“It’s okay. I’m here with you, Brother.”
“…Aren’t you worried about yourself?”
Myuri smiled, to which Col responded with a dry smile of his own before getting up. Even in Atiph, when he had fallen despondent in face of the vulgar and violent darkness, it was Myuri who had been the one to support him.
Most of the pirates were on the beach. There was a lonely village that looked like it might get blown away by the wind, and there were only a few run-down shacks. Boats perhaps used for fishing sat on the beach, exposed and on the verge of decay even now, with seaweed and shells clinging to them.
In the solemn atmosphere, roaming goats plodded along wearily, but their calm made them seem as though they had given up hope in all things.
When Col dropped into the water, it was so cold it felt as though he had been bit; he then helped Myuri down into the water, then pulled her up onto the beach.
Right after that, a piercing voice echoed around them.
“Please, forgiveness! Mercy!”
It was a shock, like suddenly seeing the red of blood in a colorless dream. Nyohhira was a hot spring village, so though there were a few disturbances caused by drunks, he never heard the desperate screams of someone truly afraid.
They were rare, even at the executions on the street corners that he had witnessed several times on his travels.
He could hear the voice from one of the sheds.
“Mercy! There must be—there must be a mistake!”
Had one of the pirates bellowed in anger, it would have been much better. That would at least signal a conversation between two people.
But no one there opened their mouths; only one middle-aged man continued to cry.
Myuri stood still in shock, even forgetting to blink.
Were she to speak, she might say that they should not have come here.
“Mercy…Lord Autumn…”
With a moan, the owner of the voice was pulled out from a shed. Pirates held him up on either side, as though he could not even walk on his own legs. It was too much—Col’s body began to move to stop it, but when he looked again, he saw a wooden brace along his right leg.
It was violent to be sure, but it did not inherently seem that way.
Yet, when Col saw the honest-looking man being pulled outside and falling face-first onto the ground, crying, his heart ached.
And the hand the man clung to belonged to the monk, Autumn.
“I exist to fulfill my duty.” He spoke shortly, and he directed his gaze into the shed.
Who came out next was a pretty young girl, even younger than Myuri.
“The number of resources is limited. You cannot fish with that leg anymore. Someone must leave this island.”
“Oooh…Sheila, Sheila!”
The man called the girl’s name. They seemed to be father and daughter. Though her face twisted at her father’s cries, she did not take his outstretched hand.
“Lord Autumn, Sheila is my only daughter, my only family! Mercy, mercy!”
Autumn did not even shake his head. One pirate urged the girl on, and she hesitantly walked forward, taking care not to look at her father on the ground.
“My leg will heal! I will be able to fish again! I can mine charcoal! I will even gather amber for you!”
His appeal was weaker than the embers left over in the furnace at dawn.
Productivity of the mines had worsened, and searching for amber involved wading waist-deep in water to scour the beach floor. In this cold, that was enough to knock out even the strongest.
It was clear there was not much he could do with such a severe leg injury.
But what were the pirates planning to do with the girl?
“So, please, please…don’t make Sheila a slave…!”
Col gulped, and his body tensed.
This was the darkness in half of half of the world.
This was the whole story of the slave trade. In resource-poor regions, there was a strict limit to the number of people who could work and the number of people who had to be provided for. And so, due to the father’s injury, he went from a provider to one who was provided for.
If there were only so many chairs, then one person would have to stand.
It would have to be someone weak, a young girl.
Col’s breathing had become shallow, hot. There was nothing he could do about the customs of the islands.
That being said, was this something he could forgive? Was it okay for someone who called himself a monk to command this?
Sheila followed the pirates and stepped into the sea as though she was being led into the jaws of death. Once she was sold as a slave, she would no longer be able to live and walk on this ground.
Col’s heart was beating so fast it pained him. He could not interrupt. He knew that. It would only make him an enemy of the pirates, and in a worst-case scenario, it would even cause trouble for the Kingdom of Winfiel. A dark shadow would fall across his great goal of protecting righteous faith for his own small sense of justice.
But he could not overlook this. He had to recall why he left Nyohhira for the outside world. Did he not resolve to point out injustices for what they were, so that the world would be a better place, even if he was up against a giant?
There were things that servants of God with true faith had to say.
He knew, however, that a sound argument would not make the situation any better. The fisherman’s leg would not heal, the islands would not grow any richer in resources, nor could he make the gold from selling the girl into slavery any less dirty. Before him was a situation in which praying showed its true powerlessness.
All that was left was faith. Autumn might be planning to preach to the fisherman about the nobility of endurance. Even Col froze at the rashness of such an action. He had just lost his daughter, and how would the very man who made that happen preach to him about it?
Or perhaps it was possible if the man believed in Autumn, and by extent, the Black-Mother.
Col had even forgotten to swallow in this tense atmosphere, and then Autumn spoke.
