Majo no Tabitabi - Volume 11 - Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

Beasts

Five

In the course of my travels, I visited a city called the Forest Capital.

“…………”

There, I witnessed a singularly dreadful spectacle.

A lone young girl, shabby in appearance, sank down to the ground and trembled. It was in the city square. A crowd of people watched the girl’s behavior intently.

“Ah…”

Right in front of the girl, an enormous beast stood growling. Apparently, it was a species of animal that lived mainly in that region, known as the kinomianis.

It resembled a huge wolf, and it was tall as the roofs of the houses lining the streets around it.

Standing firmly in the city street with its four legs, the creature brought the tip of its nose in close and looked down at the girl. Its huge mouth was large enough to easily swallow up a little girl, and its sharp fangs meant certain death for anyone caught in its jaws.

The repulsive beast was there in the very center of a human city.

“The kinomianis are perfectly able to understand what we say.”

From within the crowd—

An old man standing near me explained, “They’re obedient to us, they follow any order we give them, and they would never betray us. Those creatures are much more trustworthy than humans.”

When I looked, I could see that the kinomianis in front of us had a collar around its neck. It was tied down to the brick road with chains, and as far as I could see, it would have been difficult for it to get close to us.

The city residents watching the girl and the beast from the safety zone where its fangs couldn’t reach were all smiling, anticipating what was meant to happen next.

Apparently, this was one of the few means of entertainment in this city.

There were no other cities to speak of nearby, only forest. There was one tiny settlement in the forest, but they didn’t have the kind of relationship with the city that would enable proper communication or trade. Also, this city did not have very advanced technology.

In this city, there was barely anything for people to enjoy.

So people crowded around the little girl, sitting on the ground before the beast. Some were drinking, or chatting pleasantly, or shouting at the beast to spur it on.

I had slipped in among the residents and was watching the spectacle.

The old man asked me, “Whaddaya think, Lady Witch?”

I guess he’s asking what I think about this city, where people get excited about this kind of event.

I just shook my head.

“…I don’t think it’s right.”

But I knew that whatever I thought, it didn’t make any difference.

As if responding to the crowd’s encouragement, the beast let out a roar and opened its huge mouth. Its enormous mouth, full of sharp fangs.

Then it lunged for the girl—

One

“Oh, there’s a village out here!”

Earlier that day, I had chanced upon a small village in the forest.

As I was steering my broom through the trees, my nose picked up on the scent of some kind of richly flavorful bread mingling with the fragrance of the forest.

“What’s this? Where could that scent be coming from?” I let my broom drift this way and that and eventually wound up at the village.

Every home was beautifully integrated with the natural setting. Each of the little cabins that were built nestled in between the trees stood quietly in the forest, as if they were hiding from something. That was probably why I didn’t notice them until I got quite close.

That said, there was no hiding the smell of food.

“…Hello?”

The atmosphere about the place was one of quiet seclusion, withdrawn far from human habitation. But as a traveler, I was curious, so I alighted from my broom and took it upon myself to wander around.

The village was eerily quiet.

Even though it was the middle of the day, there were no people anywhere, and even when I stole a peek in through a window, all I could see were half-eaten dishes of food, books lying open to be read, and partially folded laundry. Nothing but traces, as if everyone had slipped out in a hurry.

My goodness, did everyone in this village disappear into thin air right before I showed up? Or maybe they all ran away?

“…………”

Although I was dressed in my black robe and pointed hat, a getup that tended to put people on their guard, I was fairly certain my appearance wouldn’t make people run away without even meeting me.

If anything, I was more likely to be dismissed, either because of my age or because of how I looked.

“…Is that really true?”

“Yes, I told you—”

“I can’t believe it, at a time like this—”

After I had been walking through the village for a short while, I spotted some human figures.

My worries were unfounded. I see now that they didn’t run away after all.

The people of the village were in an uproar. They had gathered together in a circle and were whispering to one another fearfully.

It didn’t feel as if I could speak to them. All of them were wearing very serious expressions, and I could see a little girl slumped on the mossy ground, sobbing.

This is no ordinary situation.

Hard to say anything…

I think I should just quietly turn back around and take my leave.

Immediately after I spun around—

“Who’s over there?”

—a voice called out to me from behind.

I turned back around again to look. In other words, I made one full revolution.

“Oh, hello. I am a traveler,” I said, raising both hands to emphasize that I was not a suspicious character.

The person who had spoken to me was a young woman.

She looked to be about my age. She had wavy black hair and dignified features that made her look strong-willed.

And she was dressed in a robe.

She was a mage.

“I see you are one of us,” she said as she walked over to me. “What is your business?”

