Fish swam in the pool, taking no notice of Klass whatsoever. They would trace serene paths through the exposed area, then swim back into the cave.
In the dazed, absentminded satiety that followed after Klass quenched his thirst, he watched the fish.
When he finally came to his senses with a start, he realized he’d been about to fall asleep, and he hastily wiped his mouth and slapped his own head.
If he slept here, Holo was sure to be furious at him when he returned.
Klass filled the water skin and fastened it to his waist.
Just as he lowered his mouth to the pool to take one last drink—
“…?”
Quite suddenly he felt that he was being watched.
Thinking that perhaps Holo had come looking for him after seeing that he’d left Aryes’s side, he looked around, but Holo was nowhere to be seen.
Tall grass grew around the edge of the pool, but visibility was not particularly poor.
Despite there being nowhere good to hide, he could not find the gaze’s owner.
“Must be my imagination…,” he murmured, partially to convince himself. He checked behind him, then turned to face the pond again, lowering his mouth to its surface—and then he saw it.
To the left of the semicircle-shaped entrance to the cave was an animal standing very still.
It was a fawn, too young even to have lost the speckles from its coat, and it was watching him very carefully.
Its natural camouflage hid it against the bluff, and even as Klass realized that was why he hadn’t noticed it, he concluded quite clearly that the fawn hadn’t been there before.
He’d heard frightening stories about all sorts of strange things that could happen in the forest.
But the fawn was not some sort of animal spirit; it was simply looking at him. This may well have been the first time it had seen a human, he realized, so perhaps it was just curious.
Klass looked furtively back at the fawn, then stole a quick drink of water and stood.
The fawn did not so much as budge.
If anything it was rather cute, but somehow looking into its motionless black eyes made Klass feel a chill down his spine.
Of course it wasn’t attacking or baring its teeth—it was just looking at him, so there was nothing to fear. Klass reminded himself as much, then turned on his heel and half ran away.
He looked back several times as he went. The notion that the fawn might follow him was utterly absurd, but his feet quickened their pace nonetheless.
The distance was not so great, but he was much relieved when he arrived back at Aryes’s side.
Of course, the fact that Holo was also there was both fortunate and unfortunate.
“You look as though you’re about to tell me you’ve seen a forest spirit.”
“…”
Holo’s jeering smile was a bit irritating, but looking at it did dispel his worries.
“I brought water.”
“Mm, I see,” murmured Holo, playing idly with the sleeping Aryes’s bangs.
Klass wanted to tell her that if she kept doing that, she’d wake the girl, but watching Holo’s beautiful fingers touch Aryes’s soft hair aroused complicated emotions in him.
“…May I not have some?”
“Huh?” Klass snapped out of his trance at the sound of Holo’s voice.
Holo narrowed her eyes slightly and repeated her question. “May I not have some water?”
“Oh, er, yes.” Klass hadn’t even sat down before he hastily handed the water skin to Holo.
Holo, of course, was not going to let him get away so easily.
“You want to give it a try too?”
Klass couldn’t help swallowing at Holo’s low-lidded eyes and wet-toothed smile.
With effort, he managed not to nod. “N-never mind about that. What about the people coming after us?” he asked forcefully, sitting down a short distance from Holo.
He was irritated at having to endure her teasing, and he was worried that if he didn’t ask the question with some force, he’d be reduced to weak protestations.
Holo twitched her ears two or three times at Klass’s words, then after peering into the water skin, muttered vague assent.
“They weren’t there,” she said.
“Wha—?”
“They weren’t there.”
After considering Holo’s words for a moment, he realized the truth that they pointed to and let slip another exclamation of surprise. “But that means we’re—”
“—Safe? Aye, it might be a bit early to say that. But at least it seems we won’t be caught right away.”
Klass exhaled, though even he wasn’t sure whether it was a sigh of relief or not; his shoulders went slack.
He felt like a rigid pole in his back that had done its best to support him had finally snapped.
Holo watched this and chuckled soundlessly.
But as she did this, she stroked Aryes’s cheek, and Holo’s expression did not seem to be a teasing one—if anything, it was kind and her smile one of praise.
“Of course, there are probably also men walking outside the forest, so we’re not completely safe yet. Our first job is to cross the forest and make it to the town.”
He couldn’t imagine Holo telling him that just to make him feel better.
Klass believed her words wholeheartedly. He nodded and stretched his cold-stiffened legs.
“Let us take a bit of a rest. We pushed ourselves rather hard to make it this far.”
“Yes…I guess we did,” he said, yawning midway through the sentence.
Holo smiled wryly at this, then rubbed her nose and smoothly stood before sitting down next to Klass. “You needn’t be on your guard so.”
Just because Holo said so, chuckling throatily as she did it, was no reason not to regard her with some suspicion.
Such suspicion bothered Holo not at all, of course, and by the time the word “Come” reached Klass’s ears, his head was already upon her lap.
This had to be some sorcery, he was quite certain.
Because, although his face burned red with embarrassment, the courage to pull his body upright again had left him entirely.
