Spring Log IV

by Isuna Hasekura

  Copyright

  SPICE AND WOLF, Volume 21

  ISUNA HASEKURA

  Translation by Jasmine Bernhardt

  Cover art by Jyuu Ayakura

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  OOKAMI TO KOSHINRYO Vol. 21

  ©ISUNA HASEKURA 2019

  Edited by Dengeki Bunko

  First published in Japan in 2019 by

  KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.

  English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA

  CORPORATION, Tokyo, through Tuttle-Mori Agency,

  Inc., Tokyo.

  English translation © 2019 by Yen Press, LLC

  Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  First Yen On Edition: December 2019

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Hasekura, Isuna, 1982– author. | Bernhardt, Jasmine, translator. | Ayakura, Jū, 1981- illustrator.

  Title: Spring log IV / Isuna Hasekura ; translation by Jasmine Bernhardt ; cover art by Jyuu Ayakura.

  Other titles: Spring log IV. English

  Description: First Yen On edition. | New York : Yen On, 2019. | Series: Spice & Wolf ; 21

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019046226 | ISBN 9781975386801 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781975386818 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Fantasy. | Goddesses—Fiction. | Wolves—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.H2687 Srh 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019046226

  ISBNs: 978-1-9753-8680-1 (paperback)

  978-1-9753-8681-8 (ebook)

  E3-20191127-JV-NF-ORI

  BEYOND THE STEAM AND WOLF

  Like a sharp ax stroke, she woke with a start.

  The rapid heartbeats she felt while still under the covers were likely the traces of some sort of nightmare. This had been going on for a few days now.

  Selim stared at the ceiling, breathing slowly. Then she closed her eyes. You can relax here, she told herself. She was sleeping in a room that had a real roof, nestled in a bed with proper linens that bugs wouldn’t crawl out from. The blankets were soft and warm. A faint, sweet smell clung to them, perhaps from perfumed oil. It was a blessed environment that would’ve been unthinkable during her long journey.

  Through an odd bond, she had ended up living here in the hot spring village of Nyohhira at the end of her wanderings that had started in the south. The fact that she had managed to get a job at one of the more respected bathhouses, Spice and Wolf, wasn’t so much good luck as it was a small miracle.

  That was why when she first started working at the bathhouse, she only ever had nightmares. They were the sort of dreams where she’d do something like sneak into the storage shed of a village she’d found during her travels, hoping to finally catch a wink of sleep, only to find herself engulfed in flames instead.

  Haunted by her fears and unable to believe her good fortune, Selim had continued to brace herself, suspecting that everything would come crashing down sooner or later.

  That all stopped when the cold part of the year in Nyohhira, which dragged on and on in the far reaches of the northlands, finally gave way to the greener season of renewal.

  If asked whether her work was tough, Selim would say it was certainly not easy, but neither was it harsh. She had taken jobs in the past from the merchant companies of large cities, the farming villages out in the countryside, and the noble villas established in bucolic lands. Working in a bathhouse was like a combination of all three.

  It was like a company in that so many people came and went and the business’s stock often reached astronomical numbers; the resemblance to a farming village was due to how they often procured, cooked, processed, and stored most of their meat, fish, and vegetables, usually in preparation for the coming season, and how they typically covered the costs of building maintenance by themselves as well; on the other hand, the similarity to a noble’s villa was due to the bathhouse’s need to be furnished with a certain degree of formality in order to properly receive its guests. There were so many different things the staff had to do, and there was no end to it, like counting all the grains of sand in the desert.

  That being said, Selim was never struck by anyone while they yelled at her to work more, nor was she ever condescendingly handed a piece of moldy bread after a day of grueling hard labor. Even if she made a mistake in her work, her kind boss never got mad but instead investigated what caused the mistake in the first place and even improved her working conditions based on what he figured out.

  Selim turned over onto her side, and when she shifted her gaze to the desk beside her, there she saw further proof of her boss’s intelligence and kindness. A round, polished piece of curved glass glinted as it caught the moonlight filtering through a small gap in the window. It was part of a device called spectacles—carefully shaped pieces of glass that let her clearly see even the smallest of writing once she wore them over her eyes.

  She had had no idea that her eyesight was not as good as others’. All this time, she had simply assumed that she ran into things, often mistook objects, and wrote words incorrectly because she was dim-witted.

  When her boss and bathhouse owner Lawrence first handed the spectacles to her, she had been so happy and excited that she spent the whole night reading under the moonlight.

  The night Selim received the spectacles was the same night she first wished she could work in this bathhouse forever. The exact moment was when she peered up at the golden moon through the lenses.

  But…

  Selim closed her eyes and sighed. She had been feeling down as of late.

  Her dreams were becoming horrible ordeals again. To be specific, she had started having a different sort of nightmares from the ones she had before.

