Mason's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Mason knelt by the north wall of his kiln and pressed his thumb into the fresh brick. It gave. The clay was wrong again. He wiped his hand on his apron and looked at the stack of test bricks he had fired that morning. Four out of six had split along the seam. A fortress made from these would fall before the wolf drew breath. He needed better clay. He had needed it for weeks. The pit behind his barn ran sandy now, and every batch he pulled came out brittle. Three years back, a storm had cracked his old kiln straight down the middle. He had rebuilt it stronger. He would not build anything weaker again, not with something out of the Wolf Woods coming at night to shove his fenceposts sideways and claw the mortar off his shed. His brother's straw cottage sat across the field, patched and leaning. His brother stood in the doorway now, arms folded, watching Mason work. A shaggy little pig rooted in the yard behind him, half-buried in loose hay. Mason had told them both, plain, that straw would not hold. Neither had listened. "You're going to the clover meadows?" his brother called. "Blue clay," Mason said. "Under the low bank. Grandfather used it for the chimney and the chimney still stands." "That bank runs along the woods." "I know where it runs." Mason loaded his cart before his brother could argue. He took the mixed path his father had laid years ago, brick and plank and bundled straw underfoot, and pushed the cart until the meadow opened. The low bank was where he remembered. He drove his spade in. The blade came up heavy and blue-grey, slick as soap. Good clay. The best he had touched in a decade. He dug for an hour. He filled the cart to the rails. He was tamping the last shovelful when he saw the tracks. They came out of the treeline and stopped at the bank, three strides from where he stood. Not paw prints. Boot prints. Long ones, pressed deep, the toes pointed at his dig site. Someone had stood here and watched him work. Recently. The pressed grass was still bent. Mason straightened slowly. He looked at the woods. The woods looked back, thick and dark, the sight lines closing after two paces in. He remembered why he had left them fast the one time he went in. He walked the cart home without stopping. He barred the gate behind him. Then he stood in his yard with a full load of the finest clay he had ever pulled from the ground, and understood that whatever had been breaking his walls at night now knew exactly where he was getting his bricks.