By the way, it was my handwriting.
“There’s no way you’ll hit anything if you try hunting animals from the get-go, so let’s practice here for a bit.”
This was the place I had secretly prepared the day before.
“What kinds of rewards will I get?”
“Heh-heh, you’ll find out after you hit the target.”
And then I stood next to Elise and showed her the correct way to hold the bow, as well as certain techniques for hitting the target.
“For now, try taking a shot.”
“Okay… Hyah.”
She loosed the arrow, and it fell to the ground right in front of her.
“…Did you think the target was buried beneath the snow somewhere?” I asked.
“……”
And that’s how the curtain rose on our training days.
Nearly every day, we would leave the city early in the morning, practice archery in the forest, return to the city in the afternoon, shivering cold, go to a restaurant, and then return to the forest with full bellies.
It wasn’t long before Elise’s arrows flew straight and hit their mark.
In less than three days, her shots were looking clean. She picked that up surprisingly quickly. Or could it be that I am a particularly skillful instructor? Do I have a future in teaching?
“Oh, yay! Look, Elaina! I hit the center!”
On the fifth day of training, I heard a thunk and then Elise’s cheerful shout.
“Hey, what are you going to give me for a reward?”
Rushing over to me in her excitement, Elise wore a broad smile.
So I spoke, putting on an air of importance.
“I’ll buy you all the clothes you want. That’s your reward.”
I had thought that this would make her happy, but her face scrunched into a complicated expression.
“…You mean…only for me, right?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Um… I was hoping I could ask you to buy some for my sister, too.”
“……”
I patted Elise’s head gently.
“If that’s what you want, you can have it, no matter the cost.”
Running her fingers over her stiff clothes and feeling the rough texture of her horns, she smiled with her eyes.
“Yay!”
With her new wardrobe, Elise was ready for the next phase of her training. On the snowbanks, her petite footsteps had made little wave patterns as she stepped back and forth. Some distance ahead of her was a white rabbit that blended into the snow, twitching its nose and ears as it hopped off somewhere.
Today we were aiming not for still targets but living prey.
“Is there a reward this time, too?”
“If you hit that, I’ll let you eat my delicious home cooking.”
“…Is it more delicious than the restaurants we always go to?”
“It’s mean to have the same standards for amateurs and pros.”
“…I wish it was a different prize—”
“That’s a little too honest, Elise.”
“Eh-heh-heh.”
“Hey, your rabbit is going to run away if we keep wasting time,” I said, and Elise seemed to remember her task, readied the bow, and turned a keen eye toward the rabbit.
Then she exhaled one white puff of breath and released her finger.
The arrow buried itself into the snow with a thunk.
“…Did you think the rabbit was hibernating beneath the snow?”
And so, just as before, we spent many days going back and forth between the forest outside the city and the restaurants inside.
“Oh no, I ordered more than I can eat today, again! My mistake. Here, you can have it. Enjoy it at home.”
As we sat in the restaurant, I handed Elise my leftover food, as always.
“Thank you, Miss Elaina.”
Taking the leftovers carefully with both hands, Elise smiled faintly. The girl who always wore a dark expression now graced her gentle face with a warm smile—or so it appeared.
Maybe I’ve got the wrong impression. Maybe it’s hubris.
But I got the feeling that her story was headed in a positive direction, little by little.
Maybe I’ll be able to complete this job in my own way.
The day after I had that idea, Elise brought down her first rabbit. The snow had finally stopped, giving way to a beautiful sunny day.
“Hey, look, Elaina! I did it! I did it; look!”
A small field rabbit lay stretched out atop a mound of snow glittering in the sunlight. Its legs were twitching as if it meant to escape the arrow sticking out of its neck, and a red stain was spreading out on the white snow.
“Finally. Looks tasty.”
Without waiting for the rabbit’s life to come to an end, I held up the arrow. The rabbit came with it, hanging limply and heavily.
“…So about that prize you mentioned…”
“Yep. It’s my home cooking.”
“You mean you’re going to cook this?”
“That’s right.”
“Can you handle it?”
“I may look sophisticated, but I’m top-notch when it comes to dressing a rabbit. In fact, I’m too good. I make all the rabbits tremble in fear.”
“…Aren’t rabbits always trembling?”
“Also, this isn’t part of your prize, but I have a proposal.”
“What?”
I laid the rabbit, which had finally stopped moving, down on a patch of clean, unbloodied snow. There was a crunching noise, and the snow directly below the rabbit parted, as if splitting open.
“You have a house you used to live in long ago, right? Don’t you have any desire to live there again?”
“In our old house? But—”
“You’ve learned to hunt on your own. You no longer have any reason to stay in that city. So how about it? Do you feel like returning once again to the house where you lived with your parents?”