  “Phew…”

  Selim was fed up with her own weakness. She was sure that if her older brother saw her like this, he would no doubt scold her.

  But…Selim wanted to make excuses. She buried her face in her pillow and squeezed it tight. She tried to stamp out her unease that way, but of course it didn’t work.

  As she continued doing her best to quiet her troubled heart, through her window, she heard footsteps and a bucket being tossed into a well.

  It seemed like the first one to get up was the head of the kitchen—Hanna.

  Simply preparing breakfast and making preliminary arrangements for serving the food for the rest of the day was a massive undertaking. Selim had to help her.

  Just as she was about to sit up and leave her bed, she buried her face in the pillow and sighed into it one last time.

  Once she had completely expelled every last bit of breath, Se
lim lifted her head and rose in resignation.

  Today was the start of another day.

  Morning duties included drawing water, cleaning, and kindling the fires—plus, bread making happened every other day when there were guests in the bathhouse and every four days during the off-seasons.

  Selim had kneaded some dough, let it rest, and then headed off to the village’s communal bread oven to bake the bread once the sun began to rise.

  Anyone who wanted to bake bread usually brought just enough kindling to bake their own portions, but the oven would be cool at the start of the day, so whoever went first had to bring extra fuel. Anyone arriving afterward would not need as much, since the oven would already be warm. That was why the villagers drew straws to determine the order.

  Of course, her boss and bathhouse owner Lawrence would never be angry with her for drawing the short stick. While that was not specifically the reason, Selim always preferred to go first. The reason was that the crowd that gathered around the oven was made up of village women who loved to gossip and pry.

  Selim, who had appeared out of nowhere near the end of winter, was a prime target for them.

  And Spice and Wolf was home to an inexhaustible number of other topics.

  “I’m back.”

  She had drawn a reasonable number that let her go fourth, but she had still been exposed to probing arrows while she waited for her bread to bake. By the time Selim returned to the kitchen, she had been gone long enough that it was well into morning and she was thoroughly worn out.

  When she placed the basket filled with fresh bread onto the kitchen counter, the stout woman stirring the pot with a ladle, Hanna, glanced over at her.

  “Why, hello. Good work out there.”

  Hanna peeled back the cloth over the basket and nodded, satisfied. Selim was relieved to see that she had baked the bread to perfection this time as well. Her nose was better than the average person’s, so she could generally tell what was going on in the oven without looking. The only reason she would ever burn the bread would be because she lacked the skill and was too slow to take it out of the oven.

  “I’m always impressed, Miss Wolf. It’s not undercooked, and it’s not too brown. We could put you to work in a bakery right away.”

  “Only if I’m seeing to the timing of when to take the bread out of the oven. I might be able to keep track of baking by the scent, but I haven’t the strength to knead so much dough,” Selim said with a troubled smile, and Hanna returned it with a grin of her own.

  At a glance, Selim seemed like any other young woman in the village, but that was an illusion.

  Her true form was a white wolf, a resident of the forest who would live longer than any human.

  “Right. You need to put on a little more weight, Selim. Your breakfast is there.”

  Selim’s arm probably was not even half as thick as Hanna’s.

  There was plenty of work in the bathhouse that involved manual labor, and if possible, she wanted to be sturdier for those duties.

  That being said, Selim wasn’t much of a big eater, either because she had spent a long time on the road subsisting on the bare minimum or because that was her natural preference. She usually didn’t have much of an appetite in the morning, either. Still, sitting on the kitchen table was some bread made of wheat and rye accompanying a serving of vegetable soup and some salted meat.

  Selim brought over a chair and grabbed a spoon—Hanna had gone through the trouble of cooking, after all, and eating properly could be considered part of her job—but then she stopped.

  As she thought about how she needed to eat quickly and move on to her work for the day, a hand reached out to her from behind.

  “I mixed boiled goat’s milk with wine, then stirred in some honey and breadcrumbs. You’d prefer that, right?”

  Selim turned around; it was Hanna.

  “Th-thank you…”

  The mixture was much like a drink given to sick children, but it was also undoubtedly nutritious.

  And its sweet aroma eased her tense throat.

  “You’ve been out of sorts for a while now.”

  Hanna spoke with a tired smile as Selim sipped the sweet, rich goat’s milk.

  Selim unconsciously tensed her shoulders, and Hanna laughed, shaking with mirth.

  “I’m not criticizing you. You’re diligent, Selim. You think too much sometimes.”

  Hanna put her hands on her hips and emitted a tired sigh.

  Today was not the first day that Hanna had been worried about her.

  “But…”

  As Selim was about to speak, two people noisily entered the kitchen. One was a tall and lanky young man and the other a short and stout middle-aged man. The first held a sieve filled with vegetables gathered from the mountain and the second, a basket filled with beans. It was clear they had been preparing ingredients.

