She would be twelve or thirteen this year, an age where it would not be unusual to be wed off early. Typically, this was around the time when she would be practicing needlework or cooking every day, preparing to support her husband as a good wife or saddling the household’s prosperity as a mother.
But for some reason, here she was half-naked, wearing roughly hewn gloves, holding the rope of a mule that had been brought into the baths. And even still, Myuri was standing atop something odd.
He remembered what the guests were saying: “Shield, shield.”
Since people of high standing mostly frequented here, they were accompanied by those who were heavily armed. Upon closer examination, there were several sturdy-looking men who watched the goings-on with obvious worry. Myuri was likely standing on one of their shields. He saw the broad shields, large enough to completely cover a tall adult, and finally understood what Myuri wanted to do.
That was when she yelled, standing atop the shields.
“Ready!”
She raised one hand, raising a cry like a knight in the battlefield, and he could almost hear her lift the corner of her mouth and clench her teeth.
She was looking at the mule. Next to the mule was the boy, who looked like he was about to cry. At the prompting of the cheers, he closed his eyes as though he had no choice and hit its rump with his stick.
“Charge!”
Though he was not sure if that is exactly what she said.
Everything happened in an instant, and while the entire world was paused, only Myuri, atop the shield, slid to the side.
Pulled by the rope, both Myuri and the shield slid across the water. It slid so fast and so cleanly on the water that it was almost funny. The audience gave a loud cheer and tossed their mugs. There was a loud clunk as the shield hit the edge of the bath.
“Ohhh!”
Myuri’s slender body flew into the air with the shield, but she did not fall. It hit the ground with a sound that pierced the air, and the mule pulled them along the wet stone. It was so skillfully done, Col could not speak.
He snapped out of it when he saw the excited guests all begin to run around, and the blood drained from his face.
He abandoned the cheese and ran after Myuri with the guests. Beyond the trail on the rocks left by the shield was the forest, covered in fallen leaves. Then there was a downward slope, and the mule likely ran as fast as it could. A single dark path of earth was carved into the carpet of leaves, and it gradually turned right.
Then, the path suddenly stopped.
These men, who once they returned home all had positions of power and fame and fortune, were making a big ruckus naked in the forest. Standing in the middle of it all, big grin on her face, was a girl who looked like she had been raised from the dead, covered in leaves and mud.
The men lifted Myuri up and carried her back up the hill.
When the cackling girl realized who was waiting for her, her face stiffened for a moment.
But when he glared at her, being carried by the men, she immediately pretended not to notice.
He was not filled with anger, but exasperation.
He followed after Myuri, whom the men were cheering on, and he heard the sound of her being thrown into the bath. When she poked her head out of the water, she had a refreshed look on her face. Her beautiful forehead, now clear of mud and leaves, was covered in scratch-like cuts. Cuts on her maiden face!
But Myuri did not mind and waved to the guests cheering around her, then swam to the edge. He bent his knees and held his hand out to her, and she took it calmly.
“Eh-heh-heh, did you see that? Wasn’t it awesome?”
Myuri’s innocent smile has never changed.
He sighed and pulled her slim body up.
“Are you hurt?”
“Nope, not at all,” she said, but there were skid marks all over her forehead and cheeks, and her long legs were the same as well.
However, for Myuri, these did not fall under the category of “injury.”
Under her hair, which was the strange color of silver specks in ash, one could find many scars from her childhood. He did not know how many times he had fainted at the sight of a blood-smeared Myuri.
“Get changed and come to the fire.”
“Oh, are you gonna braid my hair?!”
“It’s a scolding!” he yelled at her and she drew up her shoulders, but her expression was that of annoyance. “Your answer?”
“…Fine.”
Guests that stayed for a while found these sorts of usual occurrences amusing, but it was not funny to those who had to clean up after Myuri. First, going into the bath covered in mud and dead leaves was inexcusable, and they had to fix the stone arrangements that the shield had broken. Then, they had to find that unlucky boy from the neighboring village and apologize to him.
Like bringing home a little cat that did something wrong, he brought Myuri back to the main house by the nape of her neck. Her wet feet slapped against the ground, and she sneezed on the way. She was wet and half-naked during a time where it would not be unusual if it began to snow.
“Put on some warm clothes.”
“Okay.”
He sent her off into the main building and sighed, then went to retrieve the cheese he had left behind. There, he heard Myuri, calling back to him.
“Hey, brother!”
“…What is it?”
Myuri, still dripping wet, stood in the doorway, a bit of a praiseworthy air around her. When she was behaving, she seemed like a little girl who got caught in the rain.
“…Wasn’t it amazing?”
Look, look, brother, I caught a really big fish!
She has not changed since her innocent childhood.
Through his shock, his face smiled on its own.
“That’s…Yes, it was amazing…I could hardly believe my eyes.”
“Ha-ha-ha, yay!”
She bounced in place and then entered the main house.
She did not seem to regret her actions one bit.
But it was true that it was “amazing.” He would never have dared to do such a thing or even think of it.
