She lifted her head from his shoulder and straightened her eyes, now slightly higher than Lawrence’s.
Those red-brown eyes looked down at him, and her lip twisted in irritation. “When will you get flustered for me?”
“I might if you would tell me what you’re truly thinking about.”
Immediately Holo drew away, her face contorted as though she had tasted something bitter.
Yet when Lawrence failed to seem concerned, she soon seemed sad. “Come, now—,” she said quietly.
“What?”
“I want you flustered.”
“Fine then,” answered Lawrence, and Holo once again leaned against his chest, completely still.
“Can we not end our travels here?” she murmured.
If Lawrence had wanted to explain to someone else the surprise he felt at that moment, they would have to have seen him.
He was so surprised; that was the only thing that occurred to him.
But then what he felt was anger.
This was the one joke he never wanted to hear.
“Do you think I jest?”
“I do,” replied Lawrence instantly but not because he was composed.
It was quite the opposite. He grabbed Holo’s shoulders and held her at arm’s length, facing her.
She smiled but not in a way that Lawrence could be angry at.
“You really are quite charming.”
Lawrence muttered under his breath that she could only say such things if she tickled his chin and smiled her devilish smile as she did so.
“I am quite serious. If I were to say such a thing in jest, you would become truly angry.” Lawrence still held her shoulders; she covered his hands with hers and continued. “But you’ll forgive me because you’re kind.”
Holo’s fingers were slender, and her nails, while not properly sharp, were a lovely shape.
And when they bore down on the back of his hands, they hurt.
But even scratched so, Lawrence did not remove his hands from her shoulders. “My contract with you...it was to escort you to your homeland.”
“We are nearly there.”
“So why here, now—”
“People change. Situations change. And my mood also changes.”
After Holo spoke, she smiled a regretful smile, and Lawrence knew she was ruing her own pitiful visage.
For just a moment, he felt terror.
Was this something she would decide simply on a whim?
Holo giggled. “It seems there are fields yet untilled. But this is no place to be treading with one’s boots on.”
It was too late for her to be teasing Lawrence and enjoying his visibly flustered mien, but as he grew more and more resistant to her joking, her methods became more extreme in order to compensate.
But just as Holo had said, this was one place he didn’t want her to play.
“Why this, all of a sudden?” he asked.
“’Tis just as that fox said.”
“...Eve?”
Holo nodded and removed her fingernails from the backs of Lawrence’s hands.
A tiny bit of blood welled up; Holo apologized with her eyes and continued. “Money can buy companionship, but...”
“...But not its quality?”
“Aye, and so she said to treasure your encounters. That mere human girl, thinking herself so great...” Holo put Lawrence’s hand to her cheek. “I want our meeting to be something good. And so I think it is best that we part here.”
Lawrence did not understand what she was saying.
Back in Tereo, Holo had avoided the question of what she would do upon reaching her homeland.
Lawrence had felt this was because worry hung between them that once they arrived there, their journey together would end.
That much was only natural given the nature of their promise, and when he’d first met Holo, Lawrence had assumed that was what would happen. Surely Holo had felt similarly.
But the journey had been a joy, and he wanted to extend it, if only by a day.
He was driven unavoidably by that childish wish.
And was Holo not the same? At the very least, Lawrence felt he could look back on their travels and be certain of that much.
So how did ending their journey here follow from the idea that relationships needed to be treasured?
When Lawrence looked at her with obvious bewilderment,
Holo smiled sadly, still holding his hand to her cheek.
“You fool. Do you still not understand?”
She was neither teasing nor angry. Holo looked at him as she would look at a particularly difficult child, her frustration tingled with affection.
He took his hand from her cheek as she looked up, slowly embracing her once again.
“This journey has been truly wonderful. I’ve laughed, cried...This cunning old wolf has even screamed in anger from our fights. I had been alone for so long, so these days have been very bright indeed. I’ve even wished that they would go on forever.
“So just—,” Lawrence began to say, but the words stopped in his throat.
It was a conversation he could not have.
After all, Holo was not human. Their life spans were too different.
“You’re very clever, but you lack so much experience. Since you’re a merchant who toils for profit, I thought you would soon understand, but...I’m not saying this because I don’t want to watch you die. I’ve...already become used to that idea,” said Holo smoothly, like a winter wind blowing across a brown, withered field.
“If I’d had a bit more self-restraint, I might just have endured until my homeland. I had been confident of that when we put the last village behind us, but...you’re simply too softhearted. You accept everything that I do and give me anything I wish for. It's terrible to endure it….just terrible.”
Lawrence was not the least bit happy to hear these words from Holo, which sounded like something one would find on the last page of some chivalrous tale.
He still did not understand what Holo was saying, but there was something he did understand.
He knew that at the end of all her words would come these; "So let us part here.”
“It is just...too frightening,” she said.