“If you’ll sleep a bit, your strength will return. We’ve some distance yet to cover. You’d best sleep.”
He felt his head being stroked; it was such a pleasurable feeling that the back of his neck tingled.
That plus Holo’s words were all the excuse he needed.
He started to nod, his head still in her lap. He didn’t finish it, though, because Holo kept talking.
“Depending on what may come, you may have to carry Aryes over your shoulder if she becomes exhausted.”
Aryes had earlier grasped Klass’s right hand, turning her expression instantly from unease to relief, but now her hand was lightly closed, holding nothing.
Surely she was holding Klass’s hand in her dreams.
When the thought occurred to him, he suddenly felt terrible for laying his head in Holo’s lap.
He tried to sit up.
What stopped him was—of course—Holo’s hand.
“Heh-heh-heh…you’re such a faithful male, you are.” Holo rested her elbow on his temple, holding her chin in her hand.
Half out of surprise, half out of anger, and with only a bit of regret, Klass tried to get out from under her elbow, but when she increased the pressure so that it actually hurt, he gave up.
“Seems I didn’t actually have to do anything after all.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing. ’Twas merely talking to myself. Anyway—” Holo removed her elbow from Klass’s head as she spoke. Klass sighed and again tried to lift his head up when Holo interrupted him. “I simply hate losing, you see.”
He felt, in the distance between his raised head and Holo’s lap, a very soft thing indeed.
He didn’t even have time to wonder what he’d done.
There was a delicate, almost ticklish sensation on his cheek and
ear, along with Holo’s sweet scent.
Beneath his head was her soft, silky tail.
Holo chuckled. “I wonder if you’ll be able to raise your head now, eh?”
The sensation of the warm tail on his cheek made her point very hard to dispute, Klass thought.
Then she began to gently stroke his head.
There was no way he could sit up.
Klass relaxed his neck, and his head made a soft landing on her lap.
“I suspected as much,” said Holo a bit haughtily, whereupon his gaze went to Aryes, still sleeping quietly. “Do not worry. I’ll make sure to wake you before she rises.”
Klass felt somehow tainted, which was sad enough, but still sadder was how relieved he was to hear Holo say this.
But even as he wanted to cry at how pathetic he was, Holo leaned down and whispered into his ear, her tone both teasing and honest, “’Tis nothing—a bit of indebtedness will only make you treat her more kindly.”
“Wha…?” He thought about her words for a few moments.
Holo had called herself a wisewolf.
Klass believed that it was the truth.
He’d treat Aryes with kindness once she awoke.
Murmuring the excuse to himself, he felt like he would sleep very well upon Holo’s tail.
Mere moments later, Klass was surrounded by darkness.
“Now then, next…,” Holo muttered as though talking to herself.
But Klass couldn’t tell whether he’d dreamed it or not.
He got the feeling that Holo and Aryes were talking about something.
Unable to clearly understand the words, he was at least certain that it was a dream.
After all, Holo had said she would wake him before Aryes awoke.
Which was why when he opened his eyes, his head still resting on Holo’s warm tail, he turned bright red, and the first thing he thought was Holo, you traitor!
“Ah, it seems the sleepyhead has finally come awake.”
“…”
Without being given so much as the opportunity to blame her, to say nothing of apologizing, Klass shouldered their bags and set off walking.
It seemed little time had passed; Klass felt he’d been asleep for no more time than it took for a thrown stone to fall to earth.
And yet his fatigue was significantly lessened, and the same seemed true for Aryes.
He ignored Aryes’s puppylike reliance on him, the fact that he’d slept on Holo’s lap still gnawing at him.
As he started to walk, he felt entirely gloomy and had a special hatred for Holo’s tail, which up until a moment ago had seemed so invitingly comfortable.
He had no idea how he was supposed to talk to Aryes now. Why hadn’t Holo woken him?
The dark feelings pressed down upon him so much that for a moment something escaped his notice.
When he did notice it a moment later, he couldn’t help but make a sound of surprise.
Aryes was in fact doing nothing less than holding Klass’s hand.
“Miss Holo said I mustn’t let go,” she said with a serious face.
Klass could not, of course, muster any anger at Aryes and felt an inward sigh of relief. He was so sure she’d be furious at him.
“It is a test from God, she said,” said Aryes with an ambiguous expression. She then glanced at Holo.
Klass consider the meaning of those words, then glared at Holo’s swaying tail.
She should mind her own business, he thought.
As he considered such things, thoughts of the exhaustion that he’d felt back when he’d started walking were chased to a corner of his mind.
Klass wordlessly walked, and the forest, too, was quiet.
A short walk through the woods near the mansion revealed all sorts of creatures, but here, the only animal he’d gotten a clear look at was the fawn; he saw nothing else.
Just as he was wondering if that was simply the kind of forest this was, he looked up.
He wondered if perhaps there were squirrels or the like scampering about above him in the trees.
He realized he’d misunderstood when he looked up and saw droplets of rain falling through the gaps in the forest canopy.