“……”
She was silent.
“Of course, I’m not trying to force you, though.”
I waited eagerly for her to speak again.
Silence fell over the forest. After a little time had passed, as if she had remembered what was going on, Elise nodded.
“That’s…right. Yes. I want to go. I probably should have left this city a long time ago.”
Her words brought me relief.
Now she would definitely thrive—or so I thought.
After bleeding out the rabbit Elise had caught, we tied it up with string and headed back to the city.
It was lunchtime when we got back, and there were plenty of people on the main street. When we passed them, they gawked like they were witnessing something unusual, and each time, Elise shrank a little more.
“You don’t have anything to worry about anymore,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder. She smiled weakly.
For her, getting some distance from this country—from the thing that resembled a house, destroyed by fire—was a cause for happiness. As soon as we arrived at the house, Elise ran to gather her things.
The government official who had commissioned me appeared exactly at that moment.
“…Lady Elaina. How is that request coming along?” Holding a small package in his hands, he bowed slightly.
“Swimmingly. I think that things will soon go the way you all had hoped.”
“…Is that so? That’s good.”
“You don’t seem too happy about that.”
“Well, when our wishes come true, it isn’t always in our best interest in the end.”
After a moment’s pause, I said, “I’ve been trying to do the very best I can for her sake. And now this can all come to an end. There’s no need for you to leave those packages anymore.”
I could see that the government official gripped the package more tightly.
“…Thank you very much. Please accept our apology for dragging you into our business.” After bowing v
ery deeply, the official turned his back on me. “This is rather forward of me,” he said over his shoulder, “but could I make just one more request of you, Miss Elaina?”
“Depending on what it is, I might require an additional fee; is that all right?”
He didn’t answer. He simply said, “If you get the chance, I would appreciate it if you could somehow convey our true feelings to her.” Then he walked away.
I had no response.
Because I didn’t know whether I would be able to do that.
“……”
Elise came back shortly after the official left, balancing a great deal of luggage in both arms.
“Sorry for the wait. It took a while to pack everything after I woke my sister up.”
She had her little sister on her back.
“I haven’t introduced you to Miss Elaina yet, have I? This is my little sister, Mirina.”
It felt like the time when I would have to tell her their true feelings was drawing near.
We walked on, slowly but steadily.
“We’re home,” Elise said, sweeping off the snow that was stuck to her shoes near the front door. She walked inside, still carrying Mirina.
“……”
Imitating her, I brushed myself off and followed the trail of melting snow into the house. The small, snowy footsteps led from the entryway to the dining room.
Just in front of the kitchen, there was a table set up with two chairs on each side. They had likely been occupied by the four family members once upon a time.
She pulled out one of the chairs and sat her sister down in it.
“Hey, Elaina. What kind of dish are you going to prepare using that rabbit?” Elise’s gaze turned toward my hand.
“…How about cream stew?”
“Yay! Mirina loves that!” Elise hugged her sister’s shoulders from behind, happy as can be.
There was no response.
“…Yep! This is gonna be great.” Elise nodded at her sister with a wide smile.
“……I’m going to start the cooking,” I said. “So wait just a little while longer, Elise.”
“Okay, I’ll wait here with my sister.”
Still smiling, Elise sat down next to Mirina.
“…Okay.”
My voice echoed vacantly through the house.
I heard her cheerfully chatting as I busied myself in the kitchen.
“Hey, this is really nostalgic, isn’t it?”
“I’m going to take the place of Mom and Dad from now on, okay, Mirina? Oh, but since I have to do the cooking, too, I think I’ll have even more jobs than they did.”
“Don’t worry. I’m sure I can do a great job.”
It had been like this the whole way here. It had been particularly awful as we exited the city, Elise holding her sister in her arms. The whole way, she had been smiling and listening to her little sister’s voice, which I couldn’t hear.
“……”
A pleasant aroma wafted out of the pot that had been brought to a bubbling boil.
Amid the suffocating atmosphere, I was finally able to suck in a breath. After inhaling deeply, I stirred the pot, and the fragrance of carrots, potatoes, and rabbit meat stewing in cloudy-white cream filled the air.
“……”
Everything I had done since arriving in this country had amounted to nothing.
This included agreeing to the official’s request, getting the girl out of the cruel city, and, at the same time, providing her with an environment where she could be able to hunt and live on her own. I had worked hard for her to be able to return to this house.
I thought if I could get her this far—get her out of the city, away from other people—then the pitiful girl would come to her senses.
But it was no good.
It seemed that had only been my wish.
And there appeared to be no cure for the deep sadness plaguing her.
From the kitchen, I looked over my shoulder and watched her.
Turning away from her sister with a smile, the girl noticed me.
“Oh, Miss Elaina, are you done already?”
