Spice and Wolf, Vol. 6

by Isuna Hasekura

  At no particular signal, everyone raised their cups.

  Then suddenly, things developed.

  The woman Holo had been speaking with seemed indeed to be an actress, and she and her troupe jumped forth, as if proclaiming the event their stage.

  There was flute and drum, song and dance. Some cheerful people followed, skillfully avoiding spilling their wine as they danced.

  Their dance was not the smooth, careful footwork of the imperial palace, but a leaping, prancing, mad thing.

  The rest of the gathered people watched and laughed, raising their voices together or, like Ragusa, playing drinking games.

  No one was near Lawrence.

  A sad smile rose to his lips, but he stifled it when he sensed a presence in the darkness borne from the fire.

  There was only one person who would bother with a foolish traveling merchant like him.

  He looked, and it was Holo.

  “Whew. Talking after a long silence—it makes one thirsty,” she said, as though talking to herself. She then swiped the cask away from Lawrence and took a drink.

  This was no ale or thin wine.

  Holo shut her eyes and clamped her mouth closed.

  Then, after exhaling a great puff of breath, she sat down right on the spot.

  She seemed to have given up on ignoring him, Lawrence thought, so he sat next to her.

  “So, that actress…what were you talking ab—”

  He didn’t finish the sentence, because as soon as he started speaking, Holo looked bluntly away.

  What stunned him was not that she wouldn’t listen to him.

  It was that he was happy about it.

  “Ugh, ’tis a cold night,” said Holo, not replying to Lawrence in the slightest. She did not meet his eyes, but as she spoke, she drew near him, just as she would when they were in the driver’s box of the wagon.

  At first, Lawrence wondered if she was being stubborn, but then he realized that he was the stubborn one.

  He somehow got the feeling that if he apologized now, though it might be pathetic, she would forgive him.

  It was earlier that she had been angry at him for failing to understand something obvious.

  But now, it could be that since she had been able to make fun of and snicker at Lawrence, she would hear him out.

  He was tempted to simply say, “I don’t know.”

  Leaning against him there, she would probably look up, irritated at the noise.

  Then she would hurl some irritated invective at him.

  But she wouldn’t stand up, nor would she move away from him.

  It was as if she was saying that the closer she was, the better she could hear him.

  Lawrence did not doubt the idea. After all, doubting that would be tantamount to doubting everything that happened on his travels with her.

  A faint, chagrined smile appeared on his face.

  Holo seemed to notice this; her ears flicked beneath her hood. Her tail wagged in anticipation of the pathetic words she would soon hear.

  Lawrence spoke, as if to answer that anticipation.

  “Those traveling performers are excellent. That’s a lovely dance.”

  “Wha—?” Holo flinched away as though her tail had been stepped on, looking up at Lawrence.

  “Hmm?” he asked, but of course received no reply.

  There was nothing Holo hated more than being surprised by having her expectations defied.

  The quick switching of her tail made her anger very clear.

  It was clear, yet her amusement was also undeniable.

  “I-I may have caught cold. My nose is rather itchy.” The slight tremor in her voice might have been from the frustration at having been bested by Lawrence or from the effort of trying not to laugh.

  Holo took a drink of the liquor, as though to swallow the feeling down, then burped.

  Lawrence could tell that the ensuing silence came from each of them, groping for the next move, trying to best the other.

  The sun gave a last glimmer before sinking beneath the horizon, and after a single breath, the stars flickered into existence. People crowded around the bonfire, merchant and boatman alike trying to turn the bad luck of the river delay into something special.

  The journey of life was short, and one couldn’t waste a single day.

  The flute was blown, the drum beaten, and the misfortune of the sunken ship turned into a funny tune by a minstrel.

  There were alluring dancing girls with sashes aflutter as they danced, along with exhausted, clumsily dancing revelers, who seemed to constantly totter, on the verge of spilling the drinks they held.

  Lawrence had been focused on getting Holo to say what was on her mind, but now he felt like he understood what it was that had settled into her thoughts.

