Spice and Wolf - Volume 23 - Chapter 2

SUMMER’S HARVEST AND WOLF

Interlude: This is a tale of when Col and Myuri still lived in the bathhouse.

Though winter stays were most popular in the hot spring village of Nyohhira, summer saw its fair share of business as well.

Its mountainous location made it cool all year round. Having an ale or wine chilled in the cold rooms filled with snow that had accumulated over the winter, after taking a dip in the hot baths, was a temptation difficult to resist for the sinful alcoholics. That said, there were fewer people visiting in summer than in the winter, and the musicians and dancers had their own businesses to attend to in their homelands, so they were not present. This made summer a rather mild, but relatively lively season to visit Nyohhira.

The guests staying at the Spice and Wolf bathhouse, too, had all gone fishing together, so that made for a quiet morning at the establishment.

“Haaa…”

Holo gave a big yawn; after seeing the guests off, she lay her favorite blanket down in front of the hearth, draped a thin throw over her shoulders, and curled up like a sleepy hound. Her wolf tail, which was typically constricted and hidden when others were around, thumped against the floor in great delight, and she snored quietly. A soft heat wafted from the gently smoldering embers, a perfect complement to Nyohhira’s cool summers. And of course, sitting beside Holo was a cup of some alcoholic beverage for her to sip when she awoke.

Holo was so devoted to her daily routine of debauchery, and that made bathhouse owner Lawrence smile slightly. He gazed out the open window, thinking that perhaps tomorrow would be a better day for all the little tasks he had to take care of. He should take a page out of Holo’s book and learn to enjoy these peaceful moments.

With that thought in mind, he came to sit beside Holo, running his hand through her beautiful flaxen hair and stroking her wolf ears. Her eyes popped open in slight irritation, but she soon shifted to place her head on his lap.

And her tail began to sway happily once again.

If only moments like these would last forever.

Right after that thought crossed Lawrence’s mind, the inn door was flung open with a slam, accompanied by a girl’s loud and energetic voice.

“Big news! Listen! You have to hear what I just learned!”

Loud footsteps then began to shake the floor, and the girl’s voice grew frantic.

“Brother! Where are you?! Broootheeer!”

The voice belonged to their daughter, Myuri. It was not long ago that they celebrated her coming of age with all their close friends, yet she was as rambunctious as always.

“What is that little fool on about now…?”

Though she and her daughter were near-mirror images of each other, the centuries-old Holo did not sound too pleased about the ordeal.

“Well, she sounds eager to tell us something. You don’t think she’s plotting some prank again, is she?”

“She called for little Col, though.”

The boy Col, who Lawrence and Holo met while they were traveling together, was now a valuable individual who supported the bathhouse’s operations, and one whom Myuri looked up to as her older brother. They were family.

“I guess it’d be weird for her to ask for Col if she were plotting a prank.”

But the way she was stomping about gave Lawrence a bad feeling and he furrowed his brow; Holo, still laying down, reached for her glass of booze that sat next to her.

Her ears then stood on end all of a sudden, and she gave a disgruntled sigh. The reasons for which did not take long to manifest.

“Mother! Father! Where are you?!”

It was unusual for Myuri to call for her parents, considering how much they scolded her, which earned a heavy sigh from Holo. This could not be a good thing.

Just before lunch, Lawrence armed himself with a bag filled with sausage, a pot, and a large hemp sack strapped to his person. Standing beside him was Col, who carried a sack full of bread and, strangely enough, a copy of the scripture under his arm.

“Safe travels. Bring back something special to share.”

Hanna, the woman in charge of the kitchen, saw Lawrence and Col off with the same enthusiasm as she did the guests who went fishing earlier this morning.

The one who gave the most enthusiastic response and a wave of the hand was Myuri as she dashed ahead. Holo followed behind, a vexed look on her face, though she did seem to be enjoying herself, all things considered. The boys, carrying all the luggage, were behind them.

“Hey, sorry, Col, for making you do this on your day off.”

“Oh, no, I should be apologizing to you, Mister Lawrence.”

Though they apologized to each other, the one who was truly at fault was Myuri.

“There’s a demon in the mountains?”

Myuri, her eyes gleaming, her silver wolf ears and tail fidgeting in excitement, had come to her parents to ask just that. Apparently, some of the village children who had ventured into an untouched part of the mountain had come back alarmed and flush-faced.

“The mountain is Mother’s territory, right? If there’s a demon here, we have to get rid of it!”

