All the lords got down from their chairs and bowed on one knee to show their allegiance.
At this point, the priests could not stay obstinate, either. If they did not maintain good relationships with the lords, it would not turn out well for them once they returned home.
There was a great moment of silence as the old lord waited for protests from the priests.
Then, once he saw that they all had lowered their eyes, he spoke.
“In the ways of the battlefield, I will bury this man like he was my friend. You, the holy men…”
The lambs of God raised their eyes.
“Pray for the bread coins buried in his grave, so that they may reach heaven.”
The priests all exchanged glances.
It was not about who was more important than whom.
Since no one knew whose prayer would send the bread coins to heaven, there would be no arguments over appearance and pride.
“Then…well…”
Listening to the mumbled voices of agreement, the old lord nodded.
“Then this conversation is over! Take action!”
When he slammed his hand on the table, everyone stood up straight.
With that, the sudden commotion in Nyohhira concluded.
The company carrying the coffin went in droves to the cave where the traveler slept. It looked as though a few of the bathhouse masters went along with them, but Lawrence, who had stayed up all night, only watched them off.
He had proposed his idea to the old lord yesterday, and after he received enthusiastic support, they went around to each bathhouse in the village with their story. That itself took quite a bit of time, but he also had to wake up the kitchen attendant, Hanna, after enlisting Aram and Selim to help knead the dough. They heated up the oven as well as the seal, branding iron, and the embosser, then finished making the lightly baked bread as dawn broke.
Exhaustion bore heavily on his shoulders and back, and the backs of his eyes stung.
Lawrence thought about how he could have conducted trade for three days straight without a wink of sleep when he was young and smiled wryly.
Once the majority of the people had headed out toward the mountain, he finally spoke.
“Do you want to go back to the bathhouse?”
Holo, who had come to watch what was going on at the meeting hall, nodded shortly. They clasped hands, and Holo began to scratch away at the dough that clung to his fingers no matter how many times he washed them.
“Hey, that hurts.”
Holo did not respond, concentrating as she scratched away at the dough stuck to his fingernails.
“…Do you want to go see the burial?”
She paused.
After a few paces, she started scratching at him again.
“No.”
She spoke like a sulking little girl.
“Right. The disturbance stays safely underground.”
Holo huffed as if she were telling him the only reason she stopped scraping at his fingers was because she was bored.
They walked silently through the village of Nyohhira, its typically lively streets now quiet and empty. It was almost as if all that merrymaking had just been a dream.
“Are you afraid to sleep?”
When he asked that, Holo’s body froze, and she stopped in her tracks.
There was no other reason for her to refrain from drinking and going to sleep after spending the whole night kneading dough.
If she fell asleep, she might wake up from this dream.
That terrified her, so she accompanied Lawrence.
There was a hint of a smile on his face as he watched her. He took a step out in front of her and felt around in his breast pocket.
He pulled out a thin piece of bread, the design of a wolf burned onto it.
“Here.”
Lawrence held it out to Holo’s mouth, but she turned away, grimacing.
He shrugged, broke it in half, and ate it himself.
“Take the rest.”
He placed a piece of the bread in the pouch stuffed with wheat that hung from Holo’s neck. She had given the old pouch of wheat to Myuri, so this was a new one.
Holo did not resist, but she glanced at him, wondering what he was up to.
“With this, if you wake up alone, in some wheat field far away—”
Holo’s eyes opened wide mid-sentence, astonished.
Exasperated, Lawrence smiled as he held both of her cheeks in his hands.
“If that happens, just follow the scent of this bread. That is where you’ll find me.”
Holo stared up at Lawrence, and when he smiled, tears poured from her eyes.
Then finally, she must have remembered how she called herself the wisewolf.
Holo, who had wolf ears and a tail the same color as her flaxen hair, took a deep breath, then forced herself to smile.
“Then make it so it is not bread but spice.”
“Because that makes food more delicious?”
Then, after a burst of laughter, Holo clung to Lawrence.
Lawrence embraced her slender frame and spoke.
“Let’s head back to the bathhouse now. The bathhouse you and I created.”
As her tail whipped back and forth, Holo nodded and gripped Lawrence’s hand. This time, she no longer held it as if she had something else to say.
The two walked together.
It was the short Nyohhira summer.
Above them hung a bright blue sky that seemed like it might swallow them whole.
HARVEST AUTUMN AND WOLF
There was a quiet rustling sound, and Lawrence woke up.
For a moment, he reassured himself there was no way it could be snow. Though the summers passed by quickly in Nyohhira, it was still much too early.
As his vision cleared, he saw Holo brushing her tail.
“That sound…”
Once it started snowing, work in the bathhouse would suddenly grow busy. Lawrence breathed a sigh of relief and let his strained neck relax.
It was just after the beginning of autumn, and the summer guests had gone home. There was still some time to prepare for winter, a precious part of year when he was allowed to fall back asleep.
“Make sure you throw out the shed hairs…”
Lawrence said, and as he pulled the blanket up to his shoulders, he turned away from Holo.
