Spring Log

by Isuna Hasekura

  It was said that a bathhouse would be considered seasoned when soot made the joinery in the wood invisible.

  Not fighting his heavy eyelids, he murmured to himself, “From now on, from now on…”

  “You shan’t sleep yet.”

  Just as his consciousness was about to blink out, he could feel someone tugging his head up and something shoved into his mouth.

  “You must drink some water.”

  Holo looked down at him, a serious expression on her face. She’s worried about me, he thought and smiled in happiness.

  “Don’t laugh, you drunk. Drink!”

  She scolded him, and he swallowed the cool water. It must have been snow melted in the hot baths. It was trouble to draw water from the river every day, so most bathhouses used snow this way.

  When he first drank it, after tamping snow into a jug and boiling it into barely potable water, it tasted too much like sulfur, as though the steam had dissolved in it. But now, he thought of it as the unique taste of Nyohhira’s water.

  “Honestly, ’tis much too early for you to smell like such delicious liquor…Lingonberries, currants…Mm, oh, is that blackberry?”

  Holo sniffed him, as though discerning which smell was which, and complained bitterly.

  “It was…good. He’s particular about…the water, right?” Lawrence said, laughing, and Holo smacked him on the forehead. Then Hanna soon covered him in a blanket and took the time to place burning charcoal in the hearth and added a bit of wood.

  “You fool. You owe me, aye?”

  Holo admonished him and secured her own future right to get brazenly drunk during the daytime.

  Lawrence smiled and closed his eyes and heard a sigh.

  Suddenly, she picked up his head and something was placed between that and the floor.

  “…?”

  He opened one eye to find that a cloth had been placed on his face.

  “Wha—? What is it?”

  “Mm?”

  Removing the cloth, he noticed Holo’s face decorated with a bit of a mischievous smile.

  It seemed she received the rest of the mending from Hanna.

  “’Tis a bother that only I am working.”

  She laid her drunken husband’s head in her lap.

  This would be considered the act of a wonderful wife if that was all, but it was Holo’s style to place the mending cloth atop her husband’s face.

  “If you find it unpleasant, I shan’t mind if you move, you know.”

  If he did move, there was no doubt that she would not speak a word to him for at least three days.

  Lawrence sighed, giving up, and closed his eyes.

  Holo secretly smiled, but he could feel it through her legs.

  She ran her fingers through his hair, and as she did that, he fell asleep.

  When he suddenly came to, the view of a ceiling that was not his bedroom’s greeted him. The guilt of taking such a long nap and irresistible comfort came together into a yawn. He must have felt incredibly tired because he had dreamed that Holo was throwing acorns at him. They hit his head with soft thunks.

  When he thought that it was oddly warm in the blanket, he noticed Holo was with him. She breathed softly, going “fuu fuu” in her sleep, comfortably. Thinking she should at least take off her head covering while she slept, he reached out to remove it but stopped.

  He could hear the unmistakable sound of water dripping.

  He thought for a moment there was a leak, but that was not it. The sound told him to remember something more serious, more important. Right. What Holo was throwing at him in his dream were not acorns…

  That was it.

  He shot up and looked toward the entrance to the bathhouse.

  “…”

  There stood the strange guest, completely drenched from the snow.

  “I—I didn’t realize!”

  His dream about acorns hitting his head had actually been footsteps sounding against the floor.

  He could not believe he had shown the man such a disgraceful sight, the master of the bathhouse himself leisurely taking a nap. He hastened to right himself, but then he remembered Holo, who clung to him. He tried to hide her, pulling the blanket over her, as though it would somehow trick the man at this point.

  The old man stared at him.

  Lawrence could do nothing but show him a strained smile.

  “…Mm…Hey…,” came a muffled voice from inside the blanket.

  Lawrence ignored his wife, pulling her off before lifting her and wrapping the blanket around her. “Huh? What?!” Holo wriggled inside, but he pretended not to hear.

  “Please wait there a moment! I will bring you something to dry off with and prepare the fire shortly!” he said to the old man, who stood silently in the doorway, and rushed off, carrying Holo to the second floor. He was painfully aware of the old man’s stare following them.

  How embarrassing!

  Though the old man likely had not seen Holo’s ears and tail, it still cast a shadow on their service quality.

  Dropping the Holo bundle onto the bed, Lawrence hurried back down to the first floor, ignoring his wife’s censure.

  Having fed both the hearth and the stove with plenty of wood, the guest’s wet items were drying. There was no such thing as being too thorough with a single guest, and one that paid in gold at that.

  However, no matter how many times Lawrence spoke to the old man—“Why don’t you use the baths to warm up?” or “Would you like something to eat before dinner?” or “Where did you go today?”—he was met with silence. He sometimes shook his head or nodded, so it was not as though he was completely ignoring the questions, but the mysterious man was still difficult to deal with.

  Lawrence felt indebted after showing his customer such a foolish scene and found himself on the defensive. But if the host paid the guest too much attention, it could backfire and make him even more uncomfortable. Lawrence told the old man to call him if he needed anything and let him be.

