The exchange was both light banter and irritated conversation.
Elsa sighed and looked at Lawrence. “So long as you do not plan to bring calamity upon the village, I have not the slightest intention of raising a fuss. Though it’s true that your companion has no business being in a church, I…”
She trailed off, closing her eyes as if not wanting to see a question that had no answer.
“All we wish to do is learn more of the northlands. Your suspicion is completely understandable.”
“No,” said Elsa, her voice unexpectedly firm.
Having done so, she seemed to realize she hadn’t prepared for words that would follow this denial.
It was only after letting out a deep sigh that she was able to continue. “No… if the question is whether I feel suspicion, I admit I do. If it were possible, I wish that I could consult with someone else. But… my problem is of a larger…”
“You wish to know if my companion is truly what she claims to be?”
Elsa’s face froze as though she had swallowed a needle. “There is that as well, yes…”
She looked down, the only remaining hint of her steadfast nature being her ramrod-straight spine.
She seemed unable to continue.
Lawrence then asked, “And what else?”
Elsa did not reply.
Lawrence’s livelihood was negotiating with people.
When a person withdrew, he knew when to pursue and when to wait for that person to open up again.
This was undoubtedly the former.
“I cannot take your confession, but I may be able to give you some advice. However…”
Elsa peered at him as though from within a deep cave.
“… However, you will only be able to get sincere answers on things outside of business,” Lawrence finished with a smile. He felt that just for a moment, Elsa also smiled.
“No,” she said, “the question I have may well be best asked of a person like you. Might I ask you, then?”
When asking a favor, it is a very difficult thing to avoid seeming servile and to also preserve one’s dignity without appearing high-handed.
Yet Elsa managed it.
She was the image of the clergy.
“I cannot guarantee that any answer I give will be satisfying.”
Elsa nodded and spoke slowly, as if to be sure of every word she said. “If… if the stories collected in the books in the cellar are not false…”
“Yes…?”
“Does that mean the God we believe in is false?”
“…”
It was a simple question but an extremely serious one at the same time.
The God of the Church was omnipotent, omniscient; there were none but him.
His existence was incompatible with the many gods of the pagan tradition.
“My father – I mean, Father Franz – gathered many tales of the pagan gods of the northlands. He was suspected of heresy more than a few times, yet he was a fine priest who never once missed his daily prayers. If your companion truly is a pagan spirit, that means the God we believe in is a lie. And Father never once doubted God, not even on his deathbed.”
If so, her tragic worries were not hard to understand.
It seemed the adoptive father she’d loved and respected so had not spoken to her about a great many things.
Perhaps he had thought they were not relevant to Elsa, that such matters didn’t concern her – or perhaps he’d meant her to ponder them on her own. There was no way to know.
But to Elsa, who had no one with whom she could discuss her worries, they were a heavy burden indeed.
No matter how heavy the load, it could be carried as long as it was placed firmly on one’s back. However, all it took was a small disturbance for the whole load to come falling apart.
As soon as Elsa began to speak, her words became rapid, as though she could not hold them back if she wanted to.
“Is it because my faith is lacking? I know not. I have not the courage to rebuke the two of you, scriptures and holy water in hand. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing – no, what it is at all, I do not–”
“My companion–” Lawrence interjected before Elsa could corner herself with her own words. “My companion, though her true form is a giant wolf, does not wish to be called a god nor worshiped as one.”
Elsa listened quietly, desperately, a lost soul hoping for salvation.
“I am, as you see, nothing more than a merchant of no special birth. I know little of the teachings of God. I cannot tell you what is right and what is wrong,” said Lawrence, very much aware that Holo was probably eavesdropping on the conversation. “But I do not believe that Father Franz was mistaken.”
“Why… why do you believe that?”
Lawrence nodded thoughtfully, taking a moment to prepare his opinions.
It was possible that he was totally off the mark. Indeed, that possibility might have been the larger one.
But he felt a strange certainty that he understood Father Franz’s point of view.
Just as he was about to speak again, Lawrence was interrupted by the sound of a knock at the church’s door.
“… That will be Elder Sem. I imagine he is here to ask about you and your companion.” She seemed to be able to tell who was at the door by the sound of the knocking; perhaps this came from a need to tell whether the noise was someone from Enberch.
Wiping tears from the corners of her eyes, she stood, then glanced toward the interior of the church. “If you find yourself unable to trust me, you can get out there through an exit near the stove by the hallway. If you trust me–”
“I trust you. I don’t know whether I can trust Sem.”
Elsa neither shook her head nor nodded. “Then please stay in the back of the church,” she said. “I will explain that I’ve been asking you about the news from the churches of other lands. It is not really a lie…”
“I understand. I’ll be happy to share my experiences,” answered Lawrence with a smile. He was about to do as he was told and hide away in the back of the church when he noticed that Elsa had returned to her usual stoic self.
