Spice and Wolf - Volume 22 - Chapter 1

ACORN BREAD AND WOLF

When Lawrence returned from his errands and swung open the door to the inn, he found someone standing inside.

Her silky, flaxen-colored hair and slender physique showed she was clearly a stranger to physical labor and made her seem like the daughter of a noble family. She was young, perhaps in her mid-teens, yet the way she stood with her body leaning back, arms crossed, and feet planted shoulder width apart afforded her an oddly commanding presence.

She wore a scowl, with deep ridges etched into her furrowed brow. To anyone else, she probably looked like a livid wife who was finally fed up with a husband who frivoled away all his time in idle amusement and had made up her mind to teach him a lesson once and for all.

But even as Lawrence closed the door behind him, she didn’t so much as glance his way.

She continued standing stock-still, staring at a piece of paper affixed to the wall.

If memory served him correctly, she was in the exact same spot as when he left.

Lawrence, once a rather famous traveling merchant and currently the master of a Nyohhira bathhouse, posed a question to his wife of a little more than ten years, Holo.

“What’s got you in such a mood?”

As he was in the process of shedding his coin purse and dagger to place them on the table, Holo inhaled deeply enough to bend herself over even further and spat, “This painting will last for years to come. I would like to avoid seeing a shoddy rendition of myself in several centuries’ time.”

Lawrence did not take her words as an exaggeration.

After all, Holo was not the little girl she appeared to be. Her true form was a massive, towering wolf, a being of legend who resided in wheat and held sway over the harvest. If the painting really did persist for centuries, then it was entirely possible that she may come upon it many years later.

While Lawrence understood that she thought it would be a grave problem if the final product was disappointing, there was something that still puzzled him.

“Weren’t you thrilled by the idea at first?”

Holo paid Lawrence’s comment no heed.

He breathed a tired sigh and glanced at the picture on the wall. He spotted a rough charcoal sketch of Lawrence and Holo that would eventually be part of a much larger scene.

The commissioning of this work had been necessary in settling the commotion that had suddenly swept through the port town of Atiph, where they were staying. As recompense for getting caught up in the uproar, he had arranged for both of them to be included in the painting.

The chance to leave behind your likeness in a work of art was remarkably rare, barring members of the nobility. And given that they didn’t pay a single coin for the privilege, there was little to complain about. Even so, Holo seemed to have plenty to say.

From Lawrence’s perspective, even if they got to be in the painting for free, there was little point if Holo was unhappy. This was all for her sake to begin with.

Holo would live on for hundreds of years. She was already filling her diary with every little moment to preserve them for the future. And unlike words, which were limited in what they could express, a painting could immortalize exactly how they looked now.

That was why Holo had been thrilled when she first learned they would have a place in this painting. Naturally, being painted was a novel and exciting experience for her.

After receiving one of the several sketches the artist had done of them, Holo had stared so hard at it that she nearly got some charcoal on the tip of her nose. Given the grin that crossed her face and how her vaunted tail immediately started wagging, it was rather obvious what she thought.

However, starting two day ago, she began giving the sketch hard looks, as though something did not sit right with her.

“I admit, there is little danger this will be a shoddy work. It is drawn rather skillfully.”

If anything, Lawrence thought they looked even better in the painting than real life, but he would be torn limb from limb if he said that out loud, so of course he stayed silent.

Whether she knew how Lawrence felt or not, Holo breathed a sigh from her nose.

“My beauty certainly has been captured well. But this will be around for centuries. Many will lay eyes upon it, and some may even know me personally. What will happen when all that has been captured is my loveliness? The wisewolf will be stripped of her majesty!”

She planted her hands on her hips and huffed, a gesture that made her look even younger than she did in the picture.

Holo could be rather childish despite how many centuries she had been alive.

For a short while after they met, Lawrence figured that she merely put on an act to match the youthful appearance of her human form, but after running a bathhouse in Nyohhira and coming in contact with many elderly, powerful patrons, there was something he had come to profoundly believe: The older one became, the more childish they acted.

And that was to say nothing of a wolf who had lived for hundreds of years.

“You say that, but everything about this painting, including the subject matter, has long since been decided beforehand. You’ve been watching them work, right? There’s no room for a regular old bathhouse owner to give input. Honestly, the sheer scale took me by surprise, too.”

The commission came from a wealthy merchant group whose members hailed from every land, and all of them engaged in the port town of Atiph’s herring egg trade. This market was extremely speculative, making it almost like a socially acceptable form of gambling, and was so popular that great merchants from faraway lands would come running when it was time for herring mating season. The potential for vice caught the eye of a young priest who felt compelled to crack down on the practice amid the Church reforms that were currently sweeping the world. Just as the year’s bets were about to be placed and the merchants’ anticipation peaked, the market ground to a halt. That was where Lawrence’s quick wit and Holo’s helping hand won over the hardheaded priest.

The commissioning of this painting had been one part of winning over the priest, but it was not just a quick doodle to put in a frame so that the wealthy merchants could keep their playground where the lucky had a chance to become rich overnight. This was a grand project where they first layered stucco on one of the walls in the fish egg exchange and would then paint the massive mural on top of that. Counting all the artists and their apprentices, dozens of people were working on it.

At present, wooden scaffolding covered every part of the building where the painting would be worked on. The region’s stonemasons and carpenters had gathered, toiling under the direction of the artisan association that was overseeing construction.

Once a project this monumental was completed, there was no question that word of it would spread across the land.

Lawrence had no idea how a humble bathhouse owner would even begin to say, My wife doesn’t want to be depicted as cute and only cute…, in the face of such a grand and expensive endeavor.

“But is it not your way to undertake the impossible all for the sake of great profit?! And am I not your most precious companion?! What greater riches could there possibly be besides my happiness?!”

Holo punctuated her words by forcefully pointing her finger at him, but Lawrence simply shrugged.

“Well, I do always get scolded for my get-rich-quick schemes.”

Of course, the one who berated him for his reckless plans was none other than Holo, who had a surprisingly conservative side to her.

“Besides, you already come across as plenty dignified in this drawing.”

“…”

Holo’s incredible ears could detect lies.

The way she tightly pursed her lips made it clear that she could tell Lawrence was not lying. However, the reason she ground her teeth so hard that it made her scowl was because she could not understand why he was not lying.

Lawrence flashed a brief smile before sharing his secret.

“At least for me—whenever I look at this drawing, my face gets all tense.”

After all, the only reason they had become involved in the uproar that led to the creation of this painting was because Lawrence had nearly collected on his stake in the herring egg trade. On top of that, Holo had unexpectedly become engrossed in the part-time job she had found and set to work with a zeal while the whole incident was going on. That was more than enough reason for him to break out into a sweat.

In essence, he was a useless husband who had taken all the money his wife had slowly saved up from honest work and frivoled it away on gambling.

“All you ever do is deceive me!”

“We’ve been together for more than ten years. I’ve learned a thing or two about how to handle you.”

“You fool!”

Lawrence muttered “And what a fool I am” with a shrug, then glanced outside the wood-frame window.

“More importantly, should we start looking for a place to eat? There are loads of artisans being called into town, so everything’ll be crowded by the time the sun goes down.”

Since they had both lived on the road before opening the bathhouse, Holo understood well. If they wasted time bickering, then they might end up with a meal of bland wheat porridge and raw garlic.

“Hmph. You just narrowly escaped with your life!”

“It might not be a very long life until my next payment.”

Holo raised her eyebrows and wordlessly smacked Lawrence on the back. Then once she pulled her cloak over her head, she grumpily tucked her twitching tail underneath.

The port town of Atiph where Lawrence and Holo were staying had always been a thriving center of commerce, but recently it was busier than ever. The main plaza was packed with new arrivals who were fascinated by the hustle and bustle of the harbor. Local farmers had also come into town to sell their pigs and chickens while looking for some fish to buy. To top it all off, droves of sailors and porters flowed in and out of the boats at dock.

With the massive influx of people, food was disappearing from the stalls at an alarming rate, so Lawrence and Holo split up to get their dinner. As a woman of beauty and poise, Holo was often treated favorably when she shopped for food, so she made her rounds among the mutton and fish stalls while Lawrence went to secure them some alcohol.

He decided on a stall that sold liquor in bulk where customers were elbowing one another as they tried to order. As the saying went, Food has no taste without drink. In any case, Lawrence somehow managed to buy some for himself.

As he staggered away, a familiar voice reached his ears.

“Over here, dear! Here!”

The sharp-sighted Holo had saved them a spot at a cluster of standing tables nestled in the alleyway between two inns.

“Oh ho, what fragrant wine. I was growing tired of mountain cider.”

Holo enjoyed sour cider made from gooseberries and the like, but for a meal of fried fish and still-sizzling mutton, cold ale or wine was the obvious choice.

“Was there no ale?”

As expected, she asked about it almost immediately.

“The only reason I was even able to get this much was because it was the pricey stuff. People are practically coming to blows trying to snatch cheap ale and cider from one another.”

Holo made no claims that he was merely exaggerating. She had been able to get a general idea of how rowdy the port was with just a twitch of the ears sheltering under her hood. If anything, she was probably thinking how well Lawrence had done given the circumstances.

“Seems like you gathered quite the haul. This is an impressive spread.”

By the time Lawrence finished his comment and grabbed a skewer of mutton, Holo was already removing the stopper. Lawrence couldn’t help but smile as he watched her drink straight from the cask that was as large as her face. He knew it would be futile scolding her for gulping what he had intended to be several days’ worth of wine.

The men at nearby tables stared in amazement while they watched Holo take a deep swig. When she finally came up for air with a satisfied “Haaaah!” and a full smile, they all started whooping.

The way Holo ate and drank was always a crowd-pleaser wherever they traveled, likely because of how it contrasted with her appearance—she looked like a traveling nun if she quietly sat still. Lawrence had no idea how many times he had been tempted to turn the whole thing into a show, charging money to cover some small part of their ever-growing food expenses.

“Burp. Aye, ’tis good wine,” Holo remarked as she lapped up some extra that had spilled from the corner of her mouth before reaching for a piece of fried fish. Despite how much she used to complain about hating fish, saying it never filled her stomach, Holo had become enamored by how delicious fresh seafood could be—salted fish were still a very different story—ever since they had started staying in the port town. As Lawrence continued watching her out of the corner of his eye, he brought the cask up to his own lips and enjoyed the fresh scent of grapes filling his nostrils.

“Well, ’twas easy for me.”

“Hmm?”

As Lawrence bit into the crunchy fried fish, he glanced up when Holo spoke.

“Oh, you’re talking about gathering food.”

“Yes. I stood nervously on the edge of a crowd, when a big, muscly bear of a man put me on his shoulders and kicked the other customers out of the way. I ordered from atop his shoulders, received my food, and when I gave him a skewer as thanks, he was delighted.” She sounded particularly smug as she recalled the moment.

Though her acting like a hapless nun who had been dispatched on an errand was very convincing, Holo was as crafty as ever. And if he even showed a glimmer of emotion that expressed how scandalous most would think it was for a wife to ride on some random man’s shoulders, he knew she would happily wag that tail of hers and pounce in an instant.

As Lawrence carefully avoided the traps she had planted and pretended not to notice them, he launched his own little counterattack.

“You sure are using your cuteness to your heart’s content despite how much you complained about the painting.”

When Holo heard his slightly exasperated tone as she moved on from fish to mutton, she bit into her meat, canines glinting.

“Fool. I was only complaining about how troubling it would be if others thought I am nothing beyond my looks.”

“…Is that so?”

Lawrence sighed and reached for the wine cask, but Holo snatched it away first.

“Gulp, gulp…pwah! So? What have you been doing these past few days, leaving me alone in the room during the day?”

Every dish tasted especially salty, perhaps because the sea was only a stone’s throw away, which made them even thirstier than usual. Lawrence didn’t want Holo getting sick from drinking too much, so he prepared some wheat bread for her as he replied, “Exchanging coins.”

“Oh?”

He ripped a hole in the bread, stuck some of the mutton from the skewers and a cut of cheese into the pocket, topped them with a bit of sauce made from mustard seeds, then placed the finished product before Holo. She would keep on eating nothing but meat if left to her own devices. One of the ears under her hood twitched in dissatisfaction as she pulled open the pocket and added a few more slices of meat before finally biting into the now-bulging piece of bread.

“I took a lot of money with me when we left Nyohhira, remember? Now that I’ve met the bishop in this town, I was wondering if I could use his connections to get the money exchanged for small coins.”

It was a good thing for the world to be experiencing a great period of prosperity, but the resulting shortage of coins was rather troubling for everyone who wanted to buy and sell goods. When Lawrence departed from Nyohhira, he had been saddled with the bothersome duty to obtain low-denomination coins.

“Mm. Gnh, ohm…gulp. Why must you go out every day? Can you not finish this in one trip?”

“There are a lot of people with similar requests, so there’s a huge wait. I got in line three days ago, and it was only today that I finally got an audience.”

The queue was so long that the town guards came at every sunset to distribute wooden tags among all those still waiting their turn so everyone would line up in the same order the next day. And so while he got a good night’s rest at the inn, Lawrence spent his entire day standing.

And when those starting up new enterprises to stand in line for others in the hopes of scoring a tip began appearing as the natural course of things, Lawrence chanted mantras of frugality to himself as he endured on his own two feet.

“Ah, ’tis why you wake up in the middle of the night, making foolish noises because your leg cramped. How absurd.”

“…I can’t even say you’re wrong, and I could really use a dip in the Nyohhira springs right about now. Worst of all, I still haven’t been able to exchange the money yet.”

“Hmm? But did you not say that all the small coins were in the Church’s donation box or whatnot?”

“Right, but everyone else knows that, too. If a whole crowd of people shows up asking for the same thing, then there won’t be any left for outsiders.”

Going to the money changers was technically an option, but it was plain to see that they would ask for an unbelievable fee. The money changers themselves were very likely procuring coins from the Church at a terrible rate to begin with.

“And so you come home ignominiously; ’twould seem the day I address you as honored husband is far off yet.”

“As if you ever intended on calling me anything of the sort. Besides, if you suddenly acted so meek after all this time, it would leave a weird taste in my mouth.”

Holo bared her teeth and cackled. She was in a good mood now that the alcohol was circulating through her system.

“Well, even though I didn’t receive any change, I did get something that might lead to an opportunity for just that.”

“Oh?”

Lawrence produced a piece of paper from his breast pocket and unfolded it on the table. It was a map of the region.

“There are only so many places that collect change, and everyone knows where they are, so it’s getting competitive. What should we do, then?”

“Easy. We simply make our way to a place no one knows about.”

“Exactly.”

Lawrence turned his skewer toward Holo with a few pieces of mutton still on it, and she leaned over the table to help herself.

“Om, nom…But is there a place so convenient?”

“There aren’t many, but they do exist. We’ll need a connection in order to gain access, and I have just the thing.”

Holo ignored Lawrence’s proud declaration and simply munched on her bread as she gazed at the map.

Lawrence was used to Holo’s spiteful and harsh attitude, so he continued without dejection.

“Remember that great, elderly merchant who helped us in that whole fuss not too long ago?”

“Aye. He was rather well-dressed, an impressive male wholly unlike a certain traveling merchant.”

“…Ahem. Anyway, he apparently used to command a trade vessel for a powerful merchants’ association and once went by the title of admiral. This man used his influence to introduce us and then sent along a request that came from the bishop.”

“Oh?”

Lawrence placed his finger on Atiph, the town they were in presently, then dragged his finger down and to the right.

There was a great plain, an area often referred to as a breadbasket.

He placed his finger at the foot of the mountains that separated the grasslands and the seaside regions.

“Southeast from here, there’s a large town that connects the inner continent with the coast. The people who live there thrive on the trade of quality grain.”

“Oh, how pleasant. Well, there is no doubt that my wheat is the best of them all.”

Holo flicked the pouch that hung around her neck and sniffed with pride.

Noting how drunk she was already and worried about what was still to come, Lawrence pressed on with his explanation.

“Since merchants who engage in the grain trade swarm the city at this time of year, they’ve opened a grand market.”

“Oh ho, even better!”

Holo beamed with joy, and Lawrence returned the smile, then moved his finger slightly down and to the left from the large town marked on the map.

“However, the place we’re going to is here, southwest from the town hosting the fair. A small bishopric just off a mountain highway that doesn’t see much use.”

The light from Holo’s expression suddenly vanished, as though she had been doused with ash.

As he elaborated, Lawrence kept his mouth from twisting into a smile at the sight of her reaction.

“This bishopric has deep ties with the cathedral here, almost like sister churches, but the locals have a problem. They’re having trouble with trade and permits, and even though they want to get a merchant’s help for this, most merchants are wholly preoccupied with their own trade this time of year. They’ve requested a merchant they can not only trust but one who’s also capable, so I was a convenient choice.”

He glanced at Holo just as he said that, and it seemed as though her intoxication was beginning in earnest as her eyelids struggled to stay up. She was staring at nothing in particular, silently munching on her fried fish with a flushed face. With a sigh, Lawrence removed the wooden cask from the table and set it by his feet.

