Unlike the Church, which would hunt her down as being demon possessed, a person from the northlands might simply fall prostrate before her.
Having gotten along so well with Col, Holo certainly would have hurt feelings if she received such treatment from the boy.
“Well, we’ll hear his reason and decide from there,” said Lawrence lightly.
Holo nodded, and it was but a moment later that Lawrence was able to finally hear Col’s footsteps as he ran up the road.
Col seemed to be running with all his might, and when he got within earshot of Lawrence and Holo, he abruptly slowed his pace; then, looking as if he might collapse, he stopped entirely.
He did not come any closer.
He was close enough for his voice to carry.
Lawrence said nothing.
Those who wanted something had to knock upon the door.
“Um!” Col managed to shout, his breath ragged.
He’d cleared the first barrier.
“Did I forget something?” Lawrence asked, playing dumb.
Col bit his lower lip.
He was surely anticipating being refused.
Children always assume that adults will fulfill their every request.
He’d cleared the second barrier.
Col shook his head.
“I-I have a favor to ask.”
Beside Lawrence, Holo stirred, perhaps trying to hide her face beneath the hood.
If Holo’s caring for the boy hadn’t been a strategy to get Lawrence to take him as an apprentice, then she probably couldn’t stand to see him walk this tightrope.
But Col cleared the third barrier easily.
It took a lot of courage to ask what one knew would be refused.
“What might that be? If it’s traveling expenses, I can’t help you,” Lawrence said.
Col’s eyes did not waver at the deliberate jab.
Lawrence wanted to just say “sure” for once.
If the rest went like his usual business, he would be able to readily agree.
“N-no, it’s not that. I just–”
“You just?” Lawrence asked, and Col looked at the ground for a moment, then balled up his fists and looked back up.
“You’re going to go see the truth about the wolf of Rupi, aren’t you? Please take me with you! Please!” Col said and took a step forward.
Col was hardly going to steal from them in the night, and his character was perfect for an apprentice.
But that was exactly why Lawrence wanted him to be able to pursue his own goals.
After all, he could not guarantee that his travels with Holo would henceforth bear much fruit.
They were searching for the truth behind a dangerous rumor.
“You may not make any money,” warned Lawrence. “And there may be danger. And the rumor might turn out to be a barefaced lie.”
“I don’t mind if it’s a lie! I can put myself at ease. And I’m fine with danger. If it wasn’t for you, I would have died alongside this river!” said Col, swallowing hard.
No doubt he’d gotten thirsty, dashing up this cold, dry length of road.
Which was why when Col dropped his threadbare burlap sack, Lawrence assumed it was to get a drink of water.
He soon realized that was not it.
“I can return the money I received, I think. And–” He thrust his hand into the bag, then pulled it out.
His small hand held something tightly.
“P-please! “
“You can’t go back to Mr. Ragusa’s boat now.”
At Lawrence’s words, something like a tearful smile appeared on Col’s face.
In Col’s hand was a red copper coin.
Lawrence didn’t have to look closely to know – it was a newly minted eni.
The boy was determined.
Col looked straight at Lawrence.
“…”
Lawrence let go of Holo’s hand and scratched his head.
Col had gotten this far; there was no reason to refuse.
No matter how prepared he might be, just thinking about it, Lawrence could hardly turn him down.
For reasons all his own, Col had come all the way south to Aquent to study, been kicked out, then wandered the land.
And he’d never wavered, Lawrence knew.
Lawrence looked at Holo.
“Are your tests quite finished?” her eyes demanded.
“Fine, fine!” said Lawrence, as though out of patience, and Col’s face broke into a huge smile, and he clasped his chest and slumped in relief at having made it across the tightrope.
“However–” Lawrence continued, and the boy winced. “If you’re going to travel with us, there is something you should know.”
He knew he was being a bit overdramatic, but having gotten this far Lawrence, too, wanted the boy to come along.
There was a chance Col had taken the night lookout duty in order to steal a copper coin from Ragusa’s boat, after all.
“Er… what… is it?”
Holo looked around, then untied the sash around her waist with a practiced hand.
Lawrence wondered if the relish with which she did so was his imagination.
Holo could easily grasp another’s thoughts.
She had already long since anticipated what Col’s reaction would be.
Though he didn’t yet understand why, Col saw that Holo seemed to be taking her clothes off, and he stiffened. Lawrence came over, and taking him by the shoulder, he turned him around.
Swissh, swissh came the sound of unwrapping silk. Col looked up at Lawrence, his face red with confusion.
Such a naive lad, thought Lawrence, but when he realized Holo must think much the same thing when looking at Lawrence himself, his thoughts were complicated.
“–nchoo!”
The sneeze was Holo’s.
And as for the outcome of the bet–
Holo was the winner.
How can Col’s reaction be described?
He cried out, to be sure.
And it was a grand cry indeed.
But it was clear that it was not a fearful cry.
His face was near a smile and near tears, as well.
