Spice & Wolf Page 6

  Besides actual trading, the most important task that faced a young merchant was exploring the many regions, becoming familiar with the locals and their goods, and making sure his face was remembered. To accomplish this, it was best to carry something well-preserved that could be sold at churches or inns and used as an excuse for conversation, like dried fruit or meat.

  Lawrence watched Zheren, feeling a certain nostalgia for the time before he’d acquired his wagon.

  “Are we not going with him?” Holo asked as Zheren’s form disappeared into the distance. Having checked to see that there was no one around to see her, she was grooming her tail fur.

  Possibly because she had to cover her ears with the cloak, she did not bother combing her fall of chestnut hair, merely tying it back with a length of hempen rope. Lawrence felt that she could at least comb it, but he had no comb to offer. He resolved to acquire a comb and hat when they arrived in Pazzio.

  “It rained all day yesterday, so he’ll make better time on foot than we can on the wagon. There’s no need for him to slow down on our account.”

  “True, merchants are always on about time.”

  “Time is money.”

  “Ho-ho! An interesting saying. Time is money, is it?”

  “As long as we have time, we can make money.”

  “’Tis true. Though it’s not how I think,” said Holo, casting a glance to her tail.

  Her magnificent tail was long enough to hang past the back of her knees. The abundant fur would probably fetch a good price if shorn and sold.

  “I imagine the farmers you watched over for so many centuries were mindful of time.”

  As soon as Lawrence said it, he realized he probably shouldn’t have. Holo glanced at him as if to say “I’ll let you have that one,” smiling impishly.

  “Hmph. At what have you been looking? The farmers care nary a whit for time. It’s the air they’re mindful of.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “They wake in the dawn air, work the farm in the morning air, pull the weeds in the afternoon air, twist rope in the rainy air. They worry over their crops in the windy air, watch them grow in the summer air, celebrate the harvest in the autumn air, and in the winter air they wait for spring. They think not of time—like me, they note only the air.”

  Lawrence couldn’t say that he understood all of what Holo said, but there were parts he followed. He nodded, impressed, which seemed to satisfy Holo; she puffed up her chest and sniffed proudly.

  The self-proclaimed Wisewolf evidently didn’t feel the slightest need for humility.

  Just then, a person who seemed to be another traveling merchant came across the road.

  Although Holo’s ears were hidden by the cloak, her tail was in plain view.

  The passerby stared at Holo’s tail, although he didn’t speak.

  In all likelihood he didn’t realize it was a tail. Lawrence imagined that if it were him, he’d wonder what kind of fur it was and how much it was worth.

  Still, when it came to keeping a straight face, that was a separate matter entirely.

  “You’re quick enough, but you lack experience.”

  Apparently having finished her grooming, Holo tucked her tail back underneath her skirt and spoke. The face underneath the cloak was that of a girl barely in her mid-teens, which showed occasional glimpses of someone much younger.

  Yet her words had the air of someone much older.

  “Still, one will grow wiser with age.”

  “How many hundreds of years do you think it will take?” Lawrence headed off her attempt to tease him.

  Surprised, she laughed loudly. “Ah-ha-ha-ha! You are rather quick, aren’t you?”

  “Perhaps you’re just old and slow.”

  “Heh-heh. Do you know why we wolves attack people in the mountains?”

  Lawrence was unable to keep up with Holo’s sudden segue, so he could only answer with a confused, “Er, no.”

  “It is because we wish to eat human brains and gain their knowledge.” Holo grinned, baring her fangs.

  Even if she was joking, Lawrence shivered unconsciously, his breath catching.

  A few seconds passed; he realized he’d lost.

  “You’re still a pup. Hardly a match for me.”

  Holo sighed. Lawrence gripped the reins tightly and stifled a frustrated expression.

  “Still, have you ever been attacked by wolves in the mountains?”

