And Suta and other women came to look; and they wondered and tasted, and smacked their lips, and asked how it was done, then went home to do likewise. And the fame of Ang and Oma grew in the north land, and men said, "They are loved by the Great One".

But if Oma made the first pottery and the most useful, Suta, wife of Wang, made the most beautiful. After she had learned to bake the clay so that neither fire nor water would harm it, she amused herself by making dishes of queer shapes. Then she discovered it was not necessary to make the basket molds, and that if she made marks on the clay they would be baked in. She began by making a little row of nail prints about the rim--((((((((((. Then she made rough pictures of animals and men with a sharpened stick. And the fame of Suta went out also through the north land, and they came from far away to see the wonderful things which she had done. Others tried, but no one could make such beautiful dishes as Suta.

The Silent Readers — Part 118

Before the great fire feast an idea came to Suta like a dream in the night, she knew not from where. She would make a great bowl for Odin and she would mold on it pictures of his gifts, so that all who saw would remember from whom the good things came. With great care she shaped a bowl as high as a five-year-old child and so large that a grown man could not circle it with his arms. On it she pictured the man who shot the first deer with a stone-tipped arrow, the man who made the first snare for the wild birds, the man who first crossed the deep water in a hollowed log, Ang striking fire from the flints, Oma baking the clay dishes. Then she hesitated. These and many things more the Great One had given; what would He give next? What did she want most?

The Silent Readers — Part 118

Now Suta was not like Ang or Wang or even like Oma. Wang had thought sometimes that she was not so good a cook as Oma, and that she spent too much time listening to the song of the birds and watching the play of the light on the water and the woods and the far-off hills. She did these things sometimes when he thought she ought to get wood for the fire or cook something for him, and he grumbled a little. But now that she made dishes of clay which no one else could make and all men said, "What a fortunate man Wang is to have a woman that can make such things!" Wang began to be very proud of her. He even went so far as to get wood for the fire, which he did not think man's work.

The Silent Readers — Part 118