  But after his heated discussion with Cyrus, there was a lot Lawrence wanted to ask the curious visitor. Of course, for the man’s own sake as well, Lawrence wanted to help him leave with a smile.

  First, it was clear that since he had come back covered in snow, he had spent the entire time walking around the mountain. Lawrence could also tell that whatever the elder’s intentions, it was likely not going so well if he was searching so hard.

  What on earth is he looking for?

  It seemed that the more Lawrence thought about it, the more questions he ended up with, and he complained as much to Hanna in the kitchen. Ever since he unceremoniously bundled Holo off and abandoned her on the bed upstairs, she had not deigned to leave the bedroom out of anger, and because the odd guest was warming up by the hearth, Hanna had nowhere else to be.

  “But I agree with your wife. He is probably an herbalist.”

  Hanna spoke while she prepared dinner. She chopped and threw vegetables into the pot. She had been growing them throughout the winter, and they were an almost unnatural shade of dark green.

  “Is there a reason?”

  “I offered him some mulled wine earlier, but he was eating snow!”

  “Snow? Did he want cold water?”

  Lawrence might have been mistaken assuming their guest wanted something warm after being in the cold outside. He was probably thirsty after moving around a lot.

  “That’s not what it seemed like, I’m telling you.”

  She added jerky and pickled cabbage into the pot and then generously sprinkled salt onto it.

  “He ate it slowly, as if he was checking it. It means that something is definitely wrong.”

  Lawrence did not understand what Hanna was saying. He stared at her blankly, and she gave him a surprised look.

  “Oh, did you not know, sir?”

  “What?”

  “In the south, where they grow olives, you can sell snow as medicine. People say it works well for headaches, stomachaches, fevers, and toothache
s. Well, I think it’s only the nobles that buy it.”

  Lawrence shook his head. He never traveled that far south, not even when he was a merchant.

  “Even in the south, they gather snow from the tall mountains in the winter, you know. They pack trunks with it, and they cram those into the holds on their boats, like they’ve bundled up the mountain itself. Then, they bury the snow in deep holes, and once the weather becomes hot, they dig everything back up and sell it. Since it’s possible to get the goods without paying, people say you can earn quite the profit from it, but different places vary and all that, of course.”

  “Uh-huh.” Lawrence sighed in admiration. It was definitely a trade where a large company used a widely cast distribution network to do business. With their skill and expertise, they could turn even things that fell from the sky into gold. “So you think…he’s a southerner?”

  A southerner from so far south that he thought of snow as medicine and the land itself had no connection to the cold. A place that even he had never been to, one that he had only heard of in stories…

  Lawrence, coming to a conclusion, suddenly raised his voice.

  Hanna, who was peering into the oven, turned to face him with a questioning look.

  “Could it be…?”

  Lawrence suddenly turned on his heel but ended up kicking a colander full of fava beans.

  “Waah! Ahh!”

  He stepped onto the bellows as he tried collecting the scattered beans. He could hear Hanna laughing behind him.

  “You’re quite scatterbrained, sir.”

  He could only show his embarrassment by gesturing with his shoulders as he gave a half smile.

  “It’s all right. I’ll do the rest. I don’t know what you’ve thought up anyhow.”

  What she must have wanted to say was that she could not have him making a mess in her territory anymore.

  “Then, my apologies, I leave the rest to you…”

  Hanna, still laughing, shrugged her shoulders.

  Lawrence returned the colander to its place and left the kitchen. Then, he took out crude paper and a pot of ink from beneath the counter. He thought the contents might have frozen in the cold, but it seemed usable. He snatched a quill pen and headed to the hearth room.

  The odd guest sat staring at the fire and was, of course, eating snow. He ate slowly, chewing it well, as though letting it seep into his body. The old man, who had the countenance of a hermit, heard Lawrence’s footsteps and looked up.

  Lawrence entered with a simple “Excuse me” and sat at the other end of the hearth, pen in hand.

  Then, he wrote “hello” in every language he knew and showed the paper to the old man, who opened his eyes in surprise and looked at Lawrence.

  As Lawrence gestured to each greeting one at a time, the old man looked as though he had seen a dragon in broad daylight and pointed to one. What surprised Lawrence was that the writing the old man pointed to was a language used all throughout the world and probably even in heaven. It was liturgical script, the language of the Church—something that was unreadable without education.

  “Who…are you?”

  Lawrence asked, not thinking. The old man opened his mouth to respond but immediately closed it. Instead, he pointed to the pen and paper Lawrence held. He gave them to his guest, and the man nodded in thanks before beginning to write fluidly. He was not unfriendly, nor was he stubborn. He had simply been unable to speak.

  In addition, having come from so far south, he likely had not thought that a bathhouse owner from such a remote town in what was considered, up until recently, pagan land could read and write in liturgical script.

  However, anyone that stayed here a long time would know that there were many high-ranking clergy among the clientele. He should have been able to communicate with the bathhouse masters through them if there were any inconveniences.

  As Lawrence thought this odd, the old man showed him what he wrote.

  “This is…?” he asked with his eyes, and the old man nodded.

