Spring Log IV

by Isuna Hasekura

  “I told you that it didn’t smell as bad as I thought it would, but you didn’t believe me.”

  Holo groaned and stepped down from the driver’s perch.

  “The sulfur on the cart is not as terrible, but you must quickly do something about all this.”

  Last night, she had slept in the gaps between the bags of sulfur on the cart.

  “You always used to get mad when I put something on the cart on our old trip. Fish, metal, anything.”

  Once the fire started growing, Lawrence set up the iron pot, filling it with the cured meat and some eggs they had brought from Nyohhira. As long as the shells didn’t break, eggs kept well and added variety to meals, which made them valuable. They were often buried inside things like flour when stored for travel. Of course, on this trip, they were being kept inside the sulfur powder. As long as the eggs weren’t left in the bags for too long, the contents shouldn’t start tasting like the powder they were packed in.

  “I would not be so angry if you brought along anything more delicious. Something like dried fruits or perhaps sugared ones.”

  Her tail wagged as she spoke in rapt attention.

  “Fool. Sweets are expensive.”

  As Lawrence copied Holo’s usual insult, he made a slice in some bread, scooped up a serving of fried egg and cured meat with a spatula just as it was done cooking, then stuffed it into the bread along with a topping of cheese.

  “Here.”

  “Hmm.”

  Holo took the bread, and just as he thought she would bite right into it, she stared fixedly at it.

  “What is it?”

  “Hmm.”

  Holo stayed in place, her head hanging low from staring down at her food, only lifting her gaze to look at Lawrence.

  “I did not eat any meat yesterday. I believe I should receive more now to make up for lost meat.”

  He was astonished by the extent of her gluttony first thing in the morning, but he collected himself—he should not give in to her cajoling.

  “No. Trips have itineraries. You know from our previous peddling journey that not sticking to the plan will land us in trouble.”

  Holo always seemed like she wanted to do things her way, but she understood when pushing and prodding wouldn’t get her anywhere and could pull back at those times. That was because she could see the difference from Lawrence’s usual demeanor that often led to him spoiling her whenever she pressured him.

  That was why when he spoke firmly for a change, Holo was evidently dissatisfied, but she nodded reluctantly.

  “You have always been blockheaded.”

  “Call it being careful.”

  Holo glanced at Lawrence and shrugged.

  That was most likely a sign that she was surprised he had the nerve to call himself that when thinking back on their old travels together. On his journey with her, he often tried showing off in front of her, intentionally getting himself involved in risky business.

  And more importantly, not even a full day had passed since the night they ran into trouble with just one campfire. Lawrence was not very convincing.

  “…Yesterday was our first day on the road in a long time. Things will go smoother from now on.”

  He could not help but say that, sounding as though he was making excuses.

  Holo, her mouth firmly attached to a bite of egg yolk, flitted her ears about as though reluctantly believing him.

  Afterward, they reached the checkpoint along the river. Of all the tolls on the waterway, this one was the first or second largest. It was rather lively, considering it was also treated as the ending point of the highway that stretched all the way from the southern reaches of the continent.

  Grains, processed meat, and metalwork flowed here from the continent; furs and lumber came from upstream; the bounties of the ocean and imports from faraway countries came from down the river.

  Holo and Lawrence considered staying the night at an inn beside the checkpoint, but they arrived just before noon, so they simply broke for a meal and departed after a short break.

  While they were doing so, the innkeeper suggested that they use a boat after hearing they were traveling along the river to reach the sea.

  He was rather enthusiastic, but inns standing along the river often jointly owned boats with boatmen who went up and down the waterway, so convincing a guest to book passage on their boats meant innkeepers could make money from them twice over.

  Monks not used to going abroad might readily take up the offer, but Lawrence was a former traveling merchant.

  Holo hated camping outside and wanted to take the boat, but when Lawrence told her that the quality of food would go down accordingly after subtracting the price of the boat ride, she reluctantly accepted traveling across land.

  Four days had gone by since they departed from Nyohhira.

  “…So? What is it?”

  Holo sat hunched over on the driver’s perch, resting her chin in her palm.

  Lawrence, in contrast, held a map in one hand as he wandered in circles, puzzled.

  “…I’m lost.”

  Lawrence spoke in a frail voice, as though sentencing himself to death, fearfully looking up at Holo.

  Holo did not smile at him kindly from her perch, but she was not angry, either.

  “Hmm, I thought this might happen.”

  “Maybe it really was out of kindness that you suggested taking a boat…”

  He knew where it had all gone wrong.

  He did not think there would be a problem, since the path that followed the river went all the way to the sea, but there had been a terrible landslide along the way, so the road depicted on the map had become blocked off.

  And so they traveled along the new path that the locals had set out, but that one ended up crossing the roads that the hunters and woodcutters used, so Holo and Lawrence ended up becoming lost along the way there.

  The road was smooth and wide enough for a cart to pass through, and there were charcoal huts dotting the trail, so he had assumed that it was a commercial road. By the time he had realized that there shouldn’t be any well-used charcoal huts on a new road, they had already cut across a bluff, passed over a ridge, and finally found themselves deep within woods that did not appear on their map at all.

