Spice & Wolf Omnibus

by Isuna Hasekura

  He raised his head and peeled back the blanket.

  There was Holo, sleeping comfortably, soot smudged on her forehead and cheek.

  “Ah, so it was this…”

  She seemed to have had quite a good time.

  Her beautiful bangs had been slightly singed, and as she breathed, her breath carried the burnt smell to Lawrence’s nose. Added to that was Holo’s own sweet scent along with the scent of her tail, and Lawrence realized that was what he had smelled in his dream.

  The sleeping Holo did not have her robe on, and her ears were exposed.

  The squirrel fur had indeed fallen right next to her head, so Lawrence could see that Holo had made a vague attempt to hide her ears.

  Since they weren’t surrounded by adherents of the Church pointing spears at them, it seemed unlikely that Holo’s secret had been discovered; Lawrence let his head fall back as he sighed.

  He then took his hand off the blanket and rested it on her head.

  Her ears twitched, and her even breathing stopped.

  She then shivered as though sneezing and curled up more tightly.

  Her arms and legs fidgeted around, and finally her face moved as she rested her chin on Lawrence’s chest, then sat up.

  The eyes that stared at him from under the blanket were still glazed, as though half-asleep.

  “You’re heavy,” said Lawrence, at which Holo covered her face again and shivered. She seemed to be yawning, but her fingernails on Lawrence’s chest were proof enough that she was awake.

  Eventually she raised her head. “What’s the matter?”

  “You’re heavy.”

  “Nay, my body is quite light. Something else must be weighing upon you.”

  “Shall I say then that your feelings are heavy?”

  “That makes it seem like I am some sort of uninvited guest.” Holo chuckled throatily, resting her cheek against Lawrence’s chest.

  “Honestly… So, I assume you weren’t found out?”

  “About whose bedroom I share, you mean?”

  Lawrence murmured to himself that he wished she would be honest and say “bed.”

  “No, I was not found out. Everyone was too roused to notice. Heh – you should have come yourself.”

  “I can imagine it, more or less… but I’d rather not get burned.” Lawrence fingered Holo’s singed bangs, and Holo closed her eyes ticklishly. They would probably need to be trimmed back.

  Before he could admonish her for excessive merrymaking, Holo spoke. “I heard much of the northlands from the traveling girl. Apparently they just finished working in Nyohhira. To hear her tell it, it hasn’t changed much from the old days.”

  Holo opened her eyes and gazed at Lawrence’s fingers, then nuzzled his chest like an affectionate cat.

  But she seemed to be doing it to scrub her face free of the emotion that threatened to show there. It was clear that she struggled to restrain the emotions that welled up.

  “Always so stubborn,” said Lawrence, and Holo curled up.

  Just like a stubborn child.

  “We have time to decide what to do, though. We’re chasing Eve first, after all.”

  Holo’s pointed ears were against Lawrence’s chest, so she surely noticed his chuckle.

  Digging into his chest with her fingernails, Holo sniffed her objection.

  “Would you get off me? I’m thirsty.” Lawrence had drunk a lot.

  And he didn’t know whether it was the middle of the night or just a few minutes until dawn.

  Holo didn’t move for a moment, and Lawrence wondered if she was being malicious, but at length, she shifted and moved.

  Then, straddling him like she would a horse, she tilted her head back as though she was about to howl and yawned a great yawn.

  It was a strangely captivating, untouchably divine sight, and Lawrence found himself fascinated by it.

  Having satisfied her desire to bare her teeth at the moon, Holo sleepily smacked her lips a few times, then closed her mouth as she wiped the sleep from the corners of her eyes. She then smiled faintly as she looked down at Lawrence.

  “Being on top does suit me, I must say.”

  “And I’m under you – literally, this time.”

  The fringes of Holo’s ears were lit by the moonlight.

  With their every movement, the moonbeams seemed to dance.

  “I daresay, I’d like some water, myself… hmm? Where did my robe go?” Holo looked around, evidently not joking.

  Lawrence choked back the words that came to mind – What do you think is wrapped around your waist? – and looked up at the night sky.

  It was the dead of night. If this had been an abbey, the friars would have been awakening to chant the first prayers of the day.

  Nonetheless, not everyone was asleep. Apart from the people curled up here and there like so many piles of cow dung, there was a circle of men sitting around the fire.

  “Eyahri,” said one of the men as he noticed Holo and raised his right hand in greeting.

  Holo smiled, amused, and returned the wave.

  “What’s that about?” asked Lawrence.

  “’Tis an old greeting. Apparently it’s still in use around the vast mountains of Roef,” Holo explained.

  Since Lawrence was usually the one who was in a position to explain the world’s customs, this made him realize just how far north they had actually come.

  This was really Holo’s territory now.

  He remembered her profile as near the wheat fields, she had been overcome by the memories of the north to which she thought she would never return.

  He wanted to put into words, to say it – You want to stop heading for Kerube, don’t you?

  But if he did, she would certainly turn angry.

  After all, he didn’t want her to speak those words, either.

  “Ah, the boy’s awake,” declared Holo, interrupting Lawrence’s uncharitable thoughts.