“I just have to let it simmer.”
“Oh really? Well, it won’t be long now!”
“……”
“What’s wrong?”
“…Nothing.”
“…? Hey, you’ve been acting kind of strange this whole time, Miss Elaina. You barely said a word the whole way here, and you haven’t spoken much since we got here.”
“……”
“You know, my sister hasn’t said much, either… Isn’t that strange? Something’s off.”
“…I’m acting weird?”
“Yeah.”
“……” I was silent.
“I know, right? Something’s definitely off.” Elise nodded in response to a voice I couldn’t hear.
And then she went back to the cheerful conversation she was having with her sister, completely disregarding me.
“…You must not be feeling well. That’s probably it.”
“…Ah-ha-ha. That’s right. You’ll feel better once you eat some stew.”
“…I know. I’d better cook her something next time to show our gratitude.”
On and on, she spoke to her sister, her face the picture of contentment.
“……”
It was more than I could bear.
“…Elise.”
“What?”
I recoiled a bit as she turned her relentless smile on me. At some point, I had begun to find her smiling face terrifying.
“…Elise, just…stop it already,” I begged, unable to meet her eyes.
Then I said the only thing there was left to say. I voiced the truth that lay before me.
“Your sister is dead.”
There, propped up in one of the four chairs, was a young girl dressed in a long coat, the very same kind Elise was wearing. Beautiful blond hair dangled down from her hood.
The corpse reeked of death.
“It happened about a month ago. A group of merchants from the city made a grave mistake.”
“Hmm.”
The government official, seated across from me, began to tell an impossibly sad story.
“There was a family of beastkin living near our city. The merchants came up with a plan to capture and sell them. They told me it was because they were short on money.
“First, the merchants planned to capture the couple who went out hunting. They were going to lie to them and tell them they were lost, then get close to the man and woman, catch them off guard, and abduct them.
“Of course, there was no way they were going to simply catch a couple of beastkin. Surrounded by the merchants, the two resisted fiercely.
“As they struggled on the unstable sloping face of the mountain, they lost their footing.
“The merchants who survived went to the bottom to check on them, but everyone who had fallen was dead. The innocent beastkin couple were intertwined with the evil merchants in death.
“This was the cause of everything that’s happened.
“Three merchants survived. They brought the bodies to our city and told me about what happened. Unfortunately, they lied to me.
“‘Three merchants and two of the beastkin living nearby lost their lives in an accident,’ they said. Regrettably, I believed them. Since the two beastkin had been a couple, I thought that there might be children. I feared they might even be awaiting the return of their parents at that very moment. So I took the merchants with me into the mountains. We found their home.”
The rest of what he told me largely matched Elise’s story. The government official who visited Elise and her sister in their home had told them that their parents died in an accident and had taken the two girls back to the city.
However, as far as what happened from that point onward, Elise’s and the official’s stories were completely different.
“It happened several days after the girls came to this country. There was an incident.
”
Then he told me the truth.
“The surviving merchants targeted the girls, for money and revenge. They sneaked into the girls’ house at night, torches and knives in hand.
“The three merchants found the older sister first. Just like her parents, she—Elise—did not falter, even surrounded by adults. She fought and fought and fought.
“But she’s still a child. Physically, she never really stood a chance.
“The merchants held her down and took their revenge. The men set their knives aside and beat her. They kicked her. Even when she was cowering, begging for their forgiveness, tears streaming, they did not stop.
“I suppose they intended to hurt her but leave her alive and abduct her, rather than kill her.
“That’s when one of the men was stabbed in the back by the very knife he had set aside. When the merchants turned, there was another girl, a bit younger than Elise. The little sister, Mirina, had tried to save her big sister from the one-sided assault.
“The wounded man released the older sister, screaming, and hit Mirina with a torch. Then he quickly tossed the torch aside and picked up a knife. Mirina was wailing, her hands covering her face, and he stabbed her over and over again until she drew her last breath.
“It was awful. Horrified, the remaining two merchants tried to stop the third man. But just after they approached him, the man who was straddling Mirina stopped moving.
“Elise had killed the man using another of the merchant’s knives.
“While Elise stood still, in a daze, the fire rose from the discarded torch, the flames lapping everything in the house, the blaze growing larger by the second.
“The two surviving merchants ran away in a panic.
“Hearing news of the fire from citizens living nearby, I rushed to the girls’ house, and when I finally arrived, the fire had spread to the street. We immediately got to work fighting the flames, but even so, half the house couldn’t be saved.
“We soon identified the cause of the fire. We found the three knives at the scene, the charred corpse of the merchant, and received eyewitness testimony from the neighbors. With those things as proof, we questioned the other two merchants and arrested them.
Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina, Vol. 2 Page 7