  Holo, who believed anything was better with drink, could hardly sit still in this environment. This was no time for her to be talking about her feelings with a hopelessly outclassed merchant.

  Holo looked up at Lawrence doubtfully.

  Since declaring that she would speak to him no more, perhaps she really planned to make good on that promise, but that said, he felt it would be a bad idea to stand up from this spot.

  Perhaps that was it.

  Lawrence ignored her gaze just as she’d ignored him, instead taking the wine cask from her hands. “With strong liquor, the cold won’t be so bad for a while.”

  At those words, Holo seemed to smile at their shared stubbornness, her expression softening as she lightly touched Lawrence’s hand, then stood.

  Lawrence wondered if she was going to go dance, but her clothing was a bit loose, and her ears and tail were peeking out, which was a bit worrisome.

  Holo’s eyes shone.

  No doubt her eyes had looked much like this during the festival they’d read about in Lenos.

  And it was understandable, too, that in an atmosphere of fun like this, she might carelessly let slip her tail, and thus would come another name—the wheaten tail.

  She might even become carried away and assume her wolf form, raising a great furor.

  She surely wouldn’t do something like that here and now, but based on the way she was checking her robe and sash, she planned to do some serious dancing.

  Looking at her, Lawrence couldn’t help voicing what came to mind. “You should just take your wolf form and pull that sunken ship right out—”

  It was not because Holo’s happy expression suddenly vanished that Lawrence stopped talking; nor was it because he remembered that she wouldn’t answer him.

  Holo assuming her wolf form and pulling the wreck out of the river. It wasn’t actually feasible, of course, but it was certainly within the realm of a forgivable joke.

  It wasn’t an awkward thing to say, really.

  It wasn’t that—it was that he really couldn’t imagine Holo assuming her wolf form for just anyone.

  As to why that was, the answer came to Lawrence immediately.

  And that answer led him to another conclusion with startling speed.

  Holo’s once expressionless face now looked down on Lawrence with an exasperated smile; by contrast, Lawrence felt his own face grow sober. The reason Holo had been angry—he finally understood it.

  “Honestly…,” said Holo, looking around briefly before coming down to him.

  Her arms wrapped around his neck as she sat lightly upon him.

  As a man, it was a pleasant sensation for Lawrence, but given that she was doing this, she must have been truly angry enough to want to ignore him.

  “One can flatter a pig right up a tree, but flattering a male just makes him lose himself. Didn’t I say as much?” Holo half whispered into Lawrence’s ear, their cheeks close enough to touch—but Lawrence knew full well her eyes were narrowed and sharp.

  And the fact that Holo had looked around before coming to him was not because she didn’t want anyone to see her like this. It was quite the opposite.

  At the end of his gaze, Lawrence saw Ragusa covering
Col’s eyes as the boy squirmed to get away, Ragusa laughing hugely.

  His boatmen friends were watching too, of course, grinning as the sight made a pleasant side dish to go with their liquor.

  It wasn’t so much embarrassing as it was simply awkward.

  “If our positions were reversed, you would surely have been just as angry. Am I wrong?”

  Her resentful tone made Lawrence fear she’d bite his ear clean off.

  But that was not what he was truly afraid of.

  Holo did not kill her prey quickly—she preferred to toy with it for a while before ending its life.

  “Hmph.” She unwrapped her arms from around his neck, sat up, then looked down at Lawrence and spoke, baring her fangs. “Will you now show me how sincere you are?”

  When she poked the tip of his nose with her finger, he did not resist.

  Holo grinned, then stood up and spun about like a whirl of wind.

  All that was left behind was the warmth of her body and her somehow sweet scent.

  Her smile did not remain in his memory.

  After all, as the one who held the coin purse, that was a very dangerous smile indeed.

  “Sincerity?” Lawrence muttered to himself, taking a drink of liquor.

  It had been when he was trying to get her to consider the copper coin puzzle with him.