  The following was written there:

  “I have come here on a mission by the orders of a certain exalted personage. For this, I require special, good water that should be here in this village. However, both snow and pure water here do not seem special. I ask if you are familiar with this.”

  His writing was elegant and fluid.

  He remembered the term medicine man. Then he remembered what Hanna said—snow as medicine.

  The old man did not let the details of his goal slip easily since the one that likely required the medicine was this certain exalted personage. If someone who held an important position showed weakness, they would become a target. It was likely that this person was hiding the sickness from their peers. There were many guests from the south that stayed in Nyohhira for extended periods of time. If he had asked another guest who could understand liturgical script to mediate an exchange, it could very well be that the other guest in question was connected to someone influential that opposed his own master. He must have been hesitant to speak openly about searching for medicine.

  Coupled with the old man’s gloomy expression, this made sense to Lawrence.

  “I…”

  He began to respond, but he remembered that the old man did not entirely understand the regional language.

  He bowed lightly, taking back the pen and paper, and wrote:

  “I don’t know much about it, but I will ask someone who does.”

  After reading, the old man raised his head and again bowed deeply.

  But Lawrence could not help but ask:

  “Why did you decide to tell me of your objective?”

  Lawrence thought that it was likely he had given up finding his objective on his own. The old man’s expression was troubled, but he finally took the pen in hand. He wrote lightly:

  “You seem to be someone I can place my trust in.”

  Lawrence racked his brain, attempting to recall what the guest might have seen to come to such a conclusion. He decided it was probably more that the old man thought Lawrence was easy to control, rather than trustworthy.

  But of course, it was not a problem that this man had placed his confidence in Lawrence. Satisfied, he nodded, resisting the temptation to give the excuse that he was a slightly foolish bathhouse owner.

  When looking for something in the mountains, there were plenty of dependable people who could be called on.

  If Lawrence asked the most reliable of them, then he could immediately find the good water his elderly visitor searched for. He could learn everything immediately if it had to do with the mountains of Nyohhira.

  The problem was, Lawrence rolled up that so-called godlike presence earlier and abandoned her on the bed.

  If he went to her empty-handed, he would likely receive nothing but snide remarks. Putting on a fur coat, he first made his way to Cyrus’s bathhouse. Tucked in his arm he carried salted lamb ribs, something even Holo adored. It was in thanks for earlier that day, as well as a way to secure liquor that could placate Holo. And since Cyrus’s hobby was making alcohol, he might know the whereabouts of good water that could be used in medicine.

  It was late in the afternoon, and once the sun dipped behind the mountains, darkness quickly fell over the village. This was when Nyohhira became like a flame that refused to go out when softly placed in water. Usually, the evening was the busiest time of day with preparations for dinner parties, but there were no guests during this season.

  When Lawrence reached the bathhouse, Cyrus’s sons sat opposite each other at the long table. They looked to be learning how to use an abacus made of wooden balls and sticks.

  The moment Myuri’s childhood friend, Kalm, noticed Lawrence’s arrival, he instantly straightened his back and forced a tense smile. He probably had trouble deciding whether to smile amicably at the father of the girl he wanted to marry or to show a manly expression.

  Lawrence smiled soothingly, and it seemed some of Kalm’s tension dissipated.

  “Is
Cyrus around?”

  “Y-yes, my father is in the back with the firewood.”

  “Thanks,” Lawrence said and added, “Study hard.”

  “Yes!” Kalm responded in a strong voice and nudged his little brother, who just stared blankly at what was happening.

  Like his son had said, Cyrus was in the back, taking a break with ax in hand. Exertion rose as steam from his shirtless body.

  “Oh, how can I help you?”

  “This is thanks for earlier.”

  He handed over the wrapped package he held in his arm. Cyrus took it, and his eyes widened when he checked inside.

  “This is…I’ve gotten pretty good at business, too. Just a bit of liquor’s brought some wonderful meat.”

  “A token of my gratitude, and an advance for a question I have, as well as for a favor I need.”

  Cyrus laughed, shaking his shoulders, at how nonchalant Lawrence sounded.

  “Ask away. This is good meat; it’ll go well with plenty of drink.”

  He rewrapped it before leaving to store the gift in the kitchen connected with the firewood yard, then returned and took hold of the ax.

  “I hope you don’t mind if we do this while I split wood.”

  “Of course.”

  Cyrus nodded. He brought the ax up and, without straining, let it drop. With a satisfying noise, the wood cleaved in two.

  “I managed to get that old man to tell me what he was looking for.”

  Cyrus, placing the next piece of wood on the stump, directed only his eyes toward Lawrence.

  “He’s come far from the south, and the reason he was always so quiet was only because he didn’t understand the language here.”

  “So how did you talk to him?”

  “Liturgical script. I had to use it every once in a while when I worked as a merchant.”

  “…How much liquor would it take if I asked you to teach my sons?”

  If he really wanted them to learn, he could ask any of their clientele. It was Cyrus’s way of joking.

  “Ask me any time. And our guest said that he’s looking for good water.”