Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 1.1 - Chapter 9

Winter Preparations 

I intended to immediately start making faux-papyrus with the gathered stems, but unfortunately, life got in the way. 

“Just where do you think you’re going, Myne? Didn’t I tell you that we were starting winter preparations today?” 

Right as I was about to leave to go to the well and get the fibers out of the plant stems, Mom grabbed the back of my shirt and stopped me. Apparently, snowfall was about to lock us inside and we needed to prepare for the long upcoming winter. 

But why do I need to help when I’m so useless? No matter how much I scoured Myne’s memories, all I got were memories of her catching colds and just lazing around, being useless. 

Basically, to say it again: I was completely useless. The best thing I could do was not get sick and end up in bed all day. 

“You’re helping me today, Myne. C’mon.” 

“What about work, Dad?” 

“I have a few days off. We workers gotta take turns staying home from work if any of us wanna finish preparing, yeah?” 

Wow... Jobs are nice enough to give time off for winter preparations? I didn’t expect to see that kind of working class benefit in this world. Or maybe winter preparations are just so rough that they’re impossible without a man around the house? 

Either way, it was rare for Dad to be at home and spend a lot of quality time with me. As you might expect from his occupation as a soldier, he was more of a meathead than anything and generally spent his time with Tuuli, who was healthy enough that he could take her places without worrying. 

But now that everyone was home, I had no opportunity to escape, and since Dad had specifically requested my help, I had no choice but to give up and obey. 

“...What do we need to do?” 

Dad answered while squatting in front of a window and preparing what looked like carpenter tools. “Today we’re gonna check to see if anything needs fixing. The shutters will be locked tight during snowstorms, so we need to make sure none of the hinges are loose or rusted. While we’re at it, we’ll look for holes. Once we’re done with that, we’ll clean the chimney and furnace so we can use’m without issue over the winter.” 

Um, Dad...? What are you expecting from my weak little arms that can’t hold anything or even use a screwdriver? I understood what we needed to do, but even then, I couldn’t imagine that I would be helpful at all. 

Though maybe if I tried super hard and showed that I could be helpful, my family’s faith in me would go up a little. It should be simple to find rusted or loose hinges with my modern knowledge. 

“Dad, this hinge and its nails are rusted.” 

“Those will last.” 

Um, I’m pretty sure they’re like on the verge of breaking off? They’re a mess. I briefly considered whether or not I should trust Dad. It’d be a big problem if a window door meant to block a snowstorm broke during the middle of winter. 

I stood on a chair and tried shaking the window door a little. If nothing happened, I could trust Dad, but if it broke, then he should learn to trust me. After shaking the door a few times, the hinge loudly snapped into two. 

I nodded to myself since that was what I expected, but Dad paled and stared at the shaking door with wide eyes. 

“M-Myne, why’d you do that?!” 

“See? It broke. I told you it wouldn’t last all winter. Now, Dad. Fix it.” I pointed at the window door, and Dad, ignoring his mistake in judgement, lifted me off the chair while sighing. 

“Myne, go help Effa.” 

“Wha? But I’m helping you, Dad. We need to make sure all the hinges won’t break during winter, but you’re ignoring the really bad ones.” I shrugged and shook my head. Mom told me to help Dad, and so I would. This was all for the sake of making my winter as comfortable as possible. 

“We don’t have the money to fix all of them and at this rate you’ll break all of’m. Go help Effa.” 

...Noooo! Money’s a problem here too?! I, having destroyed the hinge that Dad had intended to treasure for a little longer, obediently followed his instructions and went to the bedroom where Mom and Tuuli were. 

They were drying our sheets and blankets to make them more usable, moving our bed to the wall closest to the furnace to make nights a little warmer, and just setting up the room to be more livable in the winter. 

“What’s wrong, Myne?” 

“Dad told me to come help you, Mom...” 