“Ah, well…I didn’t actually come here on any particular business…”

I just happened to come here by chance. If you must know, I was drawn in by the scent of bread. But it’s only natural that you would be suspicious. Now then, I’m clearly intruding, so I’ll just be leaving immediately—

“Right. That’s just perfect, then.”

The woman before me nodded firmly.

What do you mean? That it’s perfect that a person with free time on her hands showed up?

Even though I didn’t exactly get a warm welcome in the overly quiet village, she gave me the indication that she was quite glad I had happened to arrive there.

After exchanging looks with the other villagers, the woman asked, “I wonder if you would lend us a hand helping someone right now? Of course, we would reward you for your help.”

Right now?

“That’s a very sudden request…”

“Someone’s life depends upon it.”

That must mean a very urgent situation has arisen in this village.

“…I don’t know whether I’ll be of any help, okay?”

When I looked at the crowd behind the woman, I could see that all the other people were dressed in the same type of robes. Apparently, everyone in this village was a mage.

It seemed like they should have been able to manage with so many people who could use magic.

But the woman nodded firmly again.

“Right now, we need a mage with true strength, even just one—”

Then she said, without dismissing me or looking down on me, “I can tell by looking at the brooch on your chest. Your abilities are the best thing we have to rely on right now.”

So what in the world had happened to put the village in turmoil?

The mage with the black hair who had spoken to me—the woman who called herself Quori—laid the situation out simply.

According to her—

“When spring comes, the ferocious beasts start to appear around our village.”

She told me that they were called kinomianis and that they were enormous wolflike creatures. In the spring when the weather warmed up, the kinomianis awoke from their winter hibernation and became active. They were very, very hungry after their long slumber, and they would savagely attack anyone they encountered.

Consequently, the mages who lived in this village tried their best not to leave their homes during the spring. They paid careful attention whenever they went out hunting and had agreed to always travel in groups.

In spite of that—

“…That girl’s mother is out in the forest alone right now.”

Quori was pointing to the girl who was crouched on the ground, her shoulders quaking. Her hair was blond. Her eyes, moist with tears, were golden as well. She appeared to be about five years old. She was still young, and she kept mumbling, “Mama, mama…”

“Why did she go, if she knew it was dangerous?”

My question seemed like a very reasonable one.

Quori cast her eyes downward and answered, “This morning, a group of adults from the village set out hunting. That girl’s mother—her name is Eren—she was among them.”

“How many people went hunting?”

“Four. But only three came back.”

“…………”

“According to what I heard from the three people who came back, apparently they ran into a kinomianis on their way, and everyone scattered. They were in a group of four, but they knew that wasn’t enough to keep everyone from getting hurt.”

According to Quori, Eren was a brave woman.

In order to save her three companions, she had made herself into a decoy and separated from the group.

The three people who came back had immediately reported in detail what had occurred. However, no matter how long they waited for her, Eren the decoy hadn’t returned.

In short—

She was still out there, alone in the forest where the kinomianis was prowling.

“Eren told us to run…”

“I’m sorry… If only we had stood our ground…”

“P-please…! Please let us help search for her!”

Those must be the three who came back.

It was a group of three young men. They were making frantic appeals to the other villagers. I had never met her, but I could tell Eren must have been highly respected in the village.

“Enough. You all must be exhausted. Right now, everyone else who’s able will search for Eren. You three mind the children.”

One of the adults from the village addressed the three young men, calming them.

The fact that Eren had not yet returned to the village meant that she was either in a situation where she couldn’t move or that she had already fallen victim to the beast.

That much was still unclear.

However—

“In any case, it will definitely be too late if we don’t set out looking immediately, isn’t that right?”

“Yeah—”

And it sounds like you’ve decided you need as many people as you can get in order to split up and search for one woman in the wide forest.

“We would be grateful for your help,” Quori said. “To prepare for the worst, I want to have as many companions who can use magic as possible.”

Prepare for the worst.

I could tell there was a possibility we might have to do battle against the kinomianis.

“…………”

I looked past Quori, gazing out over the village.

I saw the young boys and girls of the village who depended on the adults.

I saw the adults, who were deeply troubled.

I saw the sobbing child slumped on the ground.

So I said with a smile, “I’ve never seen this creature you call the kinomianis before. I think I’d like to see what kind of animal it is.”

Two

By the way, the woman named Quori seemed to be the most capable person in the village.

“If you find the kinomianis, send up a red flare, and if you find Eren, send up a green one, got it? I’ve told your companions the same thing as well.”

It seemed appropriate for the two of us to pair up. She undoubtedly had the best abilities in the village, and I had the credentials, though it wasn’t clear whether I had the right abilities.

When it came to searching for someone, it was best to have a lot of people searching, but when it came to avoiding danger, it was best to have a lot of people working together.