  It was a strange feeling being asked such a question by a girl with ears, fangs, and a tail. He was having a conversation with a wolf—the same wolf whose presence in the mountains he feared.

  “I have. Perhaps...eight times.”

  “They’re quite difficult to handle, are they not?”

  “They are. Wild dogs I can handle, but wolves are a problem.”

  “That’s because they want to eat lots of humans, to get their—”

  “I’m sorry, all right? So stop.”

  The third time Lawrence had been set upon by wolves, he was part of a caravan.

  Two of the men in the caravan had been unable to clear the mountains. Their cries echoed in Lawrence’s ears even now.

  His face was expressionless.

  “Oh ..”

  Apparently the perceptive Wisewolf had figured it out.

  “I am sorry,” said a contrite Holo, slumping, almost shrinking.

  Lawrence had been attacked by wolves many times. With the memories of the encounters swirling in his head, he was in no mood to answer.

  Splish, splosh, went the horse’s hooves in the muddy road.

  ”...Are you angry?”

  Such a crafty wolf—she must have known that if she asked like I had, he’d be unable to truthfully answer that he was angry.

  So he answered. “Yes, I’m angry.”

  Holo looked up at Lawrence in silence. When he looked back at her out of the corner of his eye, he saw her pouting—it was charming enough that he almost forgave her.

  “I am angry. No more jokes like that,” he finally turned to her and said.

  Holo nodded resolutely and looked ahead. She now seemed quite meek.

  After a period of silence she spoke again. “Wolves live only in the mountains, but dogs have lived with humans. That’s why wolves make tougher opponents.”

  He probably should have ignored her, but doing so would make later conversation difficult. He turned slightly in her direction and gave a sign that he was listening.

  “Hm?”

  “Wolves only know that they are hunted by humans, and that they are terrifying creatures. So we are always thinking about what to do when they enter our forest.”

  Holo stared straight ahead as she spoke, as serious as Lawrence had ever seen her.

  He didn’t think she’d made that story up; he nodded, slowly.

  But there was something in her vagueness that worried him.

  “Did you ever—”

  But Holo stopped him before he could continue. “There are some things I simply cannot answer.”

  “Oh.” Lawrence chided himself for speaking without thinking ahead. “Sorry.”

  Holo then smiled. “Now we’re even.”

  A twenty-five-year-old was not, it seemed, a match for a Wisewolf.

  There was no further conversation, but neither was there any bad air between the two. The horse plodded along, and soon the day had passed and night fell.

  A merchant never continued his travels after dark when it had rained. If the wagon became stuck in the mud, seven times out of ten it meant that the goods would have to be abandoned.

  To turn a steady profit as a traveling merchant one had to minimize losses, and the road was full of dangers.

  Holo suddenly spoke, nestled in the fur pile beneath a sky she’d promised would be clear the next day.

  “The worlds we live in, you and I, are very different,” she said.

  Chapter 3

  The river Slaude meanders slowly across the plains. It is said to trace the path
left behind by a giant snake that slithered from the mountains to the west through the plains to the eastern sea, and its wide, slow path is an essential transportation route for the region.

  Pazzio is a large port town situated near the midpoint of the river. Not far upstream lie large fields of wheat; still farther are thickly forested mountains. Logs are floated downstream year-round; barges carrying wheat or corn, depending on the season, navigate up and down the river.

  That alone would be enough to ensure the town’s prosperity, but because there are no bridges across the Slaude, its ferries make it a natural gathering place.

  It was past afternoon but not yet dusk; Lawrence and Holo arrived during the busiest time of the day.

  Pazzio’s trade had grown since the town recovered its autonomy from the monarchy—now merchants and aristocrats ruled it. Consequently, there were heavy tariffs levied on goods entering the town, but there were no immigration checks or demands for identification. Had it been a castle town, the opposite would be true, and Holo’s nonhuman status would be a problem.

  “Have they no king here?” was Holo’s first utterance upon arriving in the city.

  “Is this your first time coming to a city of this size?”

