Side Colors II

by Isuna Hasekura

  “I have depended on your abilities quite a bit, after all. It’s nice this way, even just as a change of pace, isn’t it?”

  He was counting his chickens before they hatched a bit, but surely he’d be forgiven this much. Plus, if he weighed what Holo’s drink and food cost against how much her help had earned him, the latter was by far the greater. In all honesty, sometimes he wanted her to eat and drink without any care.

  “So you—”

  “Hmm?”

  “You truly imagine I could eat and drink without worry?”

  Lawrence realized something, and in that moment it felt as though time stopped. “Is that why you were angry last night…?”

  She might beg him for this or that, but it wasn’t as though that was all Holo did. She always repaid her debts and was a constant help to him at every turn during their travels.

  Wasn’t it because she hated being singled out as special that Holo so detested being called a god? If so, Lawrence’s concern might have had the opposite of its intended effect.

  “It’s not something you need agonize over…that’s what I think anyway. You’re honorable to a fault, after all.”

  At these words Holo shot him a resentful glance, as though angry at having been made to explain something she didn’t want to. “Hmph. I’m only an ignorant wolf, after all. I can’t even read those words.”

  Already anxious about not contributing, Holo would have awoken to see Lawrence toiling away at the desk. From her perspective it would’ve seemed like he was deliberately spiting her.

  “Ah, if that’s the problem, then I have an idea.”

  “…?” Holo’s expression softened, and she looked at him.

  Lawrence smiled. “Why don’t you just give them some wheat-growing advice?”

  The joke was sharp enough that Holo seemed to have difficulty knowing whether to be angry or not. A complicated expression passed over her face before she puffed her cheeks out and turned away.

  “I’m sure they’d be happy to get even a bit of wisdom. They’ve gotten into farming without even knowing what a sheepfold is. Isn’t there something you could tell them?” Lawrence then added, “The happier they are, the easier my work will be.”

  Holo looked at him, her eyes brimming with tears—“such cunning tricks you use,” they seemed to say. “Hn…”

  “Come, you needn’t agonize so. Surely there’s some small thing you could teach them,” Lawrence said with a smile, which made Holo close her eyes in thought.

  Her brow wrinkled, and her ears flicked back and forth beneath her hood.

  She really was too honorable for her own good.

  Still smiling, Lawrence turned his gaze away from Holo, directing it lazily upward at a bird flying overhead. Just then—

  “Mr. Lawrence!”

  Hearing the sound of his name being called, Lawrence looked back at the village.

  “Mr. Lawrence!”

  The voice coming from behind him was the village elder’s.

  “Ah, sorry, my translation isn’t yet…”

  “No, no—I know we’ve already burdened you with work, and it pains me to admit it, but there’s another matter I’d like to ask you about…”

  “Another matter?” Lawrence made an effort to hide his excitement, given the village’s current difficulty in obtaining goods. He stole a glance at Holo, whose face was sulky and uninterested. “Well, if there’s anything I can do, I’ll be happy to.”

  It would have been a lie for him not to smile here.

  The village elder seemed enormously relieved at Lawrence’s open smile. “Oh, thank goodness. I’m so grateful. Truth be told, the village has recently had more and more problems like the one you saw yesterday. I was hoping we could borrow your wisdom…”

  “…My wisdom?” asked Lawrence, still smiling.

  At this the elder explained the problem, a look of utter desperation on his face.

  Lawrence hung his head, agonizing over the amount of parchment on the desk before him that had yet to be translated.

  The problem that the elder had brought to him was, in fairness, something common to all villages. But older communities had long-established ways to resolve such problems—be it divine decree, the authority of the village elder, a certificate from a nearby lord, or a village assembly whose decisions were absolute.

  But this village had none of those.

  When a newly established community collapsed, the cause was often a lack of a strong force bringing people together. Those were the difficult circumstances this village found itself in, and it was amid such circumstances that they presented Lawrence with their problem. Unsurprisingly, it concerned land divisions.

  Evidently the lord had only vaguely defined the village territory and then left it up to individuals to decide how to divide it up into the amounts they had each been allotted.

  And that was the problem.

  They had been allotted a certain size, but nothing about the physical arrangement of those parcels had been written down.

  “So everyone just chose bits of land here and there, and we didn’t realize we needed a common point of reference until disputes started happening.”

  “Right. When the village was just starting out, there was enough land that there wouldn’t be problems right away. But without a starting reference, you end up with small slivers of land where nobody knows who they belong to—if I drew a map it’d be plain as day.”

  “I should think tearing a piece of flatbread into pieces would make a better example than any map,” said an amused Holo as she sat on the desk.

  “Oat bread, you mean? I doubt they’d find such tough stuff tasty.”

  “I suppose I wouldn’t claim it’s delicious if you asked me, but that texture is addictive. My fangs do itch for it from time to time…,” said Holo with a grin, flashing her sharp fangs.

  Lawrence couldn’t help but flinch a bit.