  “This is no longer my territory. Luckily, it does not seem there are any nuisances nearby.”

  Holo turned toward the sky and sniffed the air.

  She might have been looking up, but the flora here was completely different from what populated Nyohhira, with incredibly tall and wide trees growing here and there that almost entirely blocked out the sky.

  The light barely reached the ground, so there were very few shorter trees, which actually made it quite easy for the cart to travel along the road.

  Though it was dense, they could see oddly deep into the forest; sometimes Lawrence sensed a strange gaze on him, which made him shiver.

  Those glances mostly belonged to foxes and deer, so as long as he was with Holo, the king of kings of the forest, there was hardly anything he needed to fear.

  But Lawrence was human. He felt an instinctual fear of the abyss of the woods.

  “This seems to be a land humans rarely ever enter. The path, too, is less a road and more a nicely flattened channel made by the natural streams of water that appear during heavy rain. There are quite a number of fallen leaves, which make it hard to tell for certain.”

  Indeed—places similar to this that were very much like traps for humans existed in the mountains.

  Luckily, their cart was stuffed with bags of terrible-smelling sulfur, and Holo had the nose of a wolf.

  If all they needed to do was turn back, then there would be no problem.

  “…Let’s retrace our steps. We won’t be able to tell which way we’re going, since we can’t know the position of the sun in a forest as thick as this.”

  Just as Lawrence got ready to bring the horse around, he realized something.

  Holo had gone entirely express
ionless.

  Lawrence was ashamed of how much of an idiot he was and spoke.

  “You can be mad at me.”

  That would put him more at ease.

  Holo stared at Lawrence blankly.

  “Mm-hmm…Mad?”

  Lawrence shrugged in resignation, and Holo glanced around the area before sniffing.

  “’Tis a regular thing for you to boast about taking care of everything.”

  There was no bite or malice in her words, but that just made them hurt even more. Worse, Lawrence had no room to make excuses, so he had no right to be cross with her.

  “Besides, ’tis not terrible that we came here.”

  “…?”

  Holo’s voice was calm like the forest in the rain.

  “’Tis a nice wood.”

  Even though they ended up lost as a result of skimping on boat fees, Holo wore a faint smile.

  This was much more unsettling than having her hurl abuse at him, but the reason Lawrence suddenly started panicking a little was because he got the sense that Holo might suddenly vanish among the trees.

  He hurriedly shook his head and looked around him at the woods once more.

  “Nice…? It looks like a normal forest to me…”

  Rather, without many shorter trees and much underbrush, it seemed like a forest of little value to Lawrence. The wind did not find its way in easily, either, given how thick the canopy was, which meant that it would be hard to find mushrooms. If anyone started cutting down the massive trees, which represented the sole source of value in this forest, the whole area would soon be barren.

  “It may seem that way to you, but…’tis the scent.”

  Holo closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Lawrence followed suit. He felt comforted by the smell of humus, but it was a common smell.

  “Perhaps a human nose cannot tell. ’Tis the smell of syrup. The whole forest smells sweet. I think…these large trees are filled with syrup.”

  “It doesn’t seem like there any are flowering, but…sap? If we can get some sap, we might be able to make a little side money.”

  If they mixed some with glue, then they could use it to fill in gaps or to add flavor to distilled spirits.

  However, Holo looked at him with a strained smile when he spoke like a merchant.

  “That is what you always say.”

  “It’s important. I have a big eater at home, you know.”

  “And my master has no sense of direction.”

  He could not argue with her in this situation.

  Lawrence gave up on a counterattack and led the horse at a walk.

  “You’ll have to tell me where to go. Or should we just press on and hope we come across a road that leads to the ocean?”

  Holo seemed somewhat reluctant when she stared deep into the woods, eventually sighing lightly.

  “Should I return to my wolf form, I will be able to sniff out the right direction straightaway. But even if I do, this cart cannot go straight through here. I believe it will be faster in the end if we return to a man-made road for now.”

  A forest with cliffs was also bound to have marshes. Getting lost, even with Holo beside him, was because not all roads stayed straight. But just as Lawrence was about to apologize to Holo for his foolishness, something happened.

  “Hmm?”

  Holo sat up straight and stared into space.

  “What is it?”

  Holo’s ears twitched left and right. Her ears were good enough to hear a flea cough.

  There was no doubt that she would hear it right away if anybody tried to sneak up on them.

  “What’s wrong? Is it a bear or a stray? Or…bandits?”

  Lawrence immediately leaped onto the driver’s perch and took the dagger out from under his seat.

  It was impossible to avoid danger during travel.

  Just as he readied himself for whatever might come at them, Holo spoke.

  “’Tis a bee. Unusual for this season.”

  “A bee?”

  Before long, Lawrence could also hear the faint hum of wings.

  But as he sat there, looking around trying to spot one, Holo suddenly grabbed his arm.

  Her nails painfully dug into him.

  “Wh-what?! Ouch, what’s—?”

  Holo’s widening eyes cut Lawrence off, and the fur covering her ears and tail stood on end like a stiff brush.

