The Shaving of Red Cedar

How long does an iron-shod patrol take to scramble down half a league of scree?

Shoma wiped basalt dust from his brow, eyeing the black lacquer banner fluttering across the high spine of Hinode. Two hours if the scouts carried heavy trenching spades. Three if their sergeant cared about his mules' ankles. Either way, when those boots struck the sulfur cleft, Shoma had no intention of being caught huddled over a bare puddle like an illegal trench-digger. A hole in the dirt invited an iron palisade and an archer's redoubt. A proper bathhouse demanded courtesy, slippers, and unbuckled belts.

To make an officer take off his armor, one first needed somewhere decent for him to sit.

"Up, Kobo," Shoma said, nudging the foraging sack with the toe of his clog. "The stone basin catches the silt. Now we need wood that holds heat without turning to mush."

A black nose poked out into the cool alpine air, followed by two beady eyes that surveyed the scree with deep suspicion. Kobo gave a wet snuffle, clambered onto a flat boulder, and planted his round rump squarely over the mallet handle.

"No, do not guard the hammer. Move."

The badger gave a raspy chuff, folded his forepaws over his belly, and refused to budge until Shoma dug a knuckle of dried sweet tuber from his sleeve. Kobo snatched the morsel, chewed with rhythmic indignity, and deigned to waddle three paces to the left.

Ten yards above the weir stood the prize: a wind-felled mountain red-cedar, its trunk seasoned dry by alpine sun and mineral vapor. Raw stone stripped body warmth within minutes. Basalt was fine for settling silt, but if a bather leaned against bare wet rock, the mountain chill seeped straight into the kidneys. Cedar, however, drank thermal moisture, swelled tight, and trapped heat in its dense red rings.

Shoma laid a palm against the trunk. The wood was straight-grained and resinous, smelling of crushed pine needles and dry amber.

He drew his broad-bladed felling saw from the hemp roll. His new System interface flickered across the lower rim of his vision, pale amber runes hanging steady over the rough bark.

[Spring-Tender Level 2]

[Active Perk: Chisel Temper (Basalt)]

[Target: Hinode Alpine Red-Cedar (Deadfall, Grade B+)]

[Moisture Content: 18%. Resin Saturation: High.]

[Recommendation: Split along heartwood radial lines for maximum thermal swelling.]

"Listen to that," Shoma murmured. "Even the magic tells us not to rush the cuts."

Kobo sat on an exposed root, gnawing his tuber rind with critical detachment.

Shoma went to work.

He measured two arm-lengths of trunk, setting his teeth against the pull-stroke. The steel saw bit with a crisp rasp. Golden sawdust sprayed across the gravel, filling the ravine with a clean fragrance that drove back the bitter stink of sulfur. Five cuts yielded six thick rounds. With a splitting froe and wooden beetle, he struck along the radial grain, cleaving the rounds into straight, wedge-shaped staves.

The rough timber was only raw material. A tub held together by wishful thinking leaked through its seams before water reached a bather's knees. Worse, iron nails in a hot sulfur spring were an amateur's folly; acidic vapor rusted wrought iron into flakes within a month, rotting the wood and staining the bath black.

A proper cooper's vessel required tongue, groove, and tension.

Shoma dragged a split log over two boulders to form a low workbench. He laid the first stave flat, clamped it beneath his knee, and drew his curved adze along the inner face. Wood chips curled off like amber ribbons, piling soft against his shins.

Kobo waddled over, climbed onto the far end of the bench, and dropped all twenty pounds of his soot-furred weight onto the timber.

Shoma paused, his drawknife hovering. "Are you helping hold it down, or did you just find a patch of sun?"

The badger closed his eyes, settled his chin on his paws, and let out a long wheeze.

"Fine. You are an apprentice clamp."

With his living bench-weight in place, Shoma ran the drawknife along the stave edges, beveling each side at a precise five-degree inward angle. To make thirty-six staves form a true circle, every bevel had to match the curve of the tub's radius. On the left edge of each stave, he cut a shallow tongue with his grooving chisel; on the right edge, a matching channel.

When hot water filled the vessel, the dry cedar would swell outward by nearly three percent. If the joints were cut loose, water escaped; if too tight, the swelling wood crushed its own fibers and bowed inward, bursting the seams.