  “What? I should think your fangs are keener than mine by far.”

  “Huh?” replied Lawrence innocently.

  Holo poked him in the chest with her finger. “Their poison’s already working on me.”

  After a chicken walking around outside clucked three times, Lawrence looked back down at his work, whereupon Holo gave his leg an irritable kick.

  “Are you saying your work’s more important than I am?”

  “Of course.”

  “Wha—” Holo let slip in spite of herself, and when Lawrence saw her wide eyes and pricked-up ears, he realized he’d misspoken.

  “No, what I mean is that if I can’t help the villagers, they won’t be indebted to me. Our profit depends on that, but I can talk with you later…”

  “You’d best hope my good graces aren’t so limited!” spat Holo, then turned away.

  Lawrence was quite confident in his ability to charm those he’d deal with for only a short time, but such superficial treatment wouldn’t work on Holo.

  And yet the village elder had given Lawrence the authority to solve the village’s most important problem. If he couldn’t rise to the challenge, the despairing village would surely never trust him with all their trade.

  Money couldn’t buy love, it was true, but obligation could purchase money.

  “…” Lawrence couldn’t find the words to reply to Holo, even as he couldn’t very well afford to dismiss the problem before him. Sitting at the desk, he was very literally at a loss for words.

  He had never encountered a problem like this during his time alone as a traveling merchant. He doubted his old master would have been able to tell him how to solve it, either.

  After weighing everything, the key would be to understand which was the weightiest. Having determined that much, Lawrence was about to speak when—

  “You truly are a fool. ’Tis enough to make me wonder whether you have any aptitude for study at all.”

  Sitting as she was upon the desk, Holo’s head was naturally higher than Lawrence’s, so it was no surprise that he found her high-handedn
ess a bit irritating. But something about the color of Holo’s red-tinged amber irises said she would brook no argument.

  Reason did not enter into it. He had learned this from hard experience during his travels with her.

  “What did I just tell you? What did I just endure such embarrassment to tell you? I am right here, and yet you toil away there, alone…”

  “Ah…”

  She was right—they had just discussed that.

  Holo had felt hesitant because she’d had nothing to do, and yet here again Lawrence was working alone.

  She glared at him resentfully. What she needed from Lawrence was not an apology, but a request.

  “Might I…er…borrow your wisdom?” He stumbled slightly over the words as Holo watched him through half-lidded, stoic eyes.

  Her tail flicked back and forth as though weighing rejection against agreement. Finally she heaved a sigh. “I suppose I might be the biggest fool of all,” she said.

  Lawrence was about to ask what she meant, but Holo kept talking, so he straightened up and listened.

  “Hmph. Truth be told, all my wisdom amounts to is what I learned in that vexing village of Pasloe.”

  “…Stone or wood markers can be moved, so we can’t use those. Even if we put the boundaries in writing, verifying the position of those boundaries is just another thing to argue about.”

  Of course only God could create a perfect solution, but what Lawrence needed was something that everyone could acknowledge as being fair. And since they’d gone to the trouble of asking him for help, if all he could propose were obvious solutions, it would invite their despair rather than their trust.

  Lawrence then wondered if Holo was going to show her true form, but just as the thought occurred to him, she punched him lightly. “Fool. Did you forget what it was that brought me to tears in Pasloe?”

  So she wouldn’t be providing divine intervention.

  Which meant that the only option that remained would be to gather all the villagers together and show them where the reference point was, such that everyone would remember.

  “So what should we do, then? Without an astronomer we can’t accurately determine direction or position. We could use the mountains and springs as landmarks, like a sailor would, but recording that in writing is impossible. A map based only on landmarks is too vague.”

  An imprecise map indicating landmarks was good enough for a traveler, but what they needed now was a far more accurate depiction of land divisions within the village.

  “Yesterday during that scuffle, you said that people’s memories were too vague, did you not?”

  “Huh? Er, yes, that’s why this needs to be in writing.”

  “Hmm. I understand that people trust writing because once something’s written, it won’t change. But are people’s memories really so untrustworthy?”

  Lawrence didn’t understand what Holo was getting at. He had no choice but to answer. “At the very least, when there’s a dispute between two people, it’s not objective to rely on anyone’s memory. And when it comes to land, records must last years, even decades.”

  Holo listened to Lawrence’s argument. “I suppose that’s true,” she said. Then she added, “But suppose you did something like this?” She smiled an amused smile, leaned close to Lawrence’s ear, and whispered her solution.

  Surprised, Lawrence looked up at her, and the wisewolf shook her head happily.

  “As you say,” she continued, “great landmarks like mountains, springs, or hills are too broad, but if you combine several, you can determine locations quite accurately. When I was in the mountains, I could tell where I was by what I could see from the ridge.”

  Even the villagers would be able to understand that—but with no good way to write it down, it would be another source of conflict. People could be especially emotional when it came to verifying borders, which made things doubly frustrating.

  “However, it so happens that there are memories that everyone can agree upon.”