  Holo was very clever, and her abilities to jibe at Lawrence, laugh at him, and make him laugh were excellent. Her mind was so sharp it could fairly be described as “mysterious”; it had saved him more than once.

  So he thought she would enjoy the challenge.

  But that hadn’t been the case.

  Ragusa had told Lawrence, “The river does indeed flow. But—why does it flow?”

  Those words had once seemed a complete riddle to Lawrence, but now he understood their true meaning.

  Boatmen rode upon the river’s currents as they plied their trade. And those currents never ceased. But the boatmen did not take that flow for granted. They were always grateful to the river, even tearful at the deep generosity of the river spirit.

  When Holo got angry, what Lawrence was guilty of was not trusting her enough. But taking her dependability as a given suggested that it was becoming less important, and he would eventually come to overlook it.

  Suppose one’s lover wrote him frequent love letters. If he asked her to write his reply for her, because she seemed to enjoy writing letters so much, he’d earn her wrath, and rightly so.

  In other words, Holo had wanted to tell Lawrence that just because she put her wisdom to work solving his problems did not mean that she loved solving problems.

  It was obvious if he thought about it.

  While it was rather doubtful that Holo would bring her wisdom to bear for Lawrence’s sake alone, at the very least, she would be angry with him if he didn’t think so.

  Lawrence fell back on the spot.

  He had just been educated by Holo.

  That was what made her smile so terrifying.

  “Sincerity enough to balance this out…?” Lawrence sat back up and took another drink. “I haven’t got it on hand!”

  He exhaled a liquor-reeking breath, then looked at Holo, who was dancing in front of the fire.

  As she waved her arms about in the happy dance, she didn’t so much as glance at Lawrence.

  He was already afraid of what she would make him buy her.

  Holo joined hands with the dancing girl she had been talking to earlier on the riverbank, and the two danced with perfect footwork, as though they had practiced ahead of time. The sounds of flute playing and applause rewarded them.

  As if conceding defeat to their display, the flaming pile of rags and wooden debris collapsed in on itself, blowing a shower of sparks into the air, like the sigh of a demon.

  Lawrence could see a faint smile on Holo’s feverish, serious face, and her dance had a somehow unsettling quality to it. Part of it was that she was simply that attractive, but she also seemed as though she were trying to forget something.

  Since long ago, festivals had been celebrated to mark the end of one year and the beginning of the next and to quiet the anger of gods and spirits. Lawrence wondered if Holo’s appearance was due to that feeling, but then as he was moving to take another drink, his hand froze.

  He had realized earlier the reality that most of the things Holo did, she did for him.

  Did that possibly apply to things outside of helping him think through puzzles and other such difficulties?

  “Surely not—”

  Holo danced with endless gaiety, seemingly unable to think about anything else—suddenly she seemed very small.

  If Lawrence’s guess was correct, her anger was over a foolish thing indeed.

  If he was so much slower than her that he couldn’t keep up, then it could also be said that she was running ahead on her own and meddling with things.

  He drank, and the harsh liquor burned his throat.

  Lawrence stood but not to join in the dancing circle.

  To put it in his own stubborn words, he stood to collect information for Holo.

  In Ragusa’s circle, Col had already collapsed and lay faceup.

  Lawrence walked toward them, giving a light wave, which Ragusa acknowledged with a lift of his cup.

  Holo was a fool.

  He wanted to prove it.

  “Ah-ha-ha-ha! The mountains of Roef?”

  “Ho, it’s a lovely place. I bring fine lumber out of it every year! Wood that came down this very river went to a kingdom in the far south, to produce a…urp…grand table for the palace. What say you to that, my young traveling merchant?” said the boatman, heartily pouring wine from his own wineskin into the cask Lawrence held.

  The cask wasn’t a barrel, so it was hardly possible to pour into it, and both the boatman holding the wineskin and Lawrence were rather unsteady of hand.

  More and more of the wine spilled out of the cask, falling like a waterfall to the ground.

