Spice and Wolf - Volume 17 - Chapter 12.5

INTERMISSION

“Ah, Sir Knight. You seem to be in a fine mood.”

I heard a voice calling out to me as I lay atop a sunlit stone step.

I have the fine name of Enek, mind you, but it was no bad thing to also be known as Knight. I made a generous sigh through my nostrils and gave a single wave of my tail.

“By the way, is the priest inside?”

Her head wrapped in a towel, both of her sleeves rolled up, the woman was built like a bear.

I seem to recall that she was a cooper—a maker of barrels. By this hour, things had probably calmed down at the morning markets and she was taking a small break until lunch. Perhaps she had even come to offer up a prayer or two.

Pondering such things, I yawned a great yawn.

“Someone said a horse-drawn carriage arrived where the children play on the hill, so I thought, maybe it’s the one the priest mentioned.”

“…”

Somehow, I kept my eyelids—heavy and ready to close even now—in check as I looked at the woman.

“Goodness,” she said, rising and returning to the church. “But you know, the children said it was a pitch-black carriage…As if it was haunted. I wonder if it’s all right…”

It was clear that the woman’s doubt and curiosity were dueling within her as she followed the path, which I led her down.

She may have looked like a bear, but her personality was closer to that of a cat.

“What will you do, Sir Knight? Coming with me?” The humans of this town spoke readily to me, but I would never last if I answered them all.

Ignoring her, I walked to the middle of the corridor as far as the scribe room. It was the room where the priest of this church wrote important books and letters.

Though things had been busy but a short time ago with harvest festivals and saintly blessings, it was all peace and quiet now.

Having said that, there were not many people who wrote, and what few there were had a mountain of duties to fulfill. Today, too, he was surely writing up a storm in that scribe room.

If things were as expected, that is.

“Reverend, it seems that a horse-drawn carriage has—”

The woman made a light knock, half opening the door and speaking as she entered the room.

She seemed to swallow her words in a largely instinctive reaction. My master, loftily addressed as “Reverend,” was bent over her desk, fast asleep. It had recently become rather warm. It was hard work to even get out of bed.

Even so, though her back and hair had grown somewhat, she still looked like a child as she slept.

I cleared my throat.

“Woof!”

“…Hunh!?”

As my master awoke, she sat up in a great hurry. Her eyes darted all around the area and noticed myself and the woman standing in the doorway. Though there was a mountain of papers and books atop her desk, along with clothing and the tools of a tailor placed atop it.

“Ah, Miss Rifkin…Ah, er…Ha-ha…” Like a child she tried to push the clothing and the tailoring tools into the middle of the desk as if she meant to hide them.

It was rather frivolous behavior for someone in the service of God. Despite the passage of some number of years, my master still had not quite been able to outgrow a certain childishness.

“Oh, I am not upset.”

The woman made a teasing smile. My master’s body seemed to shrink in embarrassment, but as she met my eyes, she made a somewhat resentful glare. It was highly illogical to act as if it were my fault.

“Ah, so, what is it? If it’s preparations for the guild’s Guardian Saint Festival, I’m hiring Mr. Botz to take care of it…”

“Oh, not that. There seems to be a horse-drawn carriage coming into town. I thought this might be the one you mentioned so I thought I’d let you know.”

“…Carriage?”

“Yes. You mentioned it yourself. Something about having been called to somewhere a bit far off…”

“…” My master gazed at the woman in shock, and then, she suddenly opened her mouth wide, sucking in her breath. “I thought it’d be next w…Ah, er, sorry, if you’ll excuse me!”

Pulling up the hem of her long outfit, she ran out of the room in decidedly unladylike fashion.

The woman laughed heartily, holding her belly as if keeping it from dropping.

I had the vague feeling that my master had been more reliable when she had been a shepherdess.

Norah the Fairy.

That had been my master’s old name when she was a shepherdess for a time, highly skilled at leading sheep.

Now, though, she was the priest of a church in a small town leading a different kind of flock.

One never knew what might happen in this world.

Born the overly serious sort, she had cut her teeth in a place of solemn masses and festivals, making her a fairly sharp person.

