A Fool's Goddess - Chapter Fifteen
I was maybe an hour into the project when I heard a knock on the door. I was rather annoyed by the interruption, but still got up to answer. Opening the door, I was faced with Hed again. He smiled widely.
“Can I help you?” I reluctantly asked.
“Good afternoon, Mr Lior. I heard you got some materials and started working.”
“Right and wrong. I can’t start making pottery until the smith sees about setting me up with a kiln.”
“Oh… Wait, why’re your hands covered in mud if you ain’t working?”
“I’m just messing around with some clay. My hands get itchy if I don’t practice my craft often enough.”
“So you are sculpting something?”
“What are you getting at, kid?”
“Can I watch?”
“Why on earth would I want a sassy child disturbing my work?”
“Please?” He puts his hands together pleadingly. “I’ll be quiet, I just wanna see how you do it.”
“Nngh…”
Honestly, talking to someone did little to distract me when I sculpted, even someone as annoying as Hed. I was used to biting words of Master Malka after all. Maybe some company would be nice while I worked. At the very least, I’d probably be able to scam him into treating me more politely. I spent a few more moments pretending I was weighing my options before speaking.
“Okay, fine. But you’re gonna owe me one, alright Hed?”
“Yessir! I won’t forget this favor!”
“You better not. If you try to back out of this, I’ll be sure to tell your mom.”
“Don’t worry. I’m a man of word.”
“You’re hardly a man.”
“I’m a boy of my word, then.”
I shook my head and turned back inside, Hed following right behind me. I sat back down on the wooden boards with my guest sitting across from me. I returned to my work while Hed leaned in and watched closely.
“What are you making?” he asked.
“I thought you were gonna be quiet.”
“Yeah… but…”
I let out a sigh of exasperation. “It’s a figure of the Goddess Tornara.”
“Oh. Is she that forgotten God you talked to Mama about?”
“It’s rude to eavesdrop, kid.”
“I couldn’t help it. You were some stranger who slept for three days straight in our house, I was curious what you’d say when you woke up.”
“Just remember that curiosity isn’t always a good thing.” I turned my gaze back towards the clay. “Anyways, yeah, that’s the gist of it. She used to be a member of the pantheon, but some horrible things happened in the past that people blamed on her, so she was cut from the faith centuries ago.”
“So why are you carving her?”
“Because I’m in love with her.”
“…”
I was ready for when the smartass decided to toss out some kind of remark, but Hed remained silent for once. He probably just didn’t account for me sharing such an outlandish idea as I would sincerely doubt he was being respectful. I continued working while the boy tried to make sense of this stranger’s words.
After mulling it over for a few more seconds, he finally asked, “So… have you ever spoken to her?”
“I talk to her a lot. I’ve never heard her speak back, but I know she’s listening. She’s always protecting me and helping me fulfill my dreams. She’s the reason I’ve survived this long and haven’t given up.”
“Um… so… how do you love someone you can’t talk with?”
“I have an answer, but I don’t think you’d understand.”
“Hey, you said I’m smart. I’m sure it ain’t that confusing.”
“We’ll see. To put it simply, I don’t need to hear her voice to love her. I can feel her presence watching over me, guiding me. She’s all I can think about most days and I just want to sculpt her likeness for as long as I can. It was a good friend of mine who helped me realize what I was feeling was love, and I never felt more fulfilled than when I learned that.”
As expected, Hed didn’t say anything.
“I figured that was probably too much for a kid your age.”
“No… well, maybe I don’t quite get it, but I sort of get it? But, shit, that’s some deep stuff, Mr. Lior.”
“You can thank my friend. He was much better at understanding me than I am.”
“Does he live in Dostyn?”
“He did. He died in the attack that made me flee the city.”
“… I’m sorry for your loss.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Hey, looks like you do listen. Maybe we can make a decent person out of you.”
“Well, I wanna be polite. You’re letting me see your work and all.”
“Hm, you’re not such a bad kid, Hed. If you could fix that mouth of yours, I might grow to like you,” I jeered. Then, more quietly, I said, “But thanks. I miss him a lot.”
He watched me take my pick and begin adding details to Tornara’s figure quietly. The subject must have left him feeling uncomfortable.
“So where’d you learn to sculpt?” he sheepishly segued.