  Lawrence was drunk enough that he didn’t care.

  “Well, in that case, you should write this on the side of the lumber: ‘Your damn taxes are too high!’” said Lawrence loudly, bringing the cask to his mouth to take a drink when the boatman slapped him carelessly on the back, causing the wine to miss his mouth and go falling to the ground.

  “Ah, yes! Right you are, m’boy.”

  Somewhere in the back of Lawrence’s mind, he realized half-ruefully, half-proudly that not even Holo had ever gotten this drunk.

  “So then, what of Roef?” Lawrence asked.

  “Roef? I’ve taken fine lumber from the place…,” began the boatman, repeating himself—but then he collapsed on the spot.

  “What a lightweight,” said one of his comrades, more disgusted than worried.

  Lawrence grinned and looked around at the faces of the other men. “So, will you talk to me now?”

  “Ha-ha-ha! I reckon we promised, so there’s nothing to be done about it now. We’ll let Zonal settle this one up,” said a heavy-drinking boatman, smiling as he poked the head of his fallen comrade.

  The boatman named Zonal was already passed out.

  “Truly, though, to think you’d be this strong from dealing with a girl like that—”

  “Aye, aye! Still, we must…we must keep our promises!”

  “Aye, ’tis sho…”

  “So you wanted to know of Roef?”

  The last one to speak was Ragusa, who was evidently able to hold his liquor—his face was barely red.

  The rest of them were, like Lawrence, a bit unsteady on their feet.

  Lawrence himself was not entirely confident in his ability to remain conscious.

  “Ah…yes, either that or a place called Yoitsu…”

  “I’ve not heard of this Yoitsu. But Roef’s hardly worth asking about—you just head back up this river. The Roef River joins up with it, and you just follow that all the way in.”

  I’m not asking about such trifling details, Lawrence th
ought to himself, but when he tried to remember what he was asking about, he couldn’t remember.

  He was drunk.

  But Roef was the first clue he needed to follow.

  “Can you not tell me something more…interesting?”

  “Interesting, eh?” Ragusa rubbed his beard and looked over to his fellow boatmen, but to a man they seemed to be nodding off, succumbing to the alcohol. “Ah, I have it,” he said, twisting his beard, then walking over to his fallen boatman comrade and shaking the man’s shoulder violently.

  “Hey you. Wake up! You said you took a strange job recently, didn’t you?”

  “Mnngh…uuh…can’t hold any more…”

  “Idiot! Hey! You brought it out of Lesko on the Roef headwaters, didn’t you?”

  The boatman named Zonal had been deliberately drinking with Lawrence, and he’d apparently been caught in an affair and had his head soundly cracked by his wife in revenge.

  Lawrence himself was not unworried about what might happen if he was to fool around with another girl and Holo discovered it.

  “Lesko? Ah, yes, ’tis a good town. Time after time, I brought copper out of the mountains there…It flowed out like water. Oh, and the liquor there’s first-rate. How c’n I put it…? They’ve got dozens of machines there that bring the strongest liquor out of the thinnest wine. Oh, my copper-skinned bride! The blessings of fire and water be upon your shining skin!” called out Zonal before falling motionless again, his eyes closed. It was by no means clear whether he was awake or asleep.

  Ragusa gave the man’s shoulder another rough shake, but Zonal was by now a jellyfish tossed upon the waves.

  “Worthless!”

  “‘Copper-skinned bride,’ he said…Did he mean a still?”

  “Mm? Oh, aye! You’re quite knowledgeable. I’ve carried them as cargo a few times. The liquor you’re drinking was probably distilled in a Lesko still.”

  Made from skillfully beaten sheets of copper, a still would certainly have an appealing red shine to it. And it was often said that those who shaped the curved copper pieces had the female form in mind when they did so, so Lawrence understood Zonal’s ramblings.

  “Mm, this is no good. He won’t awaken ’til morning.”

  “You said…something about a strange j-job?” Lawrence was quite drunk himself and was having difficulty speaking properly.