Vessels for the Dead

Seventeen winters in

The guild potters are working across the river again.

I can hear them from here. Loud. Showing off their perfect coils, their smooth vessels, their knowledge that was given to them just for being born into the right families.

I hate them.

I know that's not right. Grandmother would say hatred poisons the hands. That if you work clay with hate in your chest, the vessels crack.

But I've been trying to copy their techniques for three winters now—secret practice in the back of our fishing shelter where no one can see—and I still can't match what they do casually, talking and laughing while their hands shape perfect forms.

Last night I tried again. Made three vessels. Broke all three before they were even dry.

Then I sat in the dark imagining their kilns catching fire. Their workshops burning. All that perfect knowledge turning to ash.

The laugh came then. First time. I didn't know what it was—just this sound bubbling up from my chest that wasn't quite laughing and wasn't quite crying.

Because imagining their fires burning felt better than admitting that mine won't light properly. That I don't even know the right kind of wood to use.

Fisher boy trying to be a potter. They'll never let me forget what I am.

The night before the tribunal

Twenty-five winters in. Tomorrow they take my teeth.

My hands won't stop shaking. I keep dropping the marking tool. These lines are crooked but I need to write this while I still can. While my mouth is still whole.

The sentence is fair, they said. Just. Necessary to maintain order.

I crossed boundaries. Mixed basket-weaving patterns with pottery techniques. Made vessels stronger and lighter and more beautiful than either guild could make alone.

And tomorrow they'll take my teeth for it.

The vessels I made ARE better. They know it. I know it. Everyone in the plaza knew it when they saw them lined up as evidence.

But better doesn't matter when you're born wrong.

I spent all day trying to think of something brave to say tomorrow. Some speech about innovation and the future and how traditions that don't bend will break.

What I actually feel: terrified. Small. I want my mother but she's three days walk away and wouldn't come even if I called. I shamed the family. Fisher boy who wouldn't stay in his place.

The laugh came again tonight. Sitting alone in the holding shelter. Teeth still in my mouth for a few more hours.

Laughing because tomorrow I'll be gap-mouthed forever and marked and everyone will know what I am just by looking at my face.

But this vessel I made—the perfect one they showed as evidence—it still holds water. Tomorrow it will still hold water. Next winter and the winter after that.

They can take my teeth. They can't unmake what I made.

The laugh hurts my chest but I can't stop it.

Three moons after

Learning to speak without teeth is harder than learning to make vessels without a guild.

Some sounds I just can't make anymore. Words that need teeth to form properly come out mushy. Wrong. People lean in and ask me to repeat myself and I see their faces change when they remember why I talk like this.

Oh right. The marked one.

I avoid speaking now. Just nod. Point. Make vessels in silence.

The laugh helps. It comes without teeth—just air and sound from the chest. People don't know what to do with it. They think I'm mad maybe. Or making fun of something they can't see.

Let them think what they think.

I sold three vessels at market today. The buyers didn't know who made them—I'm careful to mark them with signs that don't point back to me. They paid good value. Said they'd never seen pottery so light and strong.

I wanted to tell them: synthesis. That's the secret. Taking what shouldn't mix and mixing it anyway. But I can't say synthesis properly anymore. It comes out thithithith and people stare.

So I took their payment and laughed instead.

They left quickly.

Thirty-five winters in

She left this morning.

We'd been together two winters. I thought—I really thought this time it would work.

But last night she told me: "I can't understand you. Half the time I don't know what you're saying because of your... mouth. And the other half I understand the words but not what you mean."

She was kind about it. That made it worse.

"You're still in love with people who are dead," she said. "Your whole language is dead. Half your words I've never heard. You speak to me in translation and I'm tired of guessing."

She's right.

I tried to explain—the vessels hold memory, the patterns carry forward what would be lost, I'm not in love with the dead I'm just carrying them—

But my teeth make the sounds come out wrong and she didn't understand and then she was crying and then she was packing her things.

Ten winters since they took my teeth. You'd think I'd learn to shape words differently by now.

But the words in my first language—my real language, the one I think in—they had different shapes. My tongue remembers. Keeps trying to make sounds that need teeth I don't have anymore.

I am a vessel with a crack that won't seal.

The laugh came after she left. Sitting in our shelter that's just my shelter now. Laughing because she took the blue pot I made her. Said she'd keep it to remember that I made beautiful things.

Past tense.

Made. Not make.

Forty-eight winters in

My daughter spends all day preparing for ceremonies I don't recognize anymore.

The priest-king's court has changed three times since I was born. Each time the rules change. The offerings change. What's sacred changes.

Nobody knows why we do what we do anymore. They just do it because not doing it is punishable.

I tried to tell her yesterday—tried to explain that this is empty performance, the form without the why, the signal without the tone.

She got angry. Said I sound like a foreigner criticizing her traditions. Like I don't belong here.

I don't belong here. She's right about that at least.

I speak my own language that no one else speaks. Watch my own people forget themselves piece by piece. Our stories shortening. Our songs disappearing. Our words replaced by the trade tongue that everyone uses now because the old language is "too complicated."