“Really? We’ve just about finished here, so we’re about to start preparing the lights. We luckily ended up with extra beeswax this year. We’re also going to use beef tallow and fruits to make candles and oil for lamps.” 

That all sounded like a real pain. I had been smelling the nasty scent of animal oil wafting from nearby homes for several days and just imagining smelling the same stink from my own kitchen made me depressed. 

Tuuli started work on extracting oil from fruits, but since I was too weak to wield the hammer well, I had no excuse. I could only watch beside Mom as she put beef tallow into our largest pot and set it over the fire. 

...It stinks! So bad! Stay strong, me. Despite the smell being so bad I could barely breathe, Mom casually melted the tallow and picked out the drags that rose to the surface. Surprisingly, however, that was all she did before starting to finish up. 

“Wait, Mom. That’s all? You’re not going to (salt it out)?” 

“Hm? Come again?” 

Oh no. I guess this is obvious, but “(salt it out)” didn’t get translated. 

Mom shot me a little glare that said “Are you complaining about my work?” but I swallowed my fear and tried to explain what salting out was in as simple terminology as possible. 

“Ummm, you put salt water in and then boil it a bit to get more junk out?” 

“Salt water?” 

“Uh huh. If you leave it for a bit afterwards, the oil will harden on top and leave just the salt water on bottom, right? You can pour out the water and then just use the pure oil. It’s a bit more work, but the oil will smell better and be higher quality.” 

As if reacting to the phrase “higher quality,” Mom began salting the oil out. 

The quality of oil we make here was a matter of life or death for me. After all, we’d be using the oil in a closed room. I wouldn’t be able to survive a stinky home for an entire winter. Well... I couldn’t tell her exactly what ratio of salt water to oil is best, but it should still end up better. 

We went with a pretty arbitrary ratio, but thanks to the salting, the yellowed tallow became a pure white. The tallow was then split into parts, some to be used for candles and some to be used for soap come spring. The candle part was put back into the pot and melted again. 

As an aside, the tiny chunks of meat that came out after filtering the tallow were used as a pretty tasty soup base. Yum yum. 

After eating lunch, we got to work making candles. 

“Okay, Tuuli. I want you to start making candles now. Gunther and I need to prepare the firewood.” 

“Okaaay.” 

Wait... What’s my job? All three of them started their own jobs, so after a moment’s thought, I followed Mom out of the front door. Maybe “go help your mother” included this. 

But after noticing me, Mom told me to go back inside. “Myne, help Tuuli make candles. Be sure not to get in the way.” 

“...Okay.” Sheesh, why do they trust me so little? 

I returned to the kitchen and saw Tuuli cutting strings into identical lengths and hanging several of them at a time from little sticks. She then took a stick and held it such that the strings dipped into the pot of melted tallow before lifting it up and down. Over time, the oil sticking to the string hardened, fattened, and began looking like a candle. 

“Wow, so that’s how you make candles.” 

“Don’t just watch, Myne! Help!” 

Tuuli was mad, so in order to help, I grabbed some smell-blocking herbs and stuck them to some of the hardening candles. If these worked, I would put more herbs into all of them. 

“Myne! Don’t play around!” 

“Just these, okay? Don’t you want candles that don’t stink too, Tuuli? Please.” 

“Definitely just these, understand?” Tuuli drove that home, so I gave a big nod. 

I didn’t know whether it would work or not, so I had no intention of messing with all of them. I put different herbs into each candle so I would be able to see which worked the best. 

While Tuuli and I made candles, our parents were preparing firewood. Without it we would undoubtedly freeze to death, so making sure we had enough ready was absolutely vital. Dad took both the wood Tuuli had picked plus extra wood we bought and used an axe to chop it all into fifty-centimeter-long sticks. Mom then took the cut firewood and brought it to the winter storeroom. 

