Spice and Wolf, Vol. 6

  Since even Lawrence had heard stories of the great bear spirit, it would be stranger if people in this region did not know the tales.

  It was a bear spirit whose tales had been passed down over the centuries—perhaps even the millennia.

  Lawrence hesitated momentarily but eventually spoke his mind.

  If Holo became angry, he would blame it on the wine.

  “Does that make you jealous, I suppose?” When it came to the question of whose name had been remembered, Holo was no match for the Moon-Hunting Bear.

  Of course, back in the village of Pasloe, every child knew her name, but that was on a completely different scale than the Moon-Hunting Bear.

  She might feel a certain amount of competition, having come from the same era.

  Just as Lawrence was thinking that no, Holo would be above such pointlessness, she replied.

  “Just who do you think I am?”

  Her right hand held the water skin, and her left was on her hip, her chest thrust out.

  She was Holo the Wisewolf.

  Lawrence cursed himself for asking a stupid question, but just as he was about to say, “Ah, you’re right,” Holo slipped in another statement, cutting him off.

  “I’m a late bloomer, after all. I’m only just getting started.” She bared her fangs and smiled. She was shameless, indeed, to have lived so many centuries and yet claiming to be only getting started.

  Before she was a wisewolf, Holo was Holo.

  “I may have retreated from being worshipped, but ’twould be lovely indeed to have a thick book of tales recorded about me, of course.”

  “Ha-ha. Shall I write it, then?”

  Many merchants took up the pen.

  Not having learned the finer points of composition, their writing was not beautiful, but if someone on the verge of death had a fortune, they might well have a comrade take dictation for them.

  “Hmph. Though if you were to do it, the travels with you would be the larger part.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “I can’t have that now, can I?”

  “Why not?” asked Lawrence, and Holo coughed.

  “It might well end up being less of a book and more a litany of humiliations.” Holo chuckled through her nose. “You’re perfectly happy to lie—you’d embellish things that did and didn’t happen, no doubt. What sort of book would you create?” Holo looked up.

  It was clear from her face that she had gone beyond smiling and was now playing a foolish game.

  Lawrence was a merchant.

  Carefully estimating her thoughts, he spoke. “Are you trying to say I’d be as thick as the book I’d write?”

  Holo laughed voicelessly, her shoulders shaking, and she smacked Lawrence’s arm.

  It was a foolish conversation.

  “Anyway, all I heard tell of was Nyohhira. They don’t often go into the mountains of Roef, they said. Apparently ’tis not so nice a place.”

  “Huh?” Lawrence asked.

  Holo was still smiling, but there was a gaping hole behind that smile.

  She was stubborn.

  Whenever she seemed strangely cheerful, there was always something behind it.

  But she continued speaking, as though she hadn’t heard Lawrence’s inquiry at all.

  “There are more than twenty hot springs. The earth has cracks that vent steam, and it seems like the end of the world—just like it did in my time. The one annoying bit was that the spot that I’d found and only I knew about seems to have been discovered—even though it was a hot spring hidden in a canyon so narrow I had to take this form just to fit.”

  It was said that the spirits of the hot springs watched those who visited, and the more effort one put forth to soak in the waters, the more effective the water’s healing powers would be.

  So when it came to why the people of Nyohhira would go to such lengths, it was because finding such a hot spring was part of what they lived for.

  In such circumstances, it would have been discovered sooner or later.

  Holo seemed exceedingly frustrated, but Lawrence could tell it was an act.

  She had let something important slip.

  The mountains of Roef were not a good place.

  It had been carelessness.

  That much was obvious.

  Had the boatmen mentioned what awaited those who headed up the Roef River?

  One had said that there was a mine that produced copper-like water from a spring and that there was a town with copper plentiful enough to build copper-plated stills.

  And Ragusa was carrying large amounts of copper coin down the Roam River.

  What was needed to make those coins?

  Copper obviously—and large amounts of fuel wood or the black stone known as coal.

  Holo had been talking to the troupe of performers, so if they were speaking ill of an energetic mining town, it wasn’t because the town was in decline.

  It might mean that the place was unfit for human habitation.

  Clear-cut forests, poisoned rivers.

  Floods and landslides were common, and it would attract men trying to get rich quickly.

  The performer girl may have meant that the quality of the patrons was poor, but the quality of a town’s population was determined by its environment.

  It was even written in scripture that a bad tree would produce only bad fruit but that a good tree could produce only fine fruit.

  “Heh. This won’t do. At this rate, I won’t be able to hide anything from you,” said Holo suddenly, just as Lawrence was wondering what he should say.

  “There have always been fools who dig into the mountains. Time passes and men grow more numerous. I was prepared for that much.”

  Lawrence very much doubted these were her true feelings.

  After so many centuries in Pasloe, Holo had to know—she had to know that the wisdom of humanity had progressed to where some now conceitedly thought they had no need for gods.

  “Still, know this—,” Holo said, taking careful step-hops as though crossing a creek via stepping-stones. She took one step, then another, and on the third step, she looked back at Lawrence. “This is my problem to worry over. When I see you make that face, I can’t worry about it properly.”