However, in spite of having the ability and fortitude to endure hunger and cold while splendidly protecting a flock of sheep from wolves and foxes—or perhaps, because of it—I had learned, shortly after we began to live in town, that my master was surprisingly absentminded.

The date, math, people’s names, prayer phrases, ceremonial protocol—in spite of having an eye-popping grasp of the broad outlines, she tended to lose track of the small details.

It was a pitiable thing that were I not by her side, no one would call her an adult.

“Errr…clothes, food, ah, I’d better have a book of scripture, too. Also a prayer book…ah? Maybe I should bring several pairs of boots? But I haven’t worn boots since way back…I wonder why…”

As she used her hand to comb down her blond hair, which ran down to the middle of her back, she feverishly prepared the luggage strewn about before her. My master pulled out the clothes she had worn when she came to this town, but I wondered what she intended to do with them, since it was clear it was not the right size.

I lay on my belly at the doorway as I sighed an exasperated sigh.

“Ahh, er, bring the letter, er, and then, and then…”

She had never been at a loss about what to bring when leading sheep out of the pastures.

Perhaps the Church was right to teach that one should discard one’s belongings and pass them to those who lacked their own. It was an abundance of things, which made one hesitate in the face of a journey. That was all the truer for life itself.

I snorted another sigh, and my master noticed and looked at me.

By the time I thought, Uh-oh, a rolled-up apron was already sailing toward me.

“It must be nice to be so carefree, Enek!”

They were words I had heard from time to time during the five years since we had come to live in this town.

Of course, it was not so at all.

It was just that it mattered far more to me whether I was getting a cut of meat for supper that day than whether the day’s mass had gone well or not.

As my master scurried about the room like a human storm, I crawled out from under the apron, sniffing for my master’s scent, when my ears caught the sound of someone knocking at the entrance of the church.

I could tell most of the townspeople apart by their knocks.

I did not know this knock.

A guest had arrived from the outside.

It might have been just as well to call her an emissary from hell.

A throng of people had formed on the street in front of the church.

For a time, plague had reduced this town to a veritable town of the dead, but the brave few who remained, those who refused to give up, and the assistance of my master, had brought the town back to a fairly lively state.

It was not that someone coming from outside town was all that rare a sight. There were times when a caravan of merchants would pass through, with dozens of men mounted on horses. But what had caught the attention of the crowd was the majestic appearance of the entirely too-fine black horses and the pitch-black canopied carriage they were pulling. There was a separate wagon for carrying luggage, with six stout men escorting it all.

My master was seized by shock the moment she set foot out of the entrance of the church and saw the carriage.

Then, she desperately tried to comb her hair into place with her hand, but it was a complete waste of time, as it had always been fairly wavy to begin with. Besides, considering the person who came out of the carriage, one could only call my master’s efforts to hand comb her own hair pathetic by comparison.

A tall woman was not such a rare sight.

Nonetheless, it was rare to see one possessed by such dignity.

“Eve Bolan.”

The woman spoke her name. Her back was straight and tall; her body was slender. But thin was not the most accurate word; rather, it was as if a sculptor had thoroughly scraped away everything unnecessary. The fragrance about her was decidedly feminine, but for the first time in quite a while, my nose caught the scent of a beast that roamed the plains.

“Ah…err…”

Though my master was still flustered, she was someone who had had a certain amount of success as a priest, and as such, apparently refocused her wits. Clearing her throat to set things straight, she stretched her back straight up and put a smile on her face. “Ahem. I am Norah Arendt.”

Though my master had straightened her posture appreciably, this Eve was clearly an entire hand taller than her. Besides, she was overwhelmed for a number of reasons other than height. Though my master had put a fair bit of meat on her in the last five years, the woman before her came off like a wolf in her prime. Perhaps it was the combined effect of the swell of her bust and the curve of her back.

Eve, seeming like a noble who adorned herself with a fur coat regardless of the weather, looked over my master from head to toe and made a small sigh. “So she really…”

“Huh?”

As my master murmured back, Eve blinked her eyelashes, which were so long I expected to actually hear them. “Nothing. It seems best if I take care of all the necessities. If you get lonely at night, all you need bring is a book of scripture. There are other places we’re stopping at, just like the letter said. We’re leaving today.”

Upon finishing her statement, the woman calling herself Eve returned to the carriage.