“Hate me.”
He said it again. “Hate me. I pray to repent for this sin. I pray so that the islands may continue to prosper. I pray to God for your health and the happiness of your daughter.”
Autumn fell to his knees and folded his hands in front of his chest. The man, who had lost both his tears and voice from astonishment, instantly changed his expression to that of rage.
“How dare you!”
There was an awful thud. The man used to be a fisherman, and though his leg was bad, the strength in his arms was in good shape. He grabbed the kneeling monk’s beard, punched his cheek, and when the beard slipped out of his hand, he grabbed his hair and punched him again.
Unlike the sound of hitting a tree or a rock, the terrible noises echoed in the dim, empty village.
The man straddled Autumn, beating him black-and-blue.
No one tried to stop it. The pirates stood around them, and the villagers watched from the doors of their sheds, frightened.
Then, after he had hit him multiple times, the man was out of breath, and he stopped, fist still raised.
“I…”
Autumn spoke as he lay on the sand.
“Let us pray for the girl and your happiness…It is my duty to burden myself with this sin and pray to God that it may be forgiven.”
There was a dull thud sound as the man punched the sand next to Autumn’s face.
“…Urgh…”
The man collapsed onto Autumn’s chest and began to cry, and the pirates finally pulled him off.
Autumn did not take anyone’s hand, standing up by himself. It was difficult to see due to his beard and hair, but when the wind blew, visible ribbons of blood streamed down his face. This was a creature who suffered sin. An old goat who consumed the sins that someone reaped, digested them, then ate them again.
It did say in the scripture that God would forgive the sins of sinners, but Col had not imagin
ed it to be like this. Autumn’s rationale was so logical that it seemed as though he was using what was written in the scripture arbitrarily.
But there was a spirit with an overwhelming sense of self-sacrifice. An undeniable torrent of faith.
Autumn watched as the man was returned to his shed, and then he spoke quietly.
“Let us go.”
The pirates obeyed, filing back toward the boat.
As this all happened before him, Col could not budge from his spot. The silent footsteps of the pirates walking on the beach was like a march of dead soldiers that are sometimes said to appear in the snowy mountains.
After the pirates passed them, Autumn was last in line, halting to stand before them. His eyes were not critical, nor did they ridicule or hold any excuses.
He looked at them with sad, forlorn eyes.
“I will do this until my sins have saved the islands.”
His lips were cut in several places and were bright red.
“These islands are balanced on a dangerous scale. There are times when one must wield a sword in order to keep the balance. The Holy Mother preserved these islands with a miracle. No matter what, I must protect these islands.”
There was no way a boy who only ever read books in his hot spring village should stand before this.
When Col turned to the side, he was simply glad he had not collapsed to his knees.
Autumn looked at the young man with a distant expression and continued to speak.
“I am lucky. God forgives many sins.”
Then he walked off. Though his steps were unsteady, he did not fall, nor did he take anyone’s hand.
Autumn harbored as much sin as he could carry on his back and did nothing but pray. The islanders revered him because, in place of the Holy Mother, he sacrificed himself to support the islands.
“Guests.”
As Col continued to stand in place, one pirate called out to them.
“We will be sending you to the port by a separate ship.”
They had no choice. He did not even have the strength to talk back.
He concentrated on nothing but pulling Myuri along, who had also lost all speech. They climbed aboard the small boat before they were shipped off to Caeson.
By the time they arrived, it was nighttime.
Luckily, there were no clouds and the moon was out. They walked along the pale-blue, glittering snow and arrived at the church.
The island was filled with poverty and guilt.
But this place, a base for merchants from the south, was filled with the warm glow of candlelight.
When Col awoke, he still felt like he was in the middle of a nightmare. He felt like he had just repeated the scene from the dim beach over and over instead of sleeping.
When he woke up, his head was heavy and in pain, similar the morning he awoke after being sick in bed for three days.
He could not forget the look in Autumn’s eyes then, and he wanted to scream.
Would he have sacrificed himself for his faith so readily? Had he pretended he knew everything about the world, just by reading books?
Autumn was still staring at him. Col closed his eyes, but he felt Autumn chasing him. Those eyes, deserted by everything in the world, frozen like the bottom of the sea, bored into a silly boy who hailed from a hot spring village.
Forgive me. I didn’t know. I was only looking at half of half of the world.
Forgive me, forgive me…
Those words and the sound of Autumn being punched rang in his ears.
The ground wavered beneath him, and he could hear another voice from far away. The moment he thought the world would end, he could hear it clearly.
“Brother? Are you okay?”
His heart beat so fast it was painful, and his face was damp with sweat.
“Brother?”
He felt his shoulders being shaken again, and he finally understood that Myuri had woken him up.
But was he really awake this time?
He breathed in through his nose to calm himself down, and he could smell fresh water. It was a familiar smell, one that let him know it was snowing outside. The room was unusually dark, likely because thick clouds were covering the sky.
