Chapter 4: Chapter Four – The Sower’s Dance

While Salubrious was building his loom, a day came when there was no breeze, and so he paused in that work. With a bag of flaxseeds slung over his shoulder, he rhythmically cast out the tiny seeds in what looked like an elegant dance.

Calamitous watched his brother with a smile and a silent prayer that the wind would not return before the day ended.

If it did, it would blow away his seeds, and this would be seen as an ill-omen that the King of Heaven did not approve of his brother’s match.

When the day remained calm, it brought great joy to the heart of Salubrious. To add to his joy, a heavy dew appeared upon the ground that night, and so the seeds were sufficiently weighted down so that Salubrious need not fear that they would be blown away.

After he had successfully sown the field, Salubrious was forced to divide his attention between fashioning the tools he would need and watching over his crop.

Thus, Salubrious returned to assembling his loom, and when the loom was finished, he made a break. This consisted of two pieces of wood fastened together with a peg so that they worked in a scissor-like action.

He then took three pieces of wood and shaped them into three combs. The first had teeth wide apart, the second had teeth a little closer together, and the last had very fine teeth. As before, Salubrious found these tools easier to make with the help of his shard of stone.

After the combs, Salubrious began to whittle a stick, and when he was done, it was about as big around as his forefinger and as long as both his hands together. One end of it was thicker while the other tapered to a point. Near the pointed end, he carved a small groove.

With the shaft complete, Salubrious took some more clay and made a cross-shaped piece with a hole in the center that fit perfectly onto the tapered stick. Thus, when he had finished this work, he had a fully functional drop spindle.

Once a few weeks had passed, Salubrious surveyed his field. He was delighted to find that sprouts of green were appearing in the bare dirt. This was customarily seen as a blessing from the King of Heaven upon his future nuptials.

And still, Salubrious continued to fashion his tools, and so it came time for him to make the weights for his loom. Thus, he gathered more clay from the riverside and began to mold it into smooth round weights. In total, he made one hundred and twenty, and he set these out in the sun to dry next to the large pots he had made.

Lastly, Salubrious took a large piece of wood, and with his shard of stone, he carved it into a weaver’s sword.

Upon seeing it, Calamitous immediately thought of his failure to pull out the Sword Doom, and this caused his glowing eyes to darken to indigo.

“Do not be discouraged,” Salubrious said guessing what was going through his brother’s mind. “If you are to accomplish that task, the King of Heaven will show you how.”

Calamitous only nodded, but his darkened eyes made it clear that he still had doubts.

While Salubrious toiled to make all these tools and to care for his growing crop, Calamitous continued to gather food and water for them both. However, when he was not gathering, he sat nearby his brother and went on practicing the shaping of stones.

Thus, as the twins worked, they talked together. Sometimes, they recalled childhood memories, and other times, they discussed the tools being made. But most often, Calamitous would sit and patiently listen to Salubrious as he spoke fondly of his bride or planned the words of his marriage-oath.

After three long months, Salubrious was happy to see the flax blooming with pale-blue flowers. This was seen as a promise that he and his future wife would have many children.

Once the flax had grown to its full height, the time to harvest had finally come, and so Salubrious was full of joy as he pulled up the tall greenish-gold plants. Again, Calamitous could only watch as his twin gathered the flax into sheaves and bound them together with rushes.

After the sheaves had dried in the sun for a week, Salubrious carefully combed out the seed pods to be used by another.

“I will keep these for you,” he told his twin brother. “For I am sure, you will find your own bride soon enough.”

Calamitous smiled, but secretly, he doubted this would ever happen. It was true that the people of Riven looked to the twins as the future deliverers, and so they were highly favored. However, because Calamitous was seen as the destroyer, the people regarded him with a certain amount of apprehension, for destruction was a strange thing in the minds of the Ancients. Thus, he felt separated and alone, and only Salubrious drew near enough to chase away his isolation, but alas, his brother would soon be busy taking care of his own family.

You are reading story Wrath Bringer (The Epic of Battailous – Book One) by R. Jason Lynch at novel35.com

Again, the thoughts of Calamitous darkened his eyes, but this time, his twin was too busy to notice.