  “Times surely change. In my day, a city this large would have been ruled by a king.”

  Lawrence felt a slight sense of superiority—he’d been to cities many times the size of Pazzio. He tried not to let it show lest Holo point it out. And in any case, he’d been just as naive when he first started out.

  “Heh. I’ll just say that your intentions are admirable,” quipped Holo.

  Apparently Lawrence had been a bit careless about hiding his thoughts.

  Although Holo’s attention was focused on the many shops that lined the road, she’d still noticed his expression. Had it just been a lucky guess? The idea that she could discern his thoughts so easily was unsettling and far from funny.

  “This isn’t...a festival, is it?”

  “If it were a Church celebration day, the streets would be so crowded we couldn’t pass through them. Today, though, there’s still space.”

  “Ho. Difficult to imagine that,” said Holo with a smile, leaning out of the cart and scanning the merchant stalls they passed.

  She looked every bit the country bumpkin on her first visit to the town, but Lawrence suddenly thought of something else.

  “Hey.”

  “Mm?” was her only reply as she continued to stare at the many vendors.

  “Will it be all right, not covering your head?”

  “Huh? Head?”

  “I know it’s festival time in Pasloe right now, so most of the villagers will be drinking and celebrating—but not all of them, and some of the ones who don’t may be visiting Pazzio right now.”

  “Oh, that,” said

  Holo, sitting back down in the wagon, suddenly irritated. She looked back at Lawrence, her cloak just barely covering her ears. “Even if they could see my ears, nobody would notice. They’ve all long forgotten about me.”

  There was such vehemence in her voice it was a miracle she didn’t shout. Lawrence reflexively raised his hands as if calming a startled horse. Holo was no horse, but it seemed to have some effect.

  She snorted derisively and pulled the cloak down, facing ahead and pouting.

  “You lived there for hundreds of years—surely there are some legends passed down about you. Or did you never take human form?”

  “There are legends. And sometimes I’d appear as a human.”

  “So there are stories about you appearing as a human?”

  Holo gave Lawrence a belabored sidelong glance, sighed, then spoke. “As far as I remember, it went something like this. She looks like a beautiful girl of about fifteen. She has long, flowing brown hair and wolf ears, along with a white-tipped tail. Sometimes she would appear in this form, and in exchange for keeping her appearance a secret, she promises a good harvest.”

  Holo regarded Lawrence flatly with a look that said, “Happy?”

  “Well, it sounds like you pretty much told them everything about yourself. Is that really okay?”

  “Even if they were to see my ears or tail, they would doubt—just as you did. They’ll never realize the truth.”

  Holo slipped her hand underneath the cloak and fussed with her ears, perhaps because they pushed against the inside of the fabric uncomfortably.

  Lawrence looked sideways at her. He wanted her to be more careful, but if he said as much she would surely get genuinely angry.

  It seemed that discussion of Pasloe was taboo. He felt better when he considered that the legends of Holo made no mention of her actual facial features, only identifying her by her ears and tail. As long as she kept those concealed, she would go unnoticed. Legends were just legends—it was not as if she were on a Church wanted poster.

  A few moments after Lawrence resolved not to press the matter, Holo appeared to be considering something. At length, she spoke.

  “Hey...”

  “Mm?”

  “Even...even should they see me, they won’t know who I am...will they?”

  Her mood had changed completely from before; it was almost as if she wanted to be discovered.

  But Lawrence was no fool. He stared expressionlessly forward at the horse. “It is certainly my hope that they won’t,” he answered.

  Holo smiled slightly, almost ruefully. “You needn’t worry.”

  Once Holo started looking happily at the stalls again, Lawrence realized she’d been speaking to herself as well as him.

  There was no need to press the matter, however—Holo was quite stubborn.

  Lawrence couldn’t help smiling at Holo now. She’d cheered up completely and was excitedly looking at the delicious fruits they passed.