“A couple places. I first learned to do pottery and basic sculpting from a guy named Master Idan in Unoph, and that’s where I found out I had a knack for it. I left him after a disagreement and then went to work for Master Malka in Dostyn.”
“Do you think I could learn how to sculpt?”
“Probably. You seem sharp enough, but you also need imagination and dexterity. And it takes years to get as good as me, though I’m still not even close to Master Malka’s level. You just need to find a master to apprentice under.”
“Are you a master?”
I had to stop and think about that.
It was true that I had finished my apprenticeship. Master Malka even said I was ready to start my own studio, and that meant I just needed a building if I wanted to call myself master. But I guess I didn’t feel like a master. I still felt like I had so much more to learn, so much more I wanted her to teach me before I could consider teaching someone myself.
“No, I’m not,” I answered.
“Oh… do you think you could teach me how to sculpt anyways?”
“Why do you want to sculpt?”
“I’ve always wanted to do something different. This village is full of fishermen and lumberjacks, and that’s about it. I don’t wanna do either of those, or even be a shaman or mayor or the like. I wanna do something no one else in Tresety’s doing.”
“That’s a rather prideful goal. You just want to be special?”
“Well, yeah, isn’t that normal?”
“Maybe. How about this: what do you want to sculpt?”
“I dunno. Anything’s fine, I guess.”
“Mm. Then I definitely wouldn’t be able to teach you.”
Hed scowled. “Why not?!”
“My first master taught me how to earn money by making whatever was profitable, and I hated it. It was my second master that showed me her vision and the reason she sculpted. She helped me understand the goals I had for my artwork. If you don’t have a vision of your own, then you should find a job that doesn’t need one.”
Hed seemed rather angered by that answer. If he thought I was going to be his road to fame in this little town, he was mistaken.
My goal was to pay my debts, then leave. I didn’t have any plans on settling down or tutoring him. And if he didn’t have a reason to sculpt, then he would be as good a match to me as I was to Master Idan.
But it would seem he wasn’t so easily dissuaded.
“Can I borrow some clay?” Hed asked. His eyes were burning with determination.
“What for?”
“I wanna try it. I don’t have anything in mind to create, but I wanna see if I can make something. I don’t wanna give up on sculpting before I’ve even tried it.”
“What, you think that if you put your hands on some clay, it’ll awaken your creative spark or something?”
“It might, I dunno.”
“And what will you do when you just end up wasting my materials?”
“I’ll help you gather more?”
With how quick he was on the uptake, he’d probably have better luck as a trader. But with a helper secured, I decided I could humor him.
“Hmph. Alright, there’s more clay in the cart outside. Don’t grab too much.”
“Thank you, Mr. Lior!” He jumped up and ran outside.
He was probably just too young to have a real idea of what he wanted to create. But that youth also filled him with stubbornness, so it would be interesting to see what came from him. Bare minimum, he was an entertaining little guy.
He came back in with a handful of clay. He sat back down and began mushing and molding the stuff. I continued to work on Tornara’s figure.
He was completely quiet while he played with the clay. For a little while, he seemed to be trying to copy what I was doing, but once he realized that creating a human facsimile wasn’t easy, he crumpled his work and started again.
One of the best things to learn is your own limits.
Hed then made what looked like a sort of crustacean, then a very round dog, and then a simplistic fish, reverting his efforts back to shapeless clay after each attempt. It all looked very much like the work a child would do, but I could see that wasn’t what he wanted.
Yet he continued to try, making and unmaking each idea that came to him. It wasn’t until after his twelfth attempt or so that he finally put the ruined clay down.
“How long were you sculpting before you could start making things like that figure?” he asked with blatant frustration.
“Half a year,” I replied while dragging a brush along the surface of what would be Tornara’s hair. “For the first three months of my apprenticeship, I wasn’t allowed to do anything but make pots, plates, cups, and paperweights. After that, I was granted the privilege of making by-the-book figures of the Gods, and I wasn’t very good in the beginning. But I kept trying and eventually made things almost worth selling.”
“Would I be able to do the same if I practiced like you?”
“Dunno. I don’t know how well you learn. And you don’t have a teacher, so you’d be relying on intuition and epiphany.”
“…”
“By the way, you wasted that clay. It’s too dry now, so be ready for me to call on you next time I’m going to gather things.”
“… How do I get a vision?”
I paused my work again and looked at Hed. He was surprisingly despondent. In fact, he looked like he was about to cry.
