Chapter 1 — Potters and the Last Fire Season

Linh returned to the village on the day the old furnace cracked. The crack runs from the oven door to the roof, as thin as a strand of hair but long enough to divide the entire production season in half. Her father stood in front of the furnace, hands covered with red dirt, saying the last fire would start in ten days.

The bus dropped her off at the top of the slope while it was still dusk. Linh dragged her suitcase through the familiar red dirt road, on both sides were firewood piles stacked as high as a person's head and the smell of damp ash clinging to each old brick slab. Eight years was not enough for her to forget the way, just enough for her to realize that she had forgotten how to slow down to fit the rhythm of the village.

“What if the furnace can't stand it?” Linh asked.

“Let's fix it.”

“What if it can't be fixed?”

Mr. Phuc looked at the workshop, where hundreds of unglazed bowls were lined up against the walls. “Then sell it.”

Linh has been away from the village for eight years, accustomed to designs on screens and meetings where people talk about craft stories without knowing where the land comes from. She didn't think she'd hear her father say the word semi so lightly, as if he'd practiced saying it many times in his head before letting it slip out.

She put her suitcase down on the steps and looked around the factory yard. The old turntable is still in the left corner, the three-legged wooden chair has a brick added for balance, and a row of shelves to dry dishes stretches under the low corrugated iron roof. Everything is still where it used to be, only the layer of dust is thicker and the number of people passing by is less.

“Dad, are you still sleeping here?” she asked, looking at the rolled mat in the corner of the warehouse.

“The furnace needs someone to watch when it gets windy.”

Linh did not ask further. She knew the answer would be another one about the stove, not about him. Her father always talked about, rarely about himself, and eight years away from home didn't change that.

Ha, her cousin, handed over the production book from a faded cloth bag. Orders have decreased, furnace electricity has increased, and the remaining loan is larger than the amount the factory earns in a year. A corporation wants to buy the brand and keep the oven as a tourist attraction.

“Is this number correct?” Linh asked, checking the last column again.

"Yes. I checked three times because I couldn't believe it."

Ha is four years older than Linh, has stayed in the village since childhood, and has been managing the books for the factory since she was in high school at night. Her hands are calloused from both keeping books and helping to mix yeast when there is a shortage of people. She spoke in a monotone voice, as if she was used to hiding her anxiety under numbers.

“Dad, have you signed yet?” Linh asked.

“No. But they have made a deposit.”

Linh turned the book to the last page. The signature to receive the deposit was not from her father, but from a person named Son, note in the margin: negotiating representative, not legally binding. She closed the notebook, feeling a cold chill run down her spine that had nothing to do with the afternoon wind.

In the yard, a man in a gray coat measured the distance from the furnace to the earthen warehouse. Bright. Linh recognized him after a few seconds; The boy who broke her green enamel cup and then took the punishment for the whole group was now a head taller than her, his hair was cut short, and his hands still kept the habit of tapping lightly on any surface he touched as if to hear the sound of the material.

“What are you doing back?”

"Temperature check. My father called."

Minh became a materials engineer, working for many ceramic factories but did not stay in the village. He placed the gauge on the furnace wall, read the readings and said the crack was not just in the outer layer. The small screen in his hand displayed a series of numbers Linh didn't understand, but the way he frowned as he read them was enough for her to know the news wasn't good.

“Need a small test batch before firing the goods,” he said, without looking up.

Mr. Phuc dismissed it. “No time left.”

“If you don't try it, you won't know if the oven can withstand it How long will it take?" Minh replied, his voice still calm but firm. "Failure of a batch of goods is worse than losing a few days."

Mr. Phuc did not answer. He turned his back and walked towards the warehouse, his steps heavy as if he were carrying something beyond his age. Linh looked after, then looked at Minh, feeling like she had just gotten lost in the middle of an argument that had started before she could even set foot off the car.

Linh looked at the unglazed bowls, lined up in long rows on wooden shelves. Each piece bears the fingerprints of a craftsman — the mouth is slightly crooked, the bottom is thicker than usual because the maker's hand still shakes. If sold, the village name will still be on the sea, but no one will decide how the land is turned into utensils. She touched one, felt the dry dirt under her fingertips, and thought of all the childhood afternoons spent sitting next to her father's turntable, learning to keep her hands steady enough to keep the dirt from falling over.

