Wolf & Parchment, Volume 3

by Isuna Hasekura

  Myuri nodded, as though there was some truth to it, but when she looked up, she seemed cheerful.

  “If that’s all, then it’s easy.”

  When he imagined Myuri calling him by his name, however, it felt completely unnatural. Would she just call him Tote, by his first name with no honorific at all? It was much too ladylike for her to call him Mr. Tote, and it did not suit her. Master Tote was much too elegant, like the daughter of nobility. Or perhaps she would call him Col, like her mother and father did.

  He was fairly certain there was no chance she would call him Little Col, but Mr. Col sounded like the merchants or other guests who came and went from the bathhouse, which felt too distant considering how long they had known each other. Her calling him Sir Col made it seem like they were a knight and his lady from some storybook.

  No matter what he thought of, all the possibilities felt odd.

  What would Myuri end up calling him?

  He was so clueless that it almost made him curious. However, no matter how much time passed, she did not speak up.

  “…Is something the matter?”

  He posed the question to Myuri, whose face had not changed from the moment she had said, “That’s easy.” Suddenly, she looked up in surprise.

  “What? Huh? Umm, something else to call you by that’s not…that’s not Brother, right?”

  She wore a smile that tried to gloss over it but immediately stiffened up. Unusually, her eyes swam.

  “Oohhh…Eh? But…but this should be easy…”

  She must have been cycling through all the things she could call him, but perhaps none of them sat well with her.

  “…Do you understand what I mean now?”

  “Wait! Just wait!”

  She closed her eyes. Her lips were moving silently, and he could tell she was thinking as hard as she could.

  Watching her, he somehow felt relieved, but also a bit of a spiteful satisfaction. It was not so easy a thing, changing one’s perspective.

  “Ooohhh…But it should…Co—…T…!”

  What she was trying to do was call him by his name, but it was not going well. She gripped her head, hiding her red face with both arms, and squirmed.

  In the end, she gave him a bitter glare from between her arms, then jumped toward him.

  “Ooohh! Brother!!”

  Myuri clung to him, pressed her face against his chest, and yelled with all her might. It felt as though it shot straight through his heart. Her ears and tail, which had appeared in all the excitement, were wriggling about with snakelike vigor.

  He wrapped his arms around her with a slight smile and a sigh until she put her hands to his chest to push herself away.

  “Y-you’re not gonna trick me with this!”

  Col could almost see steam rising from the corners of her eyes, but she seemed to realize that her statement was rather silly. Her words lacked strength. He remembered once when he was young—before he was wise enough to be able to corner people with words—that he also threw tantrums such as this.

  Myuri must have found his composure disagreeable, seeing how she bit her bottom lip and groaned.

  Then she lowered her stance and rushed at him with all her strength.

  THUD!

  “?!”

  Col involuntarily held his breath. Assuming that what he heard was the sound of Myuri head-butting him, he placed a hand on his chest to check.

  But no, she was sitting before him, stone-still.

  She was staring at something behind him.

  Right when he turned around, wondering what was there, a shout came.

  “You demon!”

  The moment he heard that word, his body moved to shield Myuri before his mind understood what was going on. He immediately looked around for a place to hide. When he spotted a simple gazebo, he heard the yelling again.

  “Stop talking!”

  He could hear it coming from the other side of the cathedral doors.

  He wondered what the commotion might be about, but then the doors swung open, and he heard the thunderous voice again.

  “You can’t dupe me with those fake papers! Leave, you godless miser!”

  Then a person flew out from the doors, as though they were pushed out by the voice. She landed dramatically on her behind and toppled over backward, as though she had been forcefully ejected.

  “God will judge you!”

  As Col and Myuri stood dumbstruck, they could see the terrifying form of a priest from between the gaps in the door who, judging by his clothes, worked at this cathedral. Due to how dark it was inside, he practically looked like a demon himself. The priest, driven by anger, was about to say something else, but he suddenly noticed Col and Myuri.

  He held his tongue, growing calm upon seeing the presence of a third party. Frowning, he pulled the doors with all his might.

  The person on the ground sat up, moving to lean on the doors. She held parchment or something of the sort in her hand.

  “W-wait! These aren’t fake—”

  Not waiting for her to finish, the doors closed. They could hear the heavy ka-thunk of the crossbar lowering across the door. There was no clearer signal of rejection.

  Col suddenly came to his senses, having been struck silent by all the commotion.

  The person before the doors, hanging her head, did not seem to be a believer from town. He could tell by her easily recognizable traveling clothes and the conversation about papers that she must have come to take back something once loaned to the church, or something like that.

  Myuri had fallen silent. Col pulled the hood over her head and tapped her tail before turning around.

  “Are you all right?”

  Col’s question made the person sitting slumped before the doors jump in surprise. Much like how they had not noticed what was going on inside the cathedral, this person likely had not realized there were people outside, either.

  She hurriedly put the piece of parchment away in her breast pocket and turned around, and this time, it was Col’s turn to be surprised.

  The face under the hood was that of a young girl.

