CHAPTER 4
Of Statues and Witches
[The Cases of the Charcoal Witch and the Ashen Witch]
“Recently, it seems the statue of the goddess that is the symbol of our city has grown old and worn, so we would like you to repair it.”
It was about a week ago when that commission came in from the United Magic Association.
Perpetually plagued by a lack of money, I was extremely interested. “Huh? You’ll pay me just to polish up some old statue? That’s the easiest job ever! Whoo-hoo!” I set out for the city at once.
It was a strange place, well known as a city that professed to love history.
“Welcome and good day to you, Lady Witch. Please follow me.”
Appropriate for a city that loved history, they seemed to have the custom of dressing in historical garb, and even though it was midsummer and the hottest part of the year, the (female) official who showed me around, as well as every other person we passed in town, without exception, was wearing thick, long-sleeved clothes. I could only hope that they took as good care of themselves as they did of preserving history.
“Recently, here in our city, the young people’s loss of interest in plaster statues has become a serious concern…”
As she opened the doors to the library of historical records with a frown, the official looked to me like she could still quite easily pass as one of those young people. I felt like it was too early for her to be grumbling about “kids these days” and so on.
What does “loss of interest in plaster statues” mean anyway…?
“When I was young, we would cuddle plaster busts as we went to sleep, and gossip about how cool or cute the statues were, and even go on dates with plaster sweethearts. We were right in the middle of a fad for plaster girls and plaster boys.”
“What kinda place is this? Is the whole city full of weirdos?”
“In our day, that was how everyone did things.”
“Huh…”
“But times have changed… These days, even if we do get a visitor to the library, there’s hardly anyone who goes out of their way to visit the statue corner… We want to bring back those golden years… Those times were really wonderful…”
As she reminisced, the official’s eyes filled with nostalgia, like a city girl remembering her family home in the country.
“Back then, you could make easy money just by selling plaster…”
“……”
Ah, I was wrong, those are just the eyes of someone obsessed with money. If I’m not mistaken, she’s not concerned with getting back the liveliness of the past so much as returning to the era of easy money.
This was about the point when I realized that.
“During the plaster boom, if you said, ‘Yes! This is the same plaster that was used to make the statue of the goddess!’ someone would go ahead and buy it. But now, stuff like that doesn’t sell at all.”
“Did you really say ‘plaster boom’?”
Just think, making a fortune selling plaster… Was there actually that much of a demand for the stuff? Maybe this place really is full of crazy people.
“And now all the young people like paintings instead of plaster.”
“Doesn’t that just mean all the crazies switched from plaster to paintings?”
“Yes. But the painting boom is almost in decline now… We need to create a new trend…”
“……”
Trends are like food, in that people tend to constantly want to take in something new. Sooner or later, they get bored of eating the same thing day after day. So you have to mix things up every now and again.
“So you want to resurrect an old trend, yeah?”
“Yes. And I’m asking for your help, Lady Witch. Though I do stand to make a tidy profit, I also care deeply about the future of plaster busts and want to return them to their former glory.”
“I mean…you’re paying me, so I’m in, but…geez, lady…”
I was mumbling this as we arrived at the aforementioned statue corner.
“This is the one that I would like you to fix, Lady Witch.”
There, in one corner of the renowned library of historical records, the most popular institution in the center of town, loomed a plaster statue.
“……”
It must have been extremely beautiful once.
Now, no trace of that beauty remained. There were cracks throughout the plaster face and arms, and what once must have been a beautiful white color was now dull and dirty. The wings that extended from the shoulders had retained their lovely shape, but the face and arms looked like they belonged to a different statue entirely.
The statue was probably modeled after a beautiful woman, but over time, it had degraded to such a state that you would be hard-pressed to even call it pretty. The main problems were that the face and arms had become rough, so the scraps of cloth it was dressed in looked like servants’ rags. The wings sprouting from its back also looked dirty. Finally, the lance that it was gripping in its hand looked like some cheap thing someone had found in the bargain bin at the local weapons shop.
I see, so this is…
“This is the statue of a goddess that was given to us by a neighboring city when we established this library of historical records. Back then, it was incredibly beautiful, and a lot of people came here just to see the statue, even from far away, but…now no one shows any interest in it.”
“……”
I stared at the statue.
It had a face that I had seen somewhere before. Maybe because the plaster was a dull off-white—the color of ash. The ash-colored hair reminded me of a certain witch whom I love and respect.
The longer I looked at it, the more I thought its face resembled hers. It was the spitting image. Could she possibly have served as the model? It was enough to make me wonder.
A nearby sign indicated that the statue had been given to the library about twenty years ago, so it must have been based on a different person, but…
“……”
Taking a long, hard look at the plaster statue, I said, “But it’s really seen better days, huh…? The skin is especially awful. It’s all rough.”
“Well, it is a statue, so it’s not actually skin…,” the official replied to me, quite exasperated. “Anyway, I’d like to request that you perform the repairs to this statue, Lady Witch. It is possible?”
“Oh-hoh-hoh, leave it to me! I may not look like it, but I’ve been called the Magician of Plaster Repairs, you know. It’s more than possible. Do you have any special requests? I’m going to return it to perfection!”
It was all lies, though.
However, the official answered in a lively voice. “Well! That is reassuring. In that case, I’d like to request that you somehow make this statue of the goddess look like the day she was born.”
“Understood. So I should cast off these rags and make her nude, right? Leave it to me.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Well then, what did you mean?”
“I want you to make her look new again.”
