Spring Log II Page 6

  “Yes, of you, how you are obsessed with treasure and how you try stuff as much as you can in that purse of yours.”

  “No, I’m thinking of someone who will pick out the best piece of jerky from a bag of rations and hide it for later.”

  “No, you fool.”

  “Oh ho. It seems there are things even the wisewolf doesn’t know.”

  “I surely know much more than you!”

  The two continued this back-and-forth as they knocked shoulders, exiting the shed together and walking back to the main house. Though they bickered, their hands were clasped together tightly.

  Wafting behind them as they walked was a sweet scent.

  It was not that of a flower, however, but something entirely different.

  Perhaps it was the fragrance of happiness.

  SWEET FANGS AND WOLF

  The snow was melting, the festivals celebrating the coming spring had ended, and a season of fresh green had arrived.

  There was still time before the guests seeking to escape the heat of summer showed themselves, while the noisiest and most frantic season of winter was still some ways away. The village had calmed some, as the buildings were being mended or rebuilt in preparation for the next season, and every bathhouse was quiet.

  The bathhouse Col worked at, Spice and Wolf, was no exception. There were no guests; the master, Lawrence, had gone to a village assembly, and his wife, Holo, had curiously tagged along for once. The more likely story was that it was a meeting only in name and was actually a drinking party with lots of good seasonal food. The woman in charge of Spice and Wolf’s kitchen, Hanna, had also gone out to gather mushrooms and mountain vegetables and such. And so, having worked throughout the morning, Col found himself bored before lunch.

  It was times like these he should have cracked open his theology texts to study God’s teachings, but there was time and, more importantly, lots of hot water. Before helping himself to the lunch that Hanna had left for him, he took a dip in the empty baths and sighed under the blue sky. It was such a comfortable and quiet time.

  Beside him sat the sweet mead that had recently become a regular part of his diet. With a twinge of regret for his laziness, he took a sip and leaned his head back toward the heavens, spreading before him as one beautiful blue sky.

  There was nothing else he could wish for, and he even felt like he was approaching the happiness God’s teachings spoke about. Closer than he ever could from opening his theology texts…

  “Ah…”

  He wanted it to last forever.

  He placed his work and his disciplined devotion to study on the side and indulged himself in a bout of laziness, when—

  “Broootheeer!”

  Col thought he could just make out a distant voice.

  For a moment, he thought he had dozed off and imagined it in a dream, but then he heard it again, more clearly.

  “Brotheeer!”

  It seemed that Myuri, who had gone to play in the river, had returned. The only daughter of the master of Spice and Wolf, Lawrence, and his wife, Holo, Myuri often called him “brother” in admiration. She was about twelve or thirteen and was about the right age if she were to be married off early, and when he thought about that, he grew a bit sad.

  That being said, lately, he was concerned in a completely opposite manner.

  “I’m in the bath!”

  He called to her, but before long, he could hear her feet slapping against the ground, finally followed by Myuri appearing in the baths.

  “There you are! Brother!!”

  When she looked at him, her face instantly lit up.

  Though her facial features and eye color were the same as her mother’s, the two smiled differently. Holo’s smile had a softness to it, like slowly being boiled in honey, but Myuri’s was exactly like the summer sun.

  It shone brightly and sometimes burned others.

  “Brother! Look, look! Look at this! Isn’t it cool?!”

  She shook the cage she held with both arms and jogged over to him. Her clothes were soaked because she had probably been so focused on playing in the river that she had fallen in several times.

  She was covered with countless fresh cuts, her energy and innocence unchanged since childhood, and her smile was filled with a charm that could not help but elicit a similar response from those who saw it. She had a great power to make others feel her youth and naïveté.

  But at a certain point, her smile became concerning.

  “Myuri, if you run like that—”

  —You’ll slip was how he planned to complete his thought, but he never had a chance.

  Myuri had been so fixated on running that when she tried to stop at the edge of the bath, her feet completely flew out from under her.

  “Huh?”

  Then, she, along with the cage she carried, plunged directly into the bath.

  “…”

  The spray covered Col’s head, and beyond his dripping wet bangs, he could see bubbles gathering on the surface of the water. Girls of twelve or thirteen were encouraged to learn embroidery and cooking, instructed not to show their teeth when they smiled, and taught how to shyly tilt their heads. But all these things were so far removed from Myuri’s daily life.

  He would be sad if Myuri, who he had taken care of as his own sister, were to be married off, but recently, he was starting to worry whether anyone would take her as a bride. He sighed and went to pull Myuri up, as she had yet to come up on her own, but then he realized—

  Something was moving in the water.

  “Pwah!”

  Myuri finally lifted her head above the water.

  “Myuri, what on earth have you—?”

  “Brother! Don’t just stand there!”

  She did not even look at him as she stared into the water and braced herself for something.

  Then slowly, she submerged herself completely into the water, and this time, her face and arms immediately returned to the surface.

  “Hey…Stay still!”

  She shouted at a fat, round lamprey eel dancing in her grip.

  “Ah, ah, it’s gonna get away, it’s gonna—Eek!”