“If you want to enjoy the bustling grand market…” Holo’s wolf ears under her hood perked up in response, the faintest bit of sobriety returning to her eyes as he continued. “…then we need to get the problem at the bishopric squared away quickly. Once the market’s business days are over, the other merchants might start poking their noses in this matter.”

Holo, who had been studying the map, slowly closed her eyes, then gave a big nod.

“I suppose we will need to hurry…”

“It really helps that you understand. Well then, there’s no problem with the painting, so you don’t mind if we head off right away, yeah?”

Holo turned to look at Lawrence, her red eyes misty from the alcohol.

The reason she looked irritated—like when things were not exactly aligned—was because she was weighing the bustle of a grand market she had not yet seen against staying in this town to fuss over the painting and eat fried fish to her heart’s content.

“Well?” he asked, and Holo nodded with a sigh, then let out a loud sneeze.

The day after Holo had passed out drunk and Lawrence carried her back to the inn, they were already on the road. Despite how long it had been since their serious traveling days, they still always made sure they were ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

“Agh…Fresh fish from the sea was surprisingly delectable…Perhaps we should have stayed in town for a bit longer.”

For a day to begin travel, the weather was unpleasant. A cold wind blew in from the west.

Holo sat snuggled up against the cargo in the cart bed, a woolen shawl draped over her shoulders. She muttered to herself as she wrote in her diary as usual.

“The town with the grand market is at the base of the mountains that divide the region’s breadbasket from the coastline. Whether it’s from the plains and the mountains, the north and the south, or the east and the west, all sorts of things gather here, and that’s why they have fruits as good as what you can find in the mountains.”

When Lawrence said this while driving their carriage forward, Holo’s ears flicked underneath her hood.

“Of course, there’s plenty of liquor made from those choice fruits, and since it is the center of the grain trade, there are plenty of bakers. The place is sure to be packed with all sorts of pastries that use tons of fruit.”

There was a scraping sound, almost like a broom, which was likely Holo’s tail swishing in anticipation and excitement.

Lawrence laughed silently when there came a sudden smack at the back of his head.

“Ow! Hey, what was that for?”

“You fool! ’Tis because you try to entice me with food!”

“That’s not why I said all that. It’s because we’re going to be leading a dull life on the road for a little while. You can endure it if you have a prize to look forward to at the end, right?”

“You might insist we be frugal even after enduring so much!”

He was about to say, Have you ever actually been frugal just because of that, though? but she had worked hard back in Atiph and had earned her pay.

Even Lawrence, who never forgot his roots as a merchant, had no intention of saying aloud what he might have a long time ago.

“I’ve made sure to calculate all the money you earned from working. Plus my winnings from speculating on the herring eggs. I won’t ask you to scrimp when we’ve got so much. You should be able to enjoy quite a bit of luxury this time.”

“Hmph,” Holo huffed, then leaped nimbly onto the driver’s perch.

Since it had not been long since they left Atiph, there were plenty of travelers on the road.

Though they were still vigilant about not letting people catch a glimpse of Holo’s ears and tail, since it was a cold, cloudy day that made it seem as though winter had come earlier than usual, piles of wools and furs were a common sight. Peeking out from underneath her coat, Holo’s tail simply seemed like an eccentric item she used to keep herself warm.

Holo, sitting next to Lawrence, kept rustling around, readjusting the lay of the wools beneath her and on her shoulders, like a pet dog denning in preparation for a nap until she was satisfied. Lawrence gazed at her, amused by how dedicated she was to her personal comfort, and when she finally lay her vaunted tail on her lap, Holo said, “Perhaps I should make some more money by renting out my tail while I’m at it, no?”

Her tail was quite soft and fluffy. She constantly combed it and applied scented oil on a daily basis. And because it was suffused with her body heat, it was the warmest thing on cold days like this. Whether or not she would put it under the lap blanket made a huge difference in the comfort of a journey.

“You’re so greedy…”

Lawrence sighed when she cackled, then used the reins to urge the horse forward.

“Well, even if you don’t, I might need your cooperation for this upcoming job. If you help out, I’ll be sure to thank you.”

“Oh?”

Perhaps growing tired of the playful ribbing of their earlier exchange, Holo gave her tail one last brush before placing it under their shared lap blanket.

“And what sort of business is it? I drank just a little too much yesterday.”

Lawrence mouthed silently to himself, I’d use different words to describe last night…, but then responded without mentioning how he had to take care of her when she passed out.

“The cause is the same as Atiph—the commotion that Col and Myuri are stirring up.”

Holo looked back at Atiph, which was just about to vanish from view in the distance, then turned back to Lawrence.

“Every church and abbey has indulged in accumulating wealth for a long time. The original purpose wasn’t to feed a love for money but to pursue a nobler idea of being able to perform charitable acts with the riches with which they were entrusted. In the end, though, it was mostly a corrupt practice. On top of that, since they naturally came to value those who excelled in trade, people who could put merchants to shame started throwing their weight about, which only made the problem worse.”

Holo nodded, yawned loudly, then rubbed her watering eyes against Lawrence’s shoulder. Despite how by all appearances it seemed like she had no interest in hearing any more, Lawrence could tell by the movement of her ears underneath her hood that she was paying attention, so he continued.

“And since the exacerbation of those problems over time caused the current cries for reform, the Church is apparently reassigning important clergy in order to avoid the people’s dissatisfaction, especially in more radical areas. But that again is causing new problems.”

“Mm. I can see the picture now. ’Tis all well they have changed who manages where, but I suppose that means they’ve not thought of what comes after.”

Holo’s eyes then started wandering restlessly, perhaps because she was searching for jerky or something.

She seemed to quickly deduce that it was in the cart behind her and pouted.

“Exactly. And in order to show the people of the area the results of their reform, they’re choosing replacements who are especially zealous, so the problems are only multiplying.”

“Little Col is smart, but I doubt he is much suited for trade. Those boys in the town we were just in wanted to be more like him by involving themselves in the trade in a town they knew not much of, did they not?”

They had a feeling that the young priest in Atiph who wanted to crack down on things in the name of God’s teachings had even mimicked the way Col spoke.

Wondering how much attention Col and Myuri had been gathering throughout the world, Holo and Lawrence had attempted to collect stories of their activities, but every retelling they heard was jaw-dropping, making it virtually impossible to sift fact from fiction. It was likely that most of it was exaggeration. With the peace ushered in by the end of the war between the pagans and the Church, recent events were the perfect fodder for people who were starved for gossip and tall tales.

Though Myuri loved to stand out, Col was probably exhausted by everything going on.

Lawrence shrugged his shoulders, and Holo yawned loudly again.

Generally, Holo was always either eating or sleeping.

“Yaaawn…However, I do not see what you will need to borrow my powers for in such a matter.”

“Well, I’m also hoping things won’t come to that,” he responded, and she slipped the tail out from under their lap blanket.

“Hey, that’s not what I meant. It’s not because I don’t want to reward you.”

Holo shot him a doubtful look as she reluctantly put her tail back inside.

“Sheesh…I’d appreciate it if you stopped holding your tail hostage.”

“You want so badly to be henpecked, do you?”

Holo stifled her laughter, and Lawrence heaved a tired sigh. She had drunk, ate, and slept her fill the day before, so it seemed like she had an overabundance of playful energy.

“Anyway, this newly appointed priest’s worries cropped up when he checked the permits to see what sort of assets his new post possessed, and he discovered that there’s a shocking plot of land in his territory.”

“And that would be?”

As Lawrence turned toward the centuries-old wolf avatar who sat next to him, he said, “A cursed mountain rumored to house a fallen angel.”

The Vallan Bishopric was named in the letter.

It was located in a lonely area that was barely populated, but since a pass—though it was more accurately described as a rough trail mostly used by the wildlife—connected it with the grand market on the other side of the mountains, they had just managed to scrape by.

But then one day, an enormously wealthy merchant passing through the area stayed at a woeful inn run by a farmer and died in his room. This merchant was frugality itself and had decided to reach the great fair by taking a very unmaintained path all so he did not have to pay tariffs while on the road. However, on his deathbed, he felt remorse for how stingy he had been in life and left all his assets to the farmer who cared for him. His only parting wish was for a church to be built there.

The farmer might have quietly squirreled away the money if it had just been a few gold coins left over in the merchant’s purse, but he had inherited a vast sum, enough to build a castle.

The farmer understood this as a task given to him by God, so he fervently acted on the man’s final wishes by summoning the local clergy, erecting the church, improving the road, and obtaining all the lands and permits they possibly could to safeguard the endowment.

Now, either because the farmer had good eyes because he worked the land day in and day out or perhaps because of some divine intervention, it became clear that rock salt and metals could be procured from the recently secured lands. This tiny church just off the road had made a huge profit and was immediately declared an independent diocese and bestowed with a cathedral.

Vallan was the name of that mythical farmer from around two hundred years ago.

“I made a mistake in my choice of husband.”

It was the fourth day on the road since leaving Atiph. That was what Holo had said as she wrote down in her diary what they had learned about the Vallan Bishopric at the inn the night before.

“Really now? By the way, Vallan abstained from meat and alcohol and worked all day from before sunup to after midnight. I hear he even made his wife and kids lead the same kind of life.”

Lawrence glanced at Holo; she had once again helped herself to plenty of drink at the inn the previous night.

Holo, gripping the quill between her middle and ring fingers and a pork sausage between her thumb and index finger, looked back and forth between Lawrence and the meaty treat, then smiled.

“I love you.”

“Only if I keep plying you with meat and alcohol, you mean,” Lawrence said, drained, and Holo bumped his shoulder with a gleeful smile. “Well, even if the story is a trifle exaggerated, that’s how the bishopric got so big. For generations, they always strived to make lots of money, but those efforts only went well for about a hundred years or so.”

“Did their source of wealth dry up?”

“First, their salt mines were abandoned because of a groundwater flood. If you go down the mine shaft now, it’s apparently just a salty subterranean lake.”

“’Twould be perfect for salting food, though.”

“That’s true,” Lawrence said with a small smile and recalled the rest of what the innkeeper had told them. “Thus, the bishopric, needing to provide for the swelling population at the time, had to pour all its energy into the metal trade.”

Holo’s face clouded over as she wrote the story down in her diary; as a wolf who lived in the forest, she had always hated the mines that destroyed the wood.

“And in time, that dried up as well?”

And the evil was destroyed? was what Holo was asking, and Lawrence nodded vaguely.

“What ran out first wasn’t the metal but the forest.”

“…”

Holo looked like a princess whose favorite knight lost a jousting match, and her gaze dropped back to her diary.

“Until then, they’d apparently dig out the ore, then refine it and make crafts from the ingots on the spot. Since they didn’t have regulations like you’d find from a guild in a regular town, a lot of artisans were attracted to these unrestricted workshops and gathered there. The place flourished.”

Holo huffed in discontent, moving the quill with rough strokes.

“But metallurgy requires a massive amount of fuel. Mines already need heaps of lumber for the gallery support beams and waterwheels for drainage. When you get a lot of people who work there together, you need firewood for cooking and material to make houses.”

“And so after felling all the nearby trees, they discovered the land does not easily recover from the mine’s poison.”

Holo pursed her lips as if to add, “’Twas their own fault.”

“That was how the wildly booming mining town collapsed just as fast as it grew. That happened probably about seventy, eighty years ago.”

“Hmm.”

To Holo, it happened just the other day, but from Lawrence’s perspective, this was a story from before he was born.

“Once the timber ran out and the people’s livelihoods couldn’t be supported anymore, the mines themselves closed down, and the production rate plummeted. And since the metal couldn’t be refined without firewood, they were forced to ferry the heavy ores themselves to far-off towns. Profits dipped, of course, which only further encouraged people to leave, and the land became a ghost town before long.”

“And the mountain is still nude, yes?” Holo asked, vexed.

“No, that’s not how things turned out, apparently.”

“Hmm?”

Surprised, Holo looked up.

“That means you don’t remember at all, do you? Even though you kept insisting, I am not drunk!”

Holo was supposed to be a proud wolf, but she wore an entirely indifferent expression. It did not seem like she had any recollection of how drunk she had been.

That said, Lawrence understood why Holo never reflected on her heavy drinking. That was because Holo understood him far too well—he did, in a way, enjoy taking care of her when she was like that.

Lawrence sighed, lamenting how unfortunate that was, and continued.

“All that was left behind were exhausted mines, those forced to stay after exhausting their fortunes, and a mountain stripped bare. What appeared then was a troupe of alchemists.”

Holo, who had been looking away in a huff like a cheeky little girl, turned back toward Lawrence with serious eyes.

“That forbidden text about mining techniques that we were chasing all that time ago was also written by an alchemist, remember?”

The question of whether or not the world had been created by God aside, it had always been the alchemists who cut open the forests in which the ancient spirits like Holo had run rampant, developing techniques to put them under humanity’s control.

In that sense, the name of an alchemist was something even more detestable than a shepherd to Holo.

“But, well, this is where things started to get weird,” Lawrence said, pilfering a piece of sausage that sat on a wooden plate beside Holo and bringing it to his mouth. “Instead of using technology to pull metal out of the mines, they used magic for refinement.”

“Magic?”

Holo herself was like a fairy tale come to life; when she had once been asked if she had seen a witch in a deep-black forest, she replied bluntly that those who ate strange mushrooms to dream had likely seen her.

But if what the innkeeper had told Lawrence was true, then he could say those alchemists were genuine sorcerers.

“They apparently managed to refine metal without using wood.”

Holo had not lived hundreds of years for show, and she had visited many towns on her travels with Lawrence. She was naturally intelligent, and she rarely forgot—unless it was convenient for her—anything she saw or heard. Before she considered the possibility of magic, she proposed another explanation.

“Was it not that smelly peat?”

“Peat can burn, but its flame really isn’t strong enough. And it isn’t like they harvested coal from the area. It wasn’t bitumen, either.”

Bitumen was a black liquid known as flammable water. It was expensive, and Lawrence more often saw it used to preserve the integrity of ships and structures rather than as a fuel.

“The alchemists apparently created magic for purifying metal without fire, then used it on the meager amounts of ore that was produced by the mines and saved those who had been left behind from a dismal fate. If they could refine metal without using firewood, then they’d make so much money it would keep a smile on their faces for the rest of their lives, you see. Not only that, but creating fire out of nothing meant that it would help bring back the foliage to the bald mountain.”

“Mm.” Holo displayed great interest in that last sentence and asked, “And did life return to the mountain?”

“It did.”

“Oh ho.”

This sight was what most would call a blooming smile. Lawrence found himself happy to see her beaming like that, but Holo herself understood that this was not all there was to the story.

“Still, if they simply lived happily ever after, you would not have said you might need my power, no?”

“Indeed. And they wouldn’t call it a cursed mountain, either.”

Holo brought her shapely eyebrows together, creating deep wrinkles between them. Her gaze swam, possibly because she could not find the single thread that tied the whole story together.

“Has someone like little Col deemed fireless refinement as sorcery?”

Shocking people’s common sense ran the risk of being accused of doing the devil’s work and committing blasphemy.

“I considered that, too, and the bishop from Atiph who asked me to take this on seemed to have the same idea. That the ones who visited the mountain weren’t alchemists but fallen angels who were there to lead people astray.”

“Then is that to say there is a creature with wings, a goat’s head, and a horse’s legs roaming about the mountain?”

Here was the avatar of an enormous wolf who lived in wheat talking about the stories of the devil told by the Church. All the nonhumans that Lawrence knew of were embodiments of far more commonplace animals.

“I don’t think so. But they say they still appear in the mountain.”

“What do you mean?”

Lawrence recalled watching the mouth of the innkeeper by the light of the candle, despite how Holo had ended up passing out drunk beside him.

The words that came out of the slim gap between the man’s scruffy mustache and beard were thus:

“There is something that stubbornly bars anyone from entering the mountain. The technique for refining metal without heat still slumbers there to this day. Any who acquired knowledge of the technique would most certainly be able to secure immense wealth, so many in the past have attempted to investigate…”

“But they all fail to return?”

“Not only that, but you can apparently hear the clang, clang of tools on stone and ghosts appearing night after night to work a mine that should have been long since dried up.”

It was a common tale, but Lawrence knew things that others did not.

For example, there was a massive wolf who occasionally wandered the steamy baths of the Nyohhira hot springs.

It was possible for things that went beyond human comprehension to exist.

“Ghosts aside, if I were to say there are reports of something on the mountain, you’d understand what I mean, right?”

Holo’s ears and nose were those of a wolf. If she put her mind to it, she could locate whatever this mystery being was in an instant, even on the biggest of mountains.

“That may be true…” However, Holo spoke evasively, placing her feet on the seat of the cart and drawing her knees up. “If you should learn that something truly is there, then what are you going to do?”

Her eyes were uneasy. She can’t possibly be afraid of ghosts, can she? Lawrence thought, but then immediately found himself annoyed with his own cluelessness. Whatever lived in that mountain surely lived in the same world as Holo. In that case, there was no doubt that whatever it was had their own reasons for being there.