Left behind, my master stood still for a while, then looked at me.

As it was too much trouble for me to bark, I snorted a sigh.

Apparently Eve did business in a country to the south.

Though I could only venture to guess as to the size of her business, my experience suggested it was considerable.

The horse-drawn carriage was wide enough to comfortably seat three adults, with two seats of that width facing each other. The seats and their backs had many lines on them and had been adorned with fabrics and delicate ornaments. In spite of my master’s resolve to live for the sake of the townspeople, she had retained a lingering affection for sewing and so took great interest in those details.

For my part, I had rarely laid eyes upon clothing such as that in which Eve clothed herself. A very comfortable-seeming piece of clothing, it resembled a robe, but differed in many of the fine details. Perhaps responding to my master’s furtive glances, the reticent Eve said only, “It’s from a desert country.”

From there, it was a peaceful trip.

Eve was a woman of few words by nature; my master was not the type to make proactive conversation, either. As my master had procured Eve’s permission, I rose up onto the seat and gazed out the window, with her hand stroking my head the whole time.

When she had been a shepherd, even once we left the town gates, it was not a vast, borderless expanse that greeted us. Indeed, the land was more like a fearsome prison, for no matter where we went, nothing would change.

I would have been content living in the forest.

But my master, a human being, could only live among others of her kind; as a dog, I was painfully aware of just how difficult it was to live in that world.

With no help from anyone, one’s days were filled only with getting the food before one’s eyes into one’s own mouth, and there was scant likelihood of anything changing until one last drew breath.

When my master slept upon bales of straw at the sheep pen, gazing up at the moon as mice and insects scurried about her, she may not have voiced such thoughts, but she had no doubt had them.

And then a single chance meeting changed everything.

From that alone, my master’s life was changed forever.

There are many who run with all their might. However, many see their legs fail them. And yet, if only there was someone to give them a little push from behind, that is all it would take for them to move forward, too.

And so my fortunate master was able to run until she arrived in a new land.

“Anxious to be heading out?”

It was the second day since we had left.

“Hm?”

“It’s not often that a town priest leaves on a journey, after all.”

Making a flourish with her pen at the end, she double-checked the text before extending the letter out of the open wooden shutter. As she did so, a human standing and waiting outside took it, folded it, sealed it, and began riding in a direction different from our own.

The woman returned to the same subject.

“Quite a decision for you to make. Nyohhira is at the far end of the world. Even I hesitated.”

It was often said that even though one might be at the ends of the world or under the ground, if one could keep a calm face, had wine to drink, and could write letters, one was not doing so poorly.

But this Eve was underestimating my master. She was no small-town priest ignorant of the world. Though she undeniably had some fairly foolish aspects to her, she was a fine person who had never surrendered to hardship or deprivation.

I looked up at my master from her lap.

So say something, I thought at her.

My master laughed quietly. “Certainly, I was a little nervous about leaving town,” my master finally said with a pleasant smile. When I made a small bark, my master stroked my head as if to soothe me. “Even though in the past, I wanted to go out, out, when I couldn’t…”

“…”

As my master spoke while looking outside, Eve put her elbow on the windowsill, resting her chin on her hand in a very unladylike pose as she watched.

In the forest, this was behavior reserved for predators.

“Did you meet her in that town?”

There was something of a pause before Eve, now gazing out the window as well, asked as if she had no great interest in it.

“No, it was in Ruvinheigen.”

“Oh? You’re a former nun?”

“No…,” my master replied bashfully as she lowered her gaze to me. She looked like someone who had peeked into a chest full of precious treasure. “The Church took care of me, but that is all. I was like a scared little lamb.”

I laughed at my master’s self-deprecation.

It was only because she had escaped that place that she could smile about it now.

“I was a shepherdess.”

Eve raised her head up from her palms in surprise, looking over my master once more, this time with a long, hard look.

“That’s how I met both of them…Or I should say, I was saved by them…or perhaps dragged by them into conflict?” She giggled. “The latter is likely more accurate.”

Even my painfully overserious master had finally become able to speak in such a manner. Certainly, that wolf and that sheep had tried to aid us, but in the end had merely entangled us up in their chaos.

“Miss Bolan, where did you meet those two?”

