He stated his gratitude, took several sips, then he sniffed and looked at Holo’s companion.
“The young priest I’ve heard so much about from the Kingdom of Winfiel who’s causing the commotion is Mr. Col, then.”
Though he had given the details of their activities in a letter, it was rather hard to know what little Col was up to when Spice and Wolf was nestled so deep in the mountains. And little Col always governed himself with humility and modesty.
She exchanged glances with her companion. It seemed the journey was not as insignificant as his letter had made it sound.
“He’s translated the scripture into the vernacular, forced an indulgent archbishop to repent, and even had the stubborn folk from the rural areas, who are sometimes under suspicion of heresy, awaken to a new, righteous faith. Oh, I’ll be, when I first met him, he was still only this big!”
His thick hands motioned to a height just above his own head.
Little Col grew up quickly, and when he surpassed Holo in height, she recalled how she was proud of him but also a bit sad.
“Is…Col causing problems for you?”
Her companion’s grave expression did not seem like an act.
Little Col was certainly angry with the Church organization, which had the world under their thumb, and how rotten they had become; he had ventured out from the mountains in order to fix that. And those who came to this bathhouse were high-ranking members of that very Church.
“Oh no, of course not. If there are those who feel like he’s causing problems, it means they must also be ashamed of themselves.”
The old priest spoke decisively. The serviceman who was Holo’s companion was clearly relieved, but there was something within the old priest’s beard that was not so easily satisfied.
“I must say, however.”
As he uneasily rubbed his thick beard, the old priest glanced at his attendant, and he retrieved something odd from his wicker chest. It was a huge bundle of rather dusty parchment.
“It is certain that many people heeded their conscience and followed the teachings of God. Even I, who is still unknown, think so, even though my discipline is not perfect. That being said, that does not mean there are no problems.”
“O-oh.”
There was such a large pile of parchment on the dining table that they could hardly see one another’s faces.
Holo did not know why the old priest had come to the bathhouse so early, but it seems the reason was within the parchment.
“This is Nyohhira, hot spring village. Everything you see and hear here disappears like the mist when you descend from the mountain. You think so, too, Sir Lawrence. And so, I pray a favor from you.”
His long preliminary statement was a request for him to keep a secret.
At any rate, Holo’s companion glanced at the pile of parchment out of the corner of his eye, and he was perplexed.
“…Are they…permits?”
“Indeed. This includes our monastery, our daughter monastery, grandchild monastery, and their daughter monastery.”
Holo once heard that the point of monasteries building other monasteries was similar to a master craftsman ordering all his apprentices to build additional workshops. Both took a percentage of those profits.
Piled on top of the table was a vast treasure firmly in the hands of the old priest.
“These permits are…well, they certainly seem like too much for us if you look closely. God commands us to share what we have. There are also Mr. Col’s activities, and I’ve heard there is now the tendency to re-recognize God’s true teachings, and…”
He faltered, his conscience, vanity, and pride all struggling with one another.
“In other words, you wish to lift a weight from your shoulders?”
“Yes! That’s right! To lift a weight! Why, thank you, Master Lawrence!”
The former merchant that he was changed his manner of speech from a moral matter of right or wrong to one that suggested he simply wished to rid himself of the burden weighing him down.
“However, these were permits supplied by our monastery and our dependent institutions, originally for the salvation of our souls. We cannot just simply give them up, either…But then, I remembered that you were once a famous merchant, Master Lawrence…”
Holo could see that her companion was translating the old priest’s words in his head.
“So you wish for me to give this to someone who needs this the most?”
“Oh, God! Bless this wise bathhouse master!”
It was as though the Father wished to make the first move in selling his treasure before he was deemed greedy but nevertheless wanted the highest price possible for it. This annoyed Holo slightly, but her companion’s expression as he exchanged a firm handshake with the old priest suggested it was not as bad as she thought, so there must have been a way for them to benefit from it somehow. In any case, if they profited from this and she could have more food at dinner, then she had no argument.
She extended her hand and plucked up a piece of parchment and saw grandiloquent designs and rows of picturesque letters.
“Is this similar to what you once had?”
She showed it to Selim, who stood next to her. Selim and her family, in a land far south, obtained a certain permit for a mountain and came all the way to the north.
“It’s similar, but…ours was not as fancy as this.”
The young wolf whispered softly to Holo. That meant there were likely unimaginable things written down on this one piece of paper, and there was a whole mountain of more just like it.
Holo did not know that much about the human world, but the majority of its inhabitants were poor people who lived day to day.
No matter what it was, keeping everything for oneself was not good.
Her thoughts got that far, but then she corrected herself in her heart.
She counted everything else separately from the love her companion gave her. Her daughter, Myuri, should be satisfied with what she could wring out from little Col.
“And of course, I will look into the contents of these permits and see if they may be of any use.”