Her tail was puffed up to match her rising uncertainty.
She had said the same thing after eating the roast pig—that she was scared.
At the time he had not understood, but given all this, there was only one thing that could frighten her so much.
But Lawrence did not understand why it scared her so.
She wanted him to understand this.
That night, she had said it would be troublesome if he understood, but now that the conversation had come to this point, it was quite clear she had decided that the opposite was true.
Holo was a wisewolf. She did not do pointless things, and she was very rarely wrong.
So this had to be something he could understand from what he had been presented with here.
Lawrence’s mind raced.
His keen memory, which was a point of pride for Lawrence as a merchant, worked to recollect everything.
Eve’s words. Holo suddenly wanting to leave. Something that being a merchant, he should be able to understand. And Holo’s fear.
None of them seemed to have anything to do with one another, and he didn’t have the faintest idea how they connected.
Wasn’t the fact that the journey had been bright and joyful reason enough to want it to continue?
Every journey came to its end, but Holo surely wasn’t trying to evade that inescapable fact. She should have understood that all along; Lawrence certainly did. He was confident that at the journey’s proper end, they would part with smiles.
There had to be some meaning to her wanting to abandon the journey in the middle.
The middle of the journey. This particular opportunity. Because she couldn’t hold out until they reached her homeland...
When he got that far, Lawrence began to feel l
ike he was finding the connections.
Joyful. Journey. Timing. Merchant.
He froze, stricken, unable to hide the shock he felt.
“Have you realized?” she asked with a measure of exasperation, removing herself from Lawrence’s lap and standing. “In truth, I would have preferred you not to, but if I let it go any longer, I'd lose the best chance. You understand, don’t you, what I mean by this?" Lawrence nodded.
He understood all too well.
No. He had vaguely known all along. He just hadn’t wanted to accept it.
Holo drew away from Lawrence without betraying much reluctance, then stood from the bed.
Watched by those red-brown eyes of Holo’s, he murmured, “Even you haven’t seen such a tale?”
“Tale? Whatever do you mean...? Oh, I see. You’re quite clever with your words.”
Broadly speaking, there were two types of tales in the world. Some tales had happy endings while others had unhappy endings. In truth, there were really four types, but the remaining two were too difficult for humans to create, and humans were too imperfect to understand them.
If there were any who could create and read those tales, that would be a god, and it was that which the Church promised after death.
“Stories where they live happily ever after,” said Lawrence. Holo walked wordlessly over to the corner of the room, picking up the pitcher of wine that sat there next to their things. When she looked back, she smiled. “There is no such thing. Of course, I enjoy speaking with you. I enjoy it too much—so much I just want to eat you up.”
If Lawrence had heard her say this when they’d first met, if he had looked into her narrowed, red-tinged eyes then, there was no doubt he would have been afraid.
And yet now he felt no particular worry.
Holo wanted to return to the way they were when they had first met. That fact pierced his heart.
“But no matter how delicious the treat, one cannot go on eating the same thing forever, can they? It becomes tiresome, does it not? And worst of all, as I enjoy it more and more, I’ll begin to need more and more stimulation, and then what? You know, don’t you, what lies at the top of those stairs?”
Once Lawrence had trembled to hold her hand, but now Holo could embrace him without incident, and he kissed her hand as easily as one could please.
When he counted the things beyond that, Lawrence understood something that terrified him.
In the face of the long time that stretched ahead of them, there was not much they could do.
They could change hands and change goods, but the end would come before they knew it.
They could continue to climb the stairs.
But there was no guarantee those stairs would always exist.
“Eventually I will not be able to get what I crave, and all the talk that was once such a delight will fade, its joy remaining only in memory And it’s then that I will think back to how much fun it was when we first met.”
Her unkind look seemed deliberate.
“That is why I was frightened. Frightened of the way it sped the erosion of this delight. The way your”—Holo took a drink of wine from the pitcher—“kindness did,” she finished as though accusing herself.
Holo the Wisewolf.
A wolf who had lived for centuries, who had ensured the wheat harvest, and who feared loneliness above all else.
There was an aspect of this fear that was difficult to understand. The way she hated being respected and feared as a god could not be understood simply with reason, Lawrence felt.
Of course, because she lived for such a long time, the number of creatures who lived as long as she did was very low, which made her particularly susceptible to loneliness.
But here and now, Lawrence finally understood the answer, the reason why despite living as long as she did, Holo did not seek out similar creatures to her—no, couldn’t.
Holo had said that she was not a god.
And this was the true reason.
God, it was said, had created a heavenly kingdom where neither old age nor sickness existed, where bliss was eternal.
But Holo could do no such thing.
Just like a human, she could only become accustomed to something, then tire of it, passing the dim night thinking, Ah, it was such fun at first.
She could not stay happy forever.
And this wisewolf, having lived as long as she had, knew all too well that her simple, girlish wish could never come true.