She said she would stay for ten days. Her father did not ask why. He just opened the door to the earthen warehouse, where the smell of dampness and old ash retained even the past fire seasons, then gave her an old flashlight, as if those ten days had been planned by him for a long time, just waiting for her to say it herself.

Inside the warehouse, bags of clay are stacked by color — reddish-brown clay for regular ceramics, gray-white clay for high-end glazes that the factory rarely makes because it wastes firewood. Linh walked down the middle aisle, her hand passing through each bag, realizing that some bags were so old that the packaging was rotten and had to be covered with tarpaulin.

At night, Linh sat next to the stove, placing her hand on the brick body. The heat of the day remained under the mortar, as warm as the breath of a sleeping animal. Minh came to give her a reinforced drawing, the paper still smelled of ink.

“I still remember the way to the factory,” she said.

“There are places that were left and are still in hand.”

Linh asked him if he thought they should sell. Minh looked at the crack, the flashlight from his phone illuminated the crack as thin as a silver thread. “I think they need to know if they are selling land, title or decision-making power.”

“Are those three types so different?”

“If people sell land, they can still buy other land. When selling a name, people have to pay for the story behind it. Selling the right to decide, people lose the right to be wrong."

Linh was silent for a moment, looking at Minh's hand placed on the drawing, the sharp pencil lines marking the areas that needed reinforcement. She realized that she had never thought about debt in such broken terms — to her, up until now, everything had boiled down to a single word: loss.

The ten days began with a fire that was unlikely to survive the night, and a question Linh knew she would have to answer before leaving the village again: did she come here to save a furnace, or to relearn how to stand firmly on the land she had once left.

She returned to her old room, the small room behind the kitchen still hung the certificate of merit for the ceramic pattern drawing contest in ninth grade. The wooden frame had discolored but the handwriting inside was still clear. The bed was still in place, the blankets and pillows were washed as if someone had prepared them for her return one day, even though no one had told her that. Linh sat down on the edge of the bed, took out her phone, and saw a few unanswered work messages from the design studio in the city. She turned off the screen, not wanting to think about them right now.

Father's dry cough echoed from the outside room, followed by the sound of slow footsteps checking the oven door one last time before going to sleep, a habit he kept for many years even though the weather was not hot. Linh lay listening to familiar sounds With that feeling, it felt like eight years of time had just folded into a thin fold.

The next morning, she woke up earlier than planned and went out to the yard while the dew was still on the corrugated iron roof. Mrs. Nam was present, sitting on a familiar stool next to the oven door, holding a small piece of soil and turning it back and forth. She didn't say hello, just gave the soil to Linh.

“Try to see if you still remember your hand,” she said.

Linh held the soil, feeling the moisture and elasticity through her fingertips, trying to remember the squeezing rhythm that her grandmother taught her when she was twelve years old. The clod cracked slightly on one side as she bent it.

“Still stubborn,” Ms. Nam commented, not a criticism, just a truth stated directly in her own way. “Eight years is not enough to forget everything, but enough to have to relearn a few things.”

Linh nodded, returned the lump of soil to her grandmother, then stood and looked out at the firewood warehouse, where her father was rearranging each piece of wood according to size, preparing for the fire that he still insisted on keeping on schedule, regardless of the crack in the furnace wall still remaining, silently waiting for the day to reveal itself as something irreparable.

Mrs. Nam stood up, brushed her hands on her lap, then looked at Linh for a long moment before speaking more, her voice slow as if she was considering each word before releasing it. “You came back just in time,” she said. "It's not because the furnace needs you. The furnace needs anyone, as long as that person is willing to learn fire. But your father needs someone who is not afraid to argue with him."

Linh didn't know how to respond. Mrs. Nam turned away, walking slowly towards the row of unglazed bowls, leaving that sentence hanging in the dewy morning air, like a warning that Linh knew she would have to think about many times in the next ten days, when the last fire began to count back the hours, and every small decision could become something irreversible.