“It almost doesn’t feel real.”
Her whisper was almost drowned out by the crash of the waves outside.
“It doesn’t?”
When he responded with a question, her pointed animal ears twitched, brushing lightly over the tip of his nose.
She commented on the driftwood that looked like a deer’s antlers and the inn at the edge of the world.
They truly were near the world’s boundary in the middle of an adventure. This was not a place that could be reached with only the commitment for a leisurely stroll.
Myuri inhaled deeply in his arms until her body puffed out a little.
“I’m happy.”
Perhaps the adventure she had always dreamed of felt just like this.
She exhaled, and her body shrunk and grew softer. A helpless, fragile girl who seemed like she might break if he squeezed hard enough.
He could tell that she fell asleep right away.
He usually found himself frustrated with how easily she fell asleep, but earlier that day she had thrown up everything, then filled her stomach with a strange-looking yet delicious fish.
She was so very much a child still. He patted her head, smiled slightly, then relaxed, too.
Sleep came for him quickly and wrapped his consciousness in bolts of silk.
He had a tough time accepting the story of the Black-Mother at face value. Though it was a problem that would require much investigating and thinking, he was only supposed to fulfill his given role.
His role as a servant to Hyland and a good guardian to Myuri as her elder brother.
The waves tirelessly lapped up against the shore. And the inside of the blanket was very warm.
The next day before they departed, Yosef gave them a fragment of flat wood with a letter inscribed on it.
“You are honored guests from Sir Stefan in Atiph, after all; there are lots of rowdy folks out there. When your ship is inspected, please show them this piece of wood.”
An insignia was burned onto it, likely written in the local language. It must have been some sort of passport.
“Show that letter to the people of the church in the port town of Caeson on the main island. They should welcome you with hospitality.”
“There is a church there?”
Col had heard that the northern islands were rather far from the Church’s sphere of influence, so that was unexpected. He thought that only monasteries for worshipping the Black-Mother had been independently established.
“We might call it a church, but it’s more of a place to stay, paid for and managed by the big companies that want to do trade in the northlands. Because we have to work together in foreign countries, of course.”
It was very mercantile logic to work together where there was profit to be gained even between otherwise fierce competitors. In this harbor, where each company split off into their own trading houses, Col and Myuri were still in familiar territory. From here on out, they would be stepping foot into an unexplored world.
“They may tell you more about the Black-Mother.”
“Thank you.”
“Then, you must go to the monastery on the main island. If the brother there accepts you, there will be nothing you won’t be able to do.”
The building of the monastery may have also originally been meant to influence the people to stand up to the pope’s army that could try to cross the sea.
And its monk, who sat at the center of the Black-Mother faith, would be the key to determining whether this faith was genuine. Col had to meet him.
“Safe travels.”
Yosef smiled while bidding them farewell, standing in the doorway of the trading house. His canine companion sat obediently at his feet. Perhaps it was because Myuri was not nearby, but the dog seemed a bit friendlier.
Col bowed and headed to the port, and the morning sun stung his eyes.
The moment they had gotten off the ship yesterday, they were greeted with a fierce feeling of desolation, but seeing the small island under a clear, pale-blue sky made it seem less oppressive.
There was greenery visible against the snow on the rocky, bare hills, and goats dotted the scenery, wandering about grazing on grass. Even on the beach, which looked like the end of the world yesterday, there were seabirds resting on driftwood, along with islanders busily gathering seaweed that would be used for fertilizer—it was a lively place.
Among the islanders was one nosy traveler child, trying her best to peek at the seaweed. It was none other than Myuri.
“Myuri, we’re going!” he called out to her.
She immediately looked at him but reluctantly gazed down at her feet again before giving up, hauling her luggage on her back. He had noticed that she had gotten up surprisingly early, but he now knew that after wolfing down her breakfast, she had come to the beach to search for amber.
“Did you find any?” he asked with a dry smile, but she glumly shook her head. “It will not be easy.”
Though it was cheaper in value compared to other precious stones such as gold or silver, amber was more popular as jewelry.
If it were that easy to find some on a beach, they would have no problems.
Myuri sighed and exhaled breathily from her nose like a cow, blowing out white vapor, and then opened her gloved hand. There were small brown bits that looked like earwax.
“When I went to go look, they found some right away for me! Even though I couldn’t find any after looking so hard!”
There were children about the same age as Myuri among those gathering seaweed. They were probably showing off their kindness as locals to the outsider who had come from the distant south. Of course, the kind of amber that she had in her hands was much too small to have any value.
“Of course. There have been many times when others easily found truths in the scripture that I could not, even though I read it so much.”
Then Myuri, who was wearing so many layers that the outline of her body had grown square, shrugged her shoulders.
“That’s especially true because you only see half of half of the world.”
He sighed, thinking about how he had spoken out of consideration for her only to be met with such a response, but then he noticed Myuri looking up at him happily.