“Thank you so much.”
The old priest spoke solemnly, as though praying to God, and then suddenly continued.
“So may I go ahead into the baths?”
This was a village in the space between nirvana and the mortal world.
A place to brush off the dust of earthly life.
She should have expected it, but her companion had become totally engrossed in the permits.
When he had time during the day, he would make short trips back to the bedroom and roll open some parchment, and after supper, he would quickly return to the bedroom and do the same. She noticed he had been waking up rather early, too, and of course, he was rolling open parchment.
It did seem like rather profitable work, so she did not have much right to be angry. Moreover, she had no time to sulk.
“Can you read?”
With a straight face, her companion shoved some parchment toward her. It seemed he was rather enjoying himself, so she could not refuse him and the bags under his eyes. More than anything, she wanted him to finish his work and come back under the covers; the night was still cold during this season.
And so she read the contents of the parchment, sorting each permit sheet by region and purpose. There were many place-names she was unfamiliar with, but she found them rather easily, searching for them on the map in the bathhouse. That map was something that Myuri, who yearned to go on a big adventure around the world, had pestered every guest to draw out, wondering where they all had come from. It was something her rather easily bored daughter carried on for a long time, and disregarding its accuracy of the details, it had become a rather rich map once put together.
The permits were interesting in and of themselves.
Though she worked earnestly, there were of course difficulties.
“…Anyway, there are much too many.”
&nbs
p; As she recounted the work from the past few days, Holo placed her front paws together firmly on the ground, flattened her shoulders down, and assumed a posture where she bent her back forward. Then, she planted her back paws on the ground, lowered her behind, and stretched.
Finally, she shook out her body and felt like her blood finally started circulating again.
Sitting in a chair and doing nothing but reading brought about a different sort of weariness than working on mending.
After she had shifted into her wolf form outside the bathhouse, her mood greatly improved.
“That fool is having far too much fun.”
She sighed, and her breath still puffed white in the cold.
“I am sorry for having you help us.”
Selim, who was bending over, scratching her behind with her nose, immediately adjusted her posture and bowed her head deeply.
“Oh no…I am sorry I have not been much help…”
For once, her words were not a show of simple humility.
“I do not mind. You have enough work during the day. I only ask you help occasionally. Were you to be enthusiastic about this, I would earn more work as well.”
Selim smiled slightly and gazed up at the waning moon.
People did not walk about in the woods without a full moon, but in their wolf forms, Holo and Selim could rely on the scent of the trees and the earth to get far enough.
“But I’m learning a lot. I can truly feel how large the world is.”
“Hmm? I heard you all were once in a town so far south that my companion had never even heard of it.”
She should learn how big the world was with her own feet. When Holo spoke with that in mind, Selim smiled weakly.
“It was the sort of journey where we ate the grass on the side of the road, captured wild rabbits, and merely walked along while staring down at our feet. We couldn’t think of anything but putting our right foot out, then our left foot next. When we arrived at the northlands from the south, the only thing we noticed was that the color of the roads was slightly different.”
She may have been modest in some regards, but when Holo looked back on her own journey, there were similarities.
Though she had lived for so long, she felt as though she had been looking at the same things the entire time.
The growing wheat and the clouds floating across the sky.
That all suddenly changed only after she met her companion.
“I, too, spent all my years looking at a similar sight.”
Selim smiled weakly.
Then together, they ran out into the mountains. They were going to meet Selim’s family, but it was not for her sake. She had grown used to her work, and though she would still get discouraged when she made mistakes, Holo no longer needed to worry about her. And so when they occasionally left the bathhouse at night to go beyond the mountains, it was simply for work.
“The smell of sharpened metal unsettles me.”
There was a cloth sack wrapped around Selim’s neck, and she carried baggage on her back. Inside were iron tools that Selim’s brother and others needed for the construction of their lodgings.
They either must have been laboring quite hard or did not understand how to use them, but they were having a hard time because the ones they had were growing dull quickly, so Holo and the others sharpened the tools for them. Of course, they were not sharpening them at the bathhouse but commissioning a craftsman in the village for the work; in exchange, Selim’s family had been sharing a portion of the game they caught in the mountains.
Until recently, Myuri and little Col hunted for the bathhouse, and their yield comprised the majority of their meat supply. Once those two had gone, they either had to buy meat from a hunter in one of the nearby communities or from town at the bottom of the mountain, but Holo’s stingy companion insisted that they be frugal when it came to meat. In the end, there was a reason why this wisewolf could not do the hunting.
The animals of the forest held Holo in veneration, perhaps because she could not completely hide her wisewolf majesty. They occasionally depended on her to mediate territorial disputes and to care for animals that escaped, injured, from hunters.
It felt wrong to slaughter them. If she did go out to hunt, the deer would all line up, lie on their sides, and, with sad expressions, ask her to eat them.