  “There’s quite a collection of fruit! Are they all picked nearby?”

  “It’s because Pazzio is the gateway to the south. When the season’s right, you can even see fruit from regions nearly impossible to visit.”

  “There is much fruit in the south, and good.”

  “Surely you have fruit in the north as well.”

  “Aye, but it’s tough and bitter. To make it sweet it must be dried and cured. We wolves can’t do such work, so we have to take it from the villages.”

  Lawrence would’ve expected birds, horses, or sheep to be more likely targets for wolves. It was hard to imagine them driven by a desire for something sweet. Perhaps a bear—bears often took the leather bags filled with grapes that hung from the eaves of houses.

  “I would think wolves would prefer spicy things. It’s bears that crave sweets.”

  “We don’t like spicy food. Once we found red fang-shaped fruit among the cargo of a shipwreck. We ate it and regretted it loud and long!”

  “Ah, hot peppers. Expensive, those.”

  “We dunked our heads in the river and decided humans were terrifying indeed,” said Holo with a chuckle, enjoying the memory for a moment as she gazed at the stalls. After a time, her smile l added, then finally reappeared as she sighed. The pleasure of nostalgia is never without its companion, loneliness.

  Lawrence was trying to decide what he should say when Holo seemed to perk up.

  “If it’s red fruit we’re talking about, I’d rather have those,” she said, tugging on his clothing and pointing out a stall.

  Beyond the stream of passing people and wagons, there was a stall with a generous pile of apples.

  “Oh, those are fine apples.”

  “Are they not?” Holo’s eyes glittered beneath the cloak. He wondered if she noticed that her tail was swishing back and forth underneath her skirts.

  Perhaps she really did like apples. “They look rather toothsome, no?”

  “Indeed.”

  What Holo was hinting at was clear enough, but Lawrence pretended not to notice.

  “Now that I think of it, I had a friend who invested more than half his worth in apples. I’m not sure where they were from, but if they tu
rned out like these, he’s surely doubled his money.” Lawrence sighed regretfully. “I should’ve done the same.”

  Holo’s expression shifted as if to say “that’s not the point I was trying to make,” but again Lawrence pretended not to notice.

  “Hmph. Well…that’s most unfortunate,” Holo replied.

  “But the risk was very high. If it were me, I would’ve transported them by ship.”

  “A…ship, you say?” As they talked, they continued to move along the road with the clop-clopping of the horse’s hooves as accompaniment. Holo was becoming anxious. She clearly wanted the apples, but was just as clearly loath to say so, hence her agitated responses to Lawrence’s comments.

  “You see, a group of merchants will sometimes pool their money to hire a ship. The amount of money they raise determines the amount and type of cargo, but unlike land transport, if there is an accident you may lose lives as well as money. Even a strong wind can put you in danger. However, there is profit to be had. I’ve twice traveled by sea this way, so…”

  “Mm…ah…”

  “What’s wrong?

  They passed the apple booth, and it began to recede behind them.

  There is nothing more fun than knowing the heart of another. Lawrence smiled his best merchant smile.

  “Right, so about shipping...”

  “Mm…apples…”

  “Hm?”

  “I...I want...I want apples. ..”

  Lawrence thought she’d be stubborn until the end, but since she’d finally admitted her desire, he decided to go ahead and treat her.

  “Earn your own food, why don’t you.” Holo glared at Lawrence as she munched away on an apple; he made a show of shrugging helplessly.

  She’d been so charming when she finally gave in and admitted her desire that Lawrence had generously given her a silver trenni coin of considerable value. She’d returned with more apples than she could carry. She appeared not to know the meaning of the word restraint.

  By the time her face and hands were sticky with juice, well into her fourth apple, she got around to complaining again.

  “You…munch… earlier, you…mmph…pretended like you didn’t...chomp… notice!”

  “It’s amusing knowing what someone else is thinking,” said Lawrence to Holo as she ate the apple down to its core.