For example, perhaps out of thanks to the alchemists who brought the forest back to life, they continued to heroically protect what they had left behind to this day.

It was hard to imagine from her typical behavior, but Holo was generally compassionate and easily hurt.

She was likely reluctant to strip off a scab of history that remained on the mountain.

“I know how uneasy you must feel, but what the bishop from the Vallan Bishopric wants is concrete information to help him decide what to do next. It’s a good sign that he’s looking for a merchant. It means he wants to base his decision on loss and profit.”

Holo stared hard at Lawrence before slowly closing her eyes.

“Does that mean your eloquence will work well here?”

“Well, I guess that depends on how much the bishop trusts me.”

Holo inhaled deeply, then grumpily sighed.

“Will we be able to tidy this up before the grand market on the other side of the mountain is over?”

“That very much depends on what’s on the mountain.”

He briefly heard a wolf’s growl coming deep from Holo’s throat, but she knew full well that was all he could say at this point.

Not long later, she huffed, lay her cheek on her raised knees, and hunched over like a pouting girl.

“I suppose this will not end happily.”

Holo tended to be negative whenever her thoughts turned to the future—either because she had spent such a long time alone in a wheat field before meeting Lawrence or because it was a fundamental part of her personality.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Lawrence was a merchant who never learned his lesson and always forged ahead, brimming with confidence that he would strike gold next time.

“Even so, just by us going there, we might be able to help whatever or whoever it is residing in that mountain. Try and imagine what would happen if someone besides us went.”

The bishop searching for a merchant absolutely meant that completely washing his hands of the property was an option. Who he might sell it to and how he would sell it off were important questions for the future of the land.

“Plus, if it’s another nonhuman you get along with, we could always have them work at the bathhouse.”

“…”

Holo turned to Lawrence with a weary look in her eyes because she knew that he spoke the truth.

“You are always an optimistic fool.”

“I wouldn’t have taken your hand and come this far if I weren’t.”

Holo stared at him with quiet, red eyes, then grinned in surrender.

“You fool.”

Lawrence shrugged, adjusted his grip on the reins, and drove the horses.

Even though they had come down from deep within the mountains to the sea, they were once again climbing the mountains, though a different land meant these were not the mountains they called home.

They were used to the steep cliffs, deep forests, and the gorges carved out by creeks that made everything more complicated in the ranges of Nyohhira. What spread out before them was more like gentle hills that went on forever.

“Tall grasses that are host to small groves of trees in patches here and there are signs of terrible scars on the land. This is what happens when the forest is cut down without care.”

The maiden grass, rustling and swaying in the wind, almost looked like a field of wheat at a glance, which was terribly sad. On his past journeys as a peddler, Lawrence had often seen similar sights in places that had been seared by the fires of war.

The road itself was wide and beaten down, and if he had to choose, he would place it among the finer roads he had ever traveled, but it was deserted besides their cart. This route had likely been established when the rock salt and metal production were thriving, a remnant of a bygone era.

“A depressing land, one that does not bring the harvest. Perhaps it would be nice for rabbits and snakes and foxes to nest in, though.”

“Almost makes me think we should slash and burn the whole place down, then turn it all into farm fields.”

“I see no rivers. Since the mountain, the source of the water, has been so ruined in the past, I doubt one would find much even after digging new wells.”

They were starting the sixth day on their cart journey, and even though they were just running out of things to talk about, their silence was not due to exhaustion.

Holo sat on the driver’s perch, staring straight ahead, and Lawrence gently placed his hand on her head. Though she would typically shoo him away like a nuisance, she quietly drew up her shoulder to lean against him. Places whose heyday had passed imparted a particular feeling of loneliness, which made them an even more depressing sight to Holo, who always felt left behind by the inexorable flow of time.

Eventually, they spotted a mound beyond the sea of maiden grass that looked like a proper mountain. It was hard to make out in the distance since there was still a way to go, but just as they had heard from the stories, it did not look barren now.

Buildings finally started to appear here and there along the sides of the road, and though they were modest, there were some wells, and here the fields of grass had been turned into farm fields. They started to see some herds of sheep, and as they sensed other signs of life, the air around them finally grew brighter.

What they came to was a village with rows of simple houses that did not seem all that well-off, and standing staunchly in the middle was a massive stone building that towered above them, surrounded by a defensive wall.

It was the Vallan Cathedral, the place where the Vallan Bishopric found its beginnings.

The iron gates were dignified and tall, suited for a place that once controlled a mine, only they were now left open to rust. It was likely that no one was maintaining the gates, and they could not keep opening and closing the portal at will. The cathedral grounds inside the walls were also quiet, so pigs and several goats were lazily eating the grass. The stone water channel, where guests must have once washed their feet and led their horses to drink, had long since dried out; tufts of grass grew there now.

Lawrence tied his horse to the place he thought seemed the most stable, took the letter from Atiph’s bishop in hand, then headed toward the church with Holo.

“’Tis a big building.”

When they stood in the entrance to the church, Holo looked up and spoke in astonishment. The annexed bell tower was also high up—they had to crane their necks as far back as they could in order to peer all the way up, bringing to mind the energy and power of a bygone era.

“But still, it doesn’t seem like there’s anyone around.”

“Mm. Yet, it smells lived in. And there is soil from hands on that side door there.”

The reason the large entrance to the sanctuary remained closed was likely the same reason the gates to the grounds remained open. The side entrance was not locked, so they opened the door and let themselves inside.

“Oh ho.”

“This is amazing…”

The interior was undeniably stately, and it was obvious that considerable money had been invested into the construction; the colonnade and ceiling were connected with a web of curved lines and embellished with delicate ornaments.

Rows of glass-inset cabinets lined the walls, filled with statues of the Holy Mother and other decorations. The long chains hanging from the high ceilings were likely for lit incense during times of worship. When Holo approached to give the incense holders a sniff, she sneezed.

“It’s been cleaned.”

“Those are wax candles in the candleholders along the walls and pillars. ’Tis quite grand.”

It was all being properly cared for, but there were still no signs of life. Lawrence and Holo walked hand in hand, the echoes of their footsteps uncomfortably loud inside the sanctuary.

They walked along a hallway where the stained-glass windows depicted a scene featuring the Holy Mother and the advent of God, when they finally came to a stop.

They stood at a crossway. Here, the floor was made of different-colored stones in the pattern of the Church’s symbol.

“Dear.” Holo pointed to a spot high up on the wall that reached the ceiling.

“…This…”

Lawrence unconsciously covered his mouth when he laid eyes on the large mural. It was not a painting of something from reality, which was currently in vogue among nobles. Depicted in an extremely simplified and exaggerated style, the people in the scene all held up hands bigger than their heads in awkward positions that made them look like puppets, their expressionless faces directed toward heaven and eyes focused on nothing in particular. Such lack of sophistication gave it an indescribable power, and he could tell at a glance what it was representing.

It was the legend surrounding the Vallan Cathedral.

The one carrying a plow was probably Vallan, the founding farmer, and the hand reaching down from between the clouds was likely God’s divine will. Vallan was thriving in the following scene, which depicted the establishment of the church town, and Lawrence could see God’s good graces overflowing from the land and the people thanking God for the development of their new home.

However, the town in the mural suddenly went into decline; the people were reaching for the heavens, perhaps praying for intervention, and the angel that came down to them was playing a flute.

“The angel has been painted with horns.”

“Its horns are the only colorful thing here. That detail must’ve been added later. The people of later generations must’ve decided it was a fallen angel.”

The group of hooded figures, their faces obscured and hoods pulled far down over their eyes, making them almost look like pagan sorcerers, must have been the alchemists. But what came after that was odd. That sense of wrongness he had felt when collecting stories about this at the inn had been put straight into images.

The alchemists prayed at the top of the mountain, and God’s bearded face appeared at the peak, shining light filtering through the clouds from the summit all the way down to the town below in time with the angel’s wild dance.

“I’ve seen paintings in areas with long-lasting rains where the people pray for clear weather, and this looks similar.”

“…Are the people in the village smiling?”

Holo narrowed her eyes and scrunched up her face because her eyesight was not that great; she could not make out the small details of the crowd.

“No, they’re expressionless. The way they’re raising their hands makes it seem like they’re either happy or begging for dear life.”

“Hmph, it makes no difference,” she spat.

Holo had stayed in the fields of a single town for centuries to honor a very old promise. She said she occasionally had to make the wheat harvest poor in order to give them as abundant of a crop as possible in the long run. On the other hand, the villagers wished for a good yield every year and often took the varying success of the harvest as Holo’s capricious whim.

Lawrence reached out to rest his hand on Holo’s back. Holo inhaled deeply, then forcefully breathed through her nose.

“God is shining the light on those men with large metalsmithing hammers, and they’re hitting that burning clump. Must be metal. There’s horses ferrying all sorts of cargo on their backs, and those merchant-looking men are raising their hands because…it must be an expression of happiness.”

“Next to that, the forest has returned to the mountain.”

“Yeah, but—”

Lawrence cut himself off because at the foot of the mountain, now reinvigorated with forest, the people were kneeling in prayer, clearly lamenting over something.

The expressionless, bearded face of God still sat at the peak of the mountain, while the fallen angel with those ill-shaped wings sticking out of its back stood beside him, a look in its eyes that made it hard to tell what exactly it was looking at, which was a unique characteristic for this style of painting.

But at the very least, it did not seem like they were looking at the people at the foot of the mountain.

The end of the painted chronicle that continued down the hall came with the words O Merciful God.

“What’s with the bearded face?”

Despite how ridiculous it was, the face occupied a prominent place in the picture ever since the opening scene, making it even more eerie than it already was.

“Perhaps it means there is a weird one like that here.”

“Why is it just his face?”

Everyone else, even the smallest figures, had proper bodies.

He wondered if there was a reason that it was only his face.

“Hmm…If it were nonhuman, then…” Holo mulled over her thoughts, then lifted her face in realization. “Oh, we ate it in the last town. Would that not be it?”

“Huh?”

They had eaten plenty of specialty seafood in Atiph, along with the staples like mutton, pork, and chicken.

However, as Lawrence thought about how it looked like none of those, Holo asked, “Is it not a crab?”

“Crab?!”

Lawrence’s eyes widened, turning away from Holo’s proud look back to the picture. Sure, if a face appeared in a crab shell, it might look something like that. It was also possible to see the tousled wisps of beard that extended to either side as caricatures of a crab’s legs, which could explain why there was no body.

In fact, he could imagine a crab snatching people who trespassed in the mountain with those claws and biting into them with a blank, impassive face.

Lawrence shivered at how unearthly the thought was, then shook his head.

“No, no…”

He told himself to be rational about this.

What did an avatar of a crab at the mountain peak have to do with refining metal?

Furthermore, he still had no idea why it shone light from the summit.

Suddenly, they heard a voice come from above them.

“That is an interesting theory.”

It was so sudden that Lawrence jumped in spite of himself, looking hurriedly up at the ceiling but finding no one there.

Even Holo with her wolf ears did not seem to know where the voice came from as she peered up at the rafters in bewilderment, her eyes darting back and forth.

Yet, even if one fooled her ears, it seemed one could not fool her wolf’s nose.

“Behind the far pillar.”

Holo tugged on his sleeve and whirled around. She pointed to the pillar at the far end of the hallway.

Lawrence placed his hand on his dagger, then immediately remembered that this was a cathedral.

A normal train of thought would suggest the speaker was a member of the church. His mind had gotten all jumbled after their conversation about creepy crabs. Lawrence took a deep breath to steady himself, then spoke.

“We are travelers! We received orders from the bishop in Atiph and came here!”

His voice echoed around the high-ceilinged stone structure; it almost sounded like a choir singing a canon.

“We have a letter of introduction from the bishop in Atiph. We were hoping to have an audience with the bishop here.”

Lawrence’s voice echoed around them a few more times before disappearing at the end of the hallway. The voice must have sounded like it was coming from above them because of the strange acoustics.

Whoever it was behind the pillar did not answer.

Or perhaps it was someone they needed to deal with using Holo’s power?

They were in a cathedral with eerie pictures on the walls—a place where past prosperity still lived.

He thought that it could be entirely possible there was something roaming here that was beyond human comprehension.

“It seems like this is truly a coincidence.”

They heard the calm voice of a woman. What surprised him was not that it sounded like it was coming from right next to them or that it seemed a mix of annoyed and delighted.

Lawrence clearly remembered this voice.

“Dear.” Holo turned around to look at Lawrence, a sullen look on her face. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Right after she made that comment, their greeter casually revealed themselves from behind the pillar.

The movement almost seemed like a delicate dance because whomever it was had impeccable posture.

And just as he had imagined, Lawrence knew this person very well. She was a lot more mature than how he remembered her, but if he were to count the years and months since they last saw each other, it made perfect sense.

“We can simply never comprehend the whims of God.”

Walking their way was a lone woman. Her hair was neatly pulled back into a bun, her eyes were the color of honey, and though she seemed rather slender, her back was stretched powerfully straight, full of dignity in the way she carried herself. He could tell from the color dyed into the collar of her clerical robes that she occupied the position of a priest. She was the spitting image of what most people saw when they pictured the clergy.

“It has been quite a while, Mr. Lawrence,” the woman said with a smile, and her gaze turned to the person beside him. “And for better or worse, you seem the same as always. You reek of alcohol.”

“Fool,” Holo retorted, folding her arms in front of her chest and turning away in a huff.

A wry smile started to cross Lawrence’s face as he thought, These two never got along…, but he quickly corrected himself.

It was Holo alone who found their interactions unbearable.

After all, Col had described this woman as a believer of stringent faith and the one who temporarily acted as his teacher so that he might master theology. Holo, on the other hand, would drink all the alcohol in the world if she could and always picked the bits of meat that dripped with grease, so it was only natural they had poor compatibility.

“I never thought we would see you in a place like this,” Lawrence responded and said her name. “It’s been a long time, Miss Elsa.”

“All is as God wills it.”

Elsa, who they met long ago on their merchant travels and who had guided them at an important crossroads, smiled and nodded.

Lawrence and Elsa approached each other and exchanged a handshake and a brief hug.

Just after Lawrence and Holo met over ten years ago, back when Holo had forgotten the way back to Yoitsu, they met Elsa while pursuing research on her homeland. She was also very important to them as the person who presided over their ceremony when he and Holo got married.

“I received your letter, which had indeed read, ‘See you again soon,’ but I hadn’t thought you would appear quite this quickly.”

“It seems the horse got the letter to you safe and sound.”

One of the many nonhumans who had come to the bathhouse in Nyohhira was someone who delivered letters to faraway lands for a living. The person in question was the embodiment of a horse, which was most suitable for the role.

“At any rate, is it true that you’ve just had a baby, Miss Elsa?”

“That was two years ago; my third one. The older kids are taking care of the baby for me. My biggest and eldest child needs to start living life without me having to scold him all the time.”

Elsa’s husband was a good-natured young man named Evan who was her complete opposite—a bighearted man who did not dither over the details. He is clearly the henpecked type, Lawrence thought and considered himself much the same.

Right as Lawrence and Elsa were renewing their friendship, Holo interjected, annoyed.

“More importantly, we are rather tired from our long journey. I believe it is one of your Church’s principles to care for travelers, no?”

Elsa stared blankly at Holo before responding to her caustic remark with a gleeful smile. It was almost as though she had grown used to the whining of children.

“Indeed. We just so happen to be all out of visitors or helpers at the moment, so we have plenty of rooms open.”

“I wish to wash the dust away with hot water. Will there be a hot bath waiting for me?”

Holo had grown so used to life in Nyohhira with the hot springs. Back in Atiph, she had often cried about wanting to fill a tub full of hot water to submerge herself completely.

“Yes, of course.”

“What?!”

Holo’s eyes sparkled, and Elsa continued with a clear expression.

“If you draw the water, split the firewood, and start the fire yourself, that is.”

“…”

Elsa, with her honey-colored eyes and straight posture, said, “We brook no idleness here. A day filled with hard work is a good day.”

Back when Lawrence was still a merchant, Elsa was a shining example of what every earnest priestess strove to be. It was Elsa who taught Col proper manners, back when he was still a child who accompanied them on their travels.

In those days, Elsa had often scolded Holo, whose manners were no better or worse than her own daughter, Myuri.

“Mr. Lawrence, did you put your horse out front?”

“Yes.”

“Once you’ve unpacked, I’ll provide you with water to wash your feet and a meal. There’s no need to worry. It won’t be roasted beans and grass from the yard.”

She added that last bit while shooting Holo a mischievous look.

When Holo looked away in a huff, Lawrence felt like he might forget which one was supposed to be the wisewolf who would live for many centuries.

Larger Church institutions had plenty of courtesy calls from nobles and traveling clergy, so they always had lodging facilities. Lawrence and Holo borrowed one of those rooms, unpacked their things, then went outside.

Elsa was by the vegetable garden that sat within the church grounds, her sleeves rolled up as she drew water from the well.

“You will feel refreshed once you wash your feet.”

There were several stories of saints who washed the feet of the poor, but of course Holo was not the type to feel any gratitude for this.

Holo stood there with an obvious glower, and Elsa turned to look at Lawrence.