  The lamprey slipped out of her hands, and Myuri, chasing after it in a strange stance, dove into the water again.

  It seemed that the wriggling in the water had been the prey Myuri caught in the river. A little farther away, a large trout energetically jumped in and out of the water.

  Col stood before Myuri and the fish splashing about in the bathwater, took a deep breath, then exhaled.

  “Myuri!”

  His calm and peaceful moment had vanished in an instant.

  When Col told this story, the person placing a skewered fish over the red-hot coals in the hearth chuckled. She had flaxen-colored hair and red eyes, and her face was the same as Myuri’s. Their physiques were even similar; she did not look much older than fourteen, and if she stayed silent she was nothing but a pretty little girl. However, her smile inspired an odd feeling in all who saw it. That was likely due to the grimness of living such a terribly long time.

  Myuri’s mother, Holo, was not human. On the wall, illuminated by the light of the hearth, was a shadow of her large triangular ears and her tail. She was the avatar of a wolf, called Holo the Wisewolf, who was once worshipped as a god and lived in wheat and would live on for hundreds of years.

  “It is not funny. We were lucky that there are no guests here during this season.”

  “What, with fish in the bath, it shall save us some time when we must collect snacks to go with our drink, will it not?”

  Holo’s response was one of amusement.

  The fish they managed to rescue from those that Myuri had thrown into the baths were left to live in a barrel filled with water while the rest had been boiled. It seemed like a waste to throw them out, but it also did not seem appropriate to offer such things to the other villagers, so they smoked some of them while the rest were grilled and salted for their meal.

  The reason they di
d not think to use the fish in a hot pot was because it seemed sad to boil the poor things even more.

  “And so where has that fool gone?” Holo asked as she sprinkled more salt onto the fish before licking her fingers.

  “Mr. Lawrence scolded her, so now she should be cutting firewood.”

  Then Holo looked up from the fish, which made a juicy sizzling sound as it cooked.

  “Hmm?”

  Then, the large, triangular ears on the top of her head twitched. Though she was hundreds of years older than him and the wife of the bathhouse master, Col thought her ears and fuzzy tail were, to speak frankly, very cute. When he was younger, she had allowed him to cling to that tail countless times.

  “Is something the matter?”

  “Mm. ’Tis much too quiet for woodcutting.”

  There were no guests at the bathhouse, and it was silent all around. It was almost quiet enough to hear a mouse yawn.

  If Holo, whose vaunted ears were literally as sharp as a wolf’s, said so, then there was significance to this silence.

  “Mr. Lawrence should be watching over her…”

  “My dear husband had plenty of drink. He may very well be sleeping.”

  Holo, too, had had plenty to drink.

  “I’ll go check.”

  Col stood, and Holo called after him.

  “Mm. Ah, while you’re gone, please place the raisins in water.”

  “Raisins?”

  He turned around, and Holo’s eyes glittered as she wagged her tail.

  “’Tis a gift from someone who had traveled south. They were given to us at the meeting. They are quite sweet eaten as they are, but I was told after steeping them overnight in water, using that water in bread dough will make for a very sweet and delicious bread.”

  Holo was many times more childish than Myuri when it came to food.

  But raisin bread did sound good.

  “Little Col, you are fond of sweets, are you not? ’Tis well to sample some before putting them in the water. I grant you permission in my name.”

  She called him the way she used to back when he first met Holo and Lawrence as a young boy, and he felt a little embarrassed.

  But he still preferred sweet mead to bitter ale even though he had grown up, so he could not protest her treating him like a child.

  “Thank you. I’ll try some.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Holo sent him off, her interest already returned to the frying fish. A small smile appeared on Col’s face, and then he headed toward the back of the building.

  It was still quiet as he walked along the dark corridor, and he could not hear a single noise. If Myuri were really splitting logs, then he should have been able to hear chopping noises. The firewood shed was next to the kitchen, so first he peeked into the cooking area.

  But he could not spot the raisins that Holo mentioned. Perhaps Lawrence used them as bait to lure Myuri into chopping wood. Thinking this, Col went outside and peered inside the firewood shed. Lit by the stars and the moon, leaning against a mountain of logs was the master, Lawrence, fast asleep.

  “…Mr. Lawrence.”

  Col murmured, irritated, and Lawrence’s breath paused for a moment with a “Ngh,” but his quiet snoozing started soon again. He still looked young, similar to how he was when they first met, but he always said self-deprecatingly that he could not hold his liquor as well as he used to now that he had grown older, and it seemed that was no exaggeration.

  And of course, Myuri was nowhere to be seen. There was a blanket over Lawrence’s body, and Col could guess that was Myuri’s work. He wished to think that, of course, it was a daughter’s consideration for her father, but it was more likely a scheme to make sure her father did not get too angry that she skipped out on chopping wood.

  Perhaps it was his weakness as a father, but Lawrence had never lost his temper with Myuri even once.

  “But where has she gone?”

  Holo and Lawrence returned home before dinner, and once her father learned of what happened, he immediately ordered Myuri to cut wood. She was probably hungry. Not only had she inherited Holo’s face and red eyes but also her appetite. It was unthinkable for her to go to bed without eating.