When he thought this, he shook his head. It was his job as her pseudo older brother to reprimand her for her tomboyishness. She was supposed to be ladylike and become a proper wife.
“All right.”
For the time being, he did his best to carry the cheese. And once that was over, he took his place in front of the stove, scripture in one hand. Although he waited and waited, Myuri did not come.
He went to check on her in her room, and he found her napping happily.
“Heh-heh-heh.”
When Col told the story during their meal, a girl with the same face as Myuri laughed.
But there was a strange bit of intensity to this laugh, and the color of her hair was different. At a glance, she looked like a teenage girl, just like Myuri, but she was actually several hundred years old and the avatar of the wolf-that-lived-in-wheat—Holo the Wisewolf.
Holo, with big triangular ears on her head and tail wagging from her behind, was Myuri’s mother and the good wife of Lawrence, the master of the Spice and Wolf bathhouse.
“It is not something to laugh about…”
“’Tis fine. She is unhurt in the end, is she not?”
“Is it all right to call this unhurt?”
Myuri, devouring her food, was covered in bandages from her face to her arms. Underneath the bandages, Lawrence had lathered on a special ointment that contained a bit of herb, pig fat, and sulfur. He had been astonished when he saw all her cuts and forced the bandages onto her, so that her injuries would not leave any scars.
“Father and brother are making too big a deal of it.”
“It’s fine that it ended all right, but if it didn’t, you would be seriously hurt.”
Col complained, but she just shrugged her slim shoulders.
He sighed anxiously, and Holo cackled.
“But where did the master of the
house run off to?”
“Mr. Lawrence? He had Myuri help him find the Alvo boy’s mule, and he went straight to the village to apologize. He said it will affect their delivery of goods later.”
Since Nyohhira was deep in the mountains, there was a limit on how much material could be brought in. Should their relationship with the surrounding areas grow worse, then it was possible they could fold due to just that.
“It’s fine,” said Myuri, the one whose fault this all was.
“What made you say that?” he asked, and Myuri wiggled the same ears and tail as her mother. She took the lingonberry-honey jam, the fruit they had collected off a mountain in the forest over the summer, and spread it on the tough rye bread. For the moment, she put aside the question and bit into the loaf, overflowing with honey. The hair on her ears and tail bristled at the sourness.
Usually, unlike her mother Holo, she had her ears and tail put away, but they would occasionally show themselves when her emotions peaked, such as in astonishment or anger. It seemed that typically, it was more natural for them to be out.
“Wha d’yu mean…om nom. Besides, that kid likes me.”
“…”
Holo burst out laughing at his shock.
“Males are fools.”
“Yep, yep.”
He had nothing more to say to Myuri, as she added salt to her mushroom soup and slurped it down.
She was the kind of daughter who was turning out to make even Holo, who ruled over this house, seem small.
“Honestly…”
As Myuri began to look more and more like Holo, her father Lawrence would often find himself beaten in an argument instead. Holo had a broad-minded personality, and she did not mind the small things. So Col was the one who had to keep it together.
However, the struggle to make Myuri into a wonderful and ladylike daughter always felt in vain.
“Anyway, once you’ve finished eating, you’re going to practice reading and writing.”
“Nooo…”
“Don’t give me that.”
“Well, he’s right; ’tis a good thing to be able to read and write.”
Holo spoke, sprinkling a good helping of rock salt onto her cured pork and stuffing it into her mouth.
At her words, Myuri shrugged and looked at Holo, and her ears and tail drooped in obedience.
“…Okay.”
The hierarchy of their group was clear.
Holo, Lawrence, himself, then Myuri.
Recently, Myuri was rising rapidly up this hierarchy, and when she seemed about to treat him cruelly, Holo would take the opportunity to intervene. Myuri would only ever listen to what Holo had to say. Perhaps the rules of the forest were entrenched in their blood. Before the wisewolf herself, a young pup behaved like a little dog.
“Then get ready and come to the room.”
“Okay.”
Myuri voiced her response in a bored tone, and in retaliation, reached for a new piece of bread.
As Col read the scriptures aloud in the candlelight, there came a knock on the door.
But the sound was rather near the floor.
Dubious, he opened the door, and there was Myuri, still covered in bandages, carrying a large blanket.
“Myuri, how many times have I told you not to kick the door?”
She gave no response and quickly entered the room, dumping the blanket onto the bed. He knew it was cold this time of year, and she did not have the luxury of a stove and the sort in her own room, but she also had a sheep’s wool pillow, for some reason.
“Mother went to get father. Mother said she’ll shear all the hair off on my tail if I touch the stove, so let me sleep here tonight.”
Holo was typically lenient with her, but of course, she was strict when it came to dealing with fire.
“I haven’t slept here in forever! Ah-ha, the straw is so hard! Do you change it at all?”
Col’s bed was made from the wild wheat that they used to feed the livestock—it was gathered into a bundle with a hemp sheet pulled over it. The stiffness Myuri felt beneath her was since she was light; there was no need to tie the bundle of straw tightly.