It was a time when he would give in to his bubbling drowsiness so that it might soothe the year’s fatigue.
“Oh.”
A pile of fur was placed on his face. Of course, it was not rabbit fur meant for keeping him warm.
There was no doubting its beautiful lay, but there was a different character about it compared to that of deer or rabbits or other animals that nibbled on grass and nuts. Yet, it was not rough like that of a fox, nor stiff like that of a bear.
It was dignified and smooth, fur that could slip through the wilderness like wind—the pelt of a wolf.
Although he usually praised and admired it, now it was just getting in the way of his sleep.
“Urgh…What…?”
He swatted it away rather cruelly, and this time, Holo slapped him across the cheek.
“Did you not say we would go collect chestnuts today?”
“We can go at noon…”
It was ingrained in his body that if he swatted not just her tail but also her hand away, Holo would get angry.
Almost unconsciously Lawrence gripped the hand on his cheek, wrapped his fingers around it, and went in for the kiss…but just as he was pulling it toward him, he lost out to his sleepiness and began to snore.
Holo, now alone, sighed, her tail swishing back and forth.
“You fool.”
With a murmur, she too slipped under the covers and clung to Lawrence’s back.
It was the beginning of autumn.
The whole of Nyohhira was silent, a calm air drifting through the morning.
Lawrence left messages for Hanna, who ran the kitchen, and Selim, who, despite having o
nly been at the bathhouse for less than a year, could be depended on for anything from household chores to bookkeeping. He finally left the bathhouse after having fallen back asleep countless times, and by now it was almost noon. To make things worse, the days were short in Nyohhira, so it could grow dark at any time.
Lawrence shouldered a sack stuffed with bread and roasted, cured meats for lunch, as well as a folding bag for the nuts and mushrooms he collected plus waterskins for the water and wine they would drink along the way.
He dressed like this when he was once a peddling merchant, but Holo was unburdened as she walked ahead along the road, taunting a dragonfly with a stick she found.
“Don’t you think this is unfair?”
Lawrence spoke as he adjusted the luggage, while Holo blankly stared back.
“What is?”
She feigned such innocence that Lawrence sighed and responded, “Nothing.”
Holo walked through the forest so lightly that it almost seemed as though her slender frame had sprouted wings. Although she resembled a young girl around the age of ten, she was actually the avatar of a wolf that resided in wheat and would live for hundreds of years, so she was adept at trekking through the mountains.
Not only that, she had wolf ears and a tail, and her small body concealed the power of a giant wolf. She would occasionally stop and sniff and, without turning back toward Lawrence, poke at tree roots with her stick or use it to point at things.
Like the faithful manservant he was, Lawrence would take a look at where she pointed and typically find grand patches of mushrooms. Occasionally there would be a field mouse nest, its inhabitants peering up at them nervously from their hole. He apologized for Holo’s bad behavior and left them a piece of mushroom.
“You’re in a good mood today.”
Lawrence spoke cheerfully, opening up one of the bags he carried as he plucked a mushroom.
She must have felt more open since her wolf ears and tail were now exposed, which she usually kept cramped and hidden under a bandanna or sash as others were watching in the bathhouse. There were many guests during the summer and Holo had quite a bit of her own work. Then this year, in the middle of their work, they found the body of a traveler who had gotten lost in this land so long ago and perished, which had also caused a bit of an uproar. The whole commotion was now over, and she seemed to be enjoying the crisp, clear autumn weather from the bottom of her heart.
Lawrence, too, felt at ease.
In a typical year, their only daughter, Myuri, would have been with them. Myuri, as innocent as the sun itself, acted just like a wolf pup when she entered the forest. She never looked straight ahead as she rushed around, tumbling or running into things, and always laughed out loud. There were more than one or two times that she had put a poisonous mushroom in her mouth as a test of her own courage.
This year they were not being kept in suspense over Myuri’s barbarous deeds, so they could even lazily gaze at the squirrels sitting atop a tree branch, nibbling on a nut, as they walked by.
But Lawrence loved the unbearable liveliness.
It had been over six months since his only daughter, Myuri, left on a journey with Col, whom she looked up to as an older brother. Lawrence wondered if he was concerned about the two not just because of simple parental affection but because he depended so deeply on the liveliness that was now gone.
And so there was a good reason Holo taunted Lawrence for being a fool when she saw him worrying over Myuri, reading and rereading the letters she sent him.
Because the reason Holo seemed so oddly bright as she ran ahead on the path was likely to bury these quiet, empty spaces.
“…No, am I overestimating her?”
On the road ahead of him, Holo was pretending to hunt snakes with a young fox that must have just gained its independence. There were fallen leaves stuck to her vaunted tail, and she was cackling delightfully.
“Oof.”
He should have expected it, but with Holo’s guidance, who knew the mountains around Nyohhira extremely well, down to the location of every mousehole, and even though she played as she walked, the bags he brought were soon stuffed full. He might find himself exhausted before they came to where the chestnut trees grew.
Lawrence called for an early break, and like a spirit of the forest, Holo pointed farther into the woods.
