the child home, where the woman of the house always consented to let him sleep under the eaves. Most evenings a meal was provided as well

No mishap had befallen him or his cargo.

The walking had been easy so far; after he had climbed over the mountain nearest Ch’ulp’o, the terrain had flattened out into endless rice fields.

And he wiggled out of the crevice, grimacing ruefully at the tight knots in what seemed like every one of his muscles.

“The T’ang were victorious that day, but the women’s efforts were not in vain, for they have since been an inspiration to all who have need of courage. Their memory will live for a thousand years, I am sure of it.”

They were not seaside villages, and they were inhabited by farmers rather than potters, but they had the same feel as Ch’ulp’o: small thatched houses gathered in clusters along a single main road, the grand home of a government official set apart from the rest, a temple somewhere nearby, people working hard for a meager living.

Boy, tell your master—the latest style, those bowls are. The design is a favorite of the King himself! I dare not tell you what I paid for them . . . only a customer of impeccable taste could afford such an item.

He walked the last incline holding the jiggeh awkwardly in front of him and set it down once he reached the broad plateau at the top.

The man snarled, menacing and ugly, and advanced a few steps.

Tree-ear’s hands were toughened by calluses from ax and spade, his arms strengthened by endless work; he gave not a single step of ground to the robber.

While his companion kept Tree-ear pinioned, the first robber quickly opened the straw container.

After an agony of silence, the crash of pottery was heard on the rocks far below.

Several times he fell but was on his feet again in the next breath, stumbling, tripping, skidding in a headlong descent.

He looked up the sheer face of the cliff as it rose far above him and tried to guess where the vases might have fallen.

Across one side of the shard ran a shallow groove, evidence of the vase’s melon shape. Part of an inlaid peony blossom with its stem and leaves twined along the groove. And the glaze still shone clear and pure, untouched by the violence that had just been done it.

He knew that the scene must be even lovelier than it now looked to him, viewed as it was through a fog of exhaustion that blurred his senses and his mind.

Tree-ear turned his mind back to his task.

“I have an appointment with Emissary Kim. I am here on behalf of Potter Min from Ch’ulp’o.”

“Emissary Kim is a very busy man. I do not wish to disturb him when he could view the work at his convenience.”
“Then I will wait for his convenience,” said Tree-ear.

How Tree-ear wished he could somehow climb the walls and examine the tiles more closely! Even from where he stood he could make out their intricate relief work.

Shelves along one wall held celadon vessels; Tree-ear could see at a glance that each piece was of the highest quality.

“How dare you, brazen fool! How dare you demand an audience of the emissary with nothing to show him!”

“It is but a fragment, Honorable Emissary. And yet, I believe that it shows all of my master’s skill.”

Amid his despair, Tree-ear still felt grateful—grateful that the emissary had not laughed in his face for the stupidity of traveling all that way with only a single shard to show.

“I understand your skepticism,” the emissary answered patiently. “But I have seen this man’s work, in Ch’ulp’o and again here.”

“Do you see this? 'Radiance of jade and clarity of water’—that is what is said about the finest celadon glaze. It is said of very few pieces.”

And the inlay work . . . remarkable.” His voice faded for a moment as he gazed in obvious admiration at the shard.

Why did Min look so solemn? Was this not the news he had awaited nearly all his life?

It was the little ceramic monkey, still on its crude string.

He and Ajima stepped over the threshold. The part of Tree-ear’s mind that was still working marveled at this; he had never been inside the house before.

Suddenly, he was hurling a barrage of rocks into the water, one after the other, harder and harder, until the water roiled and foamed beneath the rain of rocks.

How would he endure the coming winter, alone in the dank vegetable pit?

“How am I to do it all myself? How are you to help me if you do not have a wheel of your own? And how is the wheel to be made if you do not fetch logs of considerable size? Go!”

Tree-ear had already turned to leave when the full import of Min’s words reached his understanding. A wheel of your own?

A name that shared a syllable! It was an honor bestowed on siblings. No longer would Tree-ear go by the name of an orphan.