  It would have been easy to simply tell her, “Why, the nerve!”

  But Lawrence could hardly do so.

  Holo couldn’t very well help but worry, and if they found Yoitsu in ruins, she might come apart entirely.

  And yet she herself understood that her concern was nothing to be ashamed about—that it was entirely natural.

  Lawrence reevaluated his thoughts.

  Holo was not the girl she appeared to be.

  “When the time comes, I may need to borrow your chest to cry upon. That’s one promise I’ll need from you.”

  When he heard such words from a girl like Holo, Lawrence had no choice but to tell her she could rely on him.

  Holo chuckled. “But then what of you? Did you hear any interesting talk?”

  Led on by Holo, Lawrence started to walk, looking over at the circle of men as something in their conversation caused a stir.

  “…Let’s see. I seem to remember Ragusa saying something…”

  Perhaps because of the state of his liquor-muddled mind when he’d talked to Ragusa, the memory did not come instantly. He tapped his head several times, annoyed at the failure of his ledger-like memory for recalling the things he’d seen and heard.

  “I believe…it was something funny…but not really funny…Something like that.”

  “About the boy?” Holo suggested. Col was still off staring at the ground there in the moonlight.

  The memory came drifting back to Lawrence.

  “Oh yes! Or…was it?”

  “Well, that’s all you and that boatman would have to talk about, is it not? And you’re competing over him, too.”

  “I’m not competing over anything. But Ragusa really seems to want the boy.”

  Lawrence had a vision
of the fierce attack that would happen when they got to Kerube.

  It was by no means guaranteed that the boy would safely become a high-ranking priest and that was only if he managed to finish his studies. When Lawrence thought about it that way, he felt like it might be good for Col to become Ragusa’s apprentice—but that was just his own personal judgment.

  Holo looked up at him as he mused.

  “And what of you?”

  “Me? Well, I…” Lawrence prevaricated, sidestepping Holo’s sharp eyes.

  He wouldn’t mind taking an apprentice if it was Col.

  But it felt premature, and there was another reason he was being evasive.

  “Back in Pasloe, I waited a long time for a suitable-looking traveler to come, but that good meeting did not come for some time. When it comes to people, well, you should trust my eye.”

  Lawrence noticed that somewhere along the line, Holo had taken his hand.

  “And he’s gotten attached to me, but worry not. He’s not likely to become your enemy.”

  Lawrence turned definitively away and exhaled a long, deep, white breath.

  Holo snickered.

  Lawrence faced ahead, exasperated, but he wasn’t sure if Holo realized…

  Did she realize that Lawrence was suspicious of her motivations for supporting Col?

  “Well, everything seems to be in order now. When I heard that ships were piling up, I expected more of a scene.”

  “…You were excited, then?” asked Lawrence, and Holo looked up with a complicated expression.

  She neither shook her head nor nodded.

  Instead, she spoke meditatively, looking off into the distance. “I did wish for a leisurely journey, but travels with you are strangely complicated—when you’ve time to think of foolish plans.”

  Lawrence counted off the days left in his travels with Holo and remembered what had happened in their journeys.

  It was true that given time, he did tend to think about things.

  In that case, perhaps he might as well get caught up in mad thoughts, if only for the amusement of it.

  But saying such things to Holo was going too far, Lawrence thought.

  So he instead incited her easily roused anger. “It’s both good and bad being too clever.”

  Surely Holo would say this, to which he would reply that—Lawrence constructed the exchange in his mind, but Holo said nothing at all.

  When he thought it strange and looked at her, he saw her furrowed brow.

  “Too clever?”

  Lawrence immediately knew she was not angry.

  By her expression, she simply did not understand.

  Which was precisely why Lawrence could not fathom the meaning of that expression.

  When he faltered and his words failed him, Holo made a small sound. “Ah—”

  He felt as though that was the trigger.

  Lawrence saw the source of the discrepancy.

  Their gazes met.

  They stopped walking simultaneously, and after a short silence, what appeared on both their faces were frowns meant to hide the awkwardness they felt.

  “Don’t tell me you asked around about far-off places just because you were interested, and now you’ve gotten some strange misapprehension in your head,” said Holo.

  Lawrence raised his eyebrows, at a loss for words.

  Naturally, even as he hoped that his worst fears would prove baseless, he had confidence that they would be borne out.

  “’Tis no wonder you made such a strange face back then. Well, you can keep your worries to yourself,” said Holo forcefully.

  “I could say the same thing to you. The reason you’re trying to force Col off on me as my apprentice is exactly the same.”

  This time it was Holo who drew her chin in, chastised.

  It was just as he thought.

  She might have saved Col out of kindness, but her strange fawning over him and her insistence that Lawrence take him on as an apprentice was for another reason entirely.

  So what happened if he applied his new knowledge that when Holo did something, it was for his own sake?

  Before long, he saw that his worries about Holo were the same as hers.

  They glared at each other, both trying to look firm.

  “You’re the weak one, and I’ve got to protect you,” they each insisted.

  It was a foolish conversation—they were both thinking the same thing.

