Spice & Wolf IV (4 page)

“I see. Well, we’ll be cautious. Surely we won’t be thrown out as soon as we arrive.”

“Well...no, I don’t suppose you will.”

“My thanks to you. I’ll keep your advice in mind. Suppose she’s not dressed as a nun—no one would mind, then, would they?” The youth seemed to relax. “That would be a boon, yes.” His wariness of Lawrence seemed to have turned to entreaty. “But what business have you with the church?”

“We need directions.”

“Directions?” The youth scratched his face, dubious. “So...so you haven’t come to do business, then. You’re a merchant, right?”

“Aye, and you’re a miller, are you not?”

The boy grinned as though his nose has been flicked, then slumped, defeated. “And here I was hoping I might be of some use to you in business.”

“I’ll call on you if need be. Now, may I pass?”

The youth seemed to have something yet to say, but unable to put the words together, he nodded briefly and gave way.

The look he gave Lawrence was a deeply imploring one.

It was clear, though, that he was not asking for an information fee. Lawrence loosened his grip on the reins and extended his hand to the youth. He looked directly into the boy’s eyes, speaking clearly and evenly “My name is Kraft Lawrence. What are you called?”

In an instant, the lad’s face blossomed into a smile. “Evan! I-I’m Gyoam Evan.”

“Evan, then. Understood. I’ll remember that.”

“Please—please do!” the young miller shouted in a voice loud enough to cause an easily startled horse to panic, gripping Lawrence’s hand tightly. “Come by upon your return, if you would,” he added as he stepped back from the wagon and into the doorway of the little millhouse.

He stood there in front of the black wooden millhouse, his face whitened with flour, looking distinctly lonely as he watched Lawrence and Holo drive away.

Then—just as Lawrence had expected—Holo turned to look over her shoulder, waving a hand tentatively to the youth. He started as if surprised, then returned her wave grandly with both hands, a huge smile on his face.

He seemed less like a lad waving to a beautiful maiden and more like a boy happy to have found a friend.

The path ahead curved to the right, putting Evan’s mill out of sight. Holo turned back around to face forward.

“Hmph. The boy seemed to look at
you
more than he did me,” she announced, displeased.

Lawrence smiled for a moment, then heaved a sigh and replied, “Well, he’s a miller. His is not an easy life.”

Holo regarded Lawrence dubiously, her head cocked.

There must have been a reason behind the lad’s desire to shake hands with Lawrence the merchant rather than Holo the maiden.

But was it a pleasant reason? Surely, the answer was no.

“It’s no different from being a shepherd. Both are necessary jobs, but the people who toil in them are held in contempt in towns and villages.”

Naturally depending on the region, this was not always the case. But Lawrence was quite sure that the people of Tereo did not hold the millhouse here in much regard.

“For example,” continued Lawrence, “think of the wheat that’s in the pouch about your neck.”

Holo did indeed wear a small pouch around her neck—though it was hidden beneath layers of clothing at the moment—which contained the wheat in which her essence dwelled.

“If you were to hull and grind that much wheat, how much Hour do you think it would yield?”

Holo looked down at her chest.

She could control the harvest’s quality and quantity, but even she seemed not to be entirely sure how much flour would come from the handful of grain.

“Suppose you have this much grain,” said Lawrence, putting the reins down for a moment and tracing the outline of a small mound in his hand. “If you hull and grind it, you’d probably get about this much flour,” he continued, making a much smaller circle with his index finger and thumb.

Once ground in a mill, wheat’s volume became surprisingly small.

So what must a farmer think, toiling day in and day out to raise his crop, praying always to the god of the harvest, only to see his months of labor ground into a depressingly small amount of wheat?

Holo uttered a small sound of assent after Lawrence put the question to her.

“They say that millers at the waterwheel have six fingers and that the sixth grows from the palm—for the purpose of stealing flour. Also, most waterwheels are owned by the local landlord, who levies a tax on all who grind their grain there. But the landlord can’t watch over the millhouse all day, so who do you suppose collects taxes in his place?”

“I suppose it would be the miller.”

Lawrence nodded and continued. “Aye, and no one is happy about paying taxes. But it is necessary. So who do you suppose bears the brunt of their resentment?”

She might not have been human, but Holo’s understanding of the human world was deep.

She knew the answer immediately.

“Ah, I see the way of it. So the reason that pup was wagging his tail with such vigor at you, rather than me, was—”

“Even so,” said Lawrence with a sigh and a nod. Ahead of them, the houses of the village of Tereo finally came into view. “He would like nothing better than to leave this village.”

Millwork was an important job that had to be done.

But those who did the thankless task were often resented.

The more thoroughly grain was ground, the better the rise of the bread made from it.

