When Sharon said that, Clark looked as though he wanted to say something but instead dropped his head.
The tax collecting embodiment of an eagle spoke, her mouth twisting into a smile in overwhelming anger.
“Everyone here, including myself and the tax collectors, is what you’d call the ‘nieces’ and ‘nephews’ of the clergy. They cast us aside like garbage to save themselves the nuisance.”
Col had forgotten to breathe. He had not even considered that possibility, and at the same time, he now understood all the actions of Sharon and the tax collectors.
He of course knew this was a custom within the Church. No one was ignorant of it. The fact that many of these holy men were not supposed to marry yet had unofficial wives and families was such common knowledge no one thought of it as a secret in the first place.
One of the reasons Myuri constantly whined about becoming Col’s wife without ever learning her lesson was because she knew about this terrible practice.
But in that case, that also meant Sharon’s very existence carried an even more particular meaning. Sharon was not human, born as a result of a priest who broke a commandment, and then tossed away—an illegitimate child.
“Now do you understand why I wish to see them hanged?”
These men selfishly brought them into the world, then selfishly discarded them.
Those same men went on to preach the virtues of chastity, honorable poverty, and piety.
Sharon had said “hate.” And now Col understood why she was a tax collector.
The job of a tax collector was one that accepted drifters, and even after an orphan grew and matured, they were still not fully-fledged individuals, since they lacked support. They were lucky to get any job, even if it was a position as hated as a tax collector. They had been through such hardship because of their birth, and yet, they survived. And to imagine after all that, whenever they saw a church in any town, they saw priests preaching the gospel of God and living good lives.
Not only that, but she was Sharon.
Myuri was born from the union of her mother, Holo the wisewolf, and Lawrence, a human, whose relationship was so close, it invited smiles from all those around them, even in the generally optimistic hot spring village of Nyohhira, which was full of music and happiness.
But not everything in life adhered to such wondrous ideals.
An example of someone who had walked the darker parts of the world, the parts Col never wanted to show Myuri, stood right in front of them.
“Twilight Cardinal…” Sharon murmured his moniker, and Clark, who had forgone eating in order to transcribe the scripture, also looked up.
“…Help us…”
Her gaze and words were so straightforward that Col could not even flinch.
“…Crush the rotting Church.”
Even in the back of a quiet alleyway, Sharon’s voice was hushed and calm.
And because of that, Col understood how deeply rooted her anger and hate were.
This was not something that could be relieved with words.
“You said we might end up at war with them because of us, right?”
“Well—”
“Listen. You might be right. And the people of the Kingdom will fall into great misfortune because of it. But if we could destroy the Church here and now, there wouldn’t be any more people like us and the children here at the orphanage. Wouldn’t you call that justice?”
She was not doing this for her own self-interest.
There were countless people on her side who shared her justification and pain.
There was reason and righteousness in what she was doing.
“Or…”
Sharon looked down to her feet, then raised her gaze to Col in a glare.
“…You’re working with the Church, and you’re here to get in our way?”
Her right hand moved threateningly.
Perhaps the reason she had taken them here was not only to show her hand and convince them to join her but also to secretly do them in if their goals did not align.
What she was talking about was something that could not be solved by talking.
But also, it was hard to imagine she was tricking them with temporary lies and flattery.
Just as everyone was holding their breath to see what would happen next, there was a loud clattering sound from one of the rooms farther in. After a brief moment, it was followed by the sound of a crying child.
“…”
The crying was then joined by the alarmed shouts of the other children.
That was enough to relieve the malicious fumes.
“I’m going to check on the children, Sharon,” Clark said, patting her on the shoulder, then disappeared after casting an acknowledging glance to Col.
When he saw him do that, he wondered if Clark had originally planned on stopping Sharon. And, while this was also pure conjecture, he thought that perhaps Sharon knew Clark wanted to stop her.
Col sensed that was how familiar they were with each other.
“Hey.”
Unexpectedly, it was Myuri who spoke up at that moment.
“Hey, chicken.”
When she said that, Sharon, who had been looking down the hall after Clark, turned back to Myuri with a sharp gaze, but that did not frighten her.
“Tell me about you, chicken.”
“…”
Sharon stood speechless, and Myuri reached out to take Col’s hand and continued.
“My brother is pretty unreliable most of the time, but he can be pretty useful here and there.”
Col frowned at her rough way of putting it, but Myuri kept her composure and grinned.
“And all in all, he’s our friend. More importantly, he’s my friend, though.”
Regardless of whether or not they actually rivaled each other in that department, what Myuri said in her rough introduction was all truth.
Col cleared his throat to straighten himself out and then said to Sharon, “Miss Sharon, I don’t think I will be able to persuade you, and I do not completely agree with your goal of…vengeance by any means necessary. But I believe the malpractices of the Church must be righted. I may not be able to totally help you, but I’m sure there are other ways in which I can assist you.”
