Spring Log II

by Isuna Hasekura

  “Apparently almond milk, rose water, and sugar are all necessities for noble banquets. And especially, when they mix them all together, it makes a thick and sweet soup that smells of flowers. Then you boil that with rice and drink it with raspberry cider after the meal. Or you can add ginger to make it refreshing and then boil with quail or duck. Those weakened by illness get better almost immediately after drinking this, I’ve heard.”

  Holo had completely forgotten to blink, and she gulped.

  Though they had already taken their meal while they were brainstorming in the dining room, it seemed she could still eat more. While he found himself exasperated, he also thought it was funny to see this silly side of Holo, strung along by her appetite, and he continued.

  “What’s even more amazing is the candy from the countries with deep-blue seas, where more than half the year could be counted as summer.”

  Holo grasped the clothes around his waist, her tail whipping back and forth.

  “Even in hot countries, where they harvest dates, there are amazingly tall mountains that have ice hidden on their peaks all year round. In the boiling heat, the nobles send their servants up the mountainsides and have them cut out some ice. Then, they shave it with blades to make fluffy snow, mix it with sugar, then finally cover it in rose water, the skin of a tart fruit they call lemon boiled with honey, and honey itself.”

  He piled snow into an imaginary bowl and pretended to pour honey over it, and Holo’s eyes followed his hands in fascination.

  “Then, when it’s all cold, they eat it with a silver spoon. It makes a crunch inside their mouths, and the cold, tart honey rolls down their throat…Ow, ouch…Holo!”

  She was gripping his thigh, her nails digging into his flesh.

  “…We must…go south after this…”

  “No. We are not.”

  He regretted getting so carried away.

  “It’s more expensive than honeyed peaches anyway, so we can’t afford it in the first place.”

  “Ohhh…”

  Holo suddenly seemed like she would cry and then bit into his leg.

  “Ouch, that hurts!”

  As she dug her fangs into his legs, as though wanting him to suffer with her, Holo suddenly raised her head.

  “Sheesh, my clothes might rip…”

  “But wait.”

  “What is it now?”

  “There is ice in the north, as well as honey. Lemon, well…we must use another sort of fruit instead, and one may find sugar in port towns, aye?”

  Holo had been learning unnecessary things on her merchant’s journey.

  “If there were, then who would pay that much for it?”

  Her tail smacked him on his back.

  “And rose water? It exists, yes? Is it also expensive?”

  “What?”

  Lawrence questioned her while Holo mumbled something to herself with a distant look. She must have been using all the knowledge she had gained thus far and was thinking about how she might be able to make ice candy.

  Then suddenly, when consciousness returned to her eyes, they wavered with angry flames and turned on Lawrence.

  “Which do you think is more valuable: the price of that rose water or whatnot or the warmth from my tail on cold nights, hmm?”

  Even the highest-quality wolf fur was inferior to deer fur, and deer fur was not as good as rabbit fur, and rabbit fur was no match for fox fur, but even fox fur was nothing compared to that of the ermine. Ermine fur could be traded as is for silver trenni coins, and if one wanted to buy rose water they would have to trade the same weight in gold. This fact would deeply hurt her pride as a wolf.

  However, Lawrence was not worried she would rip him to shreds because she had made some sort of misunderstanding.

  “All the wolf fur lined up in a market might not be able to buy a single drop of rose water.”

  Holo’s eyes widened. She was speechless.

  Before long her hands began to tremble, then her shoulders, then her ears, then her tail.

  As she lifted her upper lip, showing the two sharp canines beneath, Lawrence spoke.

  “But do you know what it is you put on your tail?”

  “…Huh?”

  The tail that she constantly combed and caressed day in and day out without rest was puffed out so large in just the slightest bit of anger, and the ends of the hairs glinted like thin bundles of glass.

  What was it that gave it that sheen and a sweet scent that tickled his nose?

  Holo gazed at her own tail, then turned toward Lawrence.

  “The warmth of your tail is much more expensive than any rose water. So, so much more.”

  Lawrence dropped his shoulders with a sigh.

  “You can’t find the oil you use at an oil merchant’s. It was from an apothecary. And it would be absolutely absurd to use it in cooking. But since you picked it out only by scent and bought it without looking at the price, and well, that simply shows how good your nose is. You managed to pick out the most expensive thing from the apothecary without a second thought.”

  Holo pestered him for expensive things whenever he made a foolish blunder of equal worth, so Lawrence could never protest with much strength. And so he would loosen the string around his coin purse as he was told, and Holo bought what she wanted without much hesitation. But this was typically something that the women of nobility used and not something a merchant would give as a present to his daughter.

  Plenty of which had been rubbed into the tail of one blank-eyed Holo.

  “That is collected from the clear top layer that appears when rose water is made, and then it’s diluted in different oil. Of course, there are tales of a tyrant of a large empire from long ago who gave it as gift to a princess, but it didn’t compare to undiluted, refined oil pressed from even a single rose petal. According to legend, after using as many flower petals that equaled the weight of ten fat horses, the tyrant finally managed to fill a small vial the size of the tip of his pinkie. But even the perfumed oil that you use would need a wagonful of…”

  Lawrence got that far in his story when his words caught.