A predator asks only one question. Would you prefer to be eaten starting from the head or the tail?

Perhaps that was why she frowned a fair amount at my master’s question.

“Eve is fine.”

My master grinned and nodded, correcting herself. “Miss Eve.”

“It was farther north. They dropped in to visit along their way, as it turned out.”

“Is that so?”

My master could persevere in conversation with congregants for hours.

She laughed softly; she nodded; sometimes she urged conversation forward, and others, she gently rebuked, as if with a soft pat from her palm.

That was why she did not say anything at that particular time. But her collected experience of talking to people nonetheless loosened Eve’s tongue.

“So you were a timid lamb.”

“Hm?” My master echoed back before making an embarrassed-looking smile and a nod.

“I was a wounded wolf.”

Eve gazed far into the distance, but surely it was an old memory she stared at.

When my master first became accustomed to this town and permitted herself the luxury of reminiscing, she often had such a look.

“That’s why…”

“…”

Without prompting, my master gazed across at Eve. “…I make a poor cat burglar.”

My master’s eyes widened a little.

For her part, Eve slowly reeled in her gaze from the outside, glancing sidelong at my master.

There was a very faint smile on her lips, but it looked like she was laughing at herself.

It seemed that man was on her mind a fair bit.

Furthermore, though her gaze seemed to suggest my master as being of a piece with her, if my memory served correctly, my master thought nothing of men whatsoever. Even since she had settled down to live in this town, though no small number had approached my master, she had gently refused them all.

My master told them it was because she was in service to God, but that was not why.

So long as I was by her side, it was enough.

I whuffled a short sigh as my master, stroking me from head to neck, spoke to Eve. “You see, once a sheep’s attention is taken by something, all else flies out of her head.”

As my master spoke, Eve made what was clearly a strained smile.

“Hmph. Quite some nerve she has, calling us here like this.”

Eve gazed outside once more, but this time she seemed to be actually looking outside.

“Using me as an errand girl for them takes no small amount of courage in itself. Can you believe it? There’s going to be three more women riding that wagon to Nyohhira with us.”

“Oh!”

“Shocking, isn’t it? I’m quite wrathful over it. That horse-drawn wagon behind me is full of valuable clothing and jewels. You’re Norah, right? You can borrow whatever you like and dress up however you please.”

Eve made a sadistic smile that seemed to suit her very well as she spoke.

It was no surprise my master’s smile seemed a little conflicted. After all, my master has no interest in any male besides myself.

However, after seeming to think about it a while, she stared at the tip of my nose before lifting up her gaze to speak. “Even sheep must not be pampered all the time, you see.”

The wolflike woman gave my master a grin.

I was rather taken aback with shock, thinking back to that sheep while atop my master’s lap, and made a guffaw with a sigh.

Though the old uncertainties of travel presented themselves, the carriage and clothing Eve had prepared were extravagant indeed, napping in the carriage might have been more comfortable than that drafty old church.

My master is constitutionally hardier than she looks; Eve seemed to admire that as well.

Though there was no conversation to speak of, the atmosphere was not particularly ill, and I was able to nap on my master’s lap quite a bit, too.

This was how it went until we arrived at another town. It seemed that here, another woman would be coming aboard.

However, first came a hot meal and a good night’s sleep at the inn; later, we greeted the next day’s morn.

In the middle of the morning, as I wondered what sort of person this new passenger would turn out to be, I caught a strange scent inside the moving coach.

“…I wonder what this scent is?”

“Medicine.”

“Medicine…?”

“Numerous alchemists live in this town. Apparently the woman we’re picking up collects them.”

Miller, executioner, shepherd—she used all these words with the same tone she used for witch and alchemist.

Eve spoke in a jesting tone as if she was frightening a child, but when I saw my master make a sound of admiration through her nose, I was a bit disappointed.

“Rare or not, there’ll be enough of those scents in Nyohhira to make you sick of them.”

“Eh, is that so?”

“Nyohhira is a famous land of springs. In those mountains, there are baths everywhere the eye can see. Just picture a bathtub as large as a lake. The whole place smells much like this.”

Of course, I found this a rather dubious claim, but my master seemed to take it in as the honest truth.

This time, just as Eve desired, I held my tongue and let my thoughts wander.