Myuri, who had shaken his shoulders to wake him up, was sitting on the corner of the bed. She held a comb in her hand; she had been diligently brushing her hair.
“You look terrible, Brother.”
She showed him a troubled smile, then reached over to grab the waterskin from their luggage placed by the wall.
“Have some water.”
Col accepted the skin and drank from it, finding the water had chilled well. It was then he first realized that his throat was parched.
“You…”
“Hmm?”
He gave the skin back to her and asked.
“Did you get enough sleep?”
Myuri had taken the skin and was about to drink from it, but she stopped.
She smiled dryly, drank some water, then answered.
“You’re always worried about other people.”
She bent forward and placed the skin and her comb on top of their things, then hopped backward and sat on the bed with a thump.
“Auff—!”
Myuri’s silver tail collided with his face with great force.
He could smell her sweet scent, a hint of sulfur mixed in with it.
“Myuri, you are always, always—”
The continuation of his words was interrupted when he saw the expression on her face as she turned back to look at him over her shoulder.
It was a sad, mature smile.
“Hey, Brother?”
She faced forward again, stretching her legs and placing her heels on the floor.
“I think we should just go back to Nyohhira.”
She looked back at him again when she finished talking.
“You don’t look happy, Brother.”
She reached out to him and placed her hand gently on his forehead. Her small hands were cool.
“You were having nightmares all night long. You calmed down a little bit when I patted your head, though.”
Her slender fingers ran through his hair, and for a moment, he was almost satisfied knowing that, but she began to chuckle. It must have been a joke.
But in his faint memories of the night, he did feel like someone had run their fingers through his hair like she was doing now. Perhaps it was a memory from when he was sick in Atiph?
Myuri watched her hand as she slipped her fingers through his hair over and over.
As though satisfied after doing that for a while, she pulled away from the top of Col’s head and then poked his cheek.
“Let’s go back to the village.”
She had said the same thing during the commotion in Atiph. It was their escape from an ugly reality.
“I would be completely in agreement if you were the one returning.”
He forced his body up, but the moment he did so, a terrible lethargy as well as a headache assaulted him, but the cold helped to keep him collected.
“But I must fight for righteous faith.”
“Even when you look like that?” she said.
His words caught in his throat. He did not know what he looked like.
What made him uneasy was that he knew there were things inside of his heart that he had to hide.
“It’s the same thing as what happened in that other port town before. I don’t think you were meant for this.”
Myuri placed her hands on the side of the bed and mischievously pulled both legs up.
He thought she might stomp after reaching a certain height, but her body fell backward as though a string had been cut, and her legs fell, too.
Her weight pressed on his thighs through the blanket as she lay on the bed.
“You’re kind and honest.”
She then rolled over to lie on her stomach.
“When you see the old beardy guy, you immediately start thinking that’s the right wa
y. And then you put so much pressure on yourself. It was the same when you were with that blondie in Atiph, too.”
It was as though she had peeked in on his nightmare from the outside.
“I think you do best working hard in places with bubbling hot springs, reading books, sometimes talking about complicated things with guests, and sticking your nose in my business.”
The last part of that sentence sounded a bit like a joke.
“If Mother would let me leave the village by myself, what I would do is explore a little bit, then come home. Lively towns, calm fields, severe climates, desolate lands, or endless pastures…I’d look around at the scenery and the people who live there; think, Wow, there sure is a lot in this world. Well, that was fun; and come home.”
Col could easily imagine her doing that. He could see her alone, carrying a beaten rucksack on her back, sometimes turning into a wolf as she roamed around the world.
“But you’re different, Brother.”
The only part of her that smiled was her mouth. Perhaps she was growing irritated.
“Wherever we go, you think it’s your house, you consider everyone you meet there your best friend, then somehow end up believing that you have to accept everything you find there, and then you can’t move on to the next town. You always worry so, so much over it. After leaving Nyohhira, watching you while we’re outside the village made me realize why Mother didn’t mind me leaving home, especially with what happened yesterday.”
Myuri got up on all fours and drew closer to him, then plopped her head onto his chest. Her wolf ears, covered in the same color of fur as her hair, tickled the tip of his chin.
“I can’t leave you alone, Brother. You’re more softhearted and honest than Father is.”
Myuri wrapped her arms around him and squeezed, clinging to him.
“You’re not meant for the world beyond the mountains. If you keep following that blondie, there will just be more and more awful things. I don’t want to see you have nightmares every time that happens. One day, you’ll just break. Brother? Let’s just stay Nyohhira, where it’s warm and exciting. It’s a small village filled with song and dance, where the last year is the same as this year, and this year will be the same as next year. I always thought it was cramped and boring, but leaving made me realize that it isn’t at all. There are so many good things about it. So, please?”
Wolf & Parchment, Volume 2 Page 14