“At the very least, won’t be getting in our way, is that right?”
He was not so inexperienced as to agree with her right away. That was because this whole situation could decide the fate of the Kingdom.
After Col closed his mouth, Sharon stared hard at him, then gave a tired sigh.
“Either way, I guess that dog’s preventing you from giving it your all.”
“I’m not a dog, you chicken!”
It looked like a squabble between crows and dogs that one might see in town, but neither of them obviously seemed like they were being earnest.
“Fine. Things will be a lot easier if I can win your sympathy. Let’s talk,” Sharon said, then jerked her chin toward one of the windows. “It’s nice and sunny in the garden at this time of day. Perfect weather for a dog.”
“Grrr!”
Myuri’s growl sounded a little too convincing, so Col patted her on the head to calm her down, and they then went outside.
Buildings that could not be refined even out of flattery were built leaning against one another, creating a wall around Col and company.
This little garden was less like a courtyard and more like a space that so happened to come about when the buildings were built, but just as Sharon said, it was bathed in sunlight, and there was even some greenery. Little birds peacefully pecked at something in the grass.
“Get out of here, you.”
Sharon waved her hand, and the little birds flew off. Taming smaller creatures seemed to be an old trick that any nonhuman living in a city, not just Ilenia, could do.
“Now then, where should I start?”
There was a crate placed there for sunbathing and Sharon sat down on it as she spoke. There was only one other crate there
, and Col was hoping to let Myuri have it, but she instead pulled him along and sat him down. He wondered what she was going to do, and she sat on his lap without a second thought.
While she tended to want to do things like a spoiled little girl would, she was still sharp.
“What happened to your mother, chicken?”
She got straight to the point with a single breath, and while Sharon’s eyes widened, she soon just shrugged, perhaps because she thought it would be the easiest starting point.
“My mother was a beautiful golden eagle with golden wings.”
“Wooow, golden wings…”
Despite how Myuri called Sharon a chicken, she was purely fascinated by the idea of an eagle with golden wings. Sharon seemed slightly perplexed by her response, but she did not seem to be upset by it.
“And I don’t know how it happened, but she got involved with a priest from the Church. They lived peacefully for a while.”
A forbidden love between a priest, who was not allowed to marry, and a nonhuman, of all people.
How would the poets write songs about it?
“But when most of the members of the clergy get ahead in life, they’re required to clean up their affairs. Owners of churches in smaller towns out in the country might not need to do anything like that, since they’re practically kings, but it’s apparently a required procedure out here in the bigger cities.”
If a priest had to move from a smaller diocese to a bigger one, then the place they lived and everything else would have to change. Should their new home be located within the walls of a city, then they would have to prove themselves suitable, and if they had children, then it became a question of who those children belonged to.
“Of course, they systematically repeat the same rotten customs over and over. Priests are used to cutting off their wives and kids who are holding them back. They rewrite the baptism directory to change who the parents of their children are, and then they add names to the funeral directory to kill off a made-up husband. In an instant, that creates a widow and child left behind by a good husband. There’s nothing between the mother and child and the real father. The documents prove beyond a doubt that they’re living separate lives.”
When she said that, Myuri stirred and turned to look at Col.
Her surprised expression read, She’s kidding, right?
“It might just be on paper, but…I think it is possible.”
Just like how public perception of people changed depending on the clothes they wore, ink and paper could easily change a person’s entire existence.
“But still, the truth always gets out. The local people all know the truth anyway, right? Rumors naturally spread. The better the life a woman lives as a priest’s mistress, the colder everyone around her would be and the more ostracized both she and her child would become. They usually aren’t able to stay in their original town or village, or even the region, so they go far away. And then…” Sharon sighed, dropping her shoulders. “The kid gets in the way. Even with proof of identity, at the end of the day, the mother is still a woman who’s come from far away with a kid in tow. She would absolutely draw attention in an inspection at the city gates. Maybe she’s related to someone who committed a serious crime. Maybe she committed adultery and was chased out of her home. Or maybe…she’s the mistress of some Church man or a noble and she’s been tossed away.” Sharon lifted her head, squinting at the sun, and continued. “Most mothers find themselves at their wits’ end, and with little other choice, they leave their kid on the front step of a church or monastery. Isn’t it ironic? Despite how awfully they’d both been treated by the Church, that’s the only thing they can rely on.”
“No…”
It was a grim tale, unthinkable for the daughter of the biggest lovebirds in all of Nyohhira.
“And so your mother…was the same?”
Myuri did not call her a chicken.
Sharon looked at Myuri and shrugged.
