Chapter 5: arriving home, the beginning of an industry

We were trail-weary when we reached our home. Our neighbors turned out to welcome us back and marveled at the size of the bearskin. Ruth was ecstatic to receive the parcel from her mother. Josie sold off most of the cloth, the dyestuffs and wool rugs while being careful to keep a few of the heavier ones for our cabin.

Josie was over the moon, having become pregnant with our child. I was pretty giddy myself until the responsibility kicked in. No matter what happened to Josie or me, I had to provide for our sprout. Josie wondered at my smile for a couple weeks until I broke down and explained my ideas. Then she was all for it.

I began building a low stone building at the rear of my property, out behind the smokehouse. Whenever I wandered around in the woods and found a small bald, I felt around for whatever the woods had rejected. If I found nothing I continued on, figuring that it was just a fluke. Otherwise I used my talents to surround it in gravel and clay, then compress the hell out of it to make a huge stone block. Each one got a glazed surface then quickly cooled. This I rode back to my home as if I were sitting on a flying horse. The first time I did it I realized that I'd done a new thing--I flew! I showed Josie how to do it as well. She was ecstatic!

Anyway, I slowly accumulated a cache of stone blocks, each of which was over a yard on a side. I dug up the soil until I hit gravel. I laid all that dirt to one side. I continued digging, saving out the gravel in a separate pile, until I reached four feet below the surface. Then I laid the stone blocks into a low room, some thirty feet long by ten feet deep, including a stone floor. The next part was difficult. I brought back another several tons of stone blocks, most made from disused roadbeds going to places that didn't exist any more. I carefully cut the blocks into trapezoids and laid a barrel vault ceiling, then filled in the end caps. The ceiling ended at eight feet high which brushed my head. Two blocks were left out of one end wall making a doorway of roughly seven feet tall by four feet wide. When inside the chamber on a sunlit day I could see sunbeams come down through the ceiling. It would leak like a sieve in a rain.

It would have been one hell of a messy job without the use of TK. A couple clay banks in the river were unusable because of inclusions of rock, sand and mud. I lifted great gobs of that sticky mess up and over to my 'brew house' where I thickly pasted the walls and ceiling. I didn't want to fire it in place because I'd never seen such a large structure heated to such a degree before. I didn't want to see any explosions.

Everything was covered with gravel except for the doorway. Then the reserved dirt went over the rest to make what looked like a long burial crypt. I turned Josie loose on it as a strangely shaped garden. I ended up finding more good dirt to cover it to a good depth and soften the lines. I also had to knock two holes in the ceiling and run air circulation pipes down into the room and cap them so rain could not get in. She planted bushed near the pipes which camouflaged them nicely.

The door was a stone affair hung on massive hinges. The blacksmith looked at it and damned near gave up. I stuck my thumb up, then slid my fist down it. He got the idea. The pins were two inches in diameter. The plates were one inch thick. I secured the pieces to the door by forcing holes in the rock, then fitting a lead sleeve into the holes. Finally a steel bolt was screwed into the lead sleeve, expanding it and securing the plates. I had hinges. I didn't lock the thing. After all, it weighed almost two hundred pounds. Who else was going to open it? Where were they going to get the leverage? It opened outwards. There was a slot in the side opposite the hinges. To open it, I inserted a bar with an L-shaped foot on it into the slot, then turned it. That gave me enough purchase on the door to pull it open. Within the room I laid a full row of more 3'X3'stone blocks that were three feet tall. Every few feet I placed a twenty gallon stoneware crock on top of that shelf. I played hell figuring out how to make a stop-cock for a stoneware crock. I ended up with the most time-consuming project I'd ever tackled. I made a block of stoneware and using the same talents that I'd used to change the crystals of my sword into an effective weapon I microscopically carved a stop-cock complete with a tapered plug and a turning handle that interrupted the barrel. I bored a hole near the bottom of each crock then inserted the barrel of the valve that I'd made specifically for that hole. Then I fused the stoneware pieces together. After twelve of them I gave up. Good lord, what a project. Anyway, I had my vinegar brewing vessels. The other twenty crocks I left alone. Half were left open-topped, while half had close-covering lids. These sat on the floor on the opposite side of the chamber from the brewing vessels. (since it's a biological process, you actually 'brew' vinegar.)