Where Clay Divides, Where Clay Joins – Chapter 1: The Secret Shape

Welcome to the beginning of Where Clay Divides, Where Clay Joins, a serialised novel set in Iron Age Southeast Asia. This is the first chapter of Lyra’s story. You can find the full Table of Contents.

Chapter 1: The Secret Shape

The clay yielded beneath Lyra’s hands, cool and heavy as river fog, the slip of it smudging her wrists with the red and grey of the valley. In the hour before dawn, when the mist clung low and the bamboo walls of the shelter breathed with the water of the night, she worked alone. Only the jungle watched her—its thousand unseen eyes, the rustle of creatures in the leafmold, the hush of old trees waiting for sun.

She kneaded the clay with the heel of her palm, pressing out stones and roots, folding it until it felt right—soft but not sticky, strong enough to hold its shape. She listened as she worked: the distant croak of frogs, the hush of wind in the teak. She wedged the clay, rolling it back and forth on the worn wooden board, feeling for air pockets, for anything that would make a pot crack in the fire. She worked quickly and quietly. This was not the time for the ordinary water jars or grain pots, shapes the elders had blessed with chant and incense, forms that fit the hands of the village and the needs of the land.

Her breath clouded in the cold as she began the spiral, pinching and coiling, letting the form rise sharp and coiled as a viper. It was not a vessel for grain or water, but for emptiness—a shape that belonged to the deep forest, to the spirit-haunted hollow where the moonlight never reached. The first light of the lamp flickered on her hands, picking out the curve of a fern’s fiddlehead, the twist of a strangler vine. She shaped the edge with a sliver of bamboo, smoothing the clay where it wanted to crack, coaxing it back, whispering to it as she did when she was a child.

She did not chant the village blessings. She did not sprinkle rice into the clay or murmur thanks to the nat spirits—the guardians of river, tree, and fire—who watched over every proper task. This was secret work, done in stolen time, before the others woke, before the day pressed down with its expectations. She worked quickly, hands steady but heart tight, as if every breath might bring someone to the threshold.

Outside, the forest changed color by degrees. The air carried the tang of cooling embers from the kiln down in the clearing, where Palaung’s latest firing had finished in the night, the smoke twining up through the wet leaves. The scent of damp earth, of last night’s rain, settled over the shelter, and the first bird called, high and sharp, as if to warn her.

The clay spoke back in its own way—offering resistance, then yielding, then threatening to collapse if she pressed too far. She listened to it, guided by touch: the way her mother had taught her, and her mother before that, in a line older than the village itself. But no mother, no ancestor, had taught her this shape.

A floorboard creaked at the edge of the shelter. Lyra’s hands froze, slick with slip. The spiral, half-formed, sat naked on the board. She covered it instinctively, heart hammering like a trapped bird in her chest.

“Lyra?”

Than’s voice, rough with sleep, drifted through the doorway. His shape blocked the pale light, broad and quiet as the hills themselves. He was barefoot, hair still wild, eyes shadowed by worry and the memory of dreams. “Before the cock’s crow,” he said softly, “the stream spirits wait for their offering. Is something wrong?”

Lyra’s arms closed around the unfinished coil. She forced her breath slow, tried to let her hands fall, casual, on the stack of drying bowls beside her—round, thick-walled, safe. “I was only checking the pots from yesterday,” she said, the lie clumsy on her tongue. “Making sure the fire spirits left them whole.”

Than stepped in, silent on the packed earth. His eyes moved from the kiln in the gloom to her hands. He saw the way she shielded the workbench, the tremor in her fingers. But he said nothing, only nodded and set a hand on her shoulder, warm and steady.

“The elders will meet soon,” he murmured. “Kaelen wants to settle the salt journey before the rains wake the river spirits.” His palm lingered, an anchor against the morning’s uncertainty.

Lyra angled her body, hiding the forbidden shape. She thought of the old stories: women punished for pride, for reaching beyond the blessed forms. The nats, angered, turning water to mud or bringing fever to the children. The village survived by the old ways, by honoring the unseen, by making only what was needed.

Yet beneath her fear, a different longing stirred. She remembered the tales brought by traders from the south—markets where pots bloomed with color, where clay was shaped not just for use but for beauty, where the gods themselves were coaxed from mud and fire. Sometimes, in the rush of her secret making, she felt as if she’d touched some echo of that distant world—a world both forbidden and achingly possible.

She watched Than leave, his presence fading into the waking hush of the village. Only then did she dare look again at the spiral. Even unfinished, it seemed to pulse with energy, fragile and fierce. The trance was gone. Her hands trembled, caught between hope and shame.

But she would finish it. She would find time—before the sun burned the mist from the hills, before the village stirred, before the watchful eyes of men and spirits turned her way. She would shape the wildness that lived inside her, even if it meant walking the narrow path between creation and curse.

The clay remembered. Her hands remembered. And somewhere, beneath the fear, she promised herself: not this time. She would not bury this part of herself again.

End of Chapter 1