“I am happy to see you two so close, but are you perhaps spoiling your partner a little too much?”

Elsa scolded him, and he had no choice but to offer a humble apology.

“See, Holo—cold water feels good, too.”

Lawrence washed his hands in the tub filled to the brim with water. With a grumpy look, Holo sat down nearby on a massive rock and stuck her feet out at Lawrence.

With Elsa’s exasperated sigh stinging his ears, Lawrence removed the princess’s shoes, rolled up the edges of the trousers she wore under her robe, and began washing her feet. All her complaints notwithstanding, she seemed to enjoy it. Even though her expression remained grumpy, her tail swayed gently back and forth.

“Still, are you managing this place alone, Miss Elsa?”

Since Elsa made her way toward the woodpile, saying that she would need to get a fire going in order to start preparing their meal, Lawrence took on the duty of splitting firewood for her. Holo did not complain about anything in particular, perhaps because she was satisfied after Lawrence had washed her feet, and followed along without raising much fuss.

“You know about the grand market on the other side of the mountain, yes? All the people who normally maintain the church and the village are staying there until it’s over. We need to sell the village’s harvest as dearly as we can and purchase all the goods we need to get through winter as cheaply as possible, after all. Since I don’t know the land well nor do I have many connections, I opted to stay behind.”

Lawrence swung down the ax as he listened to Elsa talk. Holo, who seemed to enjoy the rhythmic crack of logs splitting, deftly collected the freshly cut timber and then quickly set up a new piece for him.

To Lawrence, she seemed just like a dog delighted to retrieve a stick he had thrown, but he of course kept that impression to himself.

“That being said, I am much more at ease when I’m alone. All my cleaning pays off here, you see.”

He could not help but smile wryly at her precise language.

When all the wood was finally cut, Elsa guided them inside to the kitchen.

“But still, I am surprised that you left Nyohhira to visit a place like this. Why on earth?” Elsa asked as she took down some tinder and flint from a shelf in the kitchen.

“It would be a very long story, but…I want to ask you the same thing. Why are you here, Miss Elsa? You’re rather far away from home.”

“I had no intentions of coming here, either. Originally, I was asked by a neighboring church to help them because they didn’t have enough people who could read, so I only came here on a temporary basis to read through the assets and permits that the church had accumulated. That was just before summer came this year.”

As Elsa detailed her arrival, she struck the flint stones together, immediately causing a spark.

When Holo saw that, she teased Lawrence with “Would you look at that!” He took offense to that—it had only been the first few days of their travels that he took a long time to get a fire started.

“And when I heard that Col was somehow involved with the Church hastily cleaning up its act, I wasn’t sure if I should be surprised or suddenly understand exactly how this situation came to be.”

Elsa selected a piece of firewood that looked like it would burn easily from among the wood Lawrence brought over and tossed it in the stove.

Lawrence was impressed with how even though it seemed like she had simply thrown it in without much care, the firewood had actually been thoughtfully stacked in a way to make it burn easier.

“That was our reason as well. Our only daughter, Myuri, ended up following Col on his journey, and we’ve had fewer letters as of late, so we left to check up on them.”

Elsa turned her honey-colored eyes to Lawrence and Holo, then smiled dryly, hinting at something deeper.

She probably thought of them as overly doting parents.

Lawrence suddenly cleared his throat before continuing. “Ahem. So, Miss Elsa, you were helping out in various places until you found yourself here by request, is that right?”

“That is mostly correct, but that picture you were looking up at is the biggest reason. There is a significant reason as to why our paths crossed here.”

That painting showed the history of the Vallan Bishopric’s development and decline—alchemists who brought techniques that could be called nothing else but magic and the cursed mountain that was said to still be occupied by a being shrouded in mystery.

“When I heard that the bishopric was looking for help, I hesitated because it was so far away, but when I heard the story of how the Vallan Bishopric came to be, it immediately caught my interest. I wondered if I might perhaps add a new story to my father’s collection of tales about the pagan gods.”

The reason Lawrence and Holo first visited Elsa’s village was for her father’s prodigious collection of books.

“And the outcome?”

Elsa, placing an iron pot on the stove and pouring water into it from a jug, gracefully shrugged.

“You two ended up coming. Did you get the letter in Atiph?”

“…Does that mean you’re representing the troubled bishop, Miss Elsa?”

After putting the jug away, Elsa pointed to her collar.

“I am a priest. The assistant in the assistant priest title is still very much a success for a woman in our organization. This is only temporary, however. It would be irresponsible for the Church to allow someone with a husband and children to become a full-fledged priest. They so lack help that someone like me had to be recruited for this.”

Despite what Elsa said, she could read and had even journeyed once to find a clergyman to whom she could entrust their village’s church. The insightful and earnest woman had always been well respected in her village; there was good reason they could rely on her.

“However, even if I went to the church in Atiph for help and gave a detailed explanation of the situation, they might be wary of me, would they not? They might interpret the arrival of a female priest from an outside village as an attempt to wrest away control. That is why in my letter asking for support, I wrote that I was only the temporary representative. I wasn’t lying.”

When Elsa, a woman who was prim, proper, and who respected the creed above all, smiled mischievously at the end of her explanation, Lawrence realized that she had grown stronger in the years since they had last met.

“What is that face supposed to mean? I’ve learned how to navigate the world a little, you know.”

As she pressured him for a reply, she added generous amounts of salt and garlic to the pot. He caught a glimpse of how efficiently she must be running the house back in her home village.

“You don’t mind stew, do you?”

“Are you putting in meat?” Holo asked, and Elsa shrugged.

“I am the one who invited you here, so I would not admonish you for eating meat.”

“How considerate of you. What sort of meat is it?”

“You are a wolf, no? Did you see the grasses on your way here?”

By the way Elsa elegantly handled Holo, Lawrence could picture her doing the same thing with a child who persistently asked what was for dinner.

“Rabbit!”

“A rare specialty around these parts.”

Holo’s eyes glittered, her tail rustling back and forth.

Elsa smiled dryly at Holo’s voraciousness.

“With everything you’ve told us so far, it seems even more surprising that you requested the aid of a merchant,” Lawrence pointed out, while beside him Elsa requested the cheerful Holo to retrieve the rabbit meat from the villagers. Holo did not mind going through a bit of trouble for meat, and she exited the kitchen with light steps.

Despite how Holo would get hilariously jealous whenever her prey was left alone with another woman, she, of course, did not seem to question his relationship with Elsa.

“The land is referred to as the cursed mountain, and the nearby villagers dare not venture in even to collect firewood. Things would only become more complicated if I had summoned a member of the clergy. However, merchants wouldn’t mind a curse or two if it meant making money, so I thought that one might boldly stride into the forest to investigate what’s at the peak.”

Elsa’s words hinted at what she thought of merchants, but she was certainly not wrong.

“Which means you don’t know what’s in the mountain, either.”

“No. What I was originally called here for was to manage this cathedral’s assets and check their permits. I have my own veritable mountain of things to do. I also have work to do for my own village, so I want to return before winter settles in. I simply cannot go into the mountains myself. Even if I decide to set aside the time to gather information, everyone who works in this cathedral all pursued church law in outside towns and are not locals, and I’m a bit hesitant of what others may think if I decided to gather information from the locals.”

A female priest who hailed from a faraway land gathering pagan stories that have been passed down in the region for ages would certainly invite unwanted suspicion. They might think she was a new kind of inquisitor or even a foreign spy plotting to take over.

“And the book vault didn’t have any records that might prove useful. The stories you can gather at inns along the way are more detailed at this point. You saw the painting in the cathedral; that is surely a sign the people at the time thought it was a story they needed to leave behind for future generations, at any rate.”

“Did you look up the previous bishops?” Lawrence asked, and Elsa shrugged.

“Given it’s a town that’s home to a mine that has long since dried out and is associated with heretical anecdotes, pretending it doesn’t exist is the correct judgment. Nothing good will come of anything if an inquisitor gets even a whiff of this place.”

They were sweeping the town’s existence under the rug.

“On the other hand, it is not just my curiosity. A very practical problem has reared its head. It’s rather troubling that we hold lands that cannot be put to good use. One glance tells you how run down this bishopric has become, doesn’t it? Selling off a mountain that barely produces any metal and using that money to dig wells and improve the roads would be immensely helpful in changing the people’s lives for the better. But likely since the local people know the stories of the land, they are hesitant about such a deal. That is also where a merchant from a faraway place comes into play.”

Things finally lined up with the letter of request that he got from the bishop in Atiph.

Lawrence could only sigh in admiration in response to Elsa’s sensible judgment.

“Only a merchant from a faraway land could find a buyer who has never heard the rumors of a cursed mountain and knows nothing about the history of the land, right?”

Elsa did not respond, but she smiled.

It made sense that she, an outsider, had been left alone in this massive cathedral to look after it.

Anyone could rest easy knowing that she would take care of things.

“Well, as for venturing up onto the mountain to see what’s there, you can leave that to us.”

Lawrence peered outside through the kitchen entrance and saw Holo rushing toward them, holding a rabbit tied up with hemp rope in her arms. She wore a wide, guileless smile that made him wonder why she ever bothered to call herself a wisewolf.

“As long as she gets meat and drink, you can expect good work from us.”

Elsa shrugged, adding another dash of salt to the pot.

Holo loved pairing rich food with her alcohol.

It seemed like Elsa had scored a clean point on Holo.

Once their bellies were full of rabbit stew and a bit of wine, Elsa guided Lawrence and Holo to the cathedral vault. The stone basement looked like a dungeon at first, and that impression was only emphasized by the imposing sculptures of demons placed here and there meant to ward off evil spirits.

When they reached the deepest recesses, Elsa inserted a massive metal key, which barely fit in the palm of her hand, into a heavy metal door.

As the door swung open, Holo remarked, “This reminds me of that hole where the snake was.”

There was a legend of a massive snake in the village where Elsa was from, and the church basement was connected to the cave that once housed the snake. The basement filled with rows of shelves stuffed full of parchment and books even looked similar.

“Are these all permits?”

“Only about a quarter of them. The territories are quite diverse, so about half of the papers are resident tax lists, proof of property rights, and other minute documents. The books are mostly technical manuals. They include the processes for mining rock salt and ores, as well as known methods for refinement. They were covered in thick dust, which means no one has touched them for a long time—useless nowadays. I was thinking about selling them off.”

It smelled rather moldy in the book vault, which was probably the reason why Holo sneezed several times and brought her nose to her robe.

“This is what I wanted to show you.”

Elsa led the way, candlestick in hand.

While they were eating their rabbit stew, Elsa had told them all she had learned about the cursed mountain from her own investigations, but even despite having read all her father’s books on pagan gods, she still did not understand the mysteries behind that painting.

Additionally, rumors of dreadful monsters lurking in the mountains and forests were common throughout the world. Lawrence knew that most of them were made up, and one could even argue that they were introduced for a purpose.

For example, sometimes villagers would say there was a beast living in the nearby mountains or forests and claim that they simply could not continue venturing into the supposed monster’s stomping grounds. With such an excuse in place, they would then ask to be exempt from some taxes to make up for their losses while still profiting handsomely from those very mountains and forests. Other times, tales of monsters were simply to keep outsiders from seeking out the natural bounty of the land they tended to. It was for those reasons that people often made up these stories.

There were no records of the cursed land in the cathedral, and Elsa had wondered if the locals had spread the story in the beginning for some sort of political reasons, which was entirely possible.

However, one day, when she went into the vault to sort out the permits, she noticed something that had been stored as though whoever had placed it there was trying to keep it hidden.

“Is this it?”

Elsa removed the cloth, exposing to Lawrence and Holo a gilded bell, large enough to be categorized as massive.

“There was a record for the order of a new bell in an account book from fifty years ago. Hanging in the bell tower now is the newly casted bell from that time.”

“So this is the previous one?”

Elsa nodded, lighting another candle with her own candlestick and illuminating the bottom part of the bell.

“Look at this.”

Both Lawrence and Holo peered at it, and they both gulped.

“Are these…bite marks?”

In one spot on the massive bell, big enough for Holo to hide inside, there were four holes all in a row.

“That’s what it seems like. What do you think?”

Each individual hole was not large enough for a fist to fit inside, but two fingers could easily rest in the gaps without much trouble. And anyone who had seen Holo’s fangs had no choice but to picture just that.

“Us wolves hate gold,” Holo said and brought her face closer to the open holes in the bell. “…A scent still lingers…Ha-choo!”

Holo wiped her nose after she sneezed, then rubbed it again on Lawrence’s sleeve.

She must have really hated the smell.

“I would not have minded much if it were just a legend, but this bell is here, and I could not help but wonder, you know.”

Lawrence looked down at the bell and groaned. If whoever bit into this bell was still here, then he started to think that the story he heard at the inn about people going into the mountain and then never coming back might not be entirely made up.

However, he heard an exasperated sigh, then looked to see Holo sniffle.

“You fool,” she said with a nasal voice, then kicked the bell with a dong. “This bell hung from that tall bell tower, no? How would one of us bite into it?”

““Oh.””

Lawrence and Elsa voiced their sudden understanding at the same time, and Holo turned her head in exasperation.

“Birds do not have teeth. ’Twould even be strange for those who have talons.”

“…That’s true. There would be three of those, and marks would have shown up on the other side, too.”

“Also, these holes were not created by brute force.”

“Huh?”

No sooner than Lawrence had made a noise to clarify, Holo suddenly and forcefully gripped his side.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“If you were not so flabby, you would have been crushed when I grabbed you.”

Holo let him go, and Elsa nodded, interested.

“Indeed, the bell still holds its shape quite well.”

“If one were to bite hard enough to create holes, then the bell would have either lost its shape or the force would have left cracks throughout, but that does not seem to be the case at all. And these holes are odd.”

Holo examined the holes closely, illuminated by the candlelight, and squinted.

“How does one create holes like this?”

Lawrence peered at them again, but he did not quite understand what Holo was getting at. There were four strange openings in a row, and he could only picture a dog biting into metal leaving marks like those behind.

However, he could not ignore her point that it had been hung high in the bell tower, and there were no signs of the warping or cracks that obviously should have been left behind if something did bite into it.

“In truth, I would assume that this bell has nothing to do with the legend…”

It was a rational inference, but Holo herself did not seem to entirely believe it.

Lawrence asked, “First of all, despite all the odd points about this and accepting the assumption that something left these bite marks”—Holo and Elsa looked at Lawrence—“do you think this is something you can deal with?”

The candlelight wavered and flickered, even though there was no wind.

Or perhaps that was because Holo gave an undaunted smile.

“I am Holo the Wisewolf. I will not go down so easily, except perhaps against the Moon-Hunting Bear.”

She was the embodiment of a massive, towering wolf who lived in wheat.

That was what helped them settle on their next move.

Once the sun set, everyone working the fields returned home, and after dinner, in order to save costs on candles, they all got ready for the next day and went to sleep.

It was precisely during this time of evening that Holo finally revealed her wolf form.

“You should wait here.”

“Fool. You lose your cool surprisingly fast. As if I’m going to let you handle this alone.”

Lawrence mimicked Holo, which earned him an annoyed swipe from her massive tail.

Lawrence’s protests seemed to only reach deaf ears as he lay flipped over on the ground, but Elsa also weighed in.

“I want to avoid any fighting as much as possible. If there really is something up there, then we do always have the option of just leaving it alone.”

“It depends on who or what it is. It would be nice if it is willing to communicate.”

Elsa nodded, helped Lawrence up onto Holo’s back, then gripped her Church crest.

“May God watch over you.”

“You always have quite the nerve.”

The Church’s God was a newcomer compared to the ancient spirits of the forest. However, Elsa, who seemed to have done this simply out of habit, blinked at Holo’s comment and flashed a troubled smile.

“Listen—even if you get shaken loose, I will not be picking you up.”

“I won’t fall, so long as you don’t pull any mischief.”

Just as he said that, Holo almost deliberately shuddered, then immediately dashed off.

Lawrence turned back to see Elsa waving them off, but he quickly grabbed tightly onto Holo’s fur and pressed himself down onto her. They went faster and faster, the wind whipping in his ears, drowning out the rumble of Holo’s footsteps. The moon only occasionally peeked out from between the clouds, making the nighttime fields of maiden grass look like a pitch-black lake.

From Holo’s back, as she dashed through the silhouetted scenery, Lawrence caught the briefest glimpse of her world for a moment.

Lawrence, who believed that they knew absolutely everything about each other, was realizing all over again that he was in love with Holo who was not human but a wolf.

Normally, it scarcely registered, but it was times like these that the difference between them struck him hard.

If he were to tell her that despite that, he was surprisingly okay with clinging to a powerful bundle of fur, Holo would surely make a face that would be a mix of embarrassment, displeasure, and hurt, with her tail meandering back and forth. As he smiled at the image, he endured the small upswelling of fear he felt.

He was not sure how long he spent like that, but after some time, the whipping wind in his ears finally abated, and he could hear the light sounds of Holo stepping firmly on the ground.