“Rain, eh? Well, so long as it’s no worse than this, we’ll get no wetter for our walking in the forest.”
And it was just as Holo said—a small drop eventually fell on his nose, but little rain made it through the gaps in the thick foliage overhead.
And yet the rain made him begin to notice the strange quiet of the forest.
There was no sound—but it was not the silence that would’ve made a far-off pin drop audible and rather more like lead placed over his ears.
He could hear his own breath, but though Aryes was right next to him, he could hardly make out the rustling of their clothes.
Their surroundings were smothered in the peculiar silence of the rain.
Klass had heard that children born on rainy days never smiled.
The rumor around the mansion was that the silent, stoic beekeeper the lord retained had been born on a soggily rainy afternoon.
The forest overflowed with the green of the leaves, ferns, and moss, but it was starting to look hazy and misty.
The effect was somehow eerie, and Klass held Aryes’s hand a bit more tightly.
Aryes seemed to likewise feel uncertain and returned his strengthened grip.
Soon thereafter, Klass happened to catch sight of something ahead.
The trees were thick. Past them, he thought he could make something out.
Standing on a small ridge, it looked down at them as though they were dolls made of straw.
It was a deer.
Holo seemed not to have noticed it, and when Klass looked again to make sure it wasn’t his imagination, the deer was gone.
He felt an unpleasant chill and shivered.
He didn’t want to say anything; he didn’t even tell Aryes, who’d surely never seen a deer before.
Aryes and Holo continued walking silently.
As though rushed by the silence, Holo’s footsteps grew steadily quicker.
She’d said that their pursuers weren’t coming so there was no need to hurry, but the very idea of spending the night in the rainy forest made Klass’s hair stand on end. It hardly mattered whether they were caught by the pursuers or by the dark of the forest.
Holo looked in his direction several times, irritated.
Noticing this, Klass wondered how many times he’d looked at Aryes similarly over the past few days.
So instead of trying to rush her, he spoke up. “Aryes, is there anything else you’d like to see besides the sea?” he asked. In truth, Klass himself had no idea what else the world contained.
If possible, he wanted to see the mountains that held up the sky, but that was probably impossible.
“What else…?” Tired as she was, her voice still had a bit of energy left in it.
More than anything else, her simply talking to him helped him find some relief in her meager expression.
“I’ve heard there are mountains that shoot fire and places where rivers run out of the sky.”
Beneath her hood, Aryes cocked her head, puzzled.
It seemed she was having trouble imagining such things, but Klass couldn’t blame her for that as he couldn’t really imagine them himself.
He decided to stop posturing and talk about something he knew. “Hmm…have you ever seen any wheat fields?”
“Wheat fields?”
“Yeah. You know wheat, right?”
She nodded.
“They’re where wheat comes from, whole fields like a golden carpet.”
Aryes seemed to be able to imagine this.
Her eyes widened and she looked off into the distance dazedly—then tripped and nearly fell, vaguely murmuring, “Wheat fields…,” to herself as though trying to confirm their existence.
“They look really fluffy when you see them from far away, like you just want to jump into them—but if you do
, they’re not fluffy at all. And if you knock over too much wheat, the adults will beat you with sticks,” said Klass, which Aryes looked a bit surprised at and laughed.
Her face was elder sisterly. “Did you reflect on your misdeeds?”
“You bet I did,” said Klass honestly.
“In that case, God will forgive you,” said Aryes with a brilliant smile.
Klass found it somehow hard to look at and hastily averted his face, searching for another topic. “O-or a ship!”
“I know about ships.”
“Oh, er, really?” Klass stopped himself from adding, “Even though you didn’t know about the sea?”
“When the earth is covered in a great flood, that’s a giant vehicle that will take all the righteous people to the kingdom in the sky.”
Though fatigue was making her footing a bit uncertain, her face was entirely confident, and she spoke with even a touch of pride.
It was the same face she made when talking about God, and Klass was not overly fond of it.
But this time, something about her daft pride was endearing.
“The ships I know about don’t fly in the sky, I don’t think.”
“…?” Aryes’s look was so puzzled that Klass, who did not know about every ship the world over, was suddenly uncertain, but looking ahead at Holo, who was still just walking ahead, he answered.
“They float on rivers and lakes and things, on water, anyways. People ride on them, and they carry horses and such, too.”
“On the…water?”
“That’s right.”
“And they don’t sink?”
When Klass had first seen a ship, he’d also found its failure to sink rather mysterious, but since he had in fact seen such a ship, he stuck his chest out, quite able to answer. “They don’t. Even if you put a bunch of people and a whole lot of heavy bags of wheat on them, they still don’t sink.”
Aryes regarded Klass’s statement suspiciously, pursing her perfectly formed lips slightly. “It’s a sin to lie, you know.”
She seemed to think he was teasing her.
He was so tickled by her words that Klass couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m not lying! I saw it with my own eyes.”
“It could have been the work of a demon.”
“So what would you do if you saw a ship floating on the water?”
Aryes was suddenly at a loss for words.