I felt a pang of guilt. Maybe I had been too hard on him and spoke more severely than necessary. I didn’t want to fill him with wrong impressions, but I couldn’t feel good about crushing a child’s hopes either.
Still, it wouldn’t help if I lied to him. Telling Hed whatever bullshit he wanted to hear would just cripple him in the long run. If he had any real interest in sculpting, he would have to endure the pain of his own inadequacies, including the realization he might not have an artistic vision to follow.
“That’s not really something you go out and do,” I said. “I was enraptured by the beauty of Tornara. Master Malka would stay up for days on end carving out what she saw in her nightmares. Nobody tries to find their vision, it just happens.”
“Can I really never become a sculptor without one?”
“No, you can definitely become a sculptor. I just won’t be able to teach you. You said you want to be special and don’t particularly care about what you’d carve, and that simply doesn’t mesh with my ideology. I don’t sculpt to feel good about myself, I do it because it’s how my passions come alive.”
“…”
“Look, there’s plenty of ways to stand out besides sculpting. In this village, it’s probably even easier. Why not talk to that smith who’s coming by? If you learned from him, you could become Tresety’s smith. That would make you pretty special.”
“No, I… I don’t want to just run a business…”
“No? So basically, you want to be special, but not badly enough. You’re pretty much admitting you’re just a lazy dreamer who’s waiting for something to fall into his lap.”
He frowned. “You know, Mr. Lior, you’re a lot meaner when you’re working.”
“I’m not. I’m actually being pretty nice by trying to help you figure out what you really want. Especially since I’m being so patient with a smartass like you.”
“Yeah, but I thought you were a good guy who’d be nice to kids. Your style of “helping” borders on sadism.”
I snorted out a laugh. “You barely even talk like a kid. And you’re the one who asked me about becoming a sculptor, remember?”
“… Right…”
Defeated, Hed’s shoulders slumped. I continued my work, willfully indifferent to his woes.
“… So, you think I need to find the right motivation for sculpting?”
“Sure, if you want to become a sculptor like me. I want to spread Tornara’s beauty throughout the world and restore her name while my master wanted to force the immaterial into reality. Think of it this way: if you suddenly had my skills, what would you want to make with them?”
Hed pondered the idea. Again, this was probably a bit much for a kid, no matter how sharp he was. But to be honest, posing these questions at the boy wasn’t half as obnoxious as I would have expected. If anything, it was kind of fun.
It was somewhat reminiscent of my first encounter with Master Malka, though I was on the other side of the discussion.
Hed sat there in silent contemplation for a few minutes. You could practically see the ideas bouncing around in his head, rebounding off one another or falling away with rejection. His brow furrowed with the sort of deep consideration you’d expect from a miner trying to figure out where the gold was. When he finally looked up at me again, he spoke uncertainly.
“Well, I do have something…”
I pointed a clay-encrusted pick at him. “Spill it, or you’re gonna bring me dessert along with dinner tonight.”
“Hey, that ain’t how this works!”
“It is now. C’mon, kid, if you’re worried about embarrassing yourself, remember that you’re speaking to a guy who proudly states he’s deep in love with an ancient Goddess, drowning in debt, and still recovering from a head injury.”
“”Hed-injury”? Is that what you’re gonna call me now?”
“Try to change the subject again and you’ll owe me dessert for a week.”
“Ngh… fine,” Hed mumbled. He then took a deep breath. “I’d like to sculpt storybook creatures and the like.”
I raised my eyebrows. Not a terribly unusual answer, but it was interesting that he managed to find one with just a few minutes of thought. Now it was time to see if he was serious about that desire.
“And why do you want to sculpt those?”
“It… it’s because of my dad.” The boy turned a deep shade of red and spoke timidly. “He loved to read me stories about them while he was around. So I’ve always really liked them.”
“Can you give me an example or two?”
“Well, there’s the half-bull men that are supposed to live in a distant kingdom. There’s the living books of the forbidden library… oh, and the fog wolves that are said to live in the nearby forest.”
“Alright. Now, if you sculpted those and they didn’t make you famous, what would you do then?”
“I dunno…”
“Let me rephrase that: if your sculptures didn’t earn you any recognition, would you stop sculpting altogether?”