When he looked up, he found they had, at some point, come to a copse, and he could see the moon hiding behind the clouds beyond the cluster of trees. It seemed like they had reached the foot of the mountain.

He had heard the journey would take several hours by horse, but of course, Holo had much longer and more powerful strides.

“Are you sure we’re okay barging in on its territory like this?”

If there was something in the mountain, he wondered if it would be better if they observed the area a little bit before approaching like this.

“I smell naught but the usual scent of deer.”

It was hard to tell from up on Holo’s back, but her nimble footwork carried them over small height differences and some stones without much jostling.

No matter what she said, she was never honest about making sure he was safe on her back.

“Can you tell where it was that face was painted?”

“For now, we shall make our way up to the highest peak. We might perhaps learn something from the view up there.”

“Makes sense,” Lawrence responded right as Holo sped up. Or perhaps it only seemed that way because they were going up a steeper incline now that they were traversing the mountain paths. If he tried to climb this himself, he would almost certainly just end up breaking his bones, but Holo ascended with the speed of a horse galloping across a flat plain. He could clearly tell by her steps, her breathing, and how her large tail swayed that she was enjoying the climb.

Holo’s home was not in the towns of humans.

Lawrence knew that the place she truly belonged was deep in the woods.

“We are here.”

Holo stopped at a spot that was sparsely dotted with trees. It almost looked like a plaza at first glance. Lawrence realized he must have been gripping her fur much tighter than he had thought. After easing his tense fists, he carefully slid off Holo’s back as she lay with her stomach on the ground.

There were layers upon layers of soft, fallen leaves on the ground; there was little doubt that a short dig would be all that was needed to turn over some good soil.

“It doesn’t look like it used to be a bald mining mountain. This is the reason why they can get as much water from the wells as they like, huh?”

He gently kicked the leaves underfoot and scattered some acorns; once his eyes grew used to the darkness, he could see saplings sprouting here and there.

“Not so. There are stones with metal in them scattered throughout the mountain, and the terrible odor stings my nose. I am certain your eyes would notice the peculiarities if we were to come when the sun is high,” Holo said as she bumped Lawrence with her big nose. It seemed as though she was doing that because she longed for a familiar smell, so he scratched the ridge of her snout with his hand and watched as her tail wagged in response.

“I’m not sure what they mean by a curse…but if there’s been mining residue left behind, then maybe they’re talking about the pollution? But there’s still a lot of trees, and it feels too peaceful for that to be the main issue…”

Instead, the atmosphere around them felt appropriate for a ghost to suddenly appear.

“Mm.”

Holo, who had been fawning over Lawrence with her nose, lifted her head, then looked around at their surroundings with sharp eyes.

“I do not know if there is still something here, but…there is no doubt that there once was.”

Lawrence looked at her in surprise, and she met his gaze, as though urging him to look at the woods.

“The types of trees dotting this mountain are odd.”

“They are?”

“They would not come to be like this naturally. Every tree planted here drops its leaves in the winter and bears nuts. And starting at the skirt of the mountain, nearly every tree has been planted with neat regularity.”

Nut-bearing deciduous trees made for excellent firewood and could also be used as nursery beds for mushrooms. And since they were planted with regularity, that brought Lawrence to one conclusion.

“So they’ve been planted. Does that mean it didn’t grow back naturally on its own?”

“’Tis likely. And ’tis the same for as far as I can see. I have never laid eyes on such a sight as this.”

Holo, who had spent centuries looking at and roaming through forests, could tell that there was something strange about the mountain.

“For nature to return on its own on such a wide scale would require centuries to begin with. Had the mountain not gone bare only a scant few decades ago? There is no questioning that someone has been caring for it.”

“Could it be the villagers?”

Holo turned her large nose to Lawrence and huffed.

“They would need a population the size of an ant colony. And humans are intelligent. They would not do something so foolish as plant nothing but their favorite trees. ’Tis not a good thing to plant only one type of tree.”

The way she said favorite caught Lawrence’s attention.

“Do you have a hunch as to who might have planted these trees?”

“This solves one mystery in that terrible painting,” Holo huffed in displeasure and turned to look at Lawrence with reproachful eyes. “I knew I should get that painting back in the port fixed. The picture must be done properly; otherwise, the correct story will not reach future generations.”

Lawrence was astonished that she still had not given up on the painting, but he responded with a question.

“Which mystery, the face at the peak? Or?”

“The angel beside the face. ’Tis not the angels you speak of.”

“But it had wings.”

“It only seems so because of the awful workmanship. Those are not wings.”

There was something that looked like wings attached to the back of the person who had been supporting God’s face. But what if things were not what they seemed at first?

Lawrence looked at Holo, and the queen of the forest revealed the answer.

“’Tis a squirrel. The squirrel’s tail goes up its back, making it seem like wings.”

At that moment, Lawrence realized what it was about the woods that had felt slightly strange. Then he understood why so many trees had grown in such a short period of time and why they were all the type that produced nuts.

“Digging holes to bury tree nuts is their specialty. They can stuff a handful of nuts into their mouth and carry them around as well. That surely sped up their work. Either way, there is no questioning that this forest was created by a squirrel.”

Part of the puzzle, which had been full of mysteries, had been somewhat illuminated now.

However, he still had a question.

“If it really is a squirrel, then those bite marks on the bell are still a puzzle. Or wait, is it possible that its claws left those marks?”

“A squirrel trying to crush a bell in a display of its own strength? If those tiny squirrel paws are responsible for those holes, then…it would certainly have to be a squirrel the size of a mountain.”

It was hard to imagine, and in that case at any rate, he still couldn’t conceive of a reason why the bell kept its shape and why there were no telltale cracks.

“The quickest way to learn more is to ask the squirrel itself…Can you tell if it’s here on the mountain?”

“My nose does not work so well, likely because I can smell metal here and there. Well, it has created a place full of delicious treats, so it must be hiding somewhere. If it was okay for me to howl, I could send a message asking it to come out all the way to the other side of the mountain.”

There were regular villages covering the area just beyond the foot of the mountain. While there were few fields, perhaps due to poor access to water in the region, there was plenty of grass, so the locals raised sheep and goats. If they heard a wolf howling, it would certainly mean trouble for their livelihoods.

“We’ll leave that as our last option.”

“Then we have no choice but to conduct our own search. Well, I am sure the squirrel will notice if we spend the night here.”

What would happen if a massive wolf suddenly appeared one day in what was supposed to be a self-made paradise full of treats?

Most any squirrel would certainly come to at least ask its business.

“We’re sleeping outside, then? But I haven’t brought anything…Gah!”

As Lawrence was talking, Holo’s tail wrapped around him and flipped him over, but her soft fur caught him on his back.

“Are you not satisfied with sleeping in my fur?”

Big Holo turned to him with red eyes and fangs.

Lawrence could tell what sort of mood Holo was in at a glance, but to the average onlooker, he probably looked like a poor traveler who was about to be eaten.

“Oh yeah, we spent a night like this right when we first met Miss Elsa, didn’t we?”

That was the time they had suddenly found themselves involved in a fight that stemmed from a feud between Elsa’s village and a nearby town, so they slept outside in the woods after a hasty escape.

Lawrence stroked the fur of her tail, reminiscing, when she swatted him with that same tail.

“You have quite the nerve to speak of other females whilst you lay in my fur.”

He lay on Holo’s side, and he could hear a growl like rolling thunder coming from beneath him.

“It might get a little cold tonight, so I figured it might be better to make it a little warmer.”

“You fool.”

Holo curled up and bumped Lawrence with her nose.

Then, seemingly satisfied with teasing him for the moment, she huffed, stretched her limbs as though she had been lounging, and flicked her ears.

“It has been quite a while.”

Holo seemed extremely happy.

In Nyohhira, Holo would occasionally find jobs to do, then wander the mountains in her wolf form, but Lawrence rarely ever went with her. There were also many guests in Nyohhira, and a few sometimes went out into the mountain during their stay, so chances to change into her wolf form were few and far between.

As Holo happily cradled him in her bosom, Lawrence could not help but say, “I thought you hated when we did this.”

Humans were humans. Wolves were wolves.

Lawrence and Holo had always avoided having such an obvious truth thrust in their faces.

Holo started to lift her head when he spoke, but she reconsidered mid-movement, then relaxed once more as she rested her chin on the blanket of fallen leaves.

“It depends on my mood.”

Her slitted red eyes were likely twinkling in playful self-deprecation. Indeed, whenever she was in a bad mood—even in Nyohhira—she would return to her wolf form and go for a soak in the springs.

“Whims are Your Majesty’s special privileges,” he said, stroking her fur, and her tail shivered in delight.

“You truly are a fool,” Holo said with a rumbling sigh as she closed her eyes.

Lawrence flashed a small smile, relaxed, and let himself sink into her.

Drowsiness set upon him immediately as he lay among the warm fur that smelled of the woods.

Holo’s idea—sleeping in the mountain and having whatever it was notice them—turned out to be the correct choice. When dawn broke, Lawrence had Holo guide him to a stream that did not smell metallic and built a fire next to it. Right as he was roasting a wild rabbit, Holo noticed something.

Holo had been keenly watching the rabbit roast, her large tail thumping up and down, when she suddenly lifted her head. Before Lawrence could say anything, she dashed off. The way she moved was completely different from when she had brought him to the peak. Like in a gust of wind, the fallen leaves whirled into the air, and she vanished from sight in an instant—quick wit and a reaction fit for a master hunter of the forest.

Lawrence was dumbfounded, but he reminded himself that Holo would never get lost in the mountains, much less miss a place where meat was being cooked. He turned his attention back to the roasting meat, and just as he was about to help himself to an early bite of a thigh dripping with fat, he thought he spotted Holo’s ears poke up from the cliffside beside the stream. A moment later, her whole body emerged.

“Oh, welcome…back?”

Holo carried an enormous squirrel in her mouth, the likes of which he had never seen.

“It came to take a look at us.”

She had been carrying the squirrel by the scruff of its neck, and even when she let it go, it stayed curled up in a ball.

Its characteristic body-size tail was shivering, and it was hunched over, cradling its head.

This squirrel would certainly surpass Lawrence in height if it stood up straight, but right now it only looked like a perfectly round ball of fur.

“Does it understand words?”

“Come now.”

Holo poked it with her nose and the squirrel’s head snapped up, and the moment its eyes met with Lawrence’s, he understood. He could tell right away that there was intelligence in its eyes.

“We did not come here to bring ruin to this forest,” he said, and the squirrel’s mouth—much too small for the size of its body—moved but produced no words. “And of course, that wolf there isn’t going to take your life.”

The squirrel closed its mouth and glanced back at Holo.

“That depends.”

Then, when Holo flashed a fang-filled grin, it immediately curled up again.

“Hey,” Lawrence warned her, and she huffed before sitting behind Lawrence with the squirrel on the opposite side.

At last, the squirrel lifted its head slightly and looked at Lawrence.

“Are you…human?”

What it really wanted to ask was why he was working with a wolf.

“I used to be a merchant, but I’m now a bathhouse owner—my name is Kraft Lawrence.” He introduced himself and extended a hand. The squirrel’s adorably round eyes flicked back and forth between Lawrence’s face and his hand several times before it timidly reached out in return. Though its paw was small for how large its body was, it was still a bit bigger than Lawrence’s hand.

Lawrence took the opportunity to discreetly check its claws, but he had a feeling that they were much too small to have created the holes in the bell.

“It’s nice to meet you. And that there is, uh…” Lawrence felt a bit embarrassed, so he cleared his throat. “My wife, Holo.”

That was the first time in his life that he learned that squirrels could look astonished.

The squirrel, so surprised it almost fainted, immediately came back to its senses.

“A human…and a wolf…A human and a wolf!”

It looked alternatingly at Lawrence and then Holo, and its large, round body almost bounced when it said that.

If Lawrence had judged correctly, it almost seemed overjoyed.

“Then my dream of a human and a squirrel being together isn’t just a dream!”

It was Lawrence’s turn to be surprised; he reflexively turned around to look at Holo, who seemed rather intrigued.

“Heh-heh, oh, but how cheeky would it be for me and the master…? Wait, but…,” it said, rubbing its hands together and curling up its tail.

There were rumors that something on this cursed mountain was guarding its territory and killing any intruders.

This squirrel did not seem a likely suspect in the slightest.

“Um,” Lawrence called out to get its attention, only for it to jump in surprise and immediately straighten its posture, eyes blinking.

“P-pardon me!” The squirrel curled up and lowered its head, before looking back up with far more speed. “Oh y-yes, that’s right! This is not the time for all this!” It hopped in place and puffed out its tail to a size larger than its body. “Please put out that fire quickly! The angel of the mountain is going to get very angry!”

The words the angel of the mountain instantly caught Lawrence’s interest, but he could tell the squirrel’s expression was frantic.

They did need to hear what it had to say, so he obeyed for the moment.

“Understood. Holo?” Lawrence called to her, and with a bothered sigh, Holo opened her mouth and ate the rabbit roasting on the campfire whole, then dipped her front paw into the stream beside her and put out the fire.

“Is that acceptable?”

“Yes, yes, everything should be all right for now.” The squirrel breathed a sigh of relief, then looked apologetically at Lawrence. “And…could you possibly leave this place? The angel of the mountain might get angry.”

That phrase appeared again, but he could not let it slide this time.

“Is the angel of the mountain that bearded face?”

Then, after a blank stare from the squirrel, it tilted its head.

“Well…I’ve never seen the angel. Have you?”

“…”

They were not quite on the same page. There was almost no question that it was the squirrel who had planted the trees that currently carpeted the mountain, and it was very likely the squirrel who stood next to that eerie face in the painting at the cathedral.

Was that face the angel of the mountain?

“You were the one who planted the trees here on the mountain, right?”

“Oh yes! Yes! There wasn’t anything on this mountain once upon a time, but now it’s come back like this! I’m sure the master will compliment me!”

The squirrel gleefully jiggled its torso up and down as it spoke. It took a few moments for Lawrence to register that it probably intended to jump. Since it scattered its acorns everywhere and was living in a mountain forest filled with all its favorite trees as far as the eye could see, it had likely indulged a little too much.

That aside, there was something else that caught Lawrence’s attention.

“Who is this master you’ve been mentioning?”

“The master made me his apprentice.”

Even with the face of a squirrel, it could still smile.

Not only that, but just seeing that smile was enough to warm his heart. Lawrence felt like he might get drawn in, but he had to get information from this squirrel in order to solve the mystery of this mountain.

“Is your master…a human? A craftsman, perhaps?”

“Yes. The master has incredible power—something called alchemy.”

The squirrel spoke gleefully, but Lawrence gulped.

He now knew that the legend left behind in the cathedral was not entirely made up.

“Are you an alchemist, too?”

Lawrence suddenly tensed at the innocent question.

This nonhuman was cheerful, pleasant, and a bit airheaded.

But that was the attitude it took with people recognized as allies. In stories of encountering monsters deep in the woods, it was only natural to expect that it might suddenly change its tune when dealing with those who were not considered friends.

If he fumbled in answering that they were not alchemists, and it suddenly turned its claws on them…It was just as that thought crossed his mind…

“We are in a hurry. If you do not tell us everything you know, you may meet the same fate as that rabbit!”

Holo stepped in front of Lawrence, opening her mouth to better display all her sharp fangs, cornering the squirrel.

It was pressure enough to turn the squirrel on its back and make its large, warm eyes go wide in fear.

“Hey, Holo,” Lawrence hurriedly admonished her, but she turned her red eyes to look at him.

“You fool. Think back on the rumors of this mountain. If those who enter never come back, then who is it putting those people in their graves? We have someone right here who specializes in digging holes to bury their food!”

Much as a human was a human and a wolf was a wolf, nonhumans were not human.

Holo had prioritized Lawrence’s apprehensions precisely because she was not human.

Though she had protected him in a sense, he was a little sad about that.

“I—I have never done anything like that…” The squirrel’s voice came from beneath the fallen leaves, where it had buried its head. “I—I, um…I just scared off the people who wandered into the mountain by pretending to be a bear…,” the round squirrel confessed, its head still hidden and its exposed tail shivering.

Holo could hear through people’s lies, and that was true even for squirrels.

“Well?” Lawrence looked at Holo, who sighed through her snout.

“Had it said pretending to be a wolf, I would have bit its head right off.”

“O-of course I wouldn’t do that…”

The squirrel’s eyes were welling with tears, which roused Lawrence’s protective instincts.

“Holo, don’t scare it too much.”

“Hmph.”

No matter how much of her evil persona was an act, her fangs had quite the impact, which was incredibly effective on squirrels who collected nuts from trees in the forest.

“I’m sorry about the rough treatment.”

“…”

He reached out again, and the squirrel looked with bewilderment at Lawrence, then Holo.

“We came on request of the people from the church. They know about the rumors of this mountain being cursed, but they wanted us to see how much of it was true.”

The squirrel took Lawrence’s hand, lifting its portly body. The look of unease on its face made it seem like it was more afraid of Holo than the mention of Lawrence coming at the command of the church.

“Does that mean…you’re going to ask me to leave the mountain…?”