  “Full of…”

  “…Hello?”

  Holo wore a nervous expression on her face and peered up at him from below.

  Then Lawrence suddenly whipped around.

  He looked not at Holo’s worried face but to her fluffy, wagging tail.

  “A wagonful?”

  “Fwa?!”

  Holo let out an odd cry and tried to stand up.

  Lawrence did not even notice as he gripped her tail and stared hard at it.

  “O-oh, my tail…You’re so violent—”

  Holo’s face had gone red, and in an attempt to escape, she wriggled her tail like a fish. But Lawrence’s grip was firm, and he would not let go. He was not even really examining her tail. He was too busy piecing together all the things he had seen in the village in intense concentration.

  They had fuel. They had tools. They had materials. Everything needed was already on hand. Not only that, it was the sort of thing where the result was guaranteed before they even started. On top of all this, the product was not the bulky kind.

  “This is it! This is the answer!”

  Lawrence finally raised his head from his sea of ideas and showed Holo a smile.

  Then, when he finally realized that her face was red and there were tears brimming at the edges of her eyes, it was much too late.

  “You…fool!”

  She puffed out her cheeks as far as she could.

  But even if she fell from the bed at that very moment, Lawrence could not stop smiling.

  “This could be something amazing!”

  He leaped up hand in hand with Holo, who was still sadly checking to see if he had left an odd mark on her tail from gripping it so tightly.

  She recoiled at his outburst, slightly frightened.

  “And it’ll be useful for the maintenance of your tail!”

  Holo, whose tail had just been treated
horribly, was about to say something, but Lawrence gave her hand a tug and she almost tumbled from the bed.

  “W-wait, wait, you!”

  “Come on—what are you doing? Let’s go!”

  He grasped the tallow candle on the candlestand on the wall and opened the door.

  “We can help these people and make a fortune, too!”

  Holo sighed in irritation, but she did not shake off Lawrence’s hand.

  Here we go again crossed her face for a moment, but a small smile of amusement appeared afterward.

  The flowers, full of oil that could catch fire by just the light of the summer sun, as well as possessing an effusive aroma, bloomed endlessly before them.

  In the very center of that flower field, they prepared a copper distilling pot with a narrowed opening in the shape of a flattened jar, clay, and the glass vials that Amalie’s father had so passionately collected.

  Once the fuel was lit, they could gather as much as they needed from the field afterward.

  With everything they had readied, they would be able to turn the purple flower field that only brought disaster into a product that could be traded for gold.

  “Something like this?”

  The landlady Amalie had her sleeves rolled up and was stuffing clay into the mouth of the distilling pot. It was filled to the brim with flower petals and water she had drawn from the river.

  “And then, into this glass bottle…”

  Skillfully combining it with the clay, Lawrence attached the thin mouth of the glass bottle diagonally. In reality, they would ask a specialist glassmaker to create a pipe or prepare a copper tube, but this was just a makeshift version.

  They first had to be certain if it was possible.

  “And now I will light it.”

  The one that spoke uneasily was the representative of the villagers, the village head. The villagers all looked very unsettled, wondering what on earth they would do with boiled flowers in a distilling pot, as they watched from a distance.

  They should have all the tools and procedures they needed.

  Lawrence watched as he lit the fire, the stems and leaves plucked from the flowers also catching, and the smoke rose into the air.

  “And…so?”

  Amalie, who stood beside him, asked as though giving a prayer.

  When he told her his idea the night before, she had been just as excited—if not even more so—than he was and nearly went straight into the field with sickle in hand, but Yergin managed somehow to hold her back. It seemed, however, that she had not been able to get any sleep due to her excitement, and the circles under her eyes were as dark as ash.

  Yergin lamented that she should have maintained her dignity as a landlord, but despite how tired she looked, she behaved quite lively.

  Though she looked meek, perhaps that did not mean she preferred being absorbed in meditation.

  “Once it starts boiling, the steam will seep into the glass bottle. Then, we chill it with water.”

  The villagers, who were neglecting their farmwork to answer the call to gather here, were all holding wooden buckets and standing at attention, however reluctantly.

  “It won’t be long now…Look.”

  The inside of the bottle clouded. Lawrence signaled to the villagers, and they all shuffled their feet while retrieving water and began pouring it onto the bottle.

  “This is how the steam will cool and become water.”

  The sound of bubbling, boiling water came from inside the distilling pot, and steam silently steeped into the glass bottle. Though it was spring, the mountains upstream were still in a snowy season, so the waters from the river were cold. Whenever they poured water onto the glass, it cooled, and they could see the inside.

  “There is more and more water…”

  Amalie raised her voice in surprise.

  “Is that…oil…on the water surface?”

  “It looks like it’s a success.”

  Gathering near the mouth of the leaning glass bottle was a film of oil.

  It already smelled strongly of flowers around them, and under the hood that covered her eyes, Holo pressed her hand against her mouth.