“But don’t worry! Instead, I’ve found a lot of good things about you that no one else has noticed yet!”
He truly felt exasperation when she said that.
He could not bring himself to let that stand, so he replied, though it made him a bit embarrassed.
“Let me just say this now, but when I worked in the bathhouse, I had to turn down invitations from many women, you know.”
There were a great many beautiful dancers and musicians at the bathhouses in the hot spring village of Nyohhira. Of course, they were not children like Myuri but wonderful women who could navigate the world by their own wit.
But instead of becoming angry with him, Myuri grinned, unaffected.
“You didn’t turn them down, you just ran away.”
“Urgh—”
Much like how Col had watched over Myuri ever since she was born, Myuri had also been watching him ever since she came into this world. He did not hide how he acted before women that decorated themselves like birds, with chiseled chests and necks.
He was silent as Myuri had nailed him where it hurt. She grinned again.
“Well, Mother says a good woman can love everything, including the pitiful parts. So no need to worry, okay?”
“…”
There were no words. Then, he looked down at her and smiled back.
He did not know if he should point out the insolence of calling a man who was practically her older brother and twice her age “pitiful” with a smile, or if he should describe the arrogance of believing that she was a good woman even though she could not tell if he was a grown man or not.
But he shook his head, changing his mind. Myuri was a smart girl. She would naturally learn her place in the world as she got older. His job as h
er brother was to trust that she would manage that. Though some of her bites stung quite a bit for a pup, he decided to be the adult and weather through them.
“Of course. I look forward to the day you won’t give me any worry.”
He smiled, while Myuri looked as though the prey she held firmly in her teeth had just slipped away.
“Sheesh, Brother, I’m being serious!”
“I am, too. Besides, my head is filled with worry about our journey to the next island. You had three servings of fish soup for breakfast this morning. Will you really be okay? You were gobbling up all those fine-looking sardines, head to tail.”
“Urgh…”
This time, it was Myuri’s turn to be speechless. As though she was vividly recalling her terrible seasickness yesterday after seeing the ship, her face stiffened.
“I-I’ll be fine!”
Of course, there was no proof of that. But positivity was one of her good points. At the very least, Col would trust in that.
“Be sure to lie on your back and look at the sky.”
“…If I do that, then I won’t be sick?”
Her cheekiness had completely disappeared. She was staring at him, uncertain.
“Of course. God is up there, you know.”
Then she suddenly frowned and spoke with a pout.
“But the one I believe in is you, Brother.”
She was pressuring him with her stare, but it made him smile instead.
“Then, I would appreciate it if you listened to me a little bit more.”
Then he patted the hood that covered her head.
“No, that’s not it!”
She started to protest, but he smiled and dismissed it.
The sky was blue, and the breeze was calm.
Even if a witch really was waiting for them beyond the sea, he had a feeling that it would all somehow work out.
Good weather meant good visibility.
Yosef saw them off as the ship circled the island and began heading north. They were finally entering the northern islands proper. They were continually surprised as little islets appeared one after another.
“It’s just full of islands. I would never be able to tell them apart.”
Myuri, unable to stay lying down the entire time, would sometimes suddenly get up after tossing and turning. At the moment, she rested her face on the ship’s railing and gazed out across the water.
“I can’t find trees anywhere. It looks so cold. They should just bring some from Nyohhira.”
Every island was rocky, with only a bit of grass growing on each. There, they saw the daily lives of wandering goats and their attendant shepherds, craftsmen repairing rope on the beach, or people drying fish in front of their houses.
Serene was a nice word for it, but Col easily imagined how every day must have been a struggle.
If they could not go fishing for several days after a storm, then their food supply would suddenly dwindle. If their house was damaged, no trees grew around these parts, so supplies would have to be ordered for any repairs to be done. Even the boats, which supported their entire livelihood, were fashioned out of wood; the foundations of their lives were terribly fragile.
The ship they were riding on had unloaded most of its cargo at the previous port, but the villagers along the shore would stop moving once the commercial vessel came into view, their eyes blank with desire. An image appeared in Col’s mind of a ragged little girl gazing up at a noble on horseback, wearing jewels that she would never touch. If the villagers had just one crate of cargo that was packed onto the ship, then their lives would improve greatly.
“I’m sure the faith here is real.”
“…?”
He murmured absently, and Myuri looked at him with a questioning expression on her face.
At the end of the day, people had no choice but to pray if, after gathering everything they could, it was still not enough.
It was a real crutch in order to persevere against the blustering wind.
“I pray that those gaps are filled with the right thing, however.”
The people born in this region kept the figure of the Black-Mother on them every time they got on a ship not simply as a precaution. It was because they desperately wished for something to support them.