The squirrel brought its tiny hands to its chest and peered up at Lawrence with round, pleading eyes.

It finally clicked as to why Holo was in such a terrible mood.

She had originally been unwilling to come to the mountain. That was because she knew it was very likely that things would turn out like this if all the rumors were due to a nonhuman living in the mountain.

He turned to Holo, who bitterly looked away, almost as if to say, “I told you so.”

However, Lawrence had also said to her on the way here, “Things wouldn’t turn out so well if someone besides us went.”

Lawrence cleared his throat and turned back to the uneasy squirrel.

“Don’t worry. My wife, Holo, behind me was chased out of the village wheat fields where she’d lived for centuries, too. I’m a merchant very familiar with the world, and she’s a renowned wolf who was once called the wisewolf. We were just hoping to thoroughly investigate the stories about this mountain and lend you our help as much as possible.”

It was an odd pair—a human and a massive, towering wolf who was supposedly his wife, appearing out of nowhere.

Just as Lawrence started to wonder if the squirrel would believe his claims, its nose twitched and it broke into a smile.

“I can smell how close you two are. I’m sure you aren’t bad people.”

Surprised that was a possibility, Lawrence subconsciously sniffed his own clothes, but he could not discern anything useful. It just smelled like Holo since he had spent the night sleeping in her fur.

As they chatted, Holo herself bumped Lawrence on the head.

“You have quite the sharp nose.”

The squirrel blinked, then raised its shoulders and lowered its head as if to shrink itself down.

“But we are not that close. ’Tis simply that this fool cannot leave me.”

Holo bumped Lawrence in a spot that was not quite his head nor his back, but she was likely happy they had been recognized as a loving couple. Noticing her honest tail, Lawrence knew he just had to leave it be.

“And your name?” Holo asked once she was done poking Lawrence.

The squirrel blinked restlessly before nodding.

“M-my name is Tanya!”

“That is quite the fashionable name.”

Lawrence thought it was a rather adorable name, and when he saw the squirrel smile, any possibility it could be named anything other than Tanya disappeared from his mind. It was truly a brilliant name.

“That’s what the master named me. He said it fit my human form perfectly.”

Right as Lawrence found himself surprised by the idea that it could turn into a human, a change began.

He thought he felt a slight breeze, when there appeared before him a girl with soft, curly, chestnut-colored hair reaching down her back and a gentle expression on her face.

“What do you think?”

She wore an innocent smile, but Lawrence’s face tensed not because Tanya had so carelessly slipped into her human form. It was because he now understood that the alchemist had not given her such a soft-sounding name like Tanya only because of her smile.

And he also understood why Holo, behind him, was emitting such a deep, threatening growl.

“And my name is Holo, Holo the Wisewolf!”

The moment Holo bared her fangs, Tanya fell over again and instantly returned to her squirrel form.

He knew exactly what Holo was so angry about.

Tanya feasted on the bountiful nuts from the trees in this forest.

Holo did not have what the healthy and full-bodied Tanya did.

Tanya was wholly frightened of Holo, but after Lawrence explained that not wearing clothes in front of the opposite sex was practically seduction, he finally managed to calm Tanya down.

There was another reason entirely that Holo was angry, but she seemed to be aware that her own frustration was foolish. When Tanya apologized, saying she had no intentions of seducing Lawrence, Holo reluctantly accepted this.

Now that that was settled, they could finally move on to the topic at hand—the mountain.

“The master and the rest of them suddenly appeared on the mountain one day. It hadn’t been that long since people had left the mountain. It was when I was just starting to plant tree nuts.”

Tanya was walking ahead of Lawrence and Holo, taking them to a place that may have been the start of this whole myth.

“There were still people who came to dig up leftover metal back then, and I didn’t know what to do. They were ripping up saplings that were just starting to sprout and everything…”

Tanya’s tail drooped weakly.

“Then the master said to me that it was a very good thing that I was planting trees and that I should keep it up. That was because there was an angel here in the mountain who had fallen from the sky, and even though it was sleeping, it would become very angry if all the trees went away.”

That was likely the story about the fallen angel, but he had a hard time imagining an angel who would be bothered even if all the trees were gone.

“And then he said that things would get bad if we angered the angel even more, so we needed to help the people understand and make sure they didn’t come to the mountain anymore.”

Tanya had some trouble getting over a boulder that blocked their way.

It did not seem like Holo’s skill as a hunter was the reason that she had caught her so quickly.

“Then master and the others produced charcoal from somewhere, extracted metal from the stones left on the mountain, and made a big gate. I have been guarding the gate all this time.”

“A gate?”

“Yes. We should be able to see it any moment now.”

Tanya the squirrel of course traversed the mountain paths on all fours, but Lawrence could not help but remember her naked human form when he watched her doughy flesh move as she walked, so he found it hard to keep calm.

He had a feeling he heard Holo growling behind him, so he did his best to keep his eyes away from her.

“The master called down the angel from the gate and showed the people how angry it was. I didn’t see the angel myself, though, heh-heh…It was amazing how everyone panicked. The master is a great alchemist.”

Tanya turned back to look at them, her smile truly delighted.

It sounded like Tanya had lived in this area for ages, and she had been able to do nothing but watch as the mountainside withered as people came in droves to mindlessly extract metal from it.

When the mountain finally stopped producing metal and the people went away, she went straight to work putting trees back on the mountain, but people occasionally came by looking for dregs of accessible ore, trampling all over her hard work in the process.

Then along came a group of alchemists who saved Tanya.

That was how things seemed to have happened.

“Did the angel perhaps do something to the bell in the church?”

When Lawrence asked, Tanya stopped in her tracks and whirled around.

“Yes! I was so surprised! When the angel appeared from the gate, it cast the light of judgment!”

The light of what?

“It didn’t bite into it?”

“Bite it?” Tanya tilted her head and her nose twitched. “Hmm. I don’t know…Maybe I just didn’t notice. But I remember when the master opened the gate, the angel appeared with a bright light, and suddenly, the people by the bell started panicking. Then the important church people kneeled before the master. Way fewer people approached the mountain after that. Just like the master said would happen.”

It sounded like nothing more than a fairy tale, where a story of a saint’s life had gotten all jumbled up. There were stories, for example, of saints appearing in a flood of light from a cave, healing a plague that had spread among the people.

In a similar fashion, she said the angel appeared from the gate the alchemists had created and cast the light of judgment on the church’s bell tower, striking fear into all who witnessed the event. In that case, Lawrence could at least understand how they described it as an angel fallen from the sky.

“By the way, why were your master…the alchemists, I mean, here on the mountain?”

“The master and the rest of them are studying the sky.”

“The sky?”

“They built the angel gate during the day, then studied the stars in the sky all night, after all. I’m sure they were trying to find out where the angel had fallen from.”

Tanya was smiling innocently.

The story was consistent with what they already gathered. However, Lawrence was still somewhat perplexed.

That was because alchemists were even less fearful of God. If he was asked to name a type of person on this planet who had absolutely no faith in the existence of God or angels, alchemists would be the first in line.

Those alchemists could not possibly be searching the sky for the angel’s home, could they?

“Where are your masters now?” Lawrence asked, and Tanya’s expression quickly clouded over. Her fluffy tail deflated.

“I don’t know…They left not long after that, saying they were studying the sky all over the world. I wanted them to stay forever…Isn’t the sky the same wherever you go anyway?”

Tanya looked up to the sky, noting another day of dismal cloud cover.

She sighed and started walking again.

“The gate is up ahead.”

Lawrence followed Tanya, his feet treading firmly on the layers of fallen leaves beneath him.

Holo was farther behind him; she had been quiet this whole time.

“Here we are. Please wait a moment.”

Tanya rushed ahead and started busily pushing the fallen leaves aside.

Holo then slinked past Lawrence and gave a strong huff from her nose.

“Eep!”

The wind, strong enough to cause ripples on Tanya’s soft body, blasted away all the fallen leaves in a breath. Lawrence was only somewhat exasperated with how rough that was, because his eyes widened at what lay beneath the leaves.

“Is this the gate?”

It was a large disk made of a dark-gray metal, the diameter of it as long as Lawrence was tall, and the whole thing was sunken into the ground. It was stunningly carved. Perhaps this was that eerie face that had been painted in the cathedral?

But…

Lawrence hesitated in making a judgment because the carving was of a single girl.

“Is this the angel you spoke of?” Holo asked.

The girl carved into the gate was detailed enough to match the grand size and craftsmanship of the structure—it almost seemed like she had been painted over it. The girl with her long hair and gentle expression, eyes closed as though she was sleeping, looked more like a saint than an angel.

“No, this is the master’s top apprentice,” Tanya said as she lifted one side of the enormous disk to stand it up. What surprised Lawrence was not Tanya’s strength, but that he had assumed that since it was called a gate, it was covering up something that led underground.

However, it seemed to be nothing more than a simple disk.

Holo brought her nose closer to sniff it, then rounded to the back side, and her eyes widened.

“Look.”

As Holo called to him, she glanced a signal at Tanya, who spun the disk around.

“Oh.”

There was a carving of the imposing face of a bearded man covering the entire disk.

“They carved this for when they summoned the angel.” Tanya spoke cheerfully when she said that, but Lawrence and Holo looked at each other wordlessly.

Most of the roles recorded in the mural were finally coming together.

“But they needed to make sure that the angel wouldn’t come out of the gate after they were finished, so the master carved his top apprentice on the other side.”

“…Does this girl have anything to do with keeping the angel inside the gate?”

“Yes. His top apprentice takes the form of a human, but like me, she is not human. She’s a cat who came from the very far south where there’s nothing but sand.”

“Oh?”

Holo’s interest was piqued when she heard the apprentice was not human.

An alchemist traveling around with a nonhuman, though, would certainly not be surprised to find Tanya on the mountain and would likely help her.

“Since the angel has wings, it’s weak against cats.”

Tanya and her bright smile aside, Lawrence was fascinated by this carving of the girl. It went without saying that the quality of the carving was fantastic, but there was also an air about her, one that was not simple attractiveness but one where he could feel the happiness of the model coming through the static image.

A human alchemist traveling with a nonhuman.

That being said, a cat carved here to contain the angel and its bird wings sounded like a rather contrived reason, if anything.

Lawrence quickly felt the excitement that visited him earlier after hearing stories about the angel starting to cool. It was likely made up that this disk was the gate and the angel was behind it.

That was because he knew of a simpler reason as to why the alchemist would carve the portrait of a cat avatar whom he called his top apprentice.

“So is the angel beneath this? Is it not an insect?” Holo asked in obvious disgust, digging her claws into the ground where the disk had lay. She had absently flipped over countless stones in search of a place to sit when they lit the campfire, giving a cute squeal each time she did so. It was not because she was a city girl who hated bugs, of course, but because she did not want fleas and mites to infest her tail.

“No…It’s not in the ground. This is it, the gate.”

“Hmm?”

“You hear it a lot in ancient pagan tales. They say if you hang up a well-polished bronze mirror, it can act as a window to the world of the gods and stuff like that,” Lawrence said, then looked to Tanya. “Miss Tanya, have you been watching over the gate this whole time?”

“Yes. I polish it every day, and…”

She quietly placed the disk down, stuck her hand in the crack of a nearby rock, and produced a well-worn, ragged hemp sack. Inside were all sorts of hammers and chisels.

“I keep his top apprentice looking clean, since she makes sure the angel will never get out, and recently I’ve started adding flower designs along the edges.”

Now that she had mentioned it, Lawrence realized that the reason the girl carved into the disk seemed so brilliant was because of the flower patterns that surrounded her. The ornamentation itself was remarkably delicate, something the impatient Holo would give up on after a day’s attempts.

At the same time, two more points clicked together in Lawrence’s head.

It was one of the legends that still haunted this mountain.

The clang, clang of ghosts still mining for metal that echoed throughout the mountain night after night.

“Could it be that you work on that mostly at night, then?”

“Yes. I wouldn’t want humans to see me, of course.”

Tanya spoke with such pride, and Lawrence looked toward Holo.

Holo huffed in exasperation.

“In that case, Miss Tanya, does that mean you don’t know how to open the gate?”

“Yes, that’s true. But when the master was teaching me how to chisel, he said he would surely come again to teach me. Until then, I’m to maintain the gate and keep planting trees on the mountain.”

The chisels Tanya held in hand were considerably worn. The hemp sack, also likely given to her by the alchemist, had decayed so much that it barely functioned as a receptacle.

According to what he heard at the inn, and to the records of the bell casting that Elsa had found in the cathedral, Tanya must have met the alchemist some fifty or sixty years ago.

A human’s life was not that long. So long as the alchemist had not obtained the legendary philosopher’s stone and the perennial youth and long life said to come with it, he would certainly never return to the mountain again.

Lawrence almost said as much, but he stopped himself short.

Not only was he in Holo’s presence, but he did not want to take Tanya’s smile away, either.

“The flower decorations are lovely; I’m sure your master will compliment you on them.”

When Lawrence said that, Tanya’s tail stood in delight, and she bounced in place.

Tanya still had much more to share with them, but what they quickly discovered was that Tanya had not learned much in detail from the alchemists. Additionally, the disk was not much more than a lump of metal, and it was unlikely there was some sort of mysterious trick behind it.

As Lawrence sat and watched Tanya chisel away, Holo sniffed the area but reported that she did not find anything in the end. It was unlikely that there was a fallen angel of any sort secreted away somewhere on the mountain.

And so Lawrence and Holo waited for the sun to set before going down the mountain.

Tanya accompanied the both of them to the foot of the mountain to see them off and gave them a basket, woven from tree bark, overflowing with acorns as a souvenir. Lawrence almost laughed at how fairy tale–like it was, but she had meant for it to be a little gesture of thanks, leaving them to care for the mountain.

As he watched her return to the mountain alone in the dark of night, he felt a pang in his chest.

Since before Lawrence was born, before even his grandfather’s day, Tanya had lived alone in the mountain.

But while she waited and waited for the return of the alchemist she respected and called her master, she and the mountain were left to the whims of the passing of time.

“Dear,” Holo called to Lawrence as they quietly dashed through the woods at the base of the mountain.

“What is it?” Lawrence asked in return, but Holo said nothing, and he felt no need to follow up. It had been a long time since they had been married, and even though Holo called him dull, Lawrence knew how she felt.

She wanted to let Tanya stay on the mountain, quietly waiting for the alchemist to return, for as long as possible.

Holo need not say anything, because that was what he intended to try to ensure.

“A squirrel avatar?”

When they returned to the cathedral, Elsa treated them to some bread she had baked earlier in the day.

When she saw the mountain of acorns Lawrence had brought back, she had mentioned that they could save some food money by grinding them into a powder and mixing it into bread, which made Holo shudder. Even a wolf would recoil from the awful taste of acorn bread.

“I see. So that is what’s been happening on the mountain,” Elsa said quietly once she was finished listening to Lawrence’s report. “While that gives me a better grasp of who the figures in the mural are…the mystery of the bell remains unsolved.”

Holo munched on her bread, defiantly swallowed it, then said, “What do you plan to do with the mountain?”

The glint in her eye was different from the usual competitive streak she had with Elsa.

Even though she seemed angry, there was something hiding behind that sharp expression.

It was concern over the fate of those who had lived in the era when the moon and the forests held primacy, who lost their homes when the human world cast the light of modern times onto them—something she had seen over and over.

“I never noticed the existence of that land…Would it satisfy you if I continued to pretend to act as such?”

They were in the reception dining hall of the empty cathedral. In a corner of the unnecessarily long dining table, Lawrence and the other two sat having their meal. There was a glass bowl filled with water sitting on the table; the light from the candle that floated in it, illuminating the entire bowl, was surprisingly bright.

Yet, when none of them spoke, the silence was unbearably heavy for how dazzling it was.

As Lawrence stared at the glittering bowl, he said, “Even if you return to your village pretending not to notice it, that doesn’t mean the mountain will suddenly vanish. Sooner or later, someone will take up the matter again.”

When he said that, Elsa closed her eyes and sighed. “Unfortunately, I believe that is the case.”

Holo turned her discontent toward her bread and took no more bites.

Since Tanya had taken such good care of the mountain, it had quickly recovered into a thick and lush place. Without the rumors of curses, it was clear that it had value as an asset.

“If we sold the mountain, then it would make life easier for the people of the bishopric. They could dig new wells, improve the road going to the town on the other side of the mountain, and they could even build an inn in the village. If not, then you know the times we live in. The clergy who come to work here might not be able to stand the shame of having a cursed mountain in their territory, so they might want to let it go.”

If the Church was asking for the elimination of corruption, then they would not simply call it a day after throwing out all the accumulated assets. The clergy would want to restore the righteousness of conduct, honor, faith, and everything else that entailed.

The reason Holo frowned so was because Col and her daughter, Myuri, were partially the cause of why things were the way they were today.

“Then does that mean you’d still want to sell the mountain, Miss Elsa?”

When Lawrence asked, she turned to him with such an intense look that it made even him flinch.

“Do not think me such a miser. Even I can feel sympathy, you know.”

The prim and stuffy girl had vanished.