  After watching them repeat the same activity for a while, Lawrence reached out to remove the glass bottle.

  But Yergin interrupted him.

  “It will be my job to endlessly carry on this work now.”

  Or perhaps it was his way of making sure a guest did not get burned.

  Lawrence smiled and gave his spot to Yergin.

  His thick palms gently grasped the glass bottle and released it from the clay, making sure the contents did not spill.

  “Whoa.”

  “What a smell!”

  The scent that wafted from it was so tremendous that the surrounding villagers unwittingly cried out.

  And when held up to the sun, there was a clear divide between water and oil in the bottle.

  Yergin pointed the opening of the bottle toward his mistress, Amalie.

  Then she dipped her finger into the oil slightly and wiped it onto the cloth she had prepared.

  “…Incredible.”

  That was all she could manage, shocked as she was.

  “It will take a lot of flowers to make perfumed oil, but that’s not a problem here. And an apothecary will dilute such a strong perfume with oil before quickly selling it off. A traveling merchant like myself only needs a bit of the original oil in a small vial. It would be fine in the rain and wouldn’t put too much pressure on my wagon.”

  He did not know how much they would be able to sell, but at least they would have a lot, and it smelled wonderful.

  It seemed Lawrence could safely expect the villagers to cut more than enough flowers.

  “The only problem is…”

  When Lawrence spoke up again, Amalie, who had been engrossed in sniffing the oil she rubbed on the cloth, as well as Yergin, Holo, and the village head, looked at him.

  “…once you finish working on this, whatever you eat that night will smell sweet.”

  Everyone laughed, and Yergin even clapped.

  “This wise traveler has shared splendid wisdom with us. Now, we must overcome this challenge that God has given us and make this field of flowers our boon!”

  There was a veritable mountain of flowers to be cut, and then the villagers had to pluck the stems before drying them, all so they would burn better.

  Not only that, they had to carry on with their normal farmwork, and once the season changed, the flowers would fall.

  There was no time to stand around.

  The place suddenly burst into a hive of activity, and Lawrence, in a very traveler-like manner, took one, then two quiet steps away.

  Then a hand landed on his shoulder with a thud.

  “Oh.”

  He turned around, and it was Holo.

  “How about it? Aren’t you impressed with my cunning?”

  She would allow him to puff out his chest in pride a little.

  When he spoke, and as soon as she showed him an exasperated smile under the hood she had pulled down to her nose, she twisted her body and drove her fist straight into his stomach.

  “Guh?!”

  “’Tis the grudge for my tail, you fool.”

  “Augh…”

  It did not hurt that much, but his body buckled in surprise.

  Then Holo peered at Lawrence’s face when it grew closer, and there was quite a scary smile on her face that he could see even with the intervening cloth, and then she spoke.

  “I shall never, ever forget that you mussed up my tail.”

  “N-no, wait—”

  “And so…”

  Holo drew closer.

  “…from now on, you must maintain my tail as finely as you possibly can. You have now earned the goodwill of this land’s ruler and stand to make quite the fortune, aye?”

  “Wha—? No, we don’t even know if it’ll sell…”

  “Oh, do you not wish to continue sleeping in warmth at night?”r />
  Her reddish-amber eyes glinted like boiled fruit.

  Though he had come here for the tantalizing promise of making a quick profit, it did not seem like his wallet would be getting any fatter in the end.

  “…Okay.”

  He replied obediently, and Holo grinned like an innocent girl.

  Then, she spoke.

  “I must clean out your wallet regularly, after all.”

  “…”

  He looked at her, and she happily clung to his arm.

  The villagers were busily working while Yergin and Amalie were in the middle of a heated conversation.

  They suddenly noticed the two of them and came over with attractive, beaming smiles.

  “Mr. Lawrence, there is no doubt that you are a gift from God!”

  When she said that, Lawrence responded with a troubled smile, lightly raising his hand.

  His other arm was in the grip of a greedy wolf, making sure he would not be taken away.

  “I’m nothing of the sort. If anything, I’m more like a sacrifice for someone who was once called a god…,” he murmured quietly to himself.

  “’Tis the pleasure of the merchant-sort to help others.”

  Holo’s tail wagged underneath her robe as she made the remark.

  Lawrence gazed up at the beautiful blue sky. Winter had ended, and it was nearly spring.

  That was the story of a field of flowers that filled his entire body with sweetness whenever the wind blew.

  Standing before the dusty shed, Lawrence finally awoke from the memories that wafted from the small vial.

  It seemed that its potency had not faded over the years.

  “Now I remember. Myuri wasn’t at all interested in this little vial.”

  “While it may smell nice, and while it is sweet, it cannot be eaten, after all.”

  Myuri was too much of a child to be content with simply enjoying the scent of flowers.

  “That fool was much more interested in hiding the hand mill. ’Tis why it may be hiding in a place that does not occur to us.”

  Their only daughter, Myuri, loved pranks more than anything and was obsessed with treasure hunting as well as adventure stories.

  “That reminds me of a certain someone…”