And it was a single monk who created the figures of the Black-Mother that formed the bedrock of this region’s faith. If that monk was spreading the figures in accordance with the true faith, then Col could expect that the followers were genuine as well. That was his hope now.
The ship pressed forward. On the way, the weather occasionally worsened—it even snowed once—but the wind was never terrible, and nothing hindered their trip.
On one island, they stayed the night at the only man-made structure, which seemed as though it crouched beneath a sheer cliff above. Before the sun rose the next day, they were already departing. It was terribly cold but there was no wind, and as he huddled together with Myuri, whose eyes suggested she was still half-asleep, he watched over her while they meandered along the forest on the small island. But things changed just as the sun rose.
They suddenly exited into an open area.
Col thought the sudden change in scenery had given him a dizzy spell, but the truth was that the ship suddenly began to rock. Unlike the narrow passages between islands they had traversed up until that point, the waves were taller now since there was room for the wind to blow freely. The sail billowed painfully in the wind, and the mast creaked with the sound of gnashing teeth. Their sea journey had quickly become an adventure.
“Are you all right?”
A wave crashed against the ship, and the wind fanned the water across the deck.
Col hurriedly tried to fetch his oiled, leather cloak, but Myuri had awoken and was gripping the side of the ship with both hands, staring out at the sea, enraptured.
“Wow…There’s a lake…in the sea…”
When she said that, he thought he saw a clear line drawn in the sea. There the color grew darker. It was likely because the seafloor suddenly dropped off at the bottom, but at a second glance, he could see that the boundary was strung out along the islands, circling them. There was most definitely a lake in the middle of the sea.
Another gust of wind came. It blew back Myuri’s hood, whipping her long hair about. However, the silver-haired girl paid no mind to it, enthralled by the severity of the north.
The wind started to feel like ice at some point, leaving no difference between the cold and pain. In just a few moments, they became aware that the season they had felt before was more like spring. Then, when he considered that this was how it usually was only after the most difficult part of winter, he was hit by something similar to fear.
But disregarding that, it seemed that the lake in the sea was a kind of crossing for aquatic journeys because they soon began to see other ships. Ice clung to Col’s eyelashes, and no matter how many times he rubbed his eyes before looking out across the water, he could always see the imposing figures of massive ships built for long ocean journeys with three or even four decks, as well as commercial ships for transport operated by only one or two crew similar to the one they were riding on.
Everywhere people were carrying out their lives as normal.
Myuri, who was typically noisy, quietly watched the other vessels crossing the sea. As she breathed puffs of white, her hands grew red, gripping the railing against the buffeting wind, ice, and waves. It seemed she had even forgotten about her ears and tail, which usually popped out whenever she got excited.
“…Is that…a ship?”
It seemed she did not even have the time to be seasick, murmuring like she was finally coming back to reality.
“But…it’s pitch-black…and so…huge!”
He stood next to her as she doubted the way ahead of them. Widening his stance, he planted his feet in anticipation of the rocking and rolling of the ship as he looked forward.
“That…doesn’t seem like a ship. More like a moun
tain. The black parts are a forest.”
“Mountain?”
It sounded like she was asking why there would be mountains in the sea, but on closer examination, anyone could tell almost instantly that it was their destination. Once they could clearly see the ridgeline of the mountains beyond their hazy vision, the number of ships around them grew. This must have been the main island, the center of the northern islands.
Col brushed off from his clothes icy drops, which no longer melted when he touched them. He covered Myuri’s head with her hood again, then stuck the woolen scarf around her neck.
She seemed rather bothered by it, but she did not make the greatest effort to resist as she watched the route ahead of them.
Fair winds allowed the ship to head straight for the island at a great speed.
What finally came into view was the first decent, stylish-looking port town they’d seen since leaving Atiph, along with a mountain that sat like a king in his throne, lording over the lake behind it.
There was no other mountain that could be called so majestic.
As Col stood, awestruck, Myuri suddenly giggled.
“Heh-heh, look, Brother. That mountain looks like a king pulling up his pants.”
“What?”
When she mentioned it, he saw that the foliage was different around the center of the mountain and the foothills were darker than the rest. It certainly looked like someone pulling up their pants to their stomach. Then, he noticed the snow on the treeless peak resembled a crown, and everything suddenly looked silly. At the same time, his eyes were filled with mirth as he admiringly glanced out of the corner of his eye at Myuri, who was staring innocently at the scenery.
The world she saw was always colored with a fun and exciting light.
“Hmm? What’s wrong, Brother?”
She noticed his gaze, her eyes wide.
“It’s nothing. You are always just like yourself.”
“Huh?”
She looked up at him blankly, like a cat that had been tricked. He merely patted her on the head through her hood, dodging the question.
“Oh God, please watch over us on our journey.”
The ship rocked, and water from the waves sprayed them as they made their way to the mountain king.
Wolf & Parchment, Volume 2 Page 8