  As he considered this, he could hear the sounds of water splashing over Lawrence’s soft snoring.

  “She’s in the baths?”

  A little ways away from the firewood shed, Col emerged onto the stone path extending out from the bathhouse.

  He followed it and arrived at the wide-open outdoor baths, but at the entrance, he already found traces of Myuri’s presence.

  “…How many times do I have to tell her not to throw her clothes everywhere before she’ll stop…?”

  He grumbled with a sigh and began collecting her scattered clothes. He folded each piece carefully, and as he at last bundled the pile with her waist wrap, he could hear her voice coming from the other side of the partition.

  “Come on, you can do it!”

  Whatever she was doing, it sounded like she having quite a time. It could be that children from other bathhouses had come over to play. They were all infamously naughty children, but Myuri stood out even among them, and she was naturally their boss.

  Wondering what they were doing at this hour, he rounded the partition, and his jaw dropped.

  He let the nicely folded pile of Myuri’s clothes fall to the floor at the absurd sight.

  “Ah-ha-ha-ha! Mm?”

  A stark-naked Myuri noticed Col.

  The light of the stars and the moon was much brighter than any candle, clearly illuminating the scene. Myuri, her hair of ash with silver flecks inherited from her father, wagged her fluffy tail of the same color as she stood proudly on the rocks surrounding the edge of the bath without a single stitch on.

  This time, Col set aside his disappointment in her lack of shame as a young maiden. He even forgave how the wolf ears and tail she inherited from Holo, which she usually kept hidden, were out in the open.

  He could even ignore the hemp sack she gripped in her right hand, and the mountain of what seemed to be raisins, freshly hoisted from the bag, in her left hand.

  No, the true problem lay where Myuri was looking.

  On the small island in the middle of the bath, two bears stood face-to-face.

  “Myuri…Wh-what are…?”

  “Ah-ha-ha, Brother! Just in time!”

  Myuri spun around, nimbly skipped over to him, and threw herself into his chest without any reserve or consideration.

  Though she was thin and delicate and he stood one head above her, she was tomboyish and had the intensity of youth about her.

  Col managed to catch her, but before he could launch into a scolding, she lifted her head.

  “See, see, Brother? Look at that!”

  Beaming and using the hand with which she gripped the sack, she pointed to the center island.

  “Wh-what are you doing? And are those the raisins that were a gift for Miss Holo and Mr. Lawrence?”

  When he pointed that out, Myuri looked at her own hands in surprise, but she immediately smiled.

  “Eh-heh-heh. Do you want some?”

  “Myuri!”

  He promptly admonished her, and she tensed her shoulders, flattened her ears, and closed her eyes.

  However, she did not let go of the raisins, and even when he reached out to take them back, she spun around to evade him.

  “Come on, Brother, stop being so loud.”

  He felt a headache coming on as she complained. He was starting to lose track of what he should be angry about, but for now, he was certain that his main concern was the bears, glaring at each other in the center island.

  “No, tell me what that is.”

  Nyohhira was a place nestled deep in the mountains, and one could come across wild animals even within the village. If anything, the bathhouses beyond the center of the village were intruding on the territory of those who dwelled in the surrounding forests. Of these, wolves and bears were the most f
eared. At a normal bathhouse, this would have caused a commotion that would draw the attention of the entire village.

  “That? They said they wanted to have some raisins, so I said that whoever wins the fight can have some.”

  “…A fight?”

  “Yeah. No biting or scratching. I don’t want them getting hurt. The one that falls into the water first loses.”

  Myuri, an avatar of a wolf like her mother, seemed to be able to communicate with the forest animals. It was almost like a fairy tale. But if it was, then Myuri infused a limitless innocence into the story, almost to the point of cruelty.

  “N-no, if you make those two bears fight…”

  Lawrence had insisted they install a center island in the baths, and he worked incredibly hard to put the stones together so that the musicians would have a place to perform elegantly. It was a jewel of his sweat and toil, and of course, he only ever imagined that humans would be standing on it. As the bears stared intently at each other, circling while watching for any stray moves, the edges of the island were already falling apart. Once the fight began in earnest, Col could already imagine how the island would end up.

  But even if he tried to stop the bears, he did not think that they would understand him.

  Would it be a better idea to get Holo’s help?

  As he was considering this, the naked Myuri thrust the raisins up high.

  “Hey, if you wish to have these, you shall show me your strength!”

  She made her declaration, perhaps imitating how her mother spoke.

  And the bears, with their appetites and pride on the line, menacingly bared their fangs at each other.

  Please stop.

  Before Col could say it, Myuri carried on.

  “Ready…Fight!”

  With an earth-rumbling growl, the bears began to fight. Their frightening strength raised waves in the bath, and the center island trembled, as though in fear.

  Every time a stone fell into the water, there was a loud plop, plop.

  As Col helplessly watched the bears, now standing on two legs while pushing and jostling each other, he noticed Myuri had come to stand next to him.

  “Hey, Brother?”

  At some point, he had begun to feel a bit of fear whenever he heard “Brother.”