  While everybody had more or less lay down and gone to sleep wherever they pleased, people seemed to be collected in a certain area – but off in one corner was a small form that seemed to be doing something.

  To Lawrence’s still liquor-blurred eyes, it looked like it might have been Holo.

  Which meant it was Col.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Hmph. Looks to be writing something,” said Holo.

  Though he could make out the boy’s outline in the moonlight, Lawrence couldn’t see what Col’s hands were doing – he could only see that he was looking down and doing something with what looked like a stick or branch.

  Col might well have been studying with his free time.

  “Anyway, water. My throat is burning.”

  “Mm.”

  Taking the water skin that Holo seemed to have gotten from somebody, Lawrence stood at the riverbank and untied its string.

  It was empty, of course, and the drinking spout seemed to have been rather chewed up.

  Lawrence looked at Holo, who avoided his gaze. Perhaps she liked to chew on things and had simply hid it from him thus far.

  Perhaps she was worried about seeming animalistic.

  No – more likely it was that such a childish habit was not something a proper wisewolf would indulge in.

  Lawrence’s smile was so faint that in the moonlight it was imperceptible, and he filled the water skin. The river water on this winter’s night felt like just-melted ice.

  “Guh…” He filled his mouth with the painfully cold water.

  Lawrence could drink any amount of water after drinking so much wine.

  “Come, give it here,” said Holo, snatching the water skin away and drinking from it – then coughing, which was only as much as she deserved.

  “So, did you hear any interesting talk?” asked Lawrence, patting Holo’s back as she coughed and realizing that her movements were a bit exaggerated. If you want me to pay attention to you, just ask, he thought – but did not point out her lie.

  “Kuh… whew… Interestin
g talk, you say?”

  “You said you heard about Nyohhira, didn’t you?”

  “Mm. Nobody knew the name of Yoitsu, but many had heard of the Moon-Hunting Bear.”

  Since even Lawrence had heard stories of the great bear spirit, it would be stranger if people in this region did not know the tales.

  It was a bear spirit whose tales had been passed down over the centuries – perhaps even the millennia.

  Lawrence hesitated momentarily but eventually spoke his mind.

  If Holo became angry, he would blame it on the wine.

  “Does that make you jealous, I suppose?” When it came to the question of whose name had been remembered, Holo was no match for the Moon-Hunting Bear.

  Of course, back in the village of Pasloe, every child knew her name, but that was on a completely different scale than the Moon-Hunting Bear.

  She might feel a certain amount of competition, having come from the same era.

  Just as Lawrence was thinking that no, Holo would be above such pointlessness, she replied.

  “Just who do you think I am?”

  Her right hand held the water skin, and her left was on her hip, her chest thrust out.

  She was Holo the Wisewolf.

  Lawrence cursed himself for asking a stupid question, but just as he was about to say, “Ah, you’re right,” Holo slipped in another statement, cutting him off.

  “I’m a late bloomer, after all. I’m only just getting started.” She bared her fangs and smiled. She was shameless, indeed, to have lived so many centuries and yet claiming to be only getting started.

  Before she was a wisewolf, Holo was Holo.

  “I may have retreated from being worshiped, but ’twould be lovely indeed to have a thick book of tales recorded about me, of course.”

  “Ha-ha. Shall I write it, then?”

  Many merchants took up the pen.

  Not having learned the finer points of composition, their writing was not beautiful, but if someone on the verge of death had a fortune, they might well have a comrade take dictation for them.

  “Hmph. Though if you were to do it, the travels with you would be the larger part.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “I can’t have that now, can I?”

  “Why not?” asked Lawrence, and Holo coughed.

  “It might well end up being less of a book and more a litany of humiliations.” Holo chuckled through her nose. “You’re perfectly happy to lie – you’d embellish things that did and didn’t happen, no doubt. What sort of book would you create?” Holo looked up.

  It was clear from her face that she had gone beyond smiling and was now playing a foolish game.

  Lawrence was a merchant.

  Carefully estimating her thoughts, he spoke. “Are you trying to say I’d be as thick as the book I’d write?”

  Holo laughed voicelessly, her shoulders shaking, and she smacked Lawrence’s arm.

  It was a foolish conversation.

  “Anyway, all I heard tell of was Nyohhira. They don’t often go into the mountains of Roef, they said. Apparently ’tis not so nice a place.”

  “Huh?” Lawrence asked.

  Holo was still smiling, but there was a gaping hole behind that smile.

  She was stubborn.

  Whenever she seemed strangely cheerful, there was always something behind it.

  But she continued speaking, as though she hadn’t heard Lawrence’s inquiry at all.

  “There are more than twenty hot springs. The earth has cracks that vent steam, and it seems like the end of the world – just like it did in my time. The one annoying bit was that the spot that I’d found and only I knew about seems to have been discovered – even though it was a hot spring hidden in a canyon so narrow I had to take this form just to fit.”

  It was said that the spirits of the hot springs watched those who visited, and the more effort one put forth to soak in the waters, the more effective the water’s healing powers would be.

  So when it came to why the people of Nyohhira would go to such lengths, it was because finding such a hot spring was part of what they lived for.