Hed grimaced, then shook his head. “… No, I don’t think so. I mean, I’d be bummed, but I’d wanna make those specifically as a sort of remembrance of my dad. It’d be… awful if I stopped just because the rest of the world didn’t care for my sculptures. I love him too much just to abandon everything like that.”
There it was. The dividing line between my two masters.
No matter what your goals were, it was important to know where your motivation was based. Understanding whether the core of your desire was based in your heart or your ego meant everything as far as I was concerned. The former would toil regardless of result, while the latter would crumble when things didn’t go as planned.
I had to trust that Hed was being honest, both with me and himself. If not, he would regret it later. But for now, I would reward his earnestness and burden him with a spark of hope.
“Hmm, you might be worth teaching then.”
The kid’s face lit up with childish joy. “Do you really mean that, Mr. Lior?!”
“If you meant what you said, then yes. It sounds like you did have a fledgling vision, but you just weren’t aware of it yet.”
“I did mean it, I really do want to share those with the world!”
His enthusiasm was heartwarming, if a little infectious.
“Then how about this: if you help me gather my materials and play errand boy for me, I’ll teach you a bit in my spare time. Two warnings, though: I’ve never taught anyone before and I don’t guarantee anything. You also might lose interest or I might be a bad teacher, anything can happen down the line. In a word, it’s uncertain.”
“Do I have to stop cursing and being a smartass?”
“Well, no, but that would be nice.”
“Phew… then I agree.”
“That would have been a dealbreaker?”
“Can I also help you make pots for the village?” he asked, ignoring me.
“No. That’s my debt to pay and I promised your mom I’d give them quality work. Besides, anything you make for the first few months won’t even be worth the clay it’s made of.”
“… Well, I guess I won’t start with high expectations now.”
“And speaking of Tzofiya, you’ll need her approval as well. If she kills the idea, then that’s that. Of course, you still owe me at least one material run and a month of desserts, so don’t try to worm your way out of that.”
“Hey, aren’t you inflating my debt now?”
“Maybe.” I then continued in a more serious tone. “You should also keep in mind that I might leave as soon as my debts are gone. Your village is doing more than right by me, but there’s no part of my agreement that says I have to stick around any longer than necessary.”
“I’m not worried. Mama says you’re a decent fellow, and the shaman says you’re here for a reason. My gut says you’ll stay in town for a while.”
“We’ll see.”
By then, the majority of my work was done. I held up my figure of Tornara, turning it around to look at the results of my efforts. Hed leaned over to inspect it himself.
“She’s pretty,” he said.
“I’ve heard that before. But really, she’s so much more than “pretty”.”
“So when can we start my lessons?”
“Assuming your mom is fine with it, once I have a kiln. We’ll figure how to squeeze in your lessons around my work after that.”
“Thank you, Mr. Lior. I really do appreciate it.”
“Try thanking me again in a week. My masters never went easy on me and I don’t plan on breaking the tradition. You might regret this silly whim of yours.”
“Like you said, we’ll see.”
I rolled my eyes. What a brat.
Hed stuck around for a little bit longer, until I completed the figure. After that, he made a quick trip to bring me some dinner, and a promised dessert, before leaving for the day. He seemed much happier now, even though I had conned him out of his sweets.
Honestly, I wasn’t too sure about my own decision. Getting an assistant would be nice, but I was worried I may have put too much pressure on the kid. There was a fire in his eyes, but only time would tell if it was a meager ember or the actual blaze of passion. Hopefully it was the latter and I could use that energy to teach him properly.
I quietly laughed at myself. It would seem I hadn’t changed much in the past few years. Despite all of Master Malka’s warnings, I was still getting into things without taking the time to consider the consequences.
On a separate note, it was a bit unnerving that everyone seemed convinced my stay in Tresety was going to be more permanent. I wasn’t completely against the concept, mind you, but it was way too early to know if I could have a future here. Paying off my debts was one thing, building a business was another. And considering I now resided in the husk of a failed venture, the concept of opening my own studio here seemed rather fanciful.
I looked at my little figure of Tornara. The sculpture showed my Goddess standing with her hands behind her, turning as though she had just heard the voice of an old friend. It was already partially dried, but showed no signs of cracking or falling apart. I could assume that it would have held up fine if I had been able to put it through a furnace. The local clay was different than what I was used to it, yet those idiosyncrasies did nothing to hamper my expressions.
I suppose it was pretty decent material to work with.
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