Shoma checked the tongue depth with his thumb callus, feeling the grain. His fingers shaved away paper-thin curls until the tongue slid into the groove with a firm fit.

[Craft Action: Precision Tongue-and-Groove Joinery]

[Material Synergy: Cedar Heartwood + Geothermal Saturation]

[Calculating fit tolerance... Error margin: 0.8 mm.]

[Structural Integrity: 94%]

"Not bad for an uncalibrated eye," Shoma muttered.

He swept the shavings aside and began assembly on a level patch of pumice below the weir.

He set the round bottom-board flat, slotted the first stave into its perimeter groove, and tapped it home with the wooden beetle. The second stave followed, tongue sliding into groove with a dry, satisfying thunk. He worked around the circle, leaning his shoulder into the ring to hold the rising wall upright.

When the thirty-sixth stave slotted into place, the ring stood three feet tall, a fragrant cylinder open to the alpine sky.

Now came the binding.

Shoma pulled three bundles of split mountain bamboo from his pack. He had soaked the green canes in a cold brook down-valley two nights ago, keeping the skin supple. Splitting them into ribbons, he braided the strands into three flat hoop bands.

He slid the first bamboo hoop over the rim, tapping it down to the base with mallet and wooden drift. The second hoop bound the midsection. The third gripped the upper tier, just beneath the rolled lip. As he drove the hoops downward along the tub's gentle taper, the braided bamboo bit into the cedar staves, drawing thirty-six pieces into a single drum-tight drum.

"Now," Shoma said, wiping sweat from his chin. "We see if she weeps."

He lifted a flat cedar diversion trough hollowed from scrap and slotted it into the outlet lip of the basalt weir. Clear, forty-two-degree thermal water cascaded down the chute, pouring into the empty cedar tub in a smooth ribbon.

The water struck the dry bottom planks with a hollow beat. Steam billowed upward, mingling instantly with the red cedar's oils. The scent was clean and rich—warm resin, toasted wood, and mountain mist, drowning out the sulfur sharpness.

Shoma crouched, watching the base seams.

At first, tiny beads of moisture wept between the joints, glistening like sweat along the wood's lower grain. Then, under the heat of the mineral flow, the dry cedar drank. The staves expanded against the unyielding grip of the braided bamboo hoops. The weeping slowed, dwindled to intermittent drops, and stopped.

The water line rose steadily: ankle-deep, knee-deep, hip-deep. The surface settled into a calm mirror, catching the gray sky above the gorge.

A cascade of golden light chimed through his perception.

[Sanative Way System Notification]

[Facility Component Completed: Hand-Planed Cedar Soaking Tub (Single-Bather)]

[Capacity: 120 Gallons. Thermal Retention: +35%. Water Tightness: 99.4%]

[Crafting Experience Awarded: +420 XP]

[Level Up: You have reached Spring-Tender Level 4!]

[New Perk Unlocked: Cedar Affinity (Passive)]

[Cedar Affinity: Wood shaped by your hand resists mineral rot and chemical pitting 50% longer. Water steeped within your cedar vessels gains +15% Contentment Resonance.]

Shoma let out a long breath, feeling the tension bleed out of his shoulders. Level four. At this rate, by the time snow closed the pass, he might actually have a roof over the basin.

From his pack, he drew a clean, unbleached linen towel—the single pristine square he had kept hidden from Kobo in oilcloth across the border. He shook it out, folded it into a crisp rectangle, and laid it across a flat dry stone beside the tub.

A heavy gray shadow shuffled past his shin.

Kobo trotted up to the tub, stood on his hind legs, and rested two forepaws against the rim. He stretched his whiskered nose over the water, inhaling the fragrant vapor.

The badger gave a decisive grunt. He dropped onto all fours, turned his back to the water, and climbed onto the flat stone, curling his round body directly into the exact center of the freshly folded towel.

Shoma stared down at him. "That is for bathers, you bandit."

Kobo tucked his snout under his tail, sighed with supreme satisfaction, and began to snore.

High on the ridge, the clinking of iron boot-plates drifted faintly through the mist, accompanied by the stubborn bray of a tired pack mule. The patrol was two switchbacks away.

Shoma dipped a wooden scoop into the clear, fragrant water and smiled. "Let them come."