  “Honestly…so what was it you wanted to say?” said Lawrence with a little sigh, giving up on the staring match. Holo sighed as well.

  “When we’ve time to think of foolish things, it seems neither of us can think of anything good.”

  “Unaware of our own faults.”

  Holo smiled slightly and took Lawrence’s hand again. “One cannot help thinking such things, but it’s still quite difficult.”

  “Not thinking about anything is another problem, I think…it is difficult.”

  And all the more so when Lawrence realized that this was the height of that joy.

  The future would be darker than this. Even if they were worried about each other, if they continued to talk of these things, no cheer would come of it.

  “Come, let’s stop talking of this,” said Holo, apparently having come to the same conclusion.

  Lawrence agreed.

  “Well, we’ve gone to the trouble of waking up at this hour,” said Holo. “It’s cold, so let’s go talk to the lad and have some wine.”

  “More drinking?” said Lawrence, flabbergasted, but Holo walked ahead of him, and her only reply was the twitching of her ears underneath her hood.

  “Could these people not sleep in a more orderly fashion? They are in the way; ’tis frustrating.”

  The sleeping figures were scattered here and there as though they had fallen at random out of the sky, and they made it hard to walk straight across the area.

  Since it was still a wide riverbank, it was all right, but if it ever became a cheap lodging house, this would surely be one of the complaints.

  If they had lined up nicely, they could have stretched out their legs and there would have been room for more people to sleep, but people seemed to prefer sleeping hither and thither, their arms and legs sprawled everywhere.

  It was thanks to that that Lawrence didn’t know how many times he’d had an inn right before his very eyes, but spent the night under the cold sky.

  Such travel memories came to Lawrence, but something nagged at him.

  He looked behind him at the sleeping forms of the merchants and boatmen. Their posture. Their direction. Their number.

  Glared at by Holo, Lawrence found the nagging in his mind had vanished.

  “Col, m’boy,” said Holo.

  Col seemed as attached to Holo as she was to him, and she appeared to have taken a shine to the boy.

  Be it “vixen” or “bird” or “old man,” Holo essentially never called people by their names.

  Lawrence found himself searching his memory for any time Holo had called him by name.

  It had probably happened once or twice, but when he tried to imagine the scene, it made him feel a bit embarrassed.

  “Hmm?” Holo said blankly. She had called Col’s name, but the boy did not seem to have taken notice.

  Lawrence and Holo looked at each other, wondering if he was asleep, then approached the crouching Col.

  He didn’t seem asleep—he was wrapped in Holo’s robe and holding a thin stick in his hand and moving.

  He seemed to be totally absorbed in whatever it was he was doing.

  Holo was about to call his name again, but just then, he seemed to notice their footfalls and looked over his shoulder in alarm.

  “—Whoops,” said Lawrence; Holo’s face was blank.

  Col, for his part, seemed to have been wholly absorbed in whatever he was doing. Turning to Holo and Lawrence with a look of surprise on his face, he hastily picked something up. It made a light metallic clink, so it was presumably coin. He also tried t
o hide something with his feet when he stood.

  Holo wasn’t the only quick-witted one.

  Lawrence looked at the boy, whose feet hid what looked to be like writing on the ground.

  Just as Lawrence was wondering what it was, Col quickly scuffed and erased it, then spoke.

  “Wh-what is wrong?”

  Going by the feel of Holo’s hand in his, Lawrence got the feeling that Holo wanted to say, “That’s my line!” He was quite sure it wasn’t just his imagination.

  It was obvious Col was hiding something.

  “Mm. We woke up at this strange hour and thought you might drink with us.”

  The unpleasant face Col made was certainly not a joke.

  Not long ago, Ragusa had forced the boy to drink, and Col had passed out.

  Holo chuckled. “’Tis a jest. Are you hungry?”

  “Er…a, a little.”

  Col had drawn a small circle.

  It seemed he had drawn several such figures, but there was no way to know for sure.

  “Mm. Come, you—,” said Holo to Lawrence. “We have plenty of provisions, do we not?”

  “Hmm? Oh, well, we have some, yes.”

  “But?”

  Lawrence shrugged and answered, “But if we eat it, we’ll have that much less.”

  Holo lightly smacked Lawrence’s shoulder. “Well, that decides it, then. Now, ’twould be nicer to be near the fire…”

  Between the dancing and the drunken staggering, Holo and Lawrence had forgotten where their blanket had been laid.

  They both looked at Col, prompting him to ask, “Don’t you remember?” in a slightly worn-out voice.

  If Col was to indeed join Lawrence and Holo’s travels as an apprentice, this sort of exchange seemed likely to happen every day.

  Holo giggled. “We were both drunk, after all. I am sorry, but could you fetch it for us?”

  “Understood,” said Col and trotted off.

  Lawrence and Holo watched his figure recede together, and something about the scene was far from disagreeable to him.

  Part of that was of course because Holo was right next to him, but she seemed to agree and leaned lightly against him.

  Lawrence knew one word to describe the scene.

  But if he spoke it, he would lose.

  “You—,” Holo began.

  “Mm?”

  Holo did not immediately continue, instead shaking her head.