The formation of the search parties in the village had been done without counting the two of us. After forming groups, the others had set out to search the forest in groups of at least five people, dispersing in all directions.

We two were responsible for the area to the north of the village.

It was a little gloomy despite being the middle of the day, and the whole area was covered in moss, which added to the spine-tingling atmosphere.

“This is a creepy forest, huh?”

“Yeah. No one goes into the forest except for the real weirdos,” Quori replied.

“…………”

“Why did you come here, I wonder?” she asked.

“Should I not have?”

I looked over and saw her shaking her head slowly.

“No, I’m glad for your help.” But she continued, “I’m sure you didn’t think there were people living in a place like this?”

“Well, sure…you’re right.”

Since I’m a wanderer, traveling from place to place as the mood takes me, I guess the reason I wound up here was really just a whim. But—

“Are the people of your village hiding from something?”

I hadn’t seen any conclusive evidence, but that was the impression I got.

The many little modest huts, standing among the trees of the forest in startling silence. The residents whispering softly to one another, holding their breath in the middle of the eerie forest.

It was as if they were frightened of something.

“Are you out here to escape from the kinomianis?”

“No—if we were trying to escape from them, we would fortify the village more. We don’t even have fences, or a gate. Out here, in a place like this, if a kinomianis attacks you, there’s no escaping your fate.”

“…Yet you don’t build fences, or a gate.”

“The kinomianis are a threat to the village for sure, but what we truly fear is something completely different.”

“What’s that?”

Then, after we had walked a little farther, she came to a halt.

In the middle of the forest.

In that spot, there were houses nestled in among the trees, exactly like the village we had just been in. All of them were obviously dilapidated, covered with moss, as if they had been abandoned long, long ago and never visited by people since.

As she touched the moss—

“It’s humans,” she said. “We’re afraid of humans.”

According to Quori, the people of her village traced back their origins to a group of refugees who had lost their homes due to war. Without a homeland, they had wandered from place to place seeking a new safe haven.

But the grief they had borne was real.

The neighboring lands of the ancient past had persecuted mages.

They were feared for having special powers. There were even some people who scorned them and called them beasts. No matter where they traveled, other people always looked at the mages with cold eyes.

Very rarely, there was a place that welcomed them kindly. But even in those countries, the people would always end up trying to take advantage of the mages’ powers to carry out reforms, or spur advances in medicine, or win a war.

The mages were tired out.

That was an old, old story.

“Then the last place we traveled to was this forest—so I’ve been told,” Quori said. “Our ancestors stopped trusting in other people. So they decided to live in the middle of this forest.”

For better or worse, there were repulsive beasts prowling through the forest, and on top of that, it was difficult to see very far, so you could get lost just by walking around.

In the middle of this forest, which only real weirdos would enter, the mages thought they could find peace.

“But even then, people would still come. There were people who would walk into the forest, trying to contact us. Whenever that happened, we moved our dwellings.”

“…………”

I stared at the decaying village.

Undoubtedly, this, too, was a village that had been abandoned because a person had happened to come calling.

“…What a waste.”

After they went to the trouble of building a whole village.

“Yeah. But there’s no helping it. In order to keep from being used, we have to cut off all connections.”

“From people who might be bad, right?”

“Yeah.”

“…But I don’t think everyone who visits your village is necessarily a bad person.”

“Probably not.”

In fact, I—leaving aside the question of whether or not I was a bad person—I hadn’t found my way there looking to take advantage of Quori and her people. In fact, it seemed like very few humans would come to a place like this to try to recruit the mages.

“But we still don’t see other people.”

The story about being used was decades in the past.

I felt like there was no longer any need for them to keep living their lives shut away in the forest.

But Quori shook her head.

“I’m certain this is the only way for us to live in peace.”

So every day, they lived quiet lives, in fear of something.

“We love our fellow villagers like true family. But—”

She told me that whenever one of them was left out in the forest alone, the whole village went searching for them.

Then Quori looked up into the sky above the gloomy forest.

When I looked, I saw a red flare in the air.

“I wonder why things never go well for us?”

Along with a green flare.

Three

By the time Quori and I rode our brooms over to the source of the lights, there was already a great crowd of mages gathered there.

Every one of them had their wands in their hands and deeply held resentment in their eyes.

“That’s the one…! It killed Eren…!”

The kinomianis, already surrounded on all sides by the mages, glowered at them and growled. It bared its fangs menacingly.

Beside it lay a wand and a woman’s shoe.

“…Eren.”

Quori seemed to know perfectly well who those things belonged to.

Beside me, she sank down hard to the ground.

The other mages were firing off streams of spells, channeling their anger at seeing one of their own killed. Even before the two of us had arrived, they must have started their onslaught.