  “Ah, um, ah—”

  Her eyes immediately met with his, and she grabbed her crooked hood which was slipping off her head with both hands in an attempt to cover her face, perhaps because they had seen her in such an embarrassing moment. For someone to see a regular town girl be thrown out of the cathedral and cursed as a demon by a priest would not only disqualify her from getting married but would actually make it difficult for her to keep living in the town at all.

  Though it hardly seemed that there would be anything else that could cause her shame, Col of course knew something was going on.

  He held out his hand to calm her down.

  “Can you stand?”

  The girl’s face was still frozen stiff, but after she looked between him and his hand, she seemed to conclude that he was not an enemy. She inhaled a shaky breath before timidly reaching out.

  For her to willingly accept another person’s goodwill after being so frightened was proof of her sincere personality. Col smiled to reassure her, and he thought he noticed her expression relaxed a bit.

  But it was then that her shaking hand, perhaps from the fright of being pushed so forcefully, reached out to take his.

  “…”

  The girl’s eyes widened, and for the first time in his life, he witnessed the moment a person’s pupils shrunk.

  She was not looking at him, however, but farther behind him.

  He turned around, following her gaze, and there was only one other person there.

  For an instant, he thought she spotted Myuri’s ears and tail, but she had already concealed them. More importantly, Myuri was also staring wide-eyed.

  “Could you…be…?”

  When she murmured that, there was a tug on Col’s hand and he stumbled.

  “What, but, huh—”

  A sound of rustling interrupted him. When he looked at the girl, she had already fainted. I
t was so sudden that he had no idea what was happening.

  As he stood, baffled, a sudden strong gust blew from the cape below. Their clothes and hair flapped in the wind. The girl’s hood had slipped off when she collapsed, freeing her hair to dance about in the draft as well.

  “Wha—?”

  If that were all, then none of this would have been a big deal. Her particularly wavy, black hair might make those from superstitious areas suspect her of being a witch, which could have made her unwelcome in places such as that, but that was not the issue.

  There was clearly something rigid laying against her soft hair as it flitted in the wind.

  “Myuri…could she be…?”

  The girl collapsed before them had spiraled sheep horns on her head.

  Not only had the girl just quarreled with the priest but she also had horns. It was clear they could not rely on help from the cathedral.

  Col considered waiting until she woke up, but the wind at the top of the cape was cold. The situation would only get messier if the priest came outside to check on things and ran into them.

  In the end, he wound up carrying her on his back for the trip back to town.

  Myuri watched over the sheep girl anxiously but kept her distance from Col.

  She was dragging her feet, likely because she still could not call him anything but Brother, despite how much she wanted him to see her as a woman.

  And yet, he was relieved to learn that she still considered their relationship within the bounds of brother and sister, much like himself. Though he did not think that was enough to make her give up, Col did not mind. If she wanted to go about changing things little by little, then he would surely accommodate that.

  He could not know how things would turn out until they happened.

  At the very least, how dearly he held Myuri would not change. Filled with those feelings, he looked at her. When she noticed his gaze, she turned away in a huff.

  He smiled adoringly, then adjusted the girl on his back. Myuri was worried about her, too, as whenever she peeked at the girl’s twisting expression, she seemed uneasy.

  He managed to carry her with relative ease on the downward slope, though his knees were laughing at him by the time they made it all the way down, and the beggars sitting around at the bottom looked at him oddly.

  It was unlikely that his legs would be able to hold out for the whole journey to the Debau trading house, so they set forth for Yosef’s ship instead.

  When they managed to reach the pier the ship was docked at, there was a fire roaring inside a big pot. Black liquid boiled in a smaller pot inside it. Perhaps it was to keep the pier from burning. Telling by smell and color, Col knew it was the oil that came out when roasting coal. When rubbed on wood, it was waterproof and rotproof, so they often used it for building repairs in Nyohhira. When Myuri left Nyohhira, she had hidden in a barrel meant for transporting the substance, and he remembered how her typical sweet scent was replaced with a burnt odor for a little while.

  Yosef was dipping a bundle of hemp string into the pot.

  “Oh, Sir Col, what’s happened?”

  As he asked, he looked at the person on Col’s back and blinked.

  “I’m sorry, we need to look after this person, so I wondered if we might borrow your ship.”

  “I don’t mind. Hey! Somebody!”

  Yosef immediately called over a burly sailor, who took the girl from Col. Col had been just a few steps away from collapsing, but now he was in the clear.

  They accompanied the sailor as he carried the girl inside. They made sure her hood stayed on, especially with Myuri nearby.

  With a sigh, Yosef, who had been minding the goopy, black liquid as it boiled, handed the mixing stick off to someone else.

  “I’m so sorry we keep interrupting your work.”

  “Nonsense.”

  Yosef spoke while wiping his hands on his apron, but he wore a troubled expression.

  But Col understood it was not because they were bothering him as he worked when he continued to speak.

  “But what is this all about? This is the very person who came to the ship looking for you, Sir Col.”

