For the first eight of so years I was growing up, it seemed like my master Erastus was hardly aware that I was under his roof. For most of that time, I always stuck to the other slaves, and they taught me what they could so that I would be more useful to the master. I learned to scrape the fat and excess muscle and other gore from the hides that were brought in for skinning by our numbers. I was given a knife, barely hard enough to hold an edge for more than a few bit's work. It was my knife, provided by our kind master, and just mine to watch over and make certain that it didn't get lost or go astray. There were few enough things we could call our own, and even then our concepts of possessions were more illusion than reality. Yet still we treated what secret treasures stowed away beneath our sleeping pallets as our own belongings. Perhaps that gave us enough hope that we might earn freedom, as Erastus often promised to those who served him well.
Anyway, I clung to that knife trial by trial, and kept it as honed as was possible for the mild edge it could hold. It was enough,
to get most of the grisle off the hides. Although leatherworking was a dirty profession, one that rendered the tanner awash in the stink of death, the fruits of our labor were highly coveted and in demand. There were few other textiles that could match the strength of leather in the short term. Leather was flexible, tough, and fashionable once it was bathed in perfumery by those receiving the product.
Yet even so, we weren't bothered by the smell after a while.
Our noses grew accustomed to the stench, a sort of olfactory fatigue.
All the same, it was never pleasant work for the fact that we were more or less immune to the scent of leather tanning. The labor was backbreaking, and no distinction was made between slaves large or small. All hands were on call when we were working the tannery. I for my part remember a time when I was mashing the brains of the animals for the curing process.
It seemed all too convenient to me, when the other slaves that were more experienced in these matters explained that the brain had enough of what a tanned hide needed to tan, in the brain of the animal. It seemed too neat, too ordered for the reality that I knew day to day, to be true. But sure enough, the brains we processed into tannin solution were good enough for the hides were were processing, so I had no course for disagreement.
There was the packing and rolling of fully tanned hides, once they were fully prepared for use in the making of clothing and other items. The raw material seemed something so luxurious back then, something far beyond my little hands, even as I touched the surface of the leather, feeling the cool surface and texture of its grain. One of the larger slaves was sent to lug the shipment of leather to wherever it was heading. Erastus had his contacts and clients, but I was not privy to them. Not at that stage, at least. It would take a long time for me to earn his trust.
For now, my task was simple and required less strength than the lugs taking the material to its destination. I was to check the thickness of the leather, and make sure to mark where it was less dense. I was suited to this, as even as a child my limbs were long and spindly, for my age. I could reach through the width of the material to check it's consistency. Having determined that the thickness was mostly uniform, and marking where it wasn't, the leather was taken to those who were to cut it into manageable units of leather.
It was very much a factory process, working in a large scale tannery. Sometimes, I wished and wondered how the woodsmen, who made their skins into clothing, saw the process of tanning. If they saw it as less of a dirty chore of drudgery and despair, or more of a well-regarded passtime. Perhaps I'l yet have time to ask a woodsman survivalist. For the moment though, I was stuck in my role, checking, marking, and then helping to cut the leathers.