However, if there was a bathtub as large as a lake, who on earth would bathe in it…?

Naturally I thought it had to be an exaggeration.

And as the carriage came to a large turn in the road, it gently came to a stop.

The driver descended from his seat, checking someone’s name outside. With things apparently cleared up without delay, there was a gentle knock on the wooden door of the carriage.

“Aye.” Eve made a curt reply and respectfully opened the door.

There stood the woman who seemed to be a legendary witch.

“I am Dian Rubens. You may call me Diana.” She smiled as her glossy black hair swayed slightly.

This woman had a different air about her than Eve or my master.

She sat on the same side as my master, keeping that faint smile on her face as she directed her radiant gaze out the window.

Reluctantly, I curled around my master’s feet, but I continued to glance up at the woman intermittently, taking notice of matters overhead.

My master was sneaking sideways glances at Diana, as was Eve.

I could somehow understand why. It was an obvious question: What relationship did a woman who gave off an air like this have with that thickheaded sheep?

“Incidentally…” It was Diana, who seemed like a pitch-black raven, who lit the spark.

“Are the two of you friends, I wonder?”

At first glance, her calm, smiling face and demeanor displayed what looked like a gentle personality.

However, my nose told me that this bird was closer to Eve than my master.

Eve, making a bored face and giving Diana a characteristically ill-mannered look, rested her chin upon her hand as she spoke. “Does it look like that to you?”

“Not really.” Diana’s expression did not falter whatsoever as she turned her still-smiling face toward my master. “It’s just, I could hardly believe that man capable enough to handle more than one more liaison, so you must be friends, I thought.”

Those words made my master nearly smile. Somehow she suppressed it, but one threatened to break out at any moment as she turned toward Eve.

“I must agree on that point.”

“But of course.” As Diana tilted her head with a mirthful smile, her hair, so dark that it shimmered, made a sound as she brushed it. Both Eve’s hair and my master’s was splendid gold in color, but neither made the slightest move to copy her. Pitiably, though I have black hair myself, I have no skills to compare.

“I myself found it rather mysterious seeing you, I should say,” said Eve.

Diana chuckled. “You could say that…I am their elder in terms of life experience, perhaps.”

“…?”

Eve raised an eyebrow a little as she looked at Diana. One might say she was intensively scrutinizing the other party’s words, but even while thinking of something, she did not show a single opening.

For her part, my master tucked her chin a bit, just like when sensing the wind coming from an odd direction across a meadow.

“Are either of you married?”

Eve made a small laugh at the question, sitting up and raising both hands up to shoulder level.

“I’m busy with financial matters.”

“Heh.” Diana expressed no surprise as she made a small laugh that seemed very typical of her, shifting her gaze to my master, who made a nervous smile.

“People in town have made advances, but…”

“Really?” As Diana spoke, she shifted her gaze onto me. “Not because you got in the way?”

Why—this woman! I made a short cry and met my master’s eyes.

“Certainly he’s always been protecting me.” My master petted my head, then cradled it with both hands. “Right, Enek?”

“Woof.” Of course, I answered, but my master made a somewhat lonely face.

Yes, of course I understood why.

My master was vibrant and full of life each and every day, but I was the opposite.

My prime as a sheepdog was probably five years ago now. I would have liked to say I had a mountain of time left, but indeed, it was all too brief.

“So, you do have a husband, then?”

Diana lifted her gaze from me in response to Eve’s words. “I did once.”

The curt reply, given without hesitation, seemed to be as far as she would look back and scratch at the old memory.

And yet, when Diana, who had a particularly dubious air all about her, placed her snow-white hand on her chest, she made a face like a girl reminiscing about secrets from the night before as she spoke.

“So, when they came to my town, I had more excitement than I’d had in years. Was it like that for you?”

With that, her gaze moved to both Eve and my master. Both glanced at each other’s face, making strained smiles together.

“Does annoyance count as part of excitement?” said Eve.

“If excitement includes envy enough to dazzle the eyes,” said my master.

Diana’s face showed a bit of surprise at both of their answers, finally breaking into a pleasant smile. This was not the resolute mask of before, but something more natural. “Heh-heh. So in the end, you got called over here, too. That’s just, oh…”

“Annoying.”

“I’m envious.”