“Where are you going, Mom?” I was so surprised to see Mom going into a room I didn’t know about that I followed after her. It was news to me, but there was another room inside our normal storage room. Apparently it was generally only used for winter preparations. About half of the room was already packed with tons of wood. 

“Wha? I didn’t know about this room.” 

“It’s our winter storeroom, remember? How could you even forget that, Myne?” 

Speaking of which, I had been wondering where Tuuli put all the wood she came back with. Now I knew. Since the wood we normally use was put in the general storage room, I never noticed there was another one deeper inside. 

“...It’s cold here.” 

“Of course it is. This room is the furthest from the hearth.” 

Our home didn’t have anything fancy like a fireplace, so the hearth slash makeshift oven in the kitchen was the only source of heat in the entire house. We would generally spend all of our time there. 

And now, our beds were pressed against the singular wall separating them from the hearth. As long as fire was burning inside, which was when we children went to bed, it was surprisingly warm. 

But it was only warm at the start. Mom would put out the fire before bed, so the room was ice cold in the morning. On the other hand, this winter storeroom was the furthest room in the house from the hearth, so it was super cold. 

It was the perfect place to put preserved food, oil, and other things we needed for the winter. In other words, it was a natural fridge and we didn’t want it getting warm. 

“There’s lots of firewood here.” 

“It’s still barely enough, you know.” 

Even though half the room’s full?! I looked at all the firewood stacked in the winter storeroom and the word “deforestation” passed through my mind. If a single family burned this much wood, how much wood was the entire city using? 

“Myne, don’t start daydreaming, it’s time to prepare for our winter handiwork.” 

“I’m not daydreaming!” I protested, but Mom was already heading to the kitchen. I hurriedly chased after her. I didn’t want to be left alone in a dark room with no windows. 

“Mom, what do you mean by handiwork?” 

“Well. Men fix the tools they use at work, I suppose? If we intend to make new tools or furniture, we need to gather the materials ahead of time.” 

“So it’s like work we do over the winter while stuck inside?” 

Mom nodded while counting how many spools of thread we had. “That’s right. It’s important that we women make clothes, remember? We won’t be able to do that without preparing thread and dyeing cloth ahead of time. I’ve already finished all that since I work as a dyer, but we still need to prepare the wool and plants like nillen that we’ll be weaving next year.” 

“Huh.” 

“Not to mention, Tuuli’s baptism is next summer. I need to prepare her special dress during the winter.” Mom looked around with a deadly serious expression, making sure she had everything she needed. 

I got the feeling that I would just get in the way no matter what, so I slid back over to where Tuuli was. “What’s your winter handiwork going to be, Tuuli?” 

“I’m gonna make baskets. We’ll sell them when spring comes.” Tuuli was preparing her basket-making materials which would serve as her handiwork. She was taking some of the wood she gathered in the forest to the well and peeling off its bark. She would then run her knife along the fibers to split the wood apart. 

“What’ll you be doing, Myne?” 

“I’m making (faux-papyrus)!” 

“What’s that?” 

“Eheheh. It’s, a, secret.” 

I followed Tuuli’s example and started preparing the fibers I needed for my winter handiwork: making faux-papyrus. This was an important job for me. A respectable job that nobody would get mad at me for doing. 

To get the fibers out, I basically just had to do what Tuuli was doing, probably. Peel off the outer layer of the stems, soak them in water, then dry them. Winter preparations began before Tuuli and the others could get too many stems, so I decided to just take them all apart for fibers. 

“Tuuli, I want some water too.” 

“...Okay.” 

“Tuuli, how do you think I should get just the fibers out of these stems?” 

“Wha? Umm...” 

“Tuuli, they won’t get blown away if I dry them in the window, right?” 

“.........” 

I bundled up the completed fibers. There weren’t many of them, but there were probably enough to make one or two sheets of faux-papyrus. With that, my own winter preparations were more or less finished. 

Whew. I worked really hard here. Wait, what? Is it just me or does Tuuli look annoyed?