Yet, the way Elsa was now made her seem like the ideal woman of the cloth.

Seemingly embarrassed at having snapped like that, she turned away, easing the tension in her shoulders with a sigh and continuing with “…But to be honest, I do want to share the blessings of such a bountiful mountain with the people. I’ve been researching all sorts of things, and I’ve found that this area has been a drain on the Church’s assets for a very long time.”

Even Lawrence had immediately thought of several ways to make a fortune when he laid eyes on the mountain. Considering how full of acorns it was, letting pigs roam free out there would undoubtedly be fruitful; trees of that sort also made for excellent firewood, so it would be worthwhile to cut them down. To top it all off, trade was booming; with more and more ships being built nowadays, timber and coal fetched a high price at market. There was plenty of demand, so even if transport for lumber was a hassle, they could burn charcoal and export it.

“But that is the result of that little fool’s hard work. No human has done anything,” Holo interjected sharply. “And despite the thick leaf cover throughout the mountain, there are still stones with metal scattered about. It has not entirely run out of metal. The trees and water simply dried up, and as the humans say, the scales did not even out. If humans were to venture into the mountain again, ’twould only be a matter of time before they noticed the metal. And mining would begin anew as soon as that happened!”

There was also plenty of lumber for refining. But then Tanya would have no choice but to watch as the mountainside died out again. And if humans returned to the mountain, it was hard to tell how well she would be able to keep the gate concealed. She would eventually lose all the greenery she had regained with single-minded determination, lose the gate with which she had been entrusted, and ultimately lose all her ties to the alchemists. In the end, she would be forced to plant trees on a naked mountain face alone once again after several more decades, or perhaps even centuries. All while waiting for the alchemists to return.

Lawrence’s chest tightened when he pictured that, but it was Holo, who sat beside him, who shed tears first.

“…That fool.”

She stood, kicking back the chair, and left the dining hall.

She had only nibbled her bread and barely touched her alcohol.

Lawrence began to rise from his chair, but he could not bring himself to move any farther.

Even if he chased after Holo, he had no idea what he should say to her.

“It really makes one feel powerless, doesn’t it?”

When Elsa spoke quietly, Lawrence lowered himself back into his seat.

“…Yes, it really does.”

The light flooding from the glass bowl was trembling, perhaps because Holo had shaken it.

The things that anyone tried to hold dear to themselves in this cruel world were nothing more than transient light that quivered at the slightest of changes.

“But…besides the cruelty of this world, I also feel the slightest bit of anger toward that alchemist.”

Elsa was just about to rip a piece of bread off when she froze.

“You do? Why?”

“Miss Tanya said that the alchemist had been traveling with a cat avatar. That should at least mean that he knew how long nonhumans lived and how different their life span was from humans. Then…”

There must have been something more they could have done for Tanya.

Elsa weakly placed her bread back down on the table.

“Then…indeed, that eerie mural about the mountain might not have been painted by someone from the church but perhaps commissioned by the alchemist.”

When Lawrence turned to her, he noticed Elsa was not looking at him but at the images re-creating passages from the scripture on the dining hall walls.

“Even if they pretended the mountain was cursed, it would soon have been forgotten as generations passed without leaving or maintaining any records. But it will remain in memory for hundreds of years if made into a painting. It was likely a parting gift to protect that heroic squirrel, so that no one would ever dare venture into the mountain, given to her in his stead, since he would never be able to go back there.”

Nonhumans lived much, much longer than humans did.

The alchemist whom Tanya admired and called “master” was likely no longer of this world, but the painted mural in the church still remained.

“The alchemist had no intentions of coming back, did he?”

When Lawrence asked, Elsa shook her head.

“That I do not know, but he went through the trouble of carving the image of the cat girl he called his top apprentice on the gate, did he not? My impression is, after hearing it from you…that he did plan on coming back. If nothing else, once that cat girl found herself alone, he must have intended it to be a destination for her.”

Lawrence had thought the same when he saw the engraving of the girl. Just like how he wanted to leave behind a painting of Holo in Atiph, the alchemist must have left behind that disk so that even if the girl became stranded by the flow of time, she could still reunite with the boundlessly cheerful Tanya one day.

That must have been why he had come up with the idea to create the story of the angel.

The alchemist had likely put on some kind of magic trick in order to keep people away from the mountain.

That made much more sense to Lawrence.

“But there is no universal solution to any problem. Even the scripture was originally carved into a stone tablet; had the tablet not been replicated over and over again and then transcribed onto innumerable pieces of parchment, then its message surely would not have survived into the present day.”

“Do you mean to say that in order to help Miss Tanya, who’s been left alone in the mountain, we will need something new to patch up her situation?”

“Not so much a new patch but a new bottle. The scripture says we mustn’t pour new wine into old bottles, you see.”

Indeed, if they mangled their attempt to help, then it would only delay the problem by a few years at most. The fundamental problem was that this bishopric was poor, and the reality was that selling the mountain would make them good and very much needed money.

They had managed to endure this long under the shroud of a curse. But at this time of the Church’s reformation, that line of reasoning was becoming compromised. That was why they needed a new shroud if they wanted to protect both the mountain and Tanya. Something that would protect the place and bar the way of anyone who wanted to intrude on that sanctuary.

Lawrence sat back in his chair, looked again at the flickering light in the glass bowl, and contemplated.

Just as he had helped Selim—who was now looking after the bathhouse in Nyohhira, for example—could he conversely stage a miracle and have the mountain recognized as holy ground? The thought crossed his mind, but it sounded much too difficult for a place seen as cursed for such a long time to suddenly be transformed into holy ground. That had even less of an edge, considering the legend of the alchemists still remained to this day.

Since the locals knew the stories about this being a cursed mountain, Elsa thought that no one would buy it, which was why she had to look to the faraway Atiph and its bishop for help in the first place. That is why she was wondering if there would be a merchant who would selfishly buy it up, paying no mind to talk about curses.

At that moment, Lawrence suddenly lifted his head.

“A merchant?” he murmured, and Elsa blinked in surprise. “A merchant…a merchant, huh?”

“What is it?” Elsa asked, and Lawrence attempted to respond.

He was accompanied by the feeling of a large waterwheel slowly starting to turn.

“Why don’t you sell the mountain off to a merchant like you originally planned?”

“What? That’s…But why, all of a sudden?”

“Just bear with me for a moment, um…”

Lawrence closed his eyes and placed his hand on his forehead, turning some gears somewhere in his head that had remained dormant for a long time.

The merchants’ web of interests was wholly unlike running a bathhouse. It was a spider’s tapestry that stretched far and wide.

Back when he was traveling with Holo, he went to great pains trying to trace the thread that constantly hung down before him.

Lawrence now, however, after all his experience and with more years behind him, had built up many connections that often led him to encounter unexpected people in unexpected places.

If he used this thread to weave a new cloth, he had a feeling it could completely cover the mountain from view.

“Yes, a merchant. I have connections to a company whose mainstay is mining and where the avatar of a rabbit is involved in its management. If we can demonstrate that it is profitable, then he may show interest in buying the mountain.”

Elsa’s honey-colored eyes widened, and the faint freckles on her cheeks were quickly covered by a scarlet blush.

“And he would even mind our lost little lamb…or rather, our lost little squirrel, wouldn’t he?”

“But it would be pointless if we were to propose ore mining as the principal draw. We would need a twist like, for example, that they must burn charcoal at a sustainable rate, and I’m certain that this company—the Debau Company—would never lack a need for coal considering how many mines they have and how much metal they must refine on a regular basis.”

Elsa’s expression glowed at the possibility of having this whole incident end with the admirable squirrel living happily ever after, but her face suddenly clouded over.

“Miss Elsa?” Lawrence asked, and Elsa bitterly bit her lip.

“But…how much would a mountain solely used for charcoal burning go for?”

Elsa kept her hair neatly in a bun, always had her back straight, and could calmly assert what was right.

The woman wore priest robes for temporarily taking care of this cathedral.

“This Debau Company would certainly purchase the mountain if it were cheap. And with the rabbit avatar, it is very likely that he would use the property rights as a shield to keep outsiders from approaching the mountain, keeping Tanya the squirrel safe. However, I have my own duties. I have a responsibility to liquidate assets at as high a price as I can manage for the sake of this diocese. I cannot sell a mountain that…might still have ore to be mined for cheap.”

I’m glad Holo isn’t here, Lawrence thought.

That decidedly was not because he thought Holo would fly off the handle because Elsa was digging in her heels, squashing the bud of a perfectly good possibility.

It was because Holo would not get the wrong idea about Elsa, whom she respected for her fair-minded spirit and as someone who never forgot what was just.

“I’m an ex-merchant who owns a bathhouse. I’m rather good at staring at account books.”

When Lawrence said that, the valleys between Elsa’s brows in her pained expression eased a bit.

“Do you have a general idea of how much you’re expecting from the purchase, Miss Elsa?”

Vitality immediately filled her expression at the practical question. The very serious Col had once called Elsa sober and sincere. She had likely read every single letter of every single moldy account book left behind in this church.

“Yes. God says that we must ready large vessels for large things and small vessels for small things. It is not that I hope to sell everything and anything at a high price—I simply want it to be fair.”

“Then let’s do some calculations. I’ll use all my wisdom in order to sell this mountain. After all.” Lawrence smiled. “You called me here to do just that to begin with.”

Elsa smiled in turn, then stood.

“Please wait a moment. I will go retrieve some tools.”

Elsa left in high spirits, exiting via a different door than the one Holo used. Once her footsteps faded into the distance, Lawrence stood from his chair once more. Holo, who had so hurriedly left the room, was certainly waiting for him.

However, he was not going to see Holo in order to console her. Though she may have felt beaten down by powerlessness, he needed her wisdom for his calculations. As all these thoughts crossed his mind, he opened the door right behind his chair.

He then instantly could sniff out the scent of flowers coming from the oils that Holo always applied to her tail, even in the dark.

She stood leaning against the wall beside the door on her tiptoes, her lips drawn into a pout, her arms folded behind her back, her shoulders slightly raised.

“You look like a girl who’s been stood up.” The words unconsciously came tumbling out of Lawrence’s mouth, and Holo turned her red eyes, glimmering in the nighttime hallway, on him.

“You fool. I dashed out in grief, yet you did not immediately follow me.”

Lawrence gave her a tired, wry smile as he opened his arms wide to bundle her into a hug.

Holo’s tail whacked defiantly against Lawrence’s legs, but she did not try to escape.

“Holo, I need your wisdom as the ruler of the woods. If we were to cut down trees from the mountain, how much could we cut so that it doesn’t go bare again?”

Even a logger with fifty years’ experience would be no match against Holo and her wisdom.

Holo lifted her head from Lawrence’s chest and huffed.

If they turned all the assets buried within the bishopric into gold, they could use those proceeds to better the lives of the people. As such, selling a mountain covered in trees that could still possibly produce metal for an appropriate price could be seen as an act in accordance with God’s just will. The number they arrived at was born from that perspective, yet when Lawrence began to list all the things one could earn from the mountain, it immediately revealed how far away that possibility was.

“We may be able to rush growth by changing the type of tree and tending to it.”

Holo and her centuries’ worth of forest knowledge offered some advice, but that only added a bit to the number scrawled on the wax-covered wooden board.

As a traveler, Lawrence always gawked at how expensive coal and fuel was, and he was shocked at how high the prices reached in Atiph’s booming lumber trade. And so along the way, it might have been help to a troubled lord whose village was weighed down by unrest because of the rising timber prices.

But once they put the numbers together, all he could do was stare in shock at the difference between that and the calculations of the mountain’s profits as a mine.

He could do nothing but sigh in admiration at the numbers from the account books of the past that Elsa showed him.

“Mines make so much money…”

Dancing along the pages of the books that Elsa drew out from the vault, the figures he saw could only be described as blinding. It was said that the amount of coal needed to gain a fist-sized lump of metal was a full bag big enough to fit an entire person inside, so the prices of metal versus coal as products were already on a vastly different scale.

“While those in power do fight over mines, wars do not start over charcoal-burning huts.”

Elsa looked up from the accounts as well and spoke in a dejected manner. The small pair of glasses she kept nearby, sitting on parchment, shone with a dull light.

“Pig grazing would only earn pocket change in comparison, and cultivating mushrooms would only add color to the meals the inn provides.”

When Lawrence said that, Holo interjected, “We should plant fruit trees. Does the wheat trade not thrive across the mountain? Fruit to put on bread would most certainly be quite popular.”

“Picking fruit is time consuming. And Miss Tanya is a squirrel. It would be like leaving you to mind sheep.”

Holo was about to protest before she closed her mouth in vexation. She likely imagined the pain of having to hold herself back in the face of something that was less like a bit of a snack and more of a bountiful feast.

“Could we mine a bit of metal at a time and then sell it?”

When Elsa brought it up, Lawrence’s expression turned bitter.

“Reaching the nearest markets would mean following narrow roads that pass through several steep mountains. Carrying the ore as is would not be profitable at all, and either way, I can see the price being beat right down if sold unrefined. If we can’t get the ore refined, then I think it would be hard to balance the books without carrying vast amounts by ship.”

“There are no rivers large enough to send boats—you’re right,” Elsa said quietly with a sigh. “We have to refine it, don’t we?”

“I believe so.”

And so in order to create enough heat to refine the metal, they would need a considerable amount of lumber. They would need to build furnaces, hire people to oversee the furnaces, construct houses for those people to live in, and so on and so on. On top of that, since they would have to gather people and burn all that lumber, they would need to refine an appropriate amount of ore in order for it to be profitable, and by digging out all the ore they needed, they would ultimately end up harming the mountain.

The more calculations he did, the only thing Lawrence learned was that his idea was nothing more than a pie in the sky.

“A way to sell the mountain at a high price…hmm,” Elsa, who was the furthest anyone could be from dealing with monetary figures, said as she held her head in her hands.

She stared hard at the numbers in the account books; if the passages written in the scripture could not even save people, then how could this be of any help?

Sitting beside the groaning Elsa and Lawrence, Holo smacked the table.

“We are selling this to a rabbit, no?! Then I shall make him buy at a high price with my fangs!”

It would be better still if she said that out of a hastily drawn conclusion and short temper.

“Not only that, but I could even dig up the metal stones with my claws and carry what I dig far away myself. We would soon make our money back!”

That might have been entirely possible with Holo’s claws and her legs, which could cross the mountain on the horizon in a single night. But that was from the age of spirits, when power alone ruled all; needless to say, digging mines was a little more complicated.

“Ore in mines aren’t distributed equally throughout the mountain. You’d have to dig along the ore veins. You’d have to drain the groundwater, build support beams so the shafts don’t collapse, and tunnel through everywhere and anywhere. That’s why we need so many people and materials. It’s an operation on a completely different scale from running a bathhouse. Your power alone wouldn’t be enough to solve this.”

Holo groaned in frustration, and Lawrence took her hand, silently comforting her.

The era that could be navigated through strength alone ended long ago.

“It was a good idea, though…”

When Lawrence admitted that with a sigh, Holo said, “It indeed was! You are never aggressive enough!”

Despite her accusations, she did not try to shake off the hand that held hers.

She instead gripped even tighter, making it clear she was praying for him to deny what she said.

“If only the mountain came with some sort of privileges.” Elsa sighed, flipping through one of the account books one page at a time.

“Like tax exemption?”

“There is that, too, but taking for example things I’ve seen in other Church lands, property that confers peerage, that sort of thing. That went for a very high price to a merchant who recently made quite a bit of money at a big market.”

The lands Elsa was referring to came with titles, like Earl of the Something or Other, given to those who ruled over specific plots and counties.

Even the most barren wasteland would have a buyer if it came with a title.

“Can you not make something up yourself?” Holo asked Elsa, still gripping Lawrence’s hand.

Elsa glanced at their joined hands, gave a tired sigh, then responded, “In theory, it is not impossible. We could say something like, by purchasing this land, you are bestowed the right to run a small church. However, would someone from the Debau Company pay money out of a want to declare themselves a priest or abbot that is a title in name only?”

Hilde, the rabbit embodiment, would not likely want to do that at all.

“Arghhh…,” Holo groaned, hitting the leg of the chair with her tail, then grasping Lawrence’s shoulder. “Do you not have any ideas…?”

Images of herself in the wheat fields she was chased from were likely superimposed over those of Tanya on the mountain.

And since Lawrence had been sharp enough to realize it, Holo most certainly knew that the alchemist would never be returning to the mountain again.

For Holo, who would live for centuries, her unavoidable parting with Lawrence was on the horizon.

Saving Tanya was the same as saving herself.

“There is a slight chance, but I do have something.”

“What?!”

The shocked Holo aside, Elsa looked at him dubiously.

“Mr. Lawrence?”

Her expression read, “Why are you bringing this up now?” But Lawrence answered with a grim sigh. “It’s that angel that appears in the myth. If we include that, then we might be able to sell it at a high price.”

Holo stared blankly at him, then suddenly drew her brows up. “You are going to sell what is so precious to that little fool?!”