The kinomianis’s body was already filthy with blood, and its enormous face and body were pierced all over with many weapons.

And yet it didn’t bark at us, and it didn’t charge. It just kept its mouth tightly closed and growled.

“No mercy…! Kill it! Everyone, hit it with every spell you have!”

One of the mages shouted, and immediately afterward the light from their wands concentrated on the kinomianis. They hit it with flames, lightning bolts, and all sorts of weapons. They attacked the kinomianis with murderous fury.

In the midst of it all, I hadn’t pulled out my wand.

“…………”

That was because the kinomianis was wounded all over and was being blasted with so many spells that it didn’t have a single opening to make any kind of counterattack. I didn’t really feel like it was necessary for me to assist the other mages.

“…Oh, right, I’d better attack, too—”

So I looked at Quori, who was getting unsteadily to her feet.

“…Wait a second.”

I stopped her.

I certainly wasn’t feeling any pity for the kinomianis.

But there was no reason for Quori to stand up.

“It’s already dead.”

The kinomianis had died on its feet before anyone noticed, without attacking the mages even once.

The light had gone out of its eyes, which were still open.

And from its bloody mouth, which was hanging loosely open—

—fell the corpse of a woman.

Six

“Kyaaaaaahhh!”

In the Forest Capital. Right in the center of town, the shabby looking little girl shrieked and was gobbled up headfirst by the kinomianis.

Cheers went up from all the surrounding citizens. They had all been looking forward to the moment when the girl got eaten. That’s why all of them were smiling.

That’s because this was the sole form of entertainment in their city.

“…This doesn’t seem right,” I muttered again.

The old man beside me smiled. “Now, don’t say that. The next part is worth seeing. Watch.”

He pointed. The kinomianis looked like it was chewing, then it spit the little girl out.

“Kyaaaaaah!”

The shabbily dressed little girl flew gently through the air as the people of the city cheered for joy. She landed in the fountain on the other side of the plaza.

The fountain splashed, and the smiling little girl reappeared.

“One more time! Do it again!”

The girl climbed out of the fountain and, dripping wet, ran over to the kinomianis and threw her arms around it.

Following her lead, other children, dressed in shabby clothes that were dirty but otherwise intact, rushed out of the crowd and gathered around the kinomianis.

“No! It’s my turn next!”

“It’s mine!”

“Wait! But I’ve only been thrown once so far!”

The adults watched the spectacle with naked amusement, smiling.

Apparently, this was the primary diversion in their city, where there was little entertainment.

“The kinomianis is a clever creature that loves children, and apparently they have a behavior of holding their young in their mouths to protect them when they’re raising them,” explained the old man by my side. “Even here, we’ve only recently begun to understand the life cycle and habits of the kinomianis. Before, we were frightened of them because of their repulsive outward appearance, and we scattered poison in the forest so they wouldn’t come near the city, and avoided them at all costs, but after some investigation, the kinomianis’s high intelligence and peaceful disposition became clear.”

“Has one ever killed a person by mistake?”

“Never once, as far as we know,” the old man answered. “Once, an injured soldier of ours encountered a kinomianis in the woods, and he was frightened. But even when he stabbed it with his sword, far from attacking him back, the kinomianis held the soldier in its mouth and carried him back to our territory. It did that with the sword still sticking into its shoulder.”

“…………”

“That was when we realized that the creatures make good neighbors.”

So they had investigated and learned more about their intellect and disposition.

This city that had previously tried to exterminate the kinomianis cleaned up the poison they had scattered throughout the forest and then actively worked to invite the kinomianis into their territory, the man told me.

“So then, what happened to your city?” I asked.

“Just as you can see. We chose to live with the kinomianis.”

Then the old man, looking pleased at all the children’s smiles, said, “Persecution is always born of ignorance, after all.”

Four

Eren’s remains were wrapped in cloth and carried back to the village.

She must have been just like family to everyone in the village. Everyone was crying, and everyone was mourning her death.

Quori was no exception.

“If only we had set out sooner to look for her…Eren would be…”

She hung her head, her shoulders trembling, and looked down at the cloth covered in blood.

“Mama…Mama…! Why…?”

Eren’s little girl clung to the dead body.

It seemed like the village was wrapped in an even deeper silence than when I had first arrived.

The girl looked at the villagers, her eyes swollen with tears.

“Why did Mama die…?”

It was a question no one wanted to answer.

The villagers looked at one another.

Who should answer her? What should they tell her? In the long silence that followed, Quori finally approached the girl and stroked her soft blond hair.

And then—

“I’m sorry—if we had gotten there sooner, your mother might not have been a victim. So if you must blame someone, blame us.”

After saying that, she told the girl—

She told her that her mother was—

“She was a victim of the beasts.”