My daughter is twenty-three winters in. Old enough to have seen better times but young enough to think this is normal.

The worst part? I'm jealous of her.

She belongs here in a way I never will. She performs the empty ceremonies and feels fulfilled. She speaks the new words without mourning the old ones.

Meanwhile I sit in my workshop making vessels nobody needs—"We have enough vessels, Father," she keeps saying—because it's the only thing that makes sense anymore.

The vessels don't lie.

Clay is clay. Fire is fire. Water either leaks or it doesn't.

People lie all day long and call it civilization.

The laugh doesn't come as often now. When it does, it's quieter. More tired.

Sixty winters in

She's not eating.

I cook. She doesn't eat. I make broth. She doesn't drink.

Her body is folding inward. Ribs showing through her tunic. Eyes too big for her face. Skin gray.

We are the last two. Everyone else scattered when the drought came. When the redistribution system collapsed. When the civil war started and the priest-kings fought over nothing while people starved.

Everyone else is gone and now we're one and a half.

She apologized yesterday. Apologized for dying. For leaving me alone.

I told her not to be stupid. Laughed the laugh that used to make her smile. Said I'd be fine.

I won't be fine.

She's my last word-sharer. The last person who speaks our real language without having to think about it first. The last person who hears my voice without noticing the gaps where my teeth should be.

When she goes, I become a man-shaped vessel holding a dead language. A walking grave.

I should be writing something profound. Last words for my people. Final wisdom.

What I actually feel: I want my mother. I want to be young again. I want my teeth back. I want the world to stop ending.

I want to stop being the last one carrying everyone's ashes forward.

The laugh came tonight but quiet. Almost silent. Just air moving through the gaps.

I'm going to make her a vessel. The finest I've ever made. Put her ashes in it when she's gone. Carry her with me wherever I go.

At least then I won't be alone alone.

Just alone with the dead.

That's something.

Barely.

Sixty-seven winters in

They adopted me.

Threyenh's family. Formal ceremony today. Her father Harldt said words about family expanding to include those who need shelter. Her mother Brenh cooked enough food for twenty people though we were only seven.

I am family now, they say.

I don't know how to be family. I had family. They died. All of them. Everyone who spoke my language. Everyone who knew the songs. Everyone who remembered the ceremonies that mattered.

Gone.

Now I'm supposed to... what? Be grandfather to children who don't speak my language? Teach them pottery techniques they'll rename because they can't pronounce the old words? Laugh the laugh that makes them uncomfortable?

Yemotos the grateful adoptee. Yemotos the survivor. Yemotos the vessel-maker everyone feels sorry for.

I hate being pitied.

But also.

Also.

Last night little Kyrphenh—Threyenh's sister, maybe eight winters in—brought me a flower. Just a flower. No reason.

"For you," she said. "Because you're here."

And I started crying. Right there. Old man crying over a flower in front of a child.

She didn't run away or call for her mother. She just patted my hand. Said nothing. Sat with me until I stopped.

That's family, I guess. Sitting while someone cries over a flower.

I'm too old to learn new family. Too full of dead family to make room for living family.

But I'm too alone not to try.

The laugh came tonight—softer now. Almost warm. Not the wild thing it used to be. Something gentler.

Maybe I can be grandfather. Maybe that's a vessel I can learn to make.

Seventy winters in

I'm teaching pottery to children who giggle at how I talk.

Not mean giggling. Just—they think the way I say "vessel" is funny. They copy it to each other when they think I'm not listening. "Vethel. Vethel."

I should be offended. Instead I find it funny too.

The laugh comes and they laugh with me and nobody knows what we're laughing about but it doesn't matter.

Three of them are actually learning. Not just playing with clay but really learning. How to read the clay's dampness. How to know when the coils are ready to stack. How to see the shape before you make it.

One of them—maybe ten winters in—asked me yesterday why I mix the basket patterns with the pottery.

I tried to explain. Synthesis. Stronger together than apart. The whole greater than the pieces.

But synthesis comes out thithithith and I gave up trying.

So I just showed her. Made two vessels side by side. One traditional pottery. One with the basket patterns worked in.

Then I dropped them both.

The traditional one shattered. The synthesis one cracked but held.

Her eyes went wide. "Oh," she said. Just that. Oh.

Understanding without words. The best kind.

Maybe this is what survives. Not my people. Not my language. Not even my name, probably.

But this: vessels that hold water. Patterns that make things stronger. Knowledge passed hand to hand to hand, changing and surviving.

I carry my daughter's ashes in the vessel I made for her. I carry my people's ashes in the language nobody speaks anymore.

But maybe—maybe I'm also carrying forward the thing that matters most. Not the specific forms but the principle underneath. Mix what shouldn't mix. Make it stronger. Pass it on.

The laugh comes easier now. Less bitter. More like actual laughter.

Children who giggle at my speech are learning to make vessels stronger than tradition. That's something.

That's enough.