“I’ve long been impressed at how clever you humans are to have the saying, ‘All’s well that ends well.’ Though I might think to myself, ‘Oh aye, it’s quite so,’ I still find myself unable to summon the resolve to end something that gives me pleasure. I don't know what would happen if you came with me all the way to my homeland. That’s why I wish to end our travels here, so that it can be a delight from start to finish.”
Lawrence had no words. He took the pitcher when Holo walked over to him and offered it.
There was nothing positive in her words, yet somehow he heard a note of resolve in her voice, perhaps because she was close to turning defiant.
“Are you not close to achieving your dream? Is this not the perfect time to bring this chapter of your story to a close?”
“I...suppose so,” said Lawrence. It was why he hadn’t interrupted her.
“Also, I was thinking of telling you later and surprising you.”
Holo suppressed a giggle, sitting down next to Lawrence as though the entire conversation had never happened. She twisted around and picked up the book that lay at the bedside. “I was in the book,” she said with a strangely rueful smile, which was surely because of Lawrence’s surprise upon hearing those words.
Even though he had not betrayed the slightest emotion when she spoke of his dream being near.
“There were all sorts of things in the past, things I’d forgotten about entirely until seeing them,” said Holo, flipping through the pages, then turning the book toward Lawrence.
As if to say, “Read.”
Lawrence traded the book for the pitcher, dropping his eyes to the page.
The tales, written in a precise, ceremonious hand, were of a time when people still lived in ignorance and darkness.
The name of the Church was nothing more than a mere rumor from a far-off land.
And there, just as the chronicler Diana in the pagan town of Kumersun had said, was Holo’s name.
“ ‘Wheaten tail,’ they say. Such complicated words,” said Holo.
Lawrence felt as though the phrase was not far off the mark but said nothing.
“Looks like you’ve been a heavy drinker since ancient times,” he said, resigned, as he read the relevant section, and far from injuring her mood, Holo puffed out her chest and sniffed proudly.
“I remember it vividly even now. There was a rival drinker, a girl a bit younger than you, and we weren’t so much drunk as we were unable to fit any more liquor in. And in the end, it was even more heroic, you see—”
“No thanks. I don’t want to hear any more,” said Lawrence, waving her off. He didn’t even have to think about this in order to know how she had put an end to the contest.
And yet, while there was indeed a tale of a drinking contest, it seemed more like a heroic saga of Holo and the girl she had drunk against than anything else.
Perhaps that wasn’t surprising.
Holo giggled. “Ah, but that’s nostalgic. And I’d forgotten it entirely until reading it.”
“Drinking, eating, singing, dancing. I’m sure it’s been rewritten any number of times, but the fun atmosphere still comes through. Surely most of the old legends were comedies.”
“Aye. ’Twas a delight. Come now, stand up.”
"...?"
Lawrence did as he was told, standing up from the bed.
He then set the book down as Holo directed him to.
Just as he wondered what she was doing, Holo strode toward him and took his hand.
“Right, ri
ght, left, left, left, right—you see, do you not?”
He didn’t even have to think about this.
It was the ancient dance that Holo had danced in the story. But when he stood near her, Lawrence understood.
It was obvious what lay beneath her bright exterior.
Holo said that she wanted to stop traveling because it was too much fun.
“This dance is bad if you’re drinking, though. Your eyes will start to swim before you know it,” she said, looking up at Lawrence and smiling, then dropping her gaze to the floor.
“So it’s right, right, left and left, left, right—got it? Right, here we go!”
Lawrence had never danced a proper dance before, although
Holo had forced him out into the streets on Kumersun’s festival night where he had danced all night.
With that much practice, anyone would be halfway decent.
When Holo cried out “There!” and put her foot out, Lawrence matched her and did likewise.
Norah the shepherdess had done the shepherd’s dance to prove her identity. Dances were everywhere. There were countless dances, but they all resembled one another.
Lawrence matched his steps to hers on the first go, which visibly surprised Holo.
“Hmph.”
She had probably looked forward to making fun of his clumsiness, thinking it would not go so easily.
Step, step, step...They moved their bodies lightly and easily, and soon it was Lawrence who was leading Holo, her feet being more prone to getting tangled. Once a person understood that this sort of thing was more about confidence than technique, all one needed was audacity.
But Holo’s surprise only dulled her movements for a moment.
Soon she was gliding smoothly, occasionally becoming slightly confused in an obviously deliberate manner. Lawrence wondered if she was trying to make him step on her feet.
He would not fall for it, of course.
“Hnn—hmph.”
They looked like two puppets whose strings were being controlled in unison. That was how closely their movements matched.
Right, right, left, left, left, right—the movements were simple, but they continued through the steps of the dance there in the small room without stopping once.
It was only when Holo surprisingly stepped on Lawrence’s foot that the dance came to an end.