Spice and Wolf - Volume 12 - Chapter Pr

PROLOGUE

Dawn was approaching far across the endless snowy plains. The air was painfully cold, and every breath brought the throb of a headache. The sheep had been let out in the predawn darkness and could be seen at the edge of the horizon.

This scene had repeated itself for centuries and would surely continue to do so for centuries to come—the clear sky; the rolling, snowy hills; and the flock of sheep that trod them.

Lawrence took a breath and then exhaled. The wind carried the vapor away in a swirl, and his eyes followed it as it went.

Beside him, his still-sleepy traveling companion crouched down and poked at the snow with her finger.

“It may be gone, I hear.”

The response to his sudden words was no great thing. “One can hardly lose what one does not already have.” She made a snowball with her small hands and then tossed it away.

It disappeared in the snow with a soft noise, leaving a hole behind.

“We humans can indeed lose again things we’ve lost already.”

Another snowball opened up a second hole before his companion replied to him. “Such reasoning’s beyond the likes of me.”

“Do you imagine things are over when you die? It’s not so. When we die, we either live on in heaven or die yet again in hell. Losing something already lost is not so very difficult.”

His companion decided against making a third snowball and breathed on her cold, red hands. “’Tis dreadful indeed to be a human.”

“It surely is.” Lawrence nodded.

After a moment passed, his companion put another question to him. “How does one lose such a thing?”

“It’s dug up, carved out, with not a trace left behind—or so people say.”

Lawrence heard the sound of rustling fabric and turned to see his companion bent over in laughter.

“Aye, ’tis dreadful to be human! Only a pup could dream up such a notion—I surely never could.” She straightened and was still fully two heads shorter than him.

Just as the adults’ faces he had looked up to as a child always seemed vaguely frightening, the face of any girl he looked down on now always seemed weak and ephemeral. But this girl seemed stouthearted and strong, despite her stature, which was surely no illusion.

“Still, ’tis a bit pleasing to hear as much.”

“…Pleasing?”

“Aye. The first time, I lost what I did utterly unbeknownst to me. It had nothing to do with me, and there was nothing I could do to stop it from happening.”

She took a step, two steps, leaving footprints in the snow, as though to prove the weight of her light-seeming body. The footprints were small but distinct.

“But this time—” The hem of her robe whirled around her, and now the morning sun was to her back as she smiled. “—This time I will be there. ’Twill be my life after death.”

She grinned, and from behind her lips peered her sharp fangs.

“I thought there was nothing I could do, but I have another chance. Such happy things do not often happen. I can act or not as I see fit. Much better that than having the matter settled entirely behind one’s back, don’t you think?”

There were two kinds of strength. One was the strength that came with having something to protect. The other was the strength of having nothing to lose.

“You seem strangely bold,” he teased, the breath puffing whitely from his mouth.

“’Tis because I’ve come upon a wonderful excuse. Regardless of the outcome, I’ll have participated in whatever happens. There’s a certain comfort in that. It might be even more important than whether things go well or not.”

Following her implication to its conclusion suggested that even if she lost out in the end, she might do so without suffering. But when someone seemed to be concealing something and then voiced such a sentiment aloud, one could hardly fail to extend a hand to them.

To lose was one thing, but the challenge of losing with grace was a far more difficult one.

“I must live a good long while yet. I need the hearth of a good excuse to sleep through the cold nights. Something to hold while I sleep that suffices to gaze at when I wake.”

It was a difficult thing to meet such words with a smile, yet he had to. Her fearlessness made it seem as though she was proposing they go and steal the great treasures of the world.

“I can’t stay with you forever. I can only do so much to aid you. But what I can do for you I will.”

She stood there in the snow, the morning sunlight shining down on her small back.

What she wanted to know was not what his stated goal was, but rather what he could actually accomplish. Her heart was a bit too tender to desire passionate proclamations of his willingness to make any effort or risk any danger.

Perhaps their mutual willingness to simply join hands and walk together without going to any great effort only proved that he was getting older. The smile that appeared on her face was a happy one.

“Well, then, perhaps I will use breakfast as an excuse to see just how far you’ll go for me, eh?” Her joke signaled the end of their melancholy conversation. She returned to his side with light, bounding steps, then clung flirtatiously to his arm.

“Just make sure you don’t eat so much that this breakfast becomes your last.”

Even under the best circumstances, the cost of feeding her was no joke. But what had to be taken even more seriously than said cost was the speed of her wit.

“Aye. After all, you love me so much you can hardly bear it—If I ate enough to please you, my belly would surely burst.”

The words that came out of her mouth were a fortress, and if he dared to counterattack, snakes would come slithering out of the grass that surrounded it. Surrender was his only option. He shrugged. “I have no particular desire to kill you.”

“Mm.” Her red-tinged amber eyes took in the sight of the snow-covered abbey and then closed. “’Tis well. I’d hate to die by your generosity.”

Lawrence wondered privately if dawn was the coldest time of day as a reminder from God that it would only become warmer from here.