  “Miss Hanna, we finished bringing in the vegetables and shelling the beans…Oh, good morning, Miss Selim.”

  “G-good morning…”

  With the wooden bowl of goat’s milk in hand, Selim shrank down and slinked toward a corner of the kitchen.

  “Wow, the bread smells great.”

  As the shorter man idly commented on the aroma, the taller one promptly put away the sieve and basket they had carried in.

  “Miss Hanna, what should we do next? We turned the cheese over earlier and scrubbed the surface with salt water. The cider cooled overnight, so maybe we should leave it by the fireside for a while.”

  “Thanks, you two. Maybe I’ll have you make some jerky for the owners,” Hanna responded magnanimously and retrieved a large blade from a shelf.

  Selim watched nervously, but Hanna spoke boldly.

  “Or are you going to run away crying?”

  Her provocative grin suited the stout woman well.

  The two men who had come to the kitchen exchanged glances and smiled wryly.

  “No, ma’am, of course not. There certainly was a time when I was new to it, though.”

  “Ha-ha-ha, you make it sound like you’ve been thoroughly seasoned by the world.”

  “What are you trying to say, hmm?”

  As the two men casually traded banter, they took armfuls of deer meat and the large knife out the back of the kitchen.

  After seeing them off, Hanna turned around to Selim.

  “That’s the right attitude to have, if you ask me. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t want any unnecessary concern, either.”

  “…”

  Selim looked up at Hanna with wide, rounded eyes but, in the end, dropped her gaze back down to the bowl in her hand.

  That pair from earlier was one of the reasons why she had been feeling down lately.

  It wasn’t that she particularly disliked them or anything. She simply was not sure how she should interact with them.

  That was because Selim was the embodiment of a wolf, and they were the embodiments of a rabbit and a sheep.

  “I might be a bird who’s fine with only nuts and fruits for my meals, but I won’t lose to the mistress when it comes to food.”

  The proud Hanna also wasn’t human and neither was the bathhouse master Lawrence’s wife, Holo. She was a wolf, much like Selim, and she had once been known as the wisewolf, a legendary being with a massive, towering stature brimming with dignity. Selim owed her a great debt, and since Holo and her husband asked for nothing in return, Selim decided she would have worked for them until her body was ground into dust, even if Holo had been a mouse.

  Still, there was no doubt that Selim found comfort in both of them being wolves.

  Then eight other nonhumans came along.

  At first, they simply visited the bathhouse as guests—but for some reason would end up helping out for a little while. Yet, they were all horses, rabbits, sheep, and birds—all people who ate greens, nuts, berries.

  More than just being a wolf, there were plenty of other ways Selim found herself incompatible with the others. For one thing, they did not eat
meat during meals, yet she, Holo, and the master, Lawrence, ate their kin.

  She knew that these people were well traveled and worldly. They would not be shocked or resent others for such a thing. Otherwise, they never would’ve come to the bathhouse where Holo the Wisewolf was rumored to be in the first place.

  In which case, asking them to make meat jerky and handing over an ax as Hanna had done shouldn’t have been any different from asking for fish jerky.

  Of course, it wasn’t like Selim didn’t want to work with them. As a rule, bathhouses were busy, and it was dizzying when guests were visiting during the summer. The coming winter would be peak season here in Nyohhira, too. If anything, she was thankful for the extra sets of helping hands.

  However, the reason Selim shrugged in front of Hanna was because of something else.

  “Well, I guess you don’t exactly look like someone who’s got a knack for giving orders.”

  When Hanna smiled wryly, Selim sighed. It was the same as all the other things that followed her to bed. She had completely forgotten about the contents of the bowl she was still holding while murmuring quietly.

  “What are Lady Holo and Mr. Lawrence thinking…?”

  It went without saying that she adored Holo and Lawrence. They had saved her when she was just about to be turned adrift from lack of planning and bad luck after coming all the way north on nothing but a faint sliver of hope. And even if they had not, their personalities were enough for her to love them on their own merits.

  However, perhaps it was because they had lived a real fairy tale—a human merchant and wisewolf went on an epic journey, hand in hand, and came to open a bathhouse here in the northlands in the end. There was something fantastical about them, and they had announced something so far-fetched and out of the blue one day.

  “How could they leave me in charge of the bathhouse…? Where will we be after just a single month, never mind six…?”

  That was the reason why Selim barely ate, kept having nightmares, and did nothing but sigh as of late.

  One morning, after Selim had woken up, ready to work hard to serve her bosses, Holo had informed her of a change.

  “Listen, we shall be leaving on a journey until spring or summer next year. Will you run the bathhouse for us while we are away? Not to worry—you will have eight new pairs of hands to help!”