As both finished the sentence, like a ripple, all three of them smiled.

“But I think that innocent charm might put them in a tough spot.”

“Only one of them will be in a tough spot, I assure you.” Eve made a knowing smile as she spoke, and the two others indeed giggled and smiled.

Even though their ages, origins, and upbringings all differed, somehow they all shared the same estimation of that foolish sheep. As I largely agreed with them, I was certainly not going to jump to his defense.

“But that’s why I find their having a proper ceremony to be rather unexpected.” Diana pulled a sealed letter out of a purse.

It was just like the letter my master had received. When she had opened her own copy of that letter, she had looked like nothing so much as a moth who had strayed too close to an open flame.

“Ha-ha. I thought the same thing! It seemed too embarrassing for them to actually do.”

“Very much so. I’m all for being decisive, but to call us here, too…”

“And there’s two more guests after this?”

As my master asked, Eve made a happy-sounding sigh. “Yes. He’s a complete fool of a man.”

“A fool of a man, yes, that expression fits perfectly.”

As Diana nodded, my master’s words turned timidly toward her. “Ah, incidentally, as their senior in life matters, what conversations have you had with them?”

I lifted my head without thinking, for I thought it a question very unlike my master to ask.

Even so, and in spite of my master’s rather timid tone, her face betrayed great interest. In spite of her never setting one foot into the women’s banter back in town, my master was indeed just at the right age for it.

“You want to hear?” A dubious smile came over Diana.

“We have plenty of time.” As Eve replied with a leer, she and my master both leaned their light figures forward.

“This is a tale of love known to precious few in my town…”

As Diana began her tale with those words, as a knight, the atmosphere within the carriage suddenly became distinctly uncomfortable.

There was time. There was also wine. Oh, and plenty of snacks for those noisy girls, too.

They laughed, they were aghast, they sometimes smiled, sometimes grew angry, or perhaps simply interested, as they immersed themselves in the tale.

Though none of them were children, and Eve and Diana did not look like the sorts to engage in such frivolous conversation, they all behaved very much like adolescent maidens. My master positively never interrupted, taking sips of wine, which she had taken a fondness to of late, as she participated in the conversation to a rather shocking extent. Regretfully, I had no desire to venture my opinion of who was behaving most like a silly maiden here.

Like a dog who continued to gnaw on a bone he had been given for five or even ten days, they continued the conversation nonstop as they left the town, with things finally calming down when they stopped for a while to take breakfast.

Eve, whose throat rang out with such laughter that it made her shoulders quiver like that of a wild beast, said she had exhausted herself laughing and left the carriage, moving to the wagon with the luggage. Since the rays of the sun were warm and there was no wind at all, she probably just wanted a nap.

Or maybe she had pulled a stomach muscle from bragging so hard.

It was apparent she held more than a few feelings for that stupid man.

Perhaps she used the words fool of a man to reflect upon the matter—to chew over that particular bone in her own way.

For her part, my left-behind master was sitting on her seat, audibly fanning her own face. Perhaps one could get drunk on conversation as much as on wine. The story Diana told was of how, in spite of clearly looking like a couple to everyone else, their lack of honesty with themselves about it resulted in a third party challenging him to what was essentially a duel.

When the pair had met us, we came under the impression they had been settled together for some time, but apparently that wolf had been much more of a fool than I had expected. Otherwise, would she have played the innocent sheep gripped by hesitation while mere wolves attacked?

At any rate, the man who had challenged him to a duel ran all about the town in his best efforts to win, with the resulting circus kicking up a completely unnecessary uproar.

In the end, they were able to trust each other to cooperate for victory in the duel or something like that. Though I felt sorry for the man who lost, I could only think of him that one reaps what one sows. Perhaps the saving grace was that there were still fools who could not let a damsel in distress go without rescue. He seemed to be living happily now that he had mended his broken heart.

In spite of their ages—and this went for the prior discussion too—the carriages’s passengers displayed intense interest, or perhaps amusement, in the parts that seemed sweeter even than the dreams of maidens.

As I preferred savory things, just listening to these tales made my ears itch, but so long as my master was enjoying herself, I was content.

So musing, I let myself casually lay down on the floor.

My master, drunk on wine and conversation, had been audibly fanning over her breast for a while.