  In such circumstances, it would have been discovered sooner or later.

  Holo seemed exceedingly frustrated, but Lawrence could tell it was an act.

  She had let something important slip.

  The mountains of Roef were not a good place.

  It had been carelessness.

  That much was obvious.

  Had the boatmen mentioned what awaited those who headed up the Roef River?

  One had said that there was a mine that produced copper-like water from a spring and that there was a town with copper plentiful enough to build copper-plated stills.

  And Ragusa was carrying large amounts of copper coin down the Roam River.

  What was needed to make those coins?

  Copper obviously – and large amounts of fuel wood or the black stone known as coal.

  Holo had been talking to the troupe of performers, so if they were speaking ill of an energetic mining town, it wasn’t because the town was in decline.

  It might mean that the place was unfit for human habitation.

  Clear-cut forests, poisoned rivers.

  Floods and landslides were common, and it would attract men trying to get rich quickly.

  The performer girl may have meant that the quality of the patrons was poor, but the quality of a town’s population was determined by its environment.

  It was even written in scripture that a bad tree would produce only bad fruit but that a good tree could produce only fine fruit.

  “Heh. This won’t do. At this rate, I won’t be able to hide anything from you,” said Holo suddenly, just as Lawrence was wondering what he should say.

  “There have always been fools who dig into the mountains. Time passes and men grow more numerous. I was prepared for that much.”

  Lawrence very much doubted these were her true feelings.

  After so many centuries in Pasloe, Holo had to know – she had to know that the wisdom of humanity had progressed to where some now conceitedly thought they had no need for gods.

  “Still, know this–” Holo said, taking careful step-hops as though crossing a creek via stepping-stones. She took one step, then another, and on the third step, she looked back at Lawrence. “This is my problem to worry over. When I see you make that face, I can’t worry about it properly.”

  It would have been easy to simply tell her, “Why, the nerve!”

  But Lawrence could hardly do so.

  Holo couldn’t very well help but worry, and if they found Yoitsu in ruins, she might come apart entirely.

  And yet she herself understood that her concern was nothing to be ashamed about – that it was entirely natural.

  Lawrence reevaluated his thoughts.

  Holo was not the girl she appeared to be.

  “When the time comes, I may need to borrow your chest to cry upon. That’s one promise I’ll need from you.”

  When he heard such words from a girl like Holo, Lawrence had no choice but to tell her she could rely on him.

  Holo chuckled. “But then what of you? Did you hear any interesting talk?”

  Led on by Holo, Lawrence started to walk, looking over at the circle of men as something in their conversation caused a stir.

  “… Let’s see. I seem to remember Ragusa saying something…”

  Perhaps because of the state of his liquor-muddled mind when he’d talked to Ragusa, the memory did not come instantly. He tapped his head several times, annoyed at the failure of his ledger-like memory for recalling the things he’d seen and heard.

  “I believe… it was something funny… but not really funny… Something like that.”

  “About the boy?” Holo suggested. Col was still off staring at the ground there in the moonlight.

  The memory came drifting back to Lawrence.

  “Oh yes! Or… was it?”

  “Well, that’s all you and that boatman woul
d have to talk about, is it not? And you’re competing over him, too.”

  “I’m not competing over anything. But Ragusa really seems to want the boy.”

  Lawrence had a vision of the fierce attack that would happen when they got to Kerube.

  It was by no means guaranteed that the boy would safely become a high-ranking priest and that was only if he managed to finish his studies. When Lawrence thought about it that way, he felt like it might be good for Col to become Ragusa’s apprentice – but that was just his own personal judgment.

  Holo looked up at him as he mused.

  “And what of you?”

  “Me? Well, I…” Lawrence prevaricated, sidestepping Holo’s sharp eyes.

  He wouldn’t mind taking an apprentice if it was Col.

  But it felt premature, and there was another reason he was being evasive.

  “Back in Pasloe, I waited a long time for a suitable-looking traveler to come, but that good meeting did not come for some time. When it comes to people, well, you should trust my eye.”

  Lawrence noticed that somewhere along the line, Holo had taken his hand.

  “And he’s gotten attached to me, but worry not. He’s not likely to become your enemy.”

  Lawrence turned definitively away and exhaled a long, deep, white breath.

  Holo snickered.

  Lawrence faced ahead, exasperated, but he wasn’t sure if Holo realized…

  Did she realize that Lawrence was suspicious of her motivations for supporting Col?

  “Well, everything seems to be in order now. When I heard that ships were piling up, I expected more of a scene.”

  “… You were excited, then?” asked Lawrence, and Holo looked up with a complicated expression.

  She neither shook her head nor nodded.

  Instead, she spoke meditatively, looking off into the distance. “I did wish for a leisurely journey, but travels with you are strangely complicated – when you’ve time to think of foolish plans.”

  Lawrence counted off the days left in his travels with Holo and remembered what had happened in their journeys.

  It was true that given time, he did tend to think about things.

  In that case, perhaps he might as well get caught up in mad thoughts, if only for the amusement of it.

  But saying such things to Holo was going too far, Lawrence thought.