When Holo licked Col’s face with her great tongue, he fell clear on his backside, and Lawrence finally found the words to describe Col’s reaction.
It was like a boy meeting his hero.
That was exactly it.
“You seem dissatisfied.”
When Holo had first shown her wolf form to Lawrence, he’d mistakenly shied away.
So he could hardly complain when she grumbled this at him and nudged his head with her nose.
Once Col had regained his composure, he’d made a hesitant request, which they were now fulfilling.
“That tickles. Are you quite finished?” Holo swished her tail, and out from behind it appeared Col.
Who would have thought that his first reaction upon seeing Holo’s form would be to ask if he could touch her tail?
The request had surprised Holo, too, and she had been so delighted that her tail had wagged enough to make it hard for Col to touch.
“I suppose this was fated somehow,” said Lawrence, folding up Holo’s clothes and packing them away.
“Ah-er, so you’ll take me with you, then…?” Col realized that in all the fuss of seeing Holo’s true nature, he had completely forgotten his original request, and he quickly returned to himself.
“We’d be in trouble if the Church found out about us. We can’t very well let someone who knows go free,” said Lawrence with mischief in his eyes, patting Col’s head. “But stealing copper coins from Ragusa’s boat was going a bit too far.”
The amount wasn’t much, but theft was still theft.
When the chests arrived in Kerube, it would be Ragusa who would take the blame.
“Uh, the – copper coins?” Col’s reaction was a bit strange. “I didn’t actually steal those.”
“Oh?” asked Lawrence. Holo, too, seemed interested
and lay on her belly next to the other two, listening.
“Actually I figured out the reason why the copper coin chests don’t add up.”
“Wha–?” Lawrence found himself exclaiming, leaning forward, and with more than a little frustration. “… And then what happened?”
“Er, yes, well, I planned to steal some at first. Once I understood the reason the amounts didn’t add up, it seemed like it would be easy.”
Lawrence remembered Col the previous night, lining up coins under the moonlight.
Had he figured everything out by then?
“That’s why I volunteered for the night watch. I thought even if I told you I wanted to go with you, you might refuse, and… but Mr. Ragusa had been really nice to me, and I couldn’t just steal from him, so… I told him everything. That I wanted to go with you and Holo and also that I wanted to trade the information about the copper coins for my boat fare.”
Ragusa’s conflicted face came to Lawrence’s mind.
“So where did you get those coins?”
“I got them from Mr. Ragusa. But not out of the chests – he gave them to me out of his own coin purse. For luck, he said. And also–”
“And also so that when you caught up to us, you could pretend you’d stolen them and couldn’t go back,” said Holo, and Col smiled apologetically.
“That’s right.”
Ragusa really had taken a liking to the boy.
And yet he’d spoken out for him, despite his own feelings.
Lawrence almost wanted to tell Col to give up on the path of learning and go become Ragusa’s apprentice instead.
“So that is that. Shall we be off, then? People are coming,” said Holo, raising her head and looking far off into the distance.
It would be bothersome if they were spotted by travelers.
Lawrence and Col hastily got to their feet and resumed their preparations to leave, but just as Col was climbing upon Holo’s back (at her urging), Lawrence said, “I have one thing to ask you.”
Col stopped and looked back at Lawrence; Holo, too, regarded him with her amber eyes. “What is it?” the boy asked.
Lawrence’s face was extremely serious as he spoke. “Just before you and I walked together yesterday, this wolf whispered something to you, didn’t she? What did she say?”
He’d been evaded once before, but Lawrence now asked again.
Col looked as though if he said anything, there would be no more talk of traveling. “Er…”
He looked at Holo uncertainly, as though she’d told him not to say anything.
“If you say, there’s no telling what these fangs may do,” said Holo, baring those same fangs, but her voice made it clear she was smiling.
Col’s wide, intelligent eyes moved, and Lawrence could tell he was trying to divine the truth of Holo’s threat.
He soon seemed to arrive at the answer.
He smiled, nodded. “I’m sorry. I can’t say,” he replied, fully on Holo’s side now.
“Heh-heh-heh. Come now. Hurry and get on.”
Col bowed to Lawrence with an apologetic smile, then climbed on Holo’s back.
Lawrence could only scratch his head with a resigned sigh.
“What is the matter?” Holo’s stern wolf face was still capable of expressing subtle emotion. She had a malicious smile as she spoke through her sharp fangs.
“Not a thing.” Lawrence shrugged, then climbed on.
He had more or less expected that this was how things would be when Col joined them.
But if he was asked whether that was a bad thing, he could only shrug.
“Oh, one more thing,” said Lawrence as he sat astride Holo, behind the nervous Col. “What was the reason the chests didn’t add up?”
“Oh, that’s–”
Just as Col was about to answer, Holo silently got to her feet. “That’s something you should figure out for yourself,” she said shortly.
“… What, you’ve understood it, too?” Lawrence asked in disbelief, at which Holo raised her chin slightly to regard him as her ears flicked.
“And why not? But one thing is certain,” she said, beginning to walk slowly but gradually speeding up as she became used to the sensations of this form.