There was an old, fallen tree and a sunny clearing. When he sat down on the old tree, on which grew a single flower of a slim stem and light pink petals, and let down his bags, they already had enough mushrooms to sell.
“Here, ’tis water.”
As he sat on the felled tree preparing for lunch, Holo appeared, holding a waterskin.
She must have retrieved fresh water from a stream somewhere.
“Oh, thanks. I’m getting food ready, so just hold on a sec.”
“Mm. With plenty of meat, of course.”
Her voice contained not even a hint of mischief. She spoke as she stood by Lawrence, her narrowed eyes blissfully gazing at the trees swaying in the breeze.
Lawrence smiled slightly, and in jest, he stuffed the bread full of meat, then passed it to Holo.
After Holo’s eyes widened in surprise, she took it with a beaming smile.
The autumn forest was the best pantry, but the woods at this time of year were much more dangerous than the mounds of snow in the winter. That was because the things that humans thought were delicious to eat were also delicious for other animals.
Holo had gathered a heap of chestnuts in a childlike obsession but ultimately could not carry them all back and was then sitting in her spot, picking out the ones that had been eaten by bugs.
At that moment, Lawrence heard the snapping of a twig being stepped on and turned around to see a large bear towering over him. If he did not move carefully, a swing of one of those claws would kill him instantly. Lawrence froze and stared back into its black eyes when Holo returned, her tail wagging.
“What is it you need?”
Lawrence was human and did not understand the feelings of the beasts in the forest. However, as the avatar of a wolf, Holo did understand their feelings, and Lawrence in turn understood Holo’s. So if he watched her expression, he could generally tell what the animal was thinking.
When he saw Holo’s calm smile, he could somehow tell that the bear that had appeared before them was a polite one.
“You wish for chestnuts? I do not mind if you take these. They have bugs. Take as many as you wish.”
The bear gave a brief sigh-like snort, stuffed its nose into the pile of bugged chestnuts that Holo and Lawrence had picked out, and began to devour them.
Holo watched it happily, and when the bear suddenly lifted its head as though thinking of something, she put the waterskin to its mouth and let it drink.
“How are the bees this year? Does it seem they will make it through the winter, I wonder?”
Holo, who loved sweets, was trying to ask the master of the forest about the bees’ movements. The bear seemed to hesitate, perhaps because it did not want to tell her where its favorite honey might be, but its defeated expression suggested it had no choice but to answer when Holo asked, and it grunted softly.
“Hmm. So next spring at Swan’s Peak sounds like the best time.”
Holo’s knowledge of the mountain far surpassed that of the nearby hunters and woodcutters. Lawrence did not mind fully using that knowledge to gather food, but he did not want to be left entirely to gather and catch and deal with all the disposal and processing afterward. He especially did not want to go collect any beehives.
Don’t tell her too much about the beehives, Lawrence signaled to the bear.
As he continued thinking, the bear whispered to Holo, whose ears stood straight up.
“What? A whole patch of lingonberries?!”
It sounded as if she had heard some welcome news, but when Lawrence looked up to the sky, it was already starting to change color.
“Did you hear that? Lingonberries!”<
br />
Holo tugged at Lawrence’s sleeve with an earnest expression, but Lawrence kept on sorting the chestnuts.
“The sun will be setting soon, and we have our chestnuts. We have mushrooms. Next time.”
“You fool! If we do not go quickly, they shall be eaten!”
Even with a massive bear waiting on her, Holo still acted like a child when it came to food.
“We wouldn’t be able to eat all that in a day. It’d be a different story if there were multiple gluttonous wolves, though.”
In a typical year, both his sleeves would be pulled on in this kind of situation: on his right sleeve, the Wisewolf Holo; on his left, his only daughter, Myuri.
“Tomorrow, then. We must!”
Lawrence heaved a sigh and agreed. However, it would be a mistake to tell her that if she really wanted to eat them that much, then she should just go on her own. Holo wanted to go together.
And he gave up, because it was his troublesome personality that made him happy whenever she made such selfish requests.
“But lingonberries, huh? Should we preserve some in sugar and send them to Myuri?” Lawrence murmured, and Holo’s ears twitched.
“She pesters little Col for delicious things anyhow. ’Twould be best not to spoil her.”
Though Holo looked like a rather proper mother in Myuri’s presence, they competed with each other like sisters when it came to fighting over food.
Apart from that, Lawrence regretted mentioning Myuri’s name.
Once he opened his mouth, the words he had bottled up in his heart spilled forth.
“We haven’t heard from her in a while…I hope she’s okay.”
“No news is good news, is it not?”
“Well, I guess so…”
It had sounded like Col, who had set off with high hopes, and Myuri, who followed closely after, clinging to him as an older brother, were causing quite the fuss in many places.
Though Lawrence thought it might turn out all right for them, he could not rid himself of his seeds of worry.
More importantly, his precious only daughter was traveling alone with a man of age, even though that man was the honest and straightforward Col. As Lawrence worried himself over all these unpleasant thoughts, he felt a whack.
Spring Log III Page 13