The wooden shutter of the carriage was open, letting a refreshing breeze in through it.

It was a quiet time, with the only sound being the rattling sound of the carriage wheels.

“Goodness, it’s really quite something.”

“Oh?” my master asked back, hastily pulling her hand away from her collar. She must have mistaken the words as criticism of indecent behavior.

“Those two, I mean.”

“Ahh…” As Diana smiled, my master returned her expression in apparent relief, adding, “That’s true.”

“But I do find myself envious…”

“Oh, really?” The wine must have been hitting my master, for her lips had been loosened considerably.

Diana, viewing this as a good opportunity, continued speaking. “I’d think you’d be able to find plenty of good matches. I’m sure you have more than a few matchmakers trying to meddle?”

After pondering this for a bit, she made a strained smile.

“And yet—?” Diana was not asking in earnest. She posed the question while busily pouring wine into her own cup out of the casket Eve had left behind.

But perhaps that gave the question just the right seasoning.

My master leaned back into her seat, raising her chin and narrowing her eyes as if a little hot, and took her time thinking about it. “None of them seemed quite right.”

Certainly, my master was currently like a loosened cord, but even so, that answer struck me as rather surprising. I had been sure she was going to brush off the whole subject.

“May I…speak to you about him, then?”

At that, my master drew her chin back a bit and lowered her gaze. My eyes met with hers as the corners of my master’s lips made something like a faint smile. “It’s not Mr. Lawrence, you know.”

Then she leaned back in her seat once more. Even though she was on very good terms with the townspeople, my master was still someone from the outside. Moreover, she was always at the church—always a step removed from society. Drinking wine and letting her guard down simply did not happen. Usually she remained guarded, keeping her distance.

After all, I was the only one who voiced gentle complaints and told her when she was being silly; when happy, fun things happened to her, I was the first one she told.

Thus my confidence was not without basis.

“Then, it really is him?”

Diana struck right at the heart of the matter.

But my master gazed absentmindedly at the ceiling, as if not hearing her words whatsoever. It was not that I lacked confidence, but even so her lack of a reply was making me nervous.

It was right when I lifted up my head, wondering if my master might have fallen asleep.

“It’s not that I wish Enek were human.”

My body stiffened in shock.

I did not know how I should have taken those words.

“Did I mention that I was a shepherd?”

“I heard as much during our introductions.”

“Ah, right…Er…So you see, Enek has been with me the whole time…And it’s thanks to him that we were able to overcome so much…But still, I don’t wish him to be a human.”

A shepherd was said to be an alien entity to a townsperson, the offspring of man and beast. Was it all right, then, to say something like this so lightly in front of someone she did not know well?

I was concerned for my master, but as she leaned back with her chin held high, she lazily changed the direction of her face.

“Miss Diana…You’re the same as Miss Holo, aren’t you?”

I was the one taken by surprise.

That’s absurd, I thought, shocked, but the completely unruffled Diana merely stroked the edge of her wine-filled jar. “I am not a wolf, though.” She continued with a sigh. “It seems I’ve let my secret out.” My master smiled with a bit of pride as Diana added, “Or perhaps it’s from your long association with the good knight there?”

It was a manner of speech rich with implication. They seemed to have both delivered verbal jabs to the other, but as my master laughed, she composed her face and gently closed her eyes.

“So you might have supposed that my thinking to bringing Enek with me was in that sense.”

“In that sense.” Diana spoke curtly without a single hint of question.

My master, her eyes still closed, made a somewhat embarrassed-looking smile.

“Yes, in that sense.”

“And? Did you imagine that if you asked the great wisewolf, she just might give you the answer?”

I heard all too clearly something very difficult to listen to. Indeed, it was myself whose composure was disturbed, but my master, less perturbed than when listening to confessions by the townspeople, calmly replied, “I will do no such thing.” Then, she made a somewhat malicious-looking smile, a true rarity for her. “I think, if I did ask, it would put a genuinely conflicted look on her face.”

I remembered back to just after the gold-smuggling uproar.

From my perspective, this seemed like childishness quite inappropriate for both their ages.

“Why, then?” Diana asked.

This time, my master replied with only the slightest hesitation. “I wanted to see them again.”