She loved tales of adventure; she had taken a branch in hand and was swinging it around like a sword. Col and Lawrence exchanged glances—this was when they would typically scold her for behaving immaturely, but in a surprising twist, it was Holo who spoke up this time.

“It rained not long ago, no? There should be plenty of mushrooms sprouting in the mountains.”

The one who held the most sway in the bathhouse was not its owner, but Holo, who had a very short leash on her husband.

And so, they all ended up going mushroom picking together.

“Brother! Father! Hurry up!”

Myuri dashed ahead along the almost imperceptible mountain path. The trek was not a problem for Holo, either, and she proceeded forward with light steps. They were wolf parent and child, of course, but not only were Lawrence and Col merely human, they were also saddled with baggage.

They were so breathlessly concentrated on keeping up that they soon lost their way.

“We’d have to live out the rest of our lives in the woods if we make either of them angry…”

“Ha-ha-ha…” Col laughed dryly.

“But,” Lawrence continued, “what did she mean by demon?”

Myuri had apparently called for Col first right after rushing home for good reason. Col had once studied, and still studied, theology; he wanted to be a priest in the future.

It seemed she’d thought he would be perfect for exorcising demons.

“I’m not sure… Anyone could mistake a deer or a rabbit for one if they ventured into the mountains in the middle of the night in a test of courage.”

“Hmm… Oh, there’s a marker. The village kids must have left this here.”

The paths the adults used to take into the mountains were relatively safe, but the adventurous spirit of the unruly children lay beyond unmarked paths.

“We don’t even come around here during hunting season,” Col remarked.

“I hope it’s not too far from here…”

Lawrence readjusted the packs on his back, following after the carefree wolf tails as they slipped through the trees.

After trekking for a little longer, the contrasting furs finally stopped moving.

“Phew… Is this it?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

Even though Myuri wasn’t carrying anything, she had not broken a sweat at all.

As Lawrence pulled out a waterskin full of booze—for Holo, who he knew was going to start begging him for a drink any moment now—he asked, “What did you mean by demon? A bear, or something?”

“What…? By demon, I mean demon! No one would confuse a demon with a bear, obviously.”

Indeed, the village children would not get their animals wrong. In that case, it might be a recluse who dressed as a demon. Occasionally, in remote mountains such as this, there lived people who could not find a place living alongside others.

“Is there anyone around?” Lawrence asked Holo as she took a swig of wine from the waterskin, and her ears stood on end.

“That little fool would pick up on them if there were.” After wiping a drop of wine that clung to the corner of her mouth on Lawrence’s clothes, she stretched. “Mmm. What a nice spot. ’Tis not far from the bathhouse. There must be more nice spots like this.”

People came to the mountain to either hunt animals or forage for food, so these types of places were rare.

“Then what did the children see?”

Holo did not respond to Lawrence’s question. She shoved her wineskin back at Lawrence and moved to follow her daughter. Myuri led the way, pretending this was an adventure; Lawrence and Col did as Holo directed and were busy picking any mushrooms and blackberries she located.

The reason they brought a pot up was because the queen of the bathhouse had insisted they make mushroom stew for lunch.

Lawrence knew that if he told her the one who wanted the stew should carry the pot herself, he would have found himself abandoned in the mountains. As he finished that thought, he noticed Myuri standing still. She seemed to have come across a particularly large tree. The whole thing was covered in moss, and there was a hole near its roots roomy enough for one large bear to comfortably live in. It was a big, ancient tree.

“It’s magnificent,” he remarked.

Ignoring the way her daughter stared up at the large tree, Holo said, “Shall we eat here?”

The shadows of the forest trees told them that the sun was well past its zenith. They needed to get started, otherwise it would be sunset by the time they arrived home.

Lawrence and Col put down their things, when Myuri suddenly whirled around.

“What?! But we haven’t found the demon yet!”

“The village children told you this, didn’t they? You sure they weren’t just teasing you?”

Lawrence asked, and Myuri puffed out her cheeks.

“Okay, okay,” he sighed. “Once we’re done eating, your old man’ll help you find this demon.”

“Aww…”

She wanted to resume her adventure right away, and she pouted, sulking. Even though she was just old enough for them to start thinking about marrying her off, she still acted like a child; this both relieved and vexed Lawrence at the same time.

Though he was delighted to watch his daughter grow up, he had recently been beset by fits of loneliness at the prospect of letting her go. He took her hand and said to her, “Let’s eat first.”

Myuri was just about to do as she was told, reluctantly, when her head whipped around in another direction.