  “What?”

  There were people who caught wind of his fame and wished to use him.

  Since that girl had been called a demon at the cathedral, perhaps it was a problem involving faith.

  “But…I don’t understand. When we went up to visit the cathedral, we saw her getting kicked out by a father. He was acting threateningly toward her, but I had not imagined he would be so violent.”

  “What?”

  Yosef’s face grew pale hearing about the violence at the cathedral.

  “I wanted to take her to the trading house, but…my legs can only endure so much.”

  Col spoke shamefully, but when Yosef looked at his knees, the man burst out laughing.

  “Yours is a different burden to bear. I’ll take care of worldly affairs.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Have you contacted Sir Sligh?”

  When Yosef asked, Col thought for a moment.

  “I want to hear what she has to say first.”

  The girl was not human. Bringing her to the trading house might cause problems.

  “Let me know right away if you need anything.”

  “Thank you.”

  Yosef nodded and saw them off with an anxious face before returning to stirring the pot.

  Col crossed the ramp and headed toward the stern of the ship as the sailors traveled about working on repairs. The captain’s room was toward the back, so if the girl was being kept anywhere, that would be the place.

  Sure enough, an errand boy with a tubful of water was holding the door open, and Myuri was dealing with him.

  When she noticed him, she shrunk, like a baby mouse hiding in a crack in the wall.

  She acted like this whenever her mischief had wrought terrible consequences back at the bathhouse in Nyohhira. He wondered what she had done this time, but he realized that it was simply because the open door was making her uncomfortable.

  “Is she awake?”

  Col handed a few copper pieces to the boy who had brought the water, then closed the door behind him as he raised the question.

  The windows were closed, but there was a candle burning in the glass lamp, so it was not too dark.

  Myuri’s expression looked uneasy in the candlelight, and she shook her head.

  “Is…she really a sheep?”

  Myuri nodded wordlessly, either because she was minding the sleeping girl or because of distress.

  “A sheep in the kingdom…could it be…?”

  As he searched his memory, he felt Myuri’s gaze on him. When he looked at her, she immediately looked away.

  With a bitter smile, he explained it to her.

  “Do you remember how I came here with your parents when I was a child? We met someone who was the avatar of a sheep then. I don’t know if it was true or not, but he was the sheep with golden wool that appears in the Kingdom of Winfiel’s founding myth. He went on to secretly create a habitat for his sheep companions in the kingdom.”

  The girl may have been one of them.

  There were very few nonhumans who lived in human society.

  But even those who did were often limited to ones who knew humans they could truly rely on and trust, or otherwise possessed remarkable talent. A pebble mixed into wheat ground by a stone mortar would surely be found one day and picked out. Stones were stones and wheat was wheat; both stones and wheat could not become the same flour.

  “But…if that is true, then I don’t quite understand how she’s dressed.”

  Myuri glanced at him, her expression apparently indicating that she thought her brother knew nothing about clothes. While he had little knowledge about fashion, he had learned enough from his journey far south when he was a child to know about different styles of clothes.

  “The embroidery on her sash is a southern style, plus look at her hood. It’s printe
d calico, which isn’t common around here.”

  The teenage girl listened intently to his discussion about clothing.

  While she did not seem comfortable enough to talk to him, her tail made it clear she wanted to hear more.

  “It’s made from a material called cotton. I’ve never actually seen it before, but…it’s a unique kind of cloth they bring from the hot, southern countries. From what I’ve heard, it’s a plant that bears fruits stuffed with woolen yarn instead of ears of wheat. In a book written by a wandering preacher I once read, he said it was a plant that bore sheep.”

  Myuri suddenly looked at him dubiously.

  “…I do not actually believe that sheep grow from it, but nonetheless, she is wearing something we cannot obtain in these parts. Moreover, she is in traveling clothes. She must have come from far away.”

  The girl must have needed him to talk with the priest.

  The sheep girl’s tightly shut eyes added to her pained expression, as though she was in the middle of a bad dream. What was it she wanted?

  It was almost like he hoped her objective was something he might be able to help with.

  “Ah—”

  He looked up when he heard Myuri mutter and saw that the sheep girl was grimacing, her eyes still closed. When she then went to roll over, she suddenly jumped up into a sitting position. Her round eyes were opened wide, signaling her disorientation.

  “Are you all right?”

  When Col spoke, the sheep girl gulped and looked at him. She instinctively placed her hand on her chest, either looking for a dagger or making sure the parchment she had at the cathedral was still there.

  For a few moments, it was silent. They could hear the lively voices of the harbor outside the room and the cries of seabirds. She must have known immediately that she was in a room on a ship and the ones facing her were the two she met at the cathedral. She should have noticed that her wallet and parchment were intact in her breast pocket, as well.

  The girl’s hand dropped from her chest, her guard relaxing. But once her eyes settled on Myuri, she tensed up all over again.

  A wolf and a sheep. For them to be in the same room would only create tension. Myuri huddled in the corner not because she felt uncomfortable around Col but because she was thinking about the girl.