  “Oh, ah, ooh…”

  Holo’s voice barely made any coherent sounds, rumbling in the depths of her throat. Lawrence thought at first that there might be a huge swarm of bees approaching, but what slipped out from behind one of the large trees was just a single, regular bee.

  But the moment he thought something seemed a little off, Holo screamed.

  “Ahhhhhhhhh!”

  Lawrence did not even have the time to be shocked by the scream the likes of which he had never heard coming from her before. She rubbed her face against his chest like a rabbit trying to crawl into its hole. Her ears lay flat on her head and her tail was puffed and swollen, like she was under a thundercloud.

  He was puzzled, unsure of what was causing such alarm. Then he noticed the single bee lazily drawing closer.

  It did not seem particularly angry. In fact, the bee seemed more confused as to why humans were there.

  But as the buzzing grew louder, Holo started to tremble harder. It worried him—he had no idea she was so scared of bees. She loved honey and happily ate bee larvae fried in oil because it was hot and delicious like lily buds. Or perhaps it was because this was a special sort of bee? The bee was indeed a little odd. Its black-and-yellow-striped pattern seemed typical, but for some reason, a white string hung from its body.

  Lawrence stared at the bee as it buzzed overhead.

  Holo shivered in his arms like a squirrel afraid of a rampaging dragon.

  As Lawrence watched the bee leisurely passing before them, he noticed something.

  “Oh, it’s…”

  He unconsciously reached out.

  He caught it easily.

  It being the string hanging from the bee.

  Lawrence immediately undid the hand towel on his waist and suddenly wrapped it around the struggling bee.

  While he listened to the angry buzzing, he realized that Holo was staring at him, all the color having drained from her face.

  “Wh-what are you doing?”

  Holo wouldn’t have made such a face even if he suddenly threw everything in his wallet onto the street. She gave a sidelong glance at the bundle of cloth like it was an atrocious thing and then immediately hid her face again.

  “Throw it away, quickly!”

  Lawrence shrugged and said, “What’s the matter? It’s just a bee.”

  Holo immediately tensed.

  She had many traits that were maiden-like, but he felt like being afraid of bees was not one of them.

  “Don’t tell me this is a bee that’s like one of you?”

  —A creature that lived for centuries, that understood the human language, like a spirit of the forest.

  If that was true, then he thought this was very rude of her, but Holo buried herself deeper into his chest and shook her head. Her tail was still quivering.

  It was then that Lawrence, with a questioning look, peered at the bee angrily buzzing its wings inside the cloth.

  “I—I…I cannot…”

  “Hmm?”

  “I cannot…bear it…”

  Holo spoke weakly, her voice shaky due to her tears.

  “That insect is being eaten by another insect…is it not? It sickens me to think of it…”

  “Oh…Ohhh.”

  When she said that, it finally clicked.

  People had their strengths and their weaknesses. Even the most stalwart of soldiers could find themselves frozen in a high place, and the most devout of monks who loved all of creation could still lose themselves when faced with a spider.

  He had never heard of Holo being unable to handle bees and other bugs. But there were some t
hings she simply could not deal with on an instinctual level. That turned out to be insects afflicted by parasites. Anyone who traveled through mountains and forests would sometimes come across unsettling sights that could be thought of only as the darker parts of the world.

  “Hmm…But…”

  When Lawrence brought the cloth closer to Holo, she shrank back, almost rolling off the driver’s perch.

  “Eek!”

  “H-hey, come on—that’s dangerous.”

  “N-no! No!”

  While he thought about how cute she was when she was this desperate, Lawrence spoke.

  “The thing hanging from the bee isn’t a parasite. It’s just a string.”

  Holo shook her head, as though declaring that she wouldn’t be fooled by his lies.

  But when Lawrence sighed with a troubled smile, Holo finally lifted her head slightly.

  “R-really…?”

  As Holo’s childlike attitude stirred something in his heart he had never felt before, Lawrence responded.

  “Yeah. I’m sure.”

  Holo must have been able to hear that he was not lying, but he also understood why she still doubted him nonetheless.

  “Th-then…why is it…here…?”

  “You’re asking why there’s a bee with a string around it, right? A bear can’t use a spool, after all.”

  But Lawrence had an idea.

  “You said not many people enter this forest, right?”

  “…? Y-yes.”

  Holo raised her head and responded, but when the bee in the cloth buzzed, she tensed up again.

  “I think someone might be poaching the bees.”

  “…”

  Holo stared at Lawrence with widened eyes and then looked to the cloth.

  “…Do you mean to say ’tis a marker?”

  Of course the wisewolf would sniff that out.

  “But I have never seen such a thing in Nyohhira…”

  “It’s because the mountains are treacherous out there. You wouldn’t be able to follow a bee in those parts. But this forest has great sight lines, so you can tie a string around a bee as a flag and follow it back to its hive. But…if they’re doing this here, then it’s a poacher who doesn’t want anyone else to see them. Nobles and people like that normally own forests, so beehive hunting costs money.”

  “Mm…So that means…” Holo peered up at Lawrence. “There…is a hive nearby…?”