“Just to see them?”

As Diana bounced the words back, my master slowly opened her eyelids, sitting up and looking me over.

I knew this as her cue for “come,” so I got up and put my forepaws on top of her lap.

“Just to meet them.” My master took my paws in her hands, teasingly moving them up and down.

Diana stared squarely at her, but my master did not return the gaze.

Grasping my head, my master pulled a lip aside with a finger and said “grrr” to me as she grinned.

“People don’t come to church because they expect God to solve all their problems.” With no apparent concern, she said something that I doubt would have come from even my fang-filled mouth. “But people come to church nonetheless.”

My master removed her hand from my head and patted on her lap. When she said, “Come on up,” I could not refuse.

Though I was somewhat reserved about it, I hopped up onto my master’s lap and licked her face.

“I can’t really put it in words, though.”

“No, I understand very well.” Diana reached out with her hand and stroked the back of my neck.

It was nice, I thought, to have a change of pace from my master’s usual way of stroking.

“It’s been several decades since I left the town I was in. But yes…I think of it like a pilgrimage. It’s surely the same for Lady Eve, who’s far more wolfish than even the wisewolf herself.”

To call that a lady meant she must really have been quite something.

“To think, having to go together to a church like this.” Diana laughed. I wondered who she was laughing at? The pair of fools we had been discussing? Or my master and I? Or perhaps, at her past self? “This really is quite fun.”

Apparently, all of them.

Diana proposed drinking more wine, but my master objected as she looked out the window.

There was a grassland there that seemed infinite, continuing for God only knew how far.

The long winter was over. Grass was sprouting; trees were budding. It was a very fine season.

However, in the end, there were such scenes everywhere we went; they seemed to extend throughout the whole of the world. No doubt these were thoughts shared by many of those who left town walls behind on long journeys.

Even so, it made meeting a couple like that one possible someday.

With that, my master had been able to take the decisive first step.

Like a crab, she suddenly realized that it really was possible to move forward in the world.

My master probably treasured me more than anyone else in the world.

But I was a dog, and my master was a human. No matter how favorably the townspeople regarded my master, she was a stranger, someone who had arrived from the outside. How we had lived ever since was all an extension of that distinction.

Even so, that stupid couple was an exception to all of it. They seemed so childish, and yet, like children, they paid no heed to the ways of the world.

What seemed to slowly tighten around my body was likely what they call common sense. But if push came to shove, those two did not mind breaking all the rules.

Their existence together was the very incarnation of that mad notion.

I drew in a deep breath as my master embraced me.

I could not embrace her body in return.

All I could do was lick her cheek.

“Those two, having a marriage ceremony…,” Diana mumbled as she drank her wine. “It makes me want to laugh.”

My master laughed again, too, and I barked for good measure.

It was several days later that we arrived at a small village and the other two women joined us in the carriage.

One was a strict-looking woman priest whose personality ran in yet another direction from Eve’s; the other was a traveling silversmith.

The temperature in the carriage had already been plenty.

Now that there were five of them, each with their own relationship to that couple, it seemed like the talk was never going to end.

In the midst of it, I would sometimes get down from the carriage and walk, riding on the luggage wagon’s roof at other times.

It was good to be alone once in a while.

But since I went back to sleep in my master’s arms every night, perhaps I was in no position to laugh at that man.

But just as meeting me and my master was miraculous, there was no mistake that their journey had brought various miracles to others just like us. Had that not been the case, I would not have been in that carriage, listening to the high-pitched exclamations and laughter within it.

It seemed of great import to the people concerned, but given Diana’s story, I could explain it thus.

They were searching for a rainbow.

But it was this place, right where they stood, that was the end of the rainbow.

As a dog, I believed this to be a rather profound notion.

I had some regret that I was unable to share the thought, but perhaps such a thing was simply unnecessary.

“Enek!” As the carriage stopped for a break, my master stepped down and called my name.

Perhaps, just as belongings made one hesitate in the face of a journey, the capacity to speak made one hesitate in the face of conversation.

Yet in spite of that, the things one needed to do were very few.

It was good for that stupid couple to realize that truth.

I sighed, paused, and barked a sharp woof.

Then, I ran to my beloved master’s side as fast as my legs could take me.