“No. That metal disk is just a disk. But the mural painted in the church is pretty much exactly what happened in real life. The only impossibilities are the angel coming out of that disk and the bell that’s been left in storage here.” Lawrence took Holo’s hand and shook it slightly. “If we think about the whole picture, then it’s essentially a tall tale made up by the alchemists to keep people off the mountain. But what if that was what really happened?”

Elsa even forgot to blink, and she said, “…You mean refining metal without coal, right?”

Metal was incredibly expensive because the fuel for refining cost money. If there was an angel out there that could refine metal without using fire, then the people who owned mines would certainly light up and want it.

“…Where is this angel? Where might we catch it?”

That was the problem.

“Could the angel be…erm, a bird like you? If I recall correctly, there was a bird who could breathe fire among the tales of the pagan gods…”

Elsa’s question was extremely reasonable, but Holo glanced at Lawrence for confirmation.

“Your face tells me you do not agree.”

“I think…the title of angel might have just been a means to an end that the alchemists left behind.”

They had carved that stern, bearded face over the entire disk likely as a part of a grandiose play. Carving the image of the girl they had brought along afterward was most certainly not for keeping the angel at bay.

The alchemist did not believe in the gods, Tanya had said.

He had said that once she masterfully wielded her chisels, he would return to teach her the secrets of the gate.

If the incident with the angel was not a tall tale, then there were very few possibilities he could think of.

“I wonder if the story of the angel was actually a scheme the alchemists conjured up to obscure their unique technology?”

“Technology?”

Elsa furrowed her brows and dropped her gaze to the table. What she held in her hands was a beautiful pair of glasses, something that could be called a glassblower’s jewel. With those, even someone with the worst eyesight could see letters clearly, and they had plenty of other uses, too. When Lawrence had bought a pair for Selim, who they had left in charge of the bathhouse for the duration of their trip, she had been shocked, as though she had witnessed magic.

Perhaps what the alchemists had used was new technology that no one else even knew yet, and that was the key to the disk they called a gate’s secret.

“You say that the gate opened, the angel came out, and it created holes in the bell in the bell tower. You say there is technology that can re-create that?”

Lawrence as he was now could not precisely say what that might be. But if there was any kind of breakthrough to be had, that was the only place he could see it happening.

At the very least, it felt much more possible than a priestess, a merchant, and the embodiment of a wolf all silently sitting together, trying to catch an angel. At that moment, Holo suddenly spoke up.

“Metal refinement is what you said…That must be dreadfully hot, no…?”

Lawrence and Elsa turned to look at Holo, whose ears and tail suddenly stood on end. She yelled, “The key! Give me the basement key!”

“Huh, what?”

Holo disregarded the bewildered Elsa and was already running off.

After Elsa and Lawrence stared blankly as they watched her dash out of the dining hall, her angry cry of “What are you dawdling for?!” brought them back to their senses, and they chased after her.

Holo waited for them impatiently at the vault door, and when Elsa opened it, she dashed inside at full speed. She then pulled away the cover over the bell, dropped to her knees, and stuck her nose to the bell.

“I knew it.” She stood up, grabbed Lawrence’s sleeve, and buried her nose into it—not to blow her nose but to instead inhale deeply—then said, “These holes were not created by force. They were…Look, this must have been scooped out, like scraped cheese.”

“Like cheese…? But not by force?” It was like a riddle, but Lawrence finally realized what she was getting at. “You mean it was melted?”

“Aye. The holes are much too smooth. Any sort of claws, fangs, or even a bird’s beak could never create something like that. ’Tis because of that that I was unable to see how these holes had been opened.”

Holo crouched back down by the bell, stuck her finger in, and lightly brushed her finger against the edge.

But even if this was the result of some sort of melting, how had it happened? Lawrence’s own common sense was being violently rattled. If those holes were caused because they had been melted away, the only thing that came to mind was if a heated metal rod had been pressed against the bell, much like what would happen if the same rod was pressed up against cheese.

More importantly, contact with a red-hot metal rod would not produce holes like this.

Above all, such a mundane display would not pass into legend.

“That is all I know,” Holo said with regret and stood. “Technology and whatnot is of the human world. ’Tis a powerful weapon of yours; it ended our era and chased us deeper and deeper into what was left of the forests.”

Humans, with their brainpower and untiring efforts, invented all sorts of tools in order to cut down trees no single person would have been able to down alone. They could bury rivers and even carve up whole mountainsides. What Holo was alluding to was the irony that if there was a way to save Tanya, then it was certainly part of that detestable technology.

“Well, I’m certain some of those things are helpful, like that.” Holo gave a troubled smile and pointed at a small piece of glass the astonished Elsa had in her hands—her glasses, which she had brought all the way from the dining hall.

“But an angel came out of the gate, cast the light of judgment, melted the bell, and also melted the metal? Does technology like that…?”

Lawrence scratched his head as he racked his brain, frantically recalling the conversation with Tanya, wondering if there might be any sort of clue he had overlooked. If the alchemist had not lied and had truly intended to teach her the secret of the angel, then the metal disk left in her care must not be entirely pointless. It was, without a doubt, a necessary tool in summoning the angel.

The gate. The metal gate.

Lawrence groaned. “Why is it a gate anyway?”

He did not even know why that was. Tanya had said the master opened the gate and then the angel came out.

Opened the gate? But it was just a metal disk.

Lawrence produced a single silver coin from the wallet attached to his waist.

On one side of it was the image of a stern, bearded face, much like the disk.

“You said it was like a metaphor, no?”

“That’s true, but…”

Open the gate, and the angel comes out. But what was more, once they were finished with it, they engraved the image of a cat girl on the other side of the bearded face in order to keep the angel from getting out.

Was that for truly meaningless, emotional reasons?

Lawrence turned the silver coin he pinched between his fingers, as though opening a gate.

“Oh, hrm, stop.” Holo squinted and grumbled because the light of the candle Elsa held in her hands had glinted off the silver coin and caught her in the eyes. Lawrence hurriedly started to apologize, but his mouth froze in place.

Elsa was worried about Holo, who kept blinking her eyes and rubbing them.

Lawrence’s eyes were anchored on Elsa’s hands. She had a piece of glass, created from special technology, which glinted brighter than the coin. Then there was the light reflected off the silver coin.

All the pieces were starting to come together in his mind.

“Dear…?”

“Mr. Lawrence?”

Both Holo and Elsa called out to him, worried.

Then, as though being guided by their voices, he looked up at the ceiling.

There was the answer.

“I figured it out.”

Holo and Elsa, huddled close like sisters separated only in age, did the same.

There was a simple pattern of light. The pattern came from the light emanating from the candle in Elsa’s hands, reflected off the glittering bell.

But there was a round pattern, and Elsa held something else important. Her reading aid had another use.

And then there was the engraving of the cat girl, which according to Tanya was created to make sure the angel did not appear unless the gate was properly opened.

There had been meaning in everything Tanya had mentioned relating to the myth.

“Miss Elsa, I found our angel.”

“What?”

“What you have in your hands is something called an angel’s tear.”

Elsa, with a blank expression, looked back and forth between the glasses in her hand and Holo.

It was Holo who reacted first.

“Will it help her?”

Lawrence said, “If I’m wrong, then you can bite my head clean off.”

Holo’s eyes widened, then she shrunk down, flicked her ears and tail, and grinned a fang-filled grin.

If Lawrence’s guess was correct, then all they could do was to check and see if it was accurate or not once the sun rose. He relayed that to Holo, but she became much clearer minded now that something had finally been settled on, much more than himself, so she would not let him have a quick shut-eye.

She threw off her clothes and returned to her wolf form before he could say anything, then lay on her stomach and stared hard at him.

He was sure that if he did not climb on, she would either stay like that until morning or reach out to swallow him hole.

“Take care,” Elsa said, half in exasperation and half in worry, as she picked up Holo’s scattered clothes with a practiced hand, as though this was a common occurrence.

“You should write a letter with your proposal to sell the mountain and wait for us,” Holo bade Elsa and dashed off before Lawrence was wholly on her back.

The wind whipping in his ears was harsher than it had been the other night. He could sense how motivated Holo was from the vigor of her feet pounding the ground. He could feel her body heat, which was almost burning, coming from beneath the tufts of fur that he clung to.

Holo ran at full speed for the sake of those who had quietly been swallowed up by the flow of time.

She fervently wrote down all the everyday moments that spilled endlessly out from her living memory into her diary.

Some would no doubt sneer at her for insisting on such a useless struggle.

But they had come this far, vowing to each other to treasure these things, these moments.

That is why Lawrence did not complain as Holo leaped into the woods at the foot of the mountain, dodging trees, vaulting over rocks, and hauling herself up the steep mountain slopes by tooth and claw, almost as though she had forgotten he was on her back.

They found Tanya where the metal disk had been hidden. It was the first night in a while without any clouds, so she had likely been working by the light of the moon, asleep on the disk with her chisels still in hand.

Just as the moon was about to slip below the horizon, she noticed Holo and the heat emanating from her body and awoke with a start, leaping to her feet.

Lawrence slid from Holo’s back and asked the bewildered and baffled Tanya, “When the angel came out of the gate, did it come from this side?” He pointed to the side with the engraving of the cat avatar girl, where Tanya had been engraving tiny flower patterns on it.

“Y-yes, that’s right…”

All right.

That meant that, just as the alchemist said, the image of the girl was to prevent the angel from coming out. The one thing that was different from reality was that the image itself was the lid that sealed the angel.

“And before the girl was engraved on it, the gate was polished to be very, very clean. Am I wrong?”

Tanya’s eyes widened, and her nose twitched. It was as though she had sensed something coming.

“Th-that’s exactly right. Um, does this mean…?”

The chisels she had been gripping as she slept fell from her relatively small hands.

What gently broke their fall was the carpet of leaves that came from the trees Tanya had spent decades cultivating.

“Yes. I solved the mystery of the angel.”

When Lawrence said that, Tanya’s small black nose quivered, and she stood stone-still.

Behind her, he could already see the gradually lightening sky and the outline of the mountain.

“Miss Tanya, could you please lift the gate?”

“O-okay.”

Flustered, Tanya grasped the disk and heaved it up.

The girl, eyes closed, smiling, stood out in the pale-blue light of dawn.

“This technology wasn’t all that great a secret.”

Tanya supported the disk, just like her counterpart in the cathedral’s mural, and turned to Lawrence with a surprisingly intense expression, her whiskers quivering.

“B-but when the master summoned the angel, he surprised a lot of people.”

“He did. But it works under the same principle as when people who have seen squirrels in the forest before mistake you for a bear.”

“Huh…?”

Lawrence smiled and said, “Even if people have seen one thing before, if they catch a glimpse of the same thing on a much grander scale, it can easily become a miracle.”

Lawrence watched a deep shadow grow at his own feet. It deepened, a harbinger of a magnificent sunrise just about to show its face, as though blessing the coming day.

Tanya squinted in the bright light, and the girl on the disk was smiling, her eyes closed.

It was almost as though she anticipated what would come next.

“I don’t think the angel will completely reveal itself since we have a cat avatar in the way, though.”

It happened right after Lawrence said that. Beyond the long ridgeline of the mountain range, far beyond the horizon that stretched across the great plains that had been nicknamed the region’s breadbasket, the sun revealed itself.

A flood of light poured into the concave section of the giant disk with such force that it almost seemed to make a rushing sound.

“Ah, ahhh!”

Tanya opened her little round eyes as wide as she could, staring hard at what was happening in the moment.

The light pouring into the depression in the disk reflected back out, according to nature’s providence. And though the engraving of the girl disrupted it a bit, the lens was so well constructed that the flood of light was concentrated into one tight beam, all of it pointing toward a single point in the distance.

“It’s an eyeglass, Holo,” Lawrence said, and Holo, who had been laying on her stomach this whole time, stood up.

“I warned Miss Selim when I gave her a pair.” Lawrence turned around and explained further. “You can’t place them in direct sunlight because they’ll gather the light and might even set paper aflame.”

Holo opened her mouth slightly, revealing a mouthful of fangs, and stared at how the metal disk, polished every day by Tanya, shimmered with unmatched intensity.

Light that was painful to look at seemed to pour out of it as though a gate had actually been opened, like there was an entirely different world behind it, illuminating the trunks of trees that had yet to be touched by ordinary daylight.

“Glasses need to be polished well—otherwise they won’t make text easier to read or be of any use in place of flint. I bet the dip in this metal disk works so well because it was adjusted to perfection by a professional. And that is also the very reason why they carved the image of a girl into it once they were finished.”

So that once it reflected light again, it would not cause a fire. Small eyeglasses that could fit in one’s hand could even cause paper to catch fire; Lawrence could only imagine with a tense smile what sort of chaos a massive disk this large could cause after gathering the full strength of the sun.

Of course it could melt a bronze bell and even refine metal.

“Oh, oh…”

Tanya let slip a sob and released the disk.

The massive metal disk wavered and was close to crushing Lawrence’s feet, but he avoided the danger thanks to Holo grabbing him by the nape of his neck and pulling him back. As the scattered leaves fell back to the ground, glittering, Tanya wept, crouching down on the spot. It was an odd way to shed tears after solving the mystery of the gate.

But soon, Lawrence, too, realized why.

Tanya might have been a little dull, but she surely had some idea how long humans lived. She was most likely pretending that she hardly knew better.

The alchemist was never coming back.

The idea that the mystery would forever remain a mystery, that memories of that time would remain in place and would never be replaced, that the past already carved in her heart could never be painted over in new colors—

—Lawrence had just undone the spell that let her believe all those things.

For a moment, Lawrence wondered if he should not have solved the mystery of the gate. Then Tanya could have carried on fooling herself, living forever in her memories. Even if she had been chased from the mountain, she may have moved, carrying the disk on her back, spending her days in whatever new home she found in peace and quiet.

All while dreaming dreams that deceived herself—that the mystery would forever be a mystery, that the past would always be as she wanted it to be, and that, surely, the alchemist would return to her one day.

That was what Lawrence thought, but Holo suddenly nudged him from behind.

And before Lawrence could protest, Holo made her way toward Tanya and began wildly licking her cheeks with her massive tongue. It looked like a wolf checking to see how its prey tasted, but when Tanya looked up, she clung to Holo’s front leg. Holo licked Tanya’s back as she did so; then when she lay on her stomach, she drew near to the fluffy part at the scruff of her neck.

“We live a long time,” Holo said, then after looking down at the sobbing Tanya, she turned to Lawrence. “But we cannot dream forever.”

What you have done was not wrong.

That was what Holo was saying.

Lawrence decided to believe her.

He brushed the fallen leaves off his clothes, looked to the ground, and caught a glimpse of the glittering girl engraved on the disk.

She was smiling happily, just like an angel.

When Lawrence told Elsa a summary of the device and how it worked, Elsa looked at her glasses, then hurriedly moved them away from the candlelight, slightly frightened.

After solving the mystery of the angel on the mountain, the despondent Tanya let out a flood of her memories with the alchemist, and they listened as she talked and talked. Then, once the sun set, they returned to the church.

When they did, it was not just Lawrence on Holo’s back but Tanya as well.

Elsa’s eyes widened in surprise at the sight of the massive squirrel, but she did have a lot of experience. “Why don’t we make some acorn bread?” she suggested, which immediately cheered Tanya up to a degree. Holo knew she should not stop them, but it was funny to see her so vexed by the considerate choice of food.

It was late at night, before the acorn bread was to be baked, when they strapped Elsa’s memorandum about the price of the mountain and Lawrence’s letter to Hilde around Holo’s neck.

“Why not go when the bread is finished?” Elsa suggested, but Holo left, almost as though she was running away.

Holo was fast enough to even reach Nyohhira, which they had departed quite a while ago, and make the return trip in a single night.

The existence of that metal disk would certainly be something worth a thousand gold or more to Hilde, who operated many mines, so there was no doubt that he would offer a high price for both that and the mountain.

The thought did cross Lawrence’s mind that there was perhaps a slight chance that Hilde was already aware of technology similar to the disk, but his worries were quickly dispelled by Tanya’s own words.

Whatever happened to the mountain, she would always be there. The top apprentice, the one carved into the disk, may one day return along with her memories of the master.

In response, Holo assured them that she would make that rabbit pay up, even if she had to resort to her fangs. Lawrence could see her doing that, but in his letter, he had written, Please let me know if Holo tries to compel you in any way.

Holo, entrusted with the letter, filled with all sorts of thoughts and feelings, vanished into the dark of the night in the blink of an eye.

Seeing her off, Lawrence heaved a tired sigh and looked to the sky.

Their story, made into a painting as myth, was still ongoing.

“Mr. Lawrence, the bread is ready!”

Tanya, who helped bake the bread while in her human form, called out to him, pulling Lawrence’s gaze back from the sky.

He turned around, and there was Tanya, her physique marvelous in a different way from Holo’s, waving to him.

Lawrence waved back and murmured to himself, “Maybe I should eat all the bread, just to show how much I love my wife.”

Acorn bread was bitter and hard.

Just like the tales people unknowingly left behind in this world.

No, maybe I should leave at least one loaf for Holo, Lawrence thought with a quiet smile.