He asked himself in that moment if she would betray him. The answer came, No, she would not.
Though Lawrence did not trust in God, he did trust in those who did.
He decided he did not mind such ironies.
Lawrence walked down the dimly lit hallway. Eventually he saw the vague flicker of candlelight from around a corner.
There was no way Holo had not overheard his exchange with Elsa, so he prepared himself for whatever expression might await him as he rounded the corner.
There was Holo sitting cross-legged with an open book in her lap. She lifted her face to him, displeasure written all over it.
“Am I so very malicious, then?”
“… You’re inventing cause for offense,” said Lawrence, shrugging.
Holo snorted. “Your trepidation was plain as day; I could hear it in your footsteps.”
“Merchants only read minds, not feet.”
“… That was awful,” Holo pronounced of Lawrence’s joke “Still, you were quite considerate to the girl.”
Lawrence both expected and did not expect this subject to come up.
He did not immediately answer, instead sitting down next to Holo, careful not to step on her tail. He picked up one of the thick books that lay there. “Merchants must always be considerate to their customers. But that’s not important. Can you hear the elder’s conversation with Elsa?”
When someone asked advice, it was important to maintain confidence and trust.
But Holo’s displeasure at the change of subject was written large on her face, and she simply looked down at the book she was reading.
Lawrence wondered to himself just who it had been, back in Ruvinheigen, that said if you have something to say, you should just come out and say it.
He wanted very much to point that out to Holo, but he could scarcely imagine the fit sh
e would pitch if he was to do so.
However, Holo was not a completely unreasonable girl.
Before she had completely cornered herself, she relented. “She’s acting more or less as she said she would. That Sem fellow, or whatever his name was, seems to have just been checking in on her… He’s just now leaving.”
“If the elder would understand our situation, this would be a lot simpler.”
“Can you not persuade him yourself?”
For a moment, Lawrence thought Holo was mocking him; perceiving this, she glared at him.
“You overestimate me.”
“You don’t wish me to trust you, then?” asked Holo with a serious face.
Lawrence chuckled ruefully. “As ever, time is the problem. If we dally too long here, it may snow.”
“And what would be wrong with that?”
She seemed to be asking in earnest, so his reply was likewise serious. “If we were to be snowed in somewhere, would a large village or a small town be better?”
“Ah, I see. Still, we’ve a true mountain of books to get through. There’s no telling how long it will take us.”
“True, but we need only find stories that are relevant to you. If we read quickly, the two of us together should be able to make short work of it.”
“Mm.” Holo nodded, smiling as if somehow pleased.
“What is it?”
As soon as he asked, her smile disappeared.
“This is hardly the time to be asking me that,” she said with a resigned sigh. “I don’t know whether you are truly that slow or… ah, ’tis well.”
Seeing Holo waving him off, Lawrence thought back over what he had said.
Could it be? he wondered.
Had she been pleased to hear “the two of us together”?
“’Tis too late for you to say it now. I would only become angry.”
Lawrence took this as fair warning and closed his mouth.
Holo flipped through a few pages, sighing.
Slowly she let her body lean against his. “Did I not once say I was tired of being alone?” she reminded him reproachfully.
The thought nagged at Lawrence. “Sorry.”
“Mm.” Holo sniffed, then reached around and began to massage her left shoulder.
Seeing this, Lawrence had to smile.
She looked at him with a face that said, “Are you not going to help?”
Lawrence obediently brought his hand around to attend to her shoulders.
Holo sighed, satisfied, her tail brushing softly against the floor.
Even half a year ago, it would have seemed impossible to Lawrence that he would be quietly passing time with someone this way.
She was tired of being alone.
Lawrence felt precisely the same way.
Immediately after the thought passed through his mind, Lawrence heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps on stone. He hastily tried to pull his hand away from Holo’s shoulder when her hand grabbed his with uncanny strength.
“The elder has gone, but about what you were…” said Elsa as she was coming around the corner. Lawrence had managed to withdraw his hand and put on his most neutral merchant’s face, but Holo continued to lean against him all the same.
Her body trembled slightly, as though she were suppressing laughter. At first glance, it probably looked as though she was sleeping, her face pressed against his shoulder.
Elsa took this in silently, then nodded as if having come to some kind of conclusion. “Well, then, I will return later.”
Though her voice was as hard as ever, her consideration was evident from the way she lowered it.
Once the sound of her footsteps faded into silence as she walked away, Holo sat up and laughed.
“Look, you–” said Lawrence, but his accusatory tone went unheeded.
She laughed and laughed, eventually having to wipe a tear from the corner of her eye, then smiled maliciously at Lawrence. “Is it so humiliating then for you to be seen holding my shoulder?”
Lawrence knew that no matter how he answered, he would be falling into a trap.
He had lost the moment he’d so happily agreed to massage her shoulders.