With the precious seeds gathered from the flax plants, Salubrious took the sheaves to a nearby hot spring, and there, he pushed them under the water. He placed large stones upon each of the sheaves, and in this way, he soaked them for two weeks until the outer skin of the plants could be easily removed.

When the flax was ready, Salubrious pulled the sheaves from the pool and spread them out in the field to dry for twelve days.

“You smell horrible!” Calamitous laughed as his brother returned from pulling the sheaves out of the water.

After the flax had dried, Salubrious bundled them into sheaves again and let them stand in the field for seven more days. Then, once they were fully dried, he started to break the inner woody stalk of the flax to set free the long flaxen fibers. He did this with the scissor-like break he had made.

Next, he separated the pith from the flax with his three combs. He started with the wide-toothed combs and went to each successively finer comb until all that remained was several bundles of pure linen fibers. These resembled long white locks of untangled hair.

Salubrious then took the drop spindle, and gently pulling out the fine fibers, he began to spin it into strong and thick threads of yarn. This took many days.

Once he had spun all the flax, the brothers went to gather the plants Salubrious would require to dye his thread. As they followed their keen noses to find what he would need, they talked and laughed together. Thus, going from place to place, Salubrious gathered flowers, leaves, berries, lichen, roots, and lemons. Lastly, he found a grove of Staghorn Sumac, and he gathered many of their leaves.

Returning to his field with a full linen bag over his shoulder, Salubrious bore all the ingredients he would need to make the cool colors of his swathe.

First, he divided the yarn into seven groups, and after filling the seven clay pots with water from a nearby hot spring, he placed the leaves from the Staghorn Sumac trees in six of the pots. In these he soaked six of the bundles of yarn. Once the flaxen threads were infused with the mordant, he squeezed the water out, emptied the clay jars, and refilled them with more hot water.

Next, he added the different ingredients to make the six cool colors that matched his own swathe and let the yarn soak again.

In the seventh pot, he squeezed the juice from the lemons and soaked the seventh bundle of yarn in the juice to whiten the yarn further.

Then, when all the yarn was dyed or whitened, he coiled them into skeins and hung them out to dry. They swung in the breeze for the rest of the day while the twins took a break from their toil and played the Game of Stones.

The next day, Salubrious was finally ready to begin weaving. He started by setting the warp threads upon his loom. He did this by tying eighty-four hundred threads to the cloth beam.

He ordered the threads in the following pattern: three-hundred and fifty whitened threads, seven-hundred green, another seven-hundred undyed, then seven-hundred teal, seven-hundred more of the undyed, seven-hundred blue, seven-hundred whitened again, seven-hundred indigo, seven-hundred undyed, seven-hundred purple, seven-hundred undyed, seven-hundred magenta, and lastly three-hundred and fifty more of the whitened.

He then hung the one-hundred and twenty clay weights from the warp threads in groups of seventy so that the weights kept the warp threads taut.

Finally, after all this long process, Salubrious stood before his loom and began to weave. As his nimble fingers passed the weft thread through the warp, it looked like he was playing a harp, and with each plucked string, the hanging stones clacked together rhythmically.

After each pass, Salubrious took his weaver’s sword and tapped the thread tight. The Ancients did not use a heddle, for their fingers were so agile that they never saw the need, but when they were finished weaving, the cloth was finer than any seen today.

 

 

You can find story with these keywords: Wrath Bringer (The Epic of Battailous – Book One) by R. Jason Lynch, Read Wrath Bringer (The Epic of Battailous – Book One) by R. Jason Lynch, Wrath Bringer (The Epic of Battailous – Book One) by R. Jason Lynch novel, Wrath Bringer (The Epic of Battailous – Book One) by R. Jason Lynch book, Wrath Bringer (The Epic of Battailous – Book One) by R. Jason Lynch story, Wrath Bringer (The Epic of Battailous – Book One) by R. Jason Lynch full, Wrath Bringer (The Epic of Battailous – Book One) by R. Jason Lynch Latest Chapter