On the other hand, Myuri and little Col faced the animals as humans with bows and traps. They both understood that it was a battle of wits and power between hunter and the hunted. Of course, when the animals of the forest came for a dip in the baths, they shared a tacit understanding with one another that it was a truce.
And so, their exchange with Selim’s family was a lifesaver.
“Oh, ’tis bear today.”
They always met with Selim’s family by the spring Holo was in the middle of making on the second mountain.
Today, lying there was a magnificently large bear with pitch-black fur.
“We wished to exist peacefully together, but…”
Selim’s brother and the rest of her family were waiting for them in their human forms, and he spoke with a pained expression.
They intruded on the mountain and were trying to attract humans to make money, so it was more or less inevitable that they would clash with the residents of the forest. It was no different for the animals that lived here. Even this large bear, before establishing his territory, most certainly took it by force from someone else.
But even though they were aware of all those details, it still pained them.
Though it annoyed Holo slightly, it also pleased her. That sort of sincerity would certainly serve them well in an inn for pilgrims.
“At the very least, please enjoy his meat and use everything, down to the bone. May we have the tools? We’ll handle the bear, as always.”
“Mm-hmm. Thank you.”
Holo glanced at Selim, and she had her family remove the baggage she carried on her back, then shook her head and body to fix the lie of her fur.
Watching from the corner of her eye as they each took up tools and set about flaying the bear, she put her feet into the ill-shaped spring, still in her wolf form.
The water vein really was quite far underground, because even after a bit of digging, there was still only a little water. Not only that, it was bubbling up onto plain, flat ground, so the piddling amount was spread out wastefully thin, its temperature much too cool.
There was a proper reason as to why Nyohhira thrived in the place that it did now.
It did seem like she would finally get everything out of the way, but in the end, it appeared unlikely the situation would take any favorable turns. With what she had, only the bottom of her stomach would get wet if she tried to lie down.
“It might spring up all at once if I dig somewhere.”
She walked along in the water, then suddenly mud swirled up and became white and cloudy. She dug at it with her claws, searching for the water hole, but she could not find anything.
“Do even your claws come up empty-handed, Lady Holo?”
The one who spoke was Selim, washing her knife and her hands, which were red up to her elbows, in the spring. They could also wash up when they met here.
The bear had been skinned in an instant and was now being divided into parts with a large hatchet.
Regardless of her skinny arms, Selim was apparently quite adept at skinning, likely because of how skillful her hands were.
“If the flow of water has always been weak, then digging it up will create nothing but a lukewarm puddle.”
Now, as Selim stood in the spring in her human form, the water only reached up to her ankles.
It might be faster to simply search for a different spring.
“Lady Holo, it’s all finished.”
She turned around at the voice, saw the bear pelt drying on a tree branch, and realized the meat was already wrapped in large, smooth leaves that grew in swamps. If they took the fur back to the bathhouse, then the townspeople woul
d grow suspicious as to who went hunting and when, so that was the only thing they left Selim’s family to take care of, and they would sell it in town when they went down the mountain. They were very close to what could be called Nyohhira’s business competitors, so they could not maintain their relationship publicly.
“Then put it in the sack. Should I carry it back in my mouth, it may disappear before we arrive.”
“Because it is quite greasy. Understood.”
As they smiled and began to pack it away, Holo spoke to them.
“Ah, be sure to take your own portion. Game is to be enjoyed by all.”
They were silent and ended up giving all the meat to Holo. It irritated her slightly, but their stiff formality was also rather adorable.
Selim had carried the baggage on the way here, and Holo carried it on the way home.
Holo lay on her stomach, and as Selim’s family adjusted the bag filled with meat on her back, she gazed at the pathetic puddle of water. She had looked forward to making a bath in secret, then telling her companion once she was finished, but it seemed she would have to start this project over from the beginning.
It was not that she was unsatisfied with the baths currently available at the house. Neither was she so desperate for one that she could visit freely in her wolf form.
Despite that, she realized how utterly disappointed she was as she stared at the puddle of water on the forest floor. She was also a bit surprised at how disheartened she felt.
“…Holo? Lady Holo?”
“Mm.”
She realized that Selim and the others were all looking at her. They must have called to her countless times.
“Apologies. I was thinking.”
“About the bath? If so, then we can search the mountains for you.”
What a fool I am, she thought to herself.
“There is no need. I simply wish to fool around with my claws and fangs once in a while. Digging holes and such.”
“Is that so?”
“Well then, we shall return home before it gets too late. You have work tomorrow as well, no?”
She stood, and the cloth bag was indeed tied firmly around her neck with rope. She could guess by the weight on her back that there was quite a large amount inside. Hanna would surely be glad, but when she considered how they would have to process the meat by drying and salting it, she thought it a bother.
Spring Log II Page 14