“Though I will admit,” started Holo, her nasty smile disappearing as she contentedly lay her head against Lawrence again, “that I did wish to show off a bit.”
Lawrence suppressed the urge to pull away from her.
“I would hate for you to be taken away from me,” she said.
As a man, he could not help but feel pleased hearing this.
But he could hardly forget that it was Holo, the self-styled wisewolf, who said it.
He sighed. “You mean you would hate for your favorite toy to be taken from you.”
Holo grinned at him. “If that’s what you think, will you then play with me?”
Lawrence could only sigh.
The candle on the stand had lost its shape, and the pile of books they’d read had grown tall enough to lean upon when the church had another visitor.
Holo lifted her head, her ears erect.
“Who’s that?” Lawrence asked.
Holo giggled happily, not offering a serious reply – which meant it was probably Evan.
Lawrence didn’t have to guess why Holo was laughing.
“It’s gotten late, though… It’s dark now.”
He stood up straight and stretched, his spine popping gratifyingly.
He had gotten sucked into reading. Trie tales were interesting in their own right, even without the motivation of reading for Holo’s sake.
“I’m hungry also.”
“Quite. Shall we take a rest?” Lawrence let his stiff body relax as he reached for the candle. “Let’s not let Evan see your true nature. The fewer people who know the secret, the better.”
“Mm. Though that girl will likely tell him all the same.”
“I don’t know… I don’t think so.”
Elsa didn’t strike Lawrence as the kind of girl who would easily let a secret slip. Despite Evan’s statement that she told him how many sneezes she had in a day, she hadn’t mentioned Lawrence and Holo’s first visit to the church to him.
“Oh no?” came Holo’s skeptical reply. “That girl seems troubled over something. Depending on what she decides, who can say what she will do?”
“Ah, her questions about God. I suppose that is true now that you mention it.”
At the time, Lawrence hadn’t found a chance to give Elsa his answer, winding up instead lost in a book.
But as he thought on it, he wondered if that wasn’t for the best.
“Incidentally, what were you planning to tell her?” Holo asked.
“Well, I might have been completely mistaken anyway.”
“I would hardly expect a perfect answer from you.”
It was a nasty thing to say, but hearing it put so bluntly made it easier for Lawrence to answer. “The way I see it, Father Franz collected tales of the pagan gods to prove the existence of his own god.”
“Oh, ho.”
“Praying every day, day after day, yet never seeing so much as a hint of one’s god – anyone would begin to doubt, don’t you think?”
Holo – who had been thus doubted – nodded, annoyed by the memory of it.
“But if he then started to look around, he would have seen that there were many, many other gods that people worship. Does that god exist? What about this other one? It’s only natural that he would’ve started to wonder. If he could prove the existence of the gods worshiped by others, then that would mean his own God existed, too.”
Of course, this manner of thought was a complete anathema to the Church.
Shortly after Lawrence met Holo for the first time, the two had taken shelter from the rain in a church. Holo had some knowledge of Church beliefs and had been able to chat easily with the believers there – so this had to have occurred to her as well.
“Aye, but the God of the Church is a supreme being, is he not? There are no other gods before
him, and he created the world – people merely borrow it – is that not what they hold?”
“It is. Which is why I believe this is truly an abbey, not a church.”
Holo’s increasingly annoyed expression was no doubt because she did not follow Lawrence’s logic.
“Do you know the difference between an abbey and a church?”
Holo was not so vain as to feign knowledge when she was ignorant. She shook her head.
“An abbey is a place for prayer. A church is a place for teaching about God. Their aims are entirely separate. Abbeys are built in remote regions with no thought given to guiding people down the correct path. The reason monks may spend their whole lives within one is that there is simply no reason to leave.”
“Hm.”
“So what do you think would be the first thing a monk would do if he began to doubt the existence of God?”
Holo’s gaze drifted.
The fish within her mind were surely swimming farther through the sea of knowledge and wisdom.
“Indeed – he would seek to ascertain the existence of the God he worshiped, which means our treatment depends even more upon what that girl decides to do,” said Holo.
“I’m glad I didn’t tell her any of this during the day. Elsa’s not a nun – she’s a member of the clergy.”
Holo nodded briefly, glancing at the pile of books.
They hadn’t yet looked at even half of the volumes in the cellar.
Though they did not necessarily have to look at every book, they still had not found the stories that Holo sought.
Had there been an index where they could have looked for gods of a certain region, that would have sped things up considerably, but as it was, they had no choice but to search page by page through the chronicles.
“Well, in any case, all we can do is search the books as quickly as we can. There is still the problem with Enberch, after all.”
“Mm. True, but” – Holo’s gaze turned to the hallway that led to the room where Elsa and Evan were – “first let us eat.”
A moment later, they could hear Evan’s footsteps as he came to invite them to dinner.
“We thank God for blessing us with bread this day.”
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