“The kids in the orphanage have been through pretty much the same thing. Clark was smart and was allowed to stay by his father’s side as his ‘nephew,’ becoming a curate who assists the pastor. My mother and I were different. Because she was such a magnificent golden eagle, who could encircle every house around her when she spread her wings, she couldn’t just bring in my keep from the forest. If it was possible, she could have simply caught all the creatures in the forest and sold everything to the furriers and the butchers to earn a mountain of coin.” But from the way she was speaking, that was not how it turned out. “My mother lived for a long time, and she knew what it meant to live alongside humans. She didn’t hide how she never aged; she revealed her true identity, and they still crossed that gap and took each other’s hands. That’s how much they trusted each other. But even then…” The light disappeared from Sharon’s eyes. Even beneath the sunlight, her eyes were brimming with hatred. “He betrayed her. All for the sake of his own success.”
Myuri squirmed on Col’s lap because she was overwhelmed by Sharon’s open hatred.
“And my mother could not stand to be in the human world any longer. She left me behind and apparently flew across the western sea.”
The loathing in her eyes faded, transforming into a more muted hue of sadness and sorrow.
However, something in her words caught Col’s attention.
“What do you mean by apparently?”
Sharon lifted her head, then tiredly cocked it to the side.
“I was still an infant then. That’s the story I heard from the elderly sheep my mother left me with. The old man was a shepherd at a monastery, of all things, and no matter how hard we struggled, we couldn’t escape from the net of the Church.”
That was why she wanted to set fire to and destroy everything. Much like the net she was entangled in, Sharon’s hate had a tight hold on her.
On the other hand, Col realized how small the world was.
“Could that sheep have been a golden one?”
Sharon was clearly surprised.
“You know Huskins?”
“It seems all paths are connected and intertwined.”
What came from his mouth was an excerpt from the scripture, and Sharon huffed.
“Okay, then does that mean your mother went to the land in the west, where Ilenia wants to go?”
“Huh? Oh right, that…legend of the land to the west is talked about among the people who live in the Kingdom and those who live on the western shore of the mainland. The old man probably told that to me to calm me down. I don’t believe it.”
When Myuri, who believed in the land to the west, saw how flippant Sharon was about it, she pouted.
“I heard it from a whale. He said it’s not impossible.”
“…What?”
“But I guess the whale also said that he couldn’t swim all the way there, so he wasn’t planning on going…”
Sharon sighed, knowing she would not be able to talk sense into her, but Myuri continued to argue.
“But he also said there are unbelievably massive footprints in a really, really deep part of the ocean. And those footprints are heading west.”
“Footprints?”
Myuri stood and spoke.
“It’s the Moon-Hunting Bear.”
It was a legendary calamity all nonhumans and their close company would have heard about at least once.
Sharon blinked, speechless.
“…You’re kidding.”
“Are you calling me a kidder?”
It seemed like they would start glaring again, so Col interjected.
“It is most certain that Lord Autumn is not someone who would speak without good reason.”
Autumn, who was the embodiment of a whale, was also a difficult one, but he was not someone to tell lies.
“…The land at the end of the western sea…,” Sharon murmured, narrowing her eyes in displeasure.
There was said to be a continent in the western sea, to where Sharon’s mother flew off. It was entirely possib
le that Huskins made up the story out of kindness.
But Col felt like he understood why she would flatly reject the possibility that it might exist.
That was because in her eagle form, Sharon was an elegant and valiant creature and not entirely out of place in the forests like Myuri was. She knew her own wings probably would not be able to carry her all the way to that continent. Only a fool would get so worked up about a place she would never reach, and since she was not, doing so would only be painful.
Paradoxically, perhaps it was because Ilenia knew that as a sheep, she could not fly or swim in the first place, that she could chase talk about the continent.
As Col thought about that, Sharon stood from her crate and spoke.
“Whether the continent exists or not, I know what I need to do. I’m going to drag the Church dreck out onto the corner and string them up. I won’t be able to meet my mother without getting my revenge anyway.”
She was not looking for approval, and perhaps she was not even looking for sympathy.
She glanced over at the orphanage, then looked back at Col and Myuri.
“We’re up against the great organization of the Church. I don’t think we’ll ever get the chance to use tax collection permits as a shield to boldly pressure them like this again. Don’t get in my way.” She then walked off, and as she passed by them, she whispered, “Clark doesn’t know what I really am. Don’t say anything unneccesary.”
Without giving them a chance to respond, Sharon opened the door and went into the building. They could hear the children making a ruckus from the gaps in the window.
“Hmph. Chicken.”
He realized Myuri was standing next to him, her hands on her hips.
“She’s just telling herself it doesn’t exist because she can’t fly there.”
It seemed she had been thinking the same thing as he had about Sharon, but he did not think she was a cowardly chicken.
“She has been through a lot. She’s being realistic.”
While people could not live solely on bread, they still had the scripture, but without any bread in the first place, giving them the scripture would only lead them to starvation. Sharon was here in this city now because of all the trouble she had been through.
Wolf & Parchment: New Theory Spice & Wolf, Vol. 4 Page 10