“I see. So in other words, she needs a skin care regimen! Leave it to me.”
“Skin…? Um, well, sure.”
The official nodded at me, looking like this was all very bothersome.
At any rate…
In this way, the curtain rose on my dramatic statue restoration story.
“…I see. I understand the situation.”
I stood nodding in front of a plaster statue that had apparently been repaired several days earlier.
“In short, you’re in a bind because the witch who came to your city before me messed around carelessly with your statue and ended up leaving it looking like…this?”
“That’s exactly it.”
The official nodded as I stared at the plaster statue.
Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing what the statue looked like before, so it wasn’t entirely clear just what had happened to bring about its current condition.
But it was pretty obvious that certain modifications had been added after the fact.
Starting with the clothes—it was a statue of a goddess, but for some reason, it was dressed in a robe. Additionally, it was wearing a triangular hat.
Its hair was long and of an indeterminate color, since it was made of plaster, but it was likely meant to be ash-colored. It had a familiar face, the face of a girl in her late teens. She was quite pretty, I must say. I’m sure anyone who saw the statue thought so.
By the way, this girl, this statue, this monument to grace and beauty, who was she?
That’s right, she was me.
“……”
Obviously, the deed must have been done by someone quite familiar with my face.
I won’t name names, but I’m sure she was probably a young girl with black hair, dressed in a black robe, and wearing a black triangular hat. That’s definitely the impression that I’m getting. It’s the only possibility.
“As you can see, the statue has completely changed… We can’t possibly display it like this.”
The official was distraught.
“I see…” I nodded solemnly. “Far from returning the statue to its original appearance, the other witch made it so cute that it looks like it might ascend straight to heaven, huh…? Well then, so what you want to tell me…is that you’re afraid the statue might get stolen and war will break out?”
“Incorrect.”
“It would be more appropriate to call her an angel rather than a goddess, right? Let’s give her a name change.”
“No way.”
“…How did she come to have this sort of appearance in the first place?”
“I originally asked to have her repaired, but the Charcoal Witch who performed the repairs said, ‘Somehow, my emotions got the better of me after I saw the statue,’ and made her many ‘improvements,’ and so she ended up like this.”
“I see. What an awful person.”
“While she was at it, she kept insisting that, ‘In my mind, this is how a goddess ought to look.’”
“No doubt about it, she must be terrible.”
Apparently, this unfortunate city had been visited by a crazy person. Which also meant that I had allowed myself to become friends with a crazy person.
The official turned to face me.
“Please do something, Madam Witch. It’s so hard for us to have her on display looking like this. Could I please get you to restore her somehow?”
She bowed deeply.
“……”
Well, restoring a plaster statue to its original state shouldn’t be any trouble for a witch, but…
I stared hard at this statue that so closely resembled me.
“This statue is very important to our country,” said the official beside me. “It was gifted to us by another city at the founding of this library of historical records, so…”
The official explained the history of the statue to me as if she had memorized exactly what was written on the placard on the base.
“Long ago, we were able to make quite a lot of money with this statue… That’s what I want to try to do this time around as well. But if it looks like this…you see the problem?”
“……”
Her explanation slipped into vulgar speculation, but I let it pass as best I could.
And then, after the official had finished telling me about her passionate well of feelings for the statue (and about her fixation on money), I had a realization.
“…Can I ask you one thing?”
I turned to look at the official, and she tilted her head.
“You—no, everyone in this history-loving city wants to restart the plaster boom, right? And in doing so, you want to fill the city with statue-loving people, as before, correct?”
“Yes…that’s right.” She nodded and slipped in an unnecessary addendum: “And of course, it’d also be nice make a little money while we’re at it.”
However, the origin of the city’s troubles lay in the fact that people had completely stopped paying attention to statues.
“So you all want to return to the prosperity you had before, right?” I asked.
She nodded.
In that case…
If that’s what you want…
I said to the official, “Well then, I know an even easier method than restoring this statue to the way it was.”
The day the plaster statue was put on display, all sorts of people came to visit, and they exhausted the limits of abusive language.
“To think that there’s a scoundrel who would tamper with such a historical statue!”
“How utterly awful! This can be considered nothing less than disrespect of history!”
“We ought to arrest the villain who did this to the statue at once!”
You could say their outrage was justified.
I don’t know whether she was excited by the project, or maybe overwhelmed, but in any case, earlier, the Charcoal Witch had gotten carried away with the statue, which the official and I had decided to display without further alteration.
Consequently, the plaster statue corner of the library of historical records was crowded with people, and various newspaper reporters were making much of the situation for their articles, which ended up functioning as advertisements for the exhibit and ironically returning the place to its former bustling state.
“Unbelievable…! To meddle with a historical statue in this way!”
“Who on earth could have done this?! This…this…”
“…Huh? It’s kind of cute, isn’t it?”
“…Actually, I think this design is all right, don’t you?”
Young people gathered to try to get a glimpse of a statue that some traveler had desecrated, while those who had been around for the previous plaster boom crowded into the statue corner, nostalgically lamenting days past.
The official let out a sigh as she looked at the packed library.
“…What an incredible crowd…”
She was really taken aback.
“I never thought it would gather attention like this… As someone who loved the statue before, this is a confusing feeling.”
“Who cares?” I replied. “It doesn’t matter if people were or weren’t interested in the original sculpture. That doesn’t change the fact that they’re here to see it now and that the art is reaching a new audience. However it happened, their enthusiasm is authentic.”
At least the people care enough to get angry about some outsider tampering with a plaster statