It was just like the letter my master had received. When she had opened her own copy of that letter, she had looked like nothing so much as a moth who had strayed too close to an open flame.
“Ha-ha. I thought the same thing! It seemed too embarrassing for them to actually do.”
“Very much so. I’m all for being decisive, but to call us here, too…”
“And there’s two more guests after this?”
As my master asked, Eve made a happy-sounding sigh. “Yes. He’s a complete fool of a man.”
“A fool of a man, yes, that expression fits perfectly.”
As Diana nodded, my master’s words turned timidly toward her. “Ah, incidentally, as their senior in life matters, what conversations have you had with them?”
I lifted my head without thinking, for I thought it a question very unlike my master to ask.
Even so, and in spite of my master’s rather timid tone, her face betrayed great interest. In spite of her never setting one foot into the women’s banter back in town, my master was indeed just at the right age for it.
“You want to hear?” A dubious smile came over Diana.
“We have plenty of time.” As Eve replied with a leer, she and my master both leaned their light figures forward. “This is a tale of love known to precious few in my town…”
As Diana began her tale with those words, as a knight, the atmosphere within the carriage suddenly became distinctly uncomfortable.
There was time. There was also wine. Oh, and plenty of snacks for those noisy girls, too.
They laughed, they were aghast, they sometimes smiled, sometimes grew angry, or perhaps simply interested, as they immersed themselves in the tale.
Though none of them were children, and Eve and Diana did not look like the sorts to engage in such frivolous conversation, they all behaved very much like adolescent maidens. My master positively never interrupted, taking sips of wine, which she had taken a fondness to of late, as she participated in the conversation to a rather shocking extent. Regretfully, I had no desire to venture my opinion of who was behaving most like a silly maiden here.
Like a dog who continued to gnaw on a bone he had been given for five or even ten days, they continued the conversation nonstop as they left the town, with things finally calming down when they stopped for a while to take breakfast.
Eve, whose throat rang out with such laughter that it made her shoulders quiver like that of a wild beast, said she had exhausted herself laughing and left the carriage, moving to the wagon with the luggage. Since the rays of the sun were warm and there was no wind at all, she probably just wanted a nap.
Or maybe she had pulled a stomach muscle from bragging so hard.
It was apparent she held more than a few feelings for that stupid man.
Perhaps she used the words fool of a man to reflect upon the matter – to chew over that particular bone in her own way.
For her part, my left-behind master was sitting on her seat, audibly fanning her own face. Perhaps one could get drunk on conversation as much as on wine. The story Diana told was of how, in spite of clearly looking like a couple to everyone else, their lack of honesty with themselves about it resulted in a third party challenging him to what was essentially a duel.
When the pair had met us, we came under the impression they had been settled together for some time, but apparently that wolf had been much more of a fool than I had expected. Otherwise, would she have played the innocent sheep gripped by hesitation while mere wolves attacked?
At any rate, the man who had challenged him to a duel ran all about the town in his best efforts to win, with the resulting circus kicking up a completely unnecessary uproar.
In the end, they were able to trust each other to cooperate for victory in the duel or something like that. Though I felt sorry for the man who lost, I could only think of him that one reaps what one sows. Perhaps the saving grace was that there were still fools who could not let a damsel in distress go without rescue. He seemed to be living happily now that he had mended his broken heart.
In spite of their ages – and this went for the prior discussion too – the carriages’s passengers displayed intense interest, or perhaps amusement, in the parts that seemed sweeter even than the dreams of maidens.
As I preferred savory things, just listening to these tales made my ears itch, but so long as my master was enjoying herself, I was content.
So musing, I let myself casually lay down on the floor.
My master, drunk on wine and conversation, had been audibly fanning over her breast for a while.
The wooden shutter of the carriage was open, letting a refreshing breeze in through it.
It was a quiet time, with the only sound being the rattling sound of the carriage wheels.
“Goodness, it’s really quite something.”
“Oh?” my master asked back, hastily pulling her hand away from her collar. She must have mistaken the words as criticism of indecent behavior.
“Those two, I mean.”
“Ahh…” As Diana smiled, my master returned her expression in apparent relief, adding, “That’s true.”
“But I do find myself envious…”
“Oh, really?” The wine must have been hitting my master, for her lips had been loosened considerably.
Diana, viewing this as a good opportunity, continued speaking. “I’d think you’d be able to find plenty of good matches. I’m sure you have more than a few matchmakers trying to meddle?”
After pondering this for a bit, she made a strained smile.
“And yet–?” Diana was not asking in earnest. She posed the question while busily pouring wine into her own cup out of the casket Eve had left behind.
But perhaps that gave the question just the right seasoning.
My master leaned back into her seat, raising her chin and narrowing her eyes as if a little hot, and took her time thinking about it. “None of them seemed quite right.”
Certainly, my master was currently like a loosened cord, but even so, that answer struck me as rather surprising. I had been sure she was going to brush off the whole subject.
“May I… speak to you about him, then?”
At that, my master drew her chin back a bit and lowered her gaze. My eyes met with hers as the corners of my master’s lips made something like a faint smile. “It’s not Mr. Lawrence, you know.”
Then she leaned back in her seat once more. Even though she was on very good terms with the townspeople, my master was still someone from the outside. Moreover, she was always at the church – always a step removed from society. Drinking wine and letting her guard down simply did not happen. Usually she remained guarded, keeping her distance.
After all, I was the only one who voiced gentle complaints and told her when she was being silly; when happy, fun things happened to her, I was the first one she told.
Thus my confidence was not without basis.
“Then, it really is him?”
Diana struck right at the heart of the matter.
But my master gazed absentmindedly at the ceiling, as if not hearing her words whatsoever. It was not that I lacked confidence, but even so her lack of a reply was making me nervous.
It was right when I lifted up my head, wondering if my master might have fallen asleep.
“It’s not that I wish Enek were human.”
My body stiffened in shock.
I did not know how I should have taken those words.
“Did I mention that I was a shepherd?”
“I heard as much during our introductions.”
“Ah, right… Er… So you see, Enek has been with me the whole time… And it’s thanks to him that we were able to overcome so much… But still, I don’t wish him to be a human.”
A shepherd was said to be an alien entity to a townsperson, the offspring of man and beast. Was it all right, then, to say something like this so lightly in front of someone she did not know well?
I was concerned for my mas
ter, but as she leaned back with her chin held high, she lazily changed the direction of her face.
“Miss Diana… You’re the same as Miss Holo, aren’t you?”
I was the one taken by surprise.
That’s absurd, I thought, shocked, but the completely unruffled Diana merely stroked the edge of her wine-filled jar. “I am not a wolf, though.” She continued with a sigh. “It seems I’ve let my secret out.” My master smiled with a bit of pride as Diana added, “Or perhaps it’s from your long association with the good knight there?”
It was a manner of speech rich with implication. They seemed to have both delivered verbal jabs to the other, but as my master laughed, she composed her face and gently closed her eyes.
“So you might have supposed that my thinking to bringing Enek with me was in that sense.”
“In that sense,” Diana spoke curtly without a single hint of question.
My master, her eyes still closed, made a somewhat embarrassed-looking smile.
“Yes, in that sense.”
“And? Did you imagine that if you asked the great wisewolf, she just might give you the answer?”
I heard all too clearly something very difficult to listen to. Indeed, it was myself whose composure was disturbed, but my master, less perturbed than when listening to confessions by the townspeople, calmly replied, “I will do no such thing.” Then, she made a somewhat malicious-looking smile, a true rarity for her. “I think, if I did ask, it would put a genuinely conflicted look on her face.”
I remembered back to just after the gold-smuggling uproar.
From my perspective, this seemed like childishness quite inappropriate for both their ages.
“Why, then?” Diana asked.
This time, my master replied with only the slightest hesitation. “I wanted to see them again.”
“Just to see them?”
As Diana bounced the words back, my master slowly opened her eyelids, sitting up and looking me over.
I knew this as her cue for “come,” so I got up and put my forepaws on top of her lap.
“Just to meet them.” My master took my paws in her hands, teasingly moving them up and down.
Diana stared squarely at her, but my master did not return the gaze.
Grasping my head, my master pulled a lip aside with a finger and said “grrr” to me as she grinned.
“People don’t come to church because they expect God to solve all their problems.” With no apparent concern, she said something that I doubt would have come from even my fang-filled mouth. “But people come to church nonetheless.”
My master removed her hand from my head and patted on her lap. When she said, “Come on up,” I could not refuse.
Though I was somewhat reserved about it, I hopped up onto my master’s lap and licked her face.
“I can’t really put it in words, though.”
“No, I understand very well.” Diana reached out with her hand and stroked the back of my neck.
It was nice, I thought, to have a change of pace from my master’s usual way of stroking.
“It’s been several decades since I left the town I was in. But yes… I think of it like a pilgrimage. It’s surely the same for Lady Eve, who’s far more wolfish than even the wisewolf herself.”
To call that a lady meant she must really have been quite something.
“To think, having to go together to a church like this.” Diana laughed. I wondered who she was laughing at? The pair of fools we had been discussing? Or my master and I? Or perhaps, at her past self? “This really is quite fun.”
Apparently, all of them.
Diana proposed drinking more wine, but my master objected as she looked out the window.
There was a grassland there that seemed infinite, continuing for God only knew how far.
The long winter was over. Grass was sprouting; trees were budding. It was a very fine season.
However, in the end, there were such scenes everywhere we went; they seemed to extend throughout the whole of the world. No doubt these were thoughts shared by many of those who left town walls behind on long journeys.
Even so, it made meeting a couple like that one possible someday.
With that, my master had been able to take the decisive first step.
Like a crab, she suddenly realized that it really was possible to move forward in the world.
My master probably treasured me more than anyone else in the world.
But I was a dog, and my master was a human. No matter how favorably the townspeople regarded my master, she was a stranger, someone who had arrived from the outside. How we had lived ever since was all an extension of that distinction.
Even so, that stupid couple was an exception to all of it. They seemed so childish, and yet, like children, they paid no heed to the ways of the world.
What seemed to slowly tighten around my body was likely what they call common sense. But if push came to shove, those two did not mind breaking all the rules.
Their existence together was the very incarnation of that mad notion.
I drew in a deep breath as my master embraced me.
I could not embrace her body in return.
All I could do was lick her cheek.
“Those two, having a marriage ceremony…” Diana mumbled as she drank her wine. “It makes me want to laugh.”
My master laughed again, too, and I barked for good measure.
It was several days later that we arrived at a small village and the other two women joined us in the carriage.
One was a strict-looking woman priest whose personality ran in yet another direction from Eve’s; the other was a traveling silversmith.
The temperature in the carriage had already been plenty.
Now that there were five of them, each with their own relationship to that couple, it seemed like the talk was never going to end.
In the midst of it, I would sometimes get down from the carriage and walk, riding on the luggage wagon’s roof at other times.
It was good to be alone once in a while.
But since I went back to sleep in my master’s arms every night, perhaps I was in no position to laugh at that man.
But just as meeting me and my master was miraculous, there was no mistake that their journey had brought various miracles to others just like us. Had that not been the case, I would not have been in that carriage, listening to the high-pitched exclamations and laughter within it.
It seemed of great import to the people concerned, but given Diana’s story, I could explain it thus.
They were searching for a rainbow.
But it was this place, right where they stood, that was the end of the rainbow.
As a dog, I believed this to be a rather profound notion.
I had some regret that I was unable to share the thought, but perhaps such a thing was simply unnecessary.
“Enek!” As the carriage stopped for a break, my master stepped down and called my name.
Perhaps, just as belongings made one hesitate in the face of a journey, the capacity to speak made one hesitate in the face of conversation.
Yet in spite of that, the things one needed to do were very few.
It was good for that stupid couple to realize that truth.
I sighed, paused, and barked a sharp woof.
Then, I ran to my beloved master’s side as fast as my legs could take me.
Conclusion
Lawrence’s head hurt.
Though at first he had said it as a mere what-if, he felt like he really did have a headache.
The cause was crystal clear.
It was the letters Holo had sent out.
They were addressed to Norah and Eve and others they had met on their journeys – all women.
The contents: We’re having a banquet, so come during the St. Alzeuri spring festival.
Furthermore, he had first learned of the letters when Holo handed them over, already written, saying, “I shall leave the males to you.”
<
br /> At the time, he might still have been able to catch up to the traveling merchant she had handed the letters to.
But had he done that, he would have had to face Holo’s imperious wrath.
From all his experiences with Holo until now, she always had a reason when she did something like this.
Furthermore, given her cleverness, it was highly likely she had armed herself with sound, logical arguments with which to display the righteousness of her cause. The point was, at times like these, she was often already beyond the point where she could still be swayed.
All Lawrence could do was to try and figure out if he had stepped on Holo’s tail at some point, had invited Holo’s displeasure without realizing it, or she simply had a bee in her bonnet.
Regardless of the outcome of such thoughts, all he could do was pray for the grace of God.
When one considered that if there were gods here in the mountains that would hear his prayer, there were only those with dignified, large, triangular wolf ears and splendidly furred tails – like Holo.
But when Wisewolf Holo herself had a bone to pick, she was implacable.
In the end, what Lawrence could do was very limited. The letter had to have been ghostwritten by a human, and since there were not many people in the area Holo trusted to write a letter for her, all he could do was speak with the one who had.
Retracing Holo’s steps from when he had received the letter from her, Lawrence walked along the snow-covered path, heading away from the building under construction.
He had planned to complete all of the roof construction by autumn of that year, thinking he would set up enough interior decoration to make heads spin during winter and begin receiving guests once the snows melted in spring, but everything had fallen behind schedule. There apparently had been a war in the plains to the south, causing many enthusiastic traveling craftsmen to head off for the front. Also, a large trading ship belonging to his lender for the construction funds had run aground, sustaining heavy damage, and heavy snow came earlier than most years, hindering his procurement of supplies.
The last three years had taught him that he could not expect everything to go smoothly, even here at the far edges of the world of trade.
Spice & Wolf Omnibus Page 305