“…”

To be more precise, her ears and nose were twitching slightly.

She was a young wolf who had found prey. The way she looked when this happened was breathtakingly awe-inspiring and beautiful.

Myuri, full of a youthful light that Holo simply did not possess, suddenly dashed off and rounded the large tree.

“Myuri!”

Panicked, Lawrence rushed after her, rounding the tree’s roots, and found his daughter standing there.

And there he saw that the silver fur on her tail—a color she got from him—was standing on end in a way he had never seen before.

“N—”

“What?”

Myuri stood stock-still, and Col’s footsteps followed as he rushed over to see what was happening.

In that moment, there came a piercing scream, one that made it seem as though the giant tree had burst.

“Eeeeeeee!”

Myuri screamed so loud that it seemed like all the hair on her tail might fall off, whirled around on her heel, and then ran.

Whatever she had seen was enough to give her a good scare.

But this was Lawrence’s most beloved daughter. Though she’d grown standoffish after coming of age, Lawrence knew he should still comfort her in her fear; he spread his arms wide to accept her, but she ran straight past him.

“Brotheeer!”

“Wh-what’s going on?!”

“Brother, Brother! It’s the demon! The demon’s here!”

Lawrence could hear Myuri crying in Col’s arms behind him.

Col was holding her tightly, trying to soothe her out of her fear.

Though as beautiful a bond between brother and sister it was, Lawrence wasn’t sure what to do with his spread arms. He supposed he wasn’t the one she went to for help anymore.

As he stood there, disappointed, he heard the approaching sound of crunching leaves.

It was Holo, peering up at him with a mean smile.

“You fool.”

She grinned, grabbed Lawrence’s awkwardly outstretched arms, and pulled him closer.

The shrewd wisewolf walked off, pulling Lawrence by the arm as she did so. She took him to where Myuri had been standing and Lawrence found himself freezing in place.

A demon was trying to crawl out from the ground.

“Oh, whoa—”

It also gave him a good fright, and he almost landed on his behind. It looked as though the pale hand of a corpse was crawling out of the ground; its nails were long and sinister, and its eerie fingers were pointed.

“Wh-what is—?”

He did not honestly think that a demon was coming out from the mountain. As he stood with his breath held, Holo let go of him, crouched down besides the hand, and reached out to touch the demon’s fingers.

And after a firm poke, its finger snapped.

“You fool. ’Tis a mushroom.”

“What?!”

Disregarding Lawrence’s shock, Holo burst out in laughter, her shoulders shaking as she did so.

“Heh-heh-heh… Were you petrified by a mushroom?” she cackled, waving her hand as she stood. “But once, long ago, I thought someone had been buried alive when I spotted one in the woods and tried to dig them out.”

“Y-you did?”

“It looked just like the hand of a corpse, you know. I have a feeling ’tis called by a similar name.”

One of the fingers had broken off when Holo poked it, but that did not make it seem any less like the pale hand of a demon.

“But I suppose ’tis rather rare for a corpse’s hand to look this clean.”

It sounded as though she was trying to cheer him up when a thought suddenly occurred to Lawrence.

“You knew it was a mushroom all along?”

“Perhaps I did, and perhaps not.”

She shrugged, turning around to grab Lawrence’s hand and drag him away.

“Come now, ’tis time to eat. No one has come up this way yet, so the largest mushrooms are all ours for the harvesting. We must also gather some for Hanna once we are finished eating. I am quite looking forward to having some pickled, salted, and dried.”

Lawrence found himself both exasperated and smiling in response to Holo’s upbeat musings.

Or perhaps he was pleasantly surprised to know that there were all sorts of mysteries left in the world; he had not come to know everything about the world, after all.

“But…”

Lawrence contemplated. When he saw Col sitting next to the pot, deftly preparing their food with Myuri on his lap, he groaned. He wondered if Myuri was a bit too attached to her brother.

As he stood there, an uneasy impatience nagging at him, Holo tugged on his sleeve.

“Is something the matter?”

If he openly expressed his jealousy over Myuri, Holo would surely taunt him for being a fool again.

He had dignity to maintain, both as a father and a husband.

“Nothing, actually.”

“Mm.”

She smiled at him, her all-knowing wisewolf smile, but she did not poke him any further.

They then lit the fire, boiled plenty of mushrooms in their pot, then found plenty more to take home.

It was summer in Nyohhira.

It was a good season, where the cool breeze offered relief from the strong rays of the sun.