When it got cool, he took it up. A piece had been broken from one side of it, when his mother threw it down, but otherwise it was not much hurt. Tor was surprised to find, when he had brushed the ashes from it, that while before it had been yellow, it had now turned a bright red.
This pleased him, although he did not understand it, so he took the bowl down to the river-bank, and put it in the water, thinking to soften the clay by wetting it, as he had often done before, and then mould it over again into something else. To his surprise, the water would not soften the clay, but it did wash it clean, and made it seem redder and prettier than ever. Then he struck it against a stone, and at once it broke into many sharp pieces, just as a flower-pot would be shivered to bits, if you were to strike it against something hard.
THE FIRST POTTER
He worked all night, heating in the fire the clay bowl he had made.
All this puzzled Tor for a long time, but he decided at last that the heat of the fire had dried and burned his clay and changed it so that it became hard and red. He made up his mind to make another bowl for his mother, and this time to burn it in the fire first, before he gave it to her.
Very early the next day he got another lump of clay, and made a larger bowl, taking great care this time to shape it carefully, so that it was round and smooth. Then he drew the picture of a turtle on one side, to mark it with his name, and a fish on the other, and hid it away among the rocks until he should have time to make a fire and burn it.