However, the finer the grind, the smaller the volume of the resulting flour.

Doing a good job yet bearing the resentment of those who benefited from it—Lawrence had heard the story somewhere else. Holo looked straight ahead, as though sorry she had asked.

“But it’s a necessary task, and there are those who appreciate it,” said Lawrence. He stroked Holo’s head gently before taking up the reins again. Holo nodded slightly under his touch.

Though Evan had called it a tiny smear of a village, Tereo was not so bad as he would have Lawrence believe.

The only real difference between a town and a village was the presence of a wall. There were plenty of “towns” with walls barely more than a rickety wooden fence, so for a supposed village, Tereo was rather grand.

Like other villages, its buildings were not packed closely together (instead they had been erected in a more scattered fashion), but there was some stone-walled architecture in what seemed to be the heart of Tereo. The streets, while not cobbled, were clean and free from holes. The church was large enough to be visible a fair distance away, and it had a proper tower and bell.

Truly, in order to be called a town, all Tereo lacked was a wall.

Heeding Evan’s warning, Holo covered her head with Lawrence’s coat, cinching it up with a cord about her neck as though she expected rain. She eschewed her typical towngirl clothing. It seemed a bit too stylish and might attract attention.

Holo stood out enough as it was.

Once she had finished changing, Lawrence steered the cart toward the buildings of the village.

Having no walls meant there was no gatehouse, which in turn ensured that travelers passing through the village could not be taxed.

There was no one to stop the cart as it rolled into town. A man busy bundling sheaves of wheat stared openly at Lawrence and Holo; Lawrence nodded in greeting.

The village was dusty, its smaller streets bumpy and pitted, Buildings of both stone and wood were on the large side with low roofs. Many of the houses had gardens—a rare sight in larger towns.

Here and there along the roadside were piles of straw, the sign of the recently concluded harvest. Bundles of firewood were interspersed among them.

Pedestrians were few; it seemed as if they were outnumbered by the pigs and chickens that wandered here and there.

The one way that the village was like other places of its kind was the staring—upon noticing the travelers, every villager stared at Lawrence and Holo.

In this sense, Tereo was every bit a small village.

Lawrence felt his outsider status keenly in a way he hadn’t felt in many years.

He had grown up in a poor village himself. He was well aware that such places offered little in the way of amusement and that a traveler was the perfect diversion.

Lawrence thought on this as he drove. They eventually arrived at a wide square with a great block of stone placed in the center.

It seemed to be the center of the village, surrounded as it was by various buildings.

Based on the wrought iron signs that hung from the buildings’ eaves, there appeared to be a tavern, an inn, and a baker’s shop, along with what seemed to be a wool weaver’s workshop. A building with a larger entrance faced the street, and it was surely a common area where the harvested wheat could be threshed and sifted.

Other buildings seemed to be the homes of the village’s older, more influential families—and of course, there was also the church.

There were unsurprisingly a good number of people—children playing in the square and adults standing and talking. Lawrence and Holo found themselves yet again the subject of curious stares.

“That’s quite a stone there. What’s it used for?” asked Holo casually, unconcerned by the villagers’ scrutiny.

“Probably for ceremonial use in some festival or for dancing or maybe for holding meetings, I suppose.”

The stone in question had a smooth, flat surface and came up to about Lawrence’s waist. A wooden ladder leaned against it, which suggested the stone hadn’t been placed here as a mere landmark.

The only way to know for sure would be to ask a villager, but Holo merely nodded vaguely and leaned back against the wagon seat.

Lawrence guided the wagon around the stone and toward the church.

Despite the constant bombardment of curious gazes, it was clear that this was no isolated mountain hamlet.

The wagon stopped in front of the church, at which point the villagers seemed to assume that the pair had come to pray for safe travel, and the level of interest dropped.

“Seems like they’re almost disappointed,” muttered Lawrence to Holo once he’d stopped the wagon and climbed down. Holo smiled conspiratorially.

The church was a grand stone building, its great wooden door framed in iron.

It seemed to have weathered many a year. The corners of the stone blocks that made up the edifice were rounded with age, though the iron knocker affixed to the church door seemed strangely unused.

It was odd, too, for the door to be closed. It wasn’t a cloister, after all, nor did there seem to be a service in progress. The doors of any normal church would have been open.

If he had to put it simply, Lawrence would have guessed that the church was unloved by the village.

But there was no point in conjecture. Lawrence grabbed hold of the knocker and rapped it several times.

Klang, klang
—the dry sound echoed strangely across the square.

There was no reply for several moments, but just as Lawrence was beginning to wonder if anyone was there, the door creaked loudly, opening just a crack.