  Lawrence had to admit that with Holo’s method, everyone would agree. And in any case, he didn’t have any better ideas.

  He stood from his chair and took Holo’s hand.

  Record keeping was always a difficult task. Stories of Holo’s homeland of Yoitsu existed only because they had been written down and then kept within stone walls or basements. And only a small number of people could do that, so God only knew whether such records would survive the centuries.

  And when it came to just how unreliable verbal records were, the endless vicious arguments surrounding them ought to have made that quite clear.

  Lacking a good solution, would people simply abandon a conflict? Nay, such was not the way of the world.

  Somehow, solutions would be found, and after decades of fighting, people would put forth great mental effort to find compromises that all involved could agree to.

  And it was just such a solution that Holo had chanced to hear of during her time in the wheat fields.

  “Mr. Lawrence, the villagers have all been assembled.”

  “Good work. Where’s the representative?”

  “By God’s grace, there seems to be just one suitable person.” The village elder had heard the plan from Lawrence, and his reaction had been just the same as Lawrence’s when it had been conveyed to him by Holo. First, “Is that possible?” And then, “It just might be.”

  It required no special technique, nor tools, nor funds. And yet the resulting record would remain clear for decades, and all around would be able to agree on its meaning.

  The elder quickly gathered the villagers around the village well, which had evidently been nominated as a reference point in the past.

  Next, they had to pick who among them would be responsible for making the record.

  After much deliberation, the executor chosen was Holo.

  She had the distinction of being a neutral outsider, which, it was reasoned, would make her decision that much more effective.

  The villagers had been told only they were assembling to decide their property lines, and as such, they showed faces filled with doubt. This was hardly a surprise given how hard they themselves had been working to find a solution that all would accept.

  The village elder placed his hand on the chosen representative’s shoulder and cleared his throat. “In the name of myself and the name of the village, I swear to almighty God to settle here and now the problem of land division that has plagued us for so long.”

  His hoarse voice nonetheless carried well, as he had once been a cowherd who worked cattle on wide-open plains.

  “You have all been gathered here to bear witness to this and to remember the events of today should we be so unfortunate as to again quarrel over this matter.”

  Lawrence and Holo both kept their gazes downcast, and in Holo’s case at least this made her look all the more demure and lovely.

  She’d eaten and drunk only in moderation the previous night, so as far as the villagers were aware, she was every bit the pious nun she appeared to be, which made her the perfect person to execute the agreement.

  The village elder coughed again and spoke. “The ceremony we are about to witness was delivered to us by these two wise travelers and has long been used to settle property. As elder of this village, I recommend this boy as the representative for the ceremony.”

  The elder then nudged forward a boy whose years could still be counted on one hand. His eyes were round and wide and his beautiful fair hair angelic.

  Though he had not yet been told what he was to do, or perhaps what was to be done to him, he was surrounded by serious-faced adults. He was still with nervousness as the elder continued. “Are there any objections?”

  While several villagers looked at one another, none raised a hand. This was not surprising given that none of them had been told the nature of the ceremony. Lawrence had explained that once it was complete, there would still be opportunity to hear from anyone who might feel it had been insufficient.

  Law
rence and the elder agreed, though, that there would be no such complaints.

  “Very well, then. Let us begin.”

  No one said a word.

  The elder leaned down and whispered something into the boy’s ear, then nudged him toward Lawrence and Holo.

  The boy hesitated, looking back at the elder, then to Lawrence and Holo. The elder gestured for him to go, and the boy tremulously approached.

  In a village like this that had so little contact with nearby towns, even an adult would be nervous around an outsider. As the boy came nearer, his nervous gaze alit on a particular spot in the assembled crowd.

  It was clear who he had found, Lawrence thought. It was his mother.

  “We thank you,” said Lawrence with a smile and an outstretched hand as the boy walked up.

  The boy hesitantly took the hand and mumbled a reply.

  Lawrence then indicated Holo next to him.

  Holo was relatively small framed, but the boy was even smaller. While Holo wore her hood and continued to look down, the boy could see her face as he approached.

  The boy suddenly straightened and gave a shy little grin, and Lawrence could tell this was because Holo smiled at him.

  When he shook hands with her, his expression turned suddenly friendly—perhaps there were no young girls in this village.

  “My name’s Holo. What’s yours?”

  “Ah—it’s Clorri.”

  “Clorri, eh? ’Tis a good name.”

  The boy shied away ticklishly at the compliment and hair ruffle he received. The ceremony was probably the last thing on his mind at that moment, so happy he appeared.

  “Now, then, Clorri, we’re going to play a bit of a game. Don’t worry, all will be well. ’Tis not difficult.”

  Holo’s words brought him back to reality, and his face suddenly stiffened. But Holo gave him a gentle hug, which seemed to help him summon some courage. It seemed all men were alike, regardless of age.

  “First, we face north and pray.”

  “Pray?”

  “Aye. Any prayer will do. You pray every day in this village, do you not?” Holo had some small knowledge of the Church.