Col and Myuri often slept in the same bed when they were little, but after they grew up, they started to sleep separately. It was especially cold here, so wearing clothes to bed in the middle of winter would instead make one sick. It was normal to warm oneself through body heat.
Though that was typical, as a servant of God and as a good older brother, he wanted Myuri to have a maiden’s sense of shyness. And there were the times he would be startled at how similar she looked to Holo in the darkness.
“If you do that, you really will fall asleep.”
Myuri’s specialty was the ability to fall asleep as soon as she lay down. Even now she had already gone quiet, and Col immediately pulled her up by the arm.
“Uuuu…”
“Come on, get up now!”
Even if he gripped her thin shoulders, her neck would lean at an angle.
But if she was truly sleepy, her tail would have been curled up, so she was merely acting.
“If you pretend any more, I’ll have you sleep on the floor.”
“…”
She cracked one eye open and giggled.
“You’re always so angry, brother. It’s in the scripture, right? ‘Thou shalt not give in to anger!’”
“That’s all you remember…?”
He sighed, and Myuri nimbly got out of the bed. She took the blanket and wrapped it around her, then sat in the chair.
Before her, he opened a collection of teachings that travelers used as solace during their journey and prepared a wooden board and pointed stick. A layer of wax lay on the board, and one wrote by scratching it. When it was full of writing, one would melt the wax with the heat of a candle and then could write on it many times.
“But I really am sleepy, so let’s hurry up and finish this so I can sleep.”
“I agree. If Mr. Lawrence does not come back tonight, then I must get up early to do the work tomorrow.”
“You sound like I don’t do any help at all.”
“Then will you get up before dawn and break the ice in the well for me?”
Myuri’s ears immediately flattened, and she began to scratch out the letters.
It was not that she was the lazy type and actually, she was a rather hard worker. The problem lay in the fact that Myuri was not a morning person, and it took her a while to get started on her work. And she would immediately get caught up in some foolishness if a guest egged her on.
Col watched the girl from behind, relieved, and once she had written about three lines, her tail began to fidget nervously.
“Aww, we’ve got another busy winter coming up, huh?”
Though Nyohhira had its fair share of visitors in the summer, the real deal was when the snow piled high in the winter, starting right around this time.
“You played a lot this spring, summer, and fall.”
Since Nyohhira was in the north, the transition from spring to fall passed quickly, but there were still many fun things to do. In the spring they collected wild plants, in the summer they collected tree seeds and caught fish, and in the fall they harvested mushrooms and fruit. Hunting was also occasionally included.
“That’s why I want to sleep during the winter.”
“…I don’t think wolves hibernate.”
“Wolves don’t study.”
She always had a retort ready.
“Then you must be a child, since you hate studying and cause mischief all the time.”
Lately, treating Myuri like a child would cause her to become angry.
“This is wrong.”
He reached over her and pointed to a letter, and she scratched it away with her fingernail.
“I haven’t done anything too bad,” she muttered as she wrote.
He was exasperated at what she was trying to say, considering she used a shield as a sled and skidded across the baths.
 
; “Then what would be something that is too bad?”
Scratching the letters onto the board, she shrugged her slender shoulders.
“Brother, what’s this?”
“Like this.”
It was when he drew his face in by her side and tried to take the branch to write an example for her.
Myuri suddenly reached out and clamped both of her hands onto his cheeks.
Before he realized it, her long eyelashes were directly in front of his eyes, and the tips of their noses were touching. And then their lips.
It seemed that one’s body really could freeze. He could not move at all due to the suddenness of it all.
He could not breathe, and Myuri peeked one eye open, hesitating a bit before looking at him.
Her eyes were swimming feverishly, as though she would cry, and as though she was happy.
She leaned back and pursed her lips.
“Don’t tell father, okay?” Myuri whispered, smiling, even though it still seemed as though she would cry.
It was too quiet—a deep silence that almost moved him.
He knew Myuri was quite attached to him, but this was impossible.
The moment he thought about it, something burned deep in his heart. Even though their lips were parted, he still could not breathe. His heart was beating loudly, and his chest hurt as though the blood had nowhere to go.
And then there was Myuri, looking down, embarrassed.
The unexpectedly rough feeling of her lips still remained, as well as the strong smell of sulfur, likely since she was in the water…Rough?
Myuri’s lips remained a smooth cherry pink, even in winter.
As he thought something was amiss, Myuri let go of his face.
The bandages were pulled across her hands, creating a bridge. They were exactly the right width to fit perfectly over his mouth.
She looked up, her mouth forming a small pout, bearing a smile.
“This is father’s special ointment, so I think it’ll fix your dry lips, brother,” she said, the smile of a demon on her face, and wagged her tail.
Col finally understood what she did to him and off came the lid on his thoughts.
All the blood in his chest rushed to his head at once.
“M-M-Myuri!”
He yelled her name, and she shrugged and closed her eyes, but she still smiled.