Soon she was moving quickly enough that the wind was bitingly cold unless her passengers crouched down.
“You’ll take more enjoyment from puzzling over the coins than from talking to me, will you not?” came her resentful sarcasm.
Immediately thereafter she increased her speed dramatically – which was surely done on purpose.
Lawrence grumbled as he tightened his grip on her fur and crouched lower.
Col sat in front of him, so when they crouched, the boy was half underneath him.
Which meant that when Col giggled, Lawrence knew.
The scenery began to blur.
The wind was like ice.
But there in the bitterly cold wind, Lawrence smiled faintly.
His heart was warm.
A journey of three unlikely companions.
Lawrence knew of a single word to describe the situation.
Yet he didn’t let it cross his lips.
He wouldn’t do that.
But when it came time to write of his travels with Holo, perhaps he would lightly write it there in the margins of the thick volume.
Like this:
And so, the trio’s journey began.
Yes – yes, indeed.
It was very much like a rehearsal.
But no.
He wouldn’t write it.
Not in the actual book.
Carefully, so Holo wouldn’t notice, Lawrence smiled.
The journey had begun, full of hope – the journey to end the journey.
Afterword
It has been a while. I’m Isuna Hasekura, and this is the sixth volume of Spice and Wolf.
Time does fly! Just one month after I write this afterword will be the third Dengeki Novel Prize awards ceremony that I personally have attended.
Of course, that means deadlines come quickly, too. It’s certainly not my fault-it’s the flow of time that’s to blame. Stupid time!
Incidentally, I recently had the following conversation with a fellow author.
“Hasekura, how’re your stocks doing?”
“Oh, pretty good. Sometimes I make even [AMOUNT REDACTED] yen a day.”
“That much?”
“That much. When I make [AMOUNT REDACTED] in a day, though, it kinda makes me not want to do work.”
“Really? So when you take a loss, it makes you feel like you have to work harder, right?”
“No, actually. When I lose money, I feel awful, and work’s the last thing on my mind.”
“I see. So you work when the market’s closed, then?”
The stock market closes on weekends and holidays.
I answered, “Are you crazy? Work on a weekend?”
So that’s how I’ve managed to plow through the sixth volume of Spice and Wolf. This volume had fewer economic elements, I think, so my plan is to really cram them into the next one. The manga adaptation is starting, and I think right about the time this afterword along with the rest of volume six makes it to bookstores, the anime broadcast will be imminent. I’ll try to work really hard so I don’t lose out to all that stuff!
Also, in reality I’m working about six days a week.
Let’s meet again in the next volume.
– Isuna Hasekura
The Boy and the Girl and the White Flowers
Klass sat upon a flat rock by the road, just past a little hill.
Without anything to obstruct the view, he could see quite a ways in every direction, despite the hill not being particularly large.
Things looked the same in every direction, and although he had heard that the road continued all the way to the sea, he couldn’t see so much as a river.
Klass, just ten years and a bit more in the world, could not begin to conceive of what exactly the “sea”
was.
But from what he had heard, it was not something that one could easily overlook while walking down the road, so it had to be a ways off still. He set the fat stick he was using as a walking staff down beside him and picked up a leather water skin. He wetted his lips with just a bit of the bitter, leather-flavored water. The breeze ruffled his brown hair, and he looked casually back over his shoulder.
The house that had kicked them out was long since out of sight. Klass felt more vindicated than lonely at the fact.
He didn’t know exactly why he felt that way, but in any case, the goal had entered his field of vision.
He wondered if she’d stopped because of the white flowers that were in bloom there, and indeed it was so.
Winter was over; its dry, freezing winds were at an end, and in the spring sunshine the scent of soft grass filled the air. Squatting down, gazing tirelessly, almost hungrily, at the nameless flowers, she looked not unlike a sheep.
Her head was completely covered by a hood, and the hem of her white robe nearly touched the ground.
He was close enough to see the places where the robe was slightly dirty, but from a bit farther off, she would definitely resemble a sheep.
Her name was Aryes.
She said she didn’t know how old she was, but to Klass’s frustration, she was just a bit taller than him.
Thus he’d decided that she was two years older than he was.
“Aryes!” Klass called her name, and Aryes finally looked up. “You promised we’d make it over four hills by midday!”
Although he still didn’t know what Aryes was thinking generally, Klass had grasped a few key truths.
One was that she would never do something just because he asked her to, but if he got her to make a promise, she would always keep it.
Klass wondered how many times he’d thought about leaving her behind after she’d stopped midwalk before he realized that fact.
Aryes sluggishly stood and dragged herself up the hill, looking back several times at the flowers as she went. Klass sighed at her and spoke.
“Are they that rare?”
He was still sitting on the flat rock and so looked up at her.
With her hood over her head, her face was not visible unless one was very close or looking up at her from below.
So it was that Klass had traveled with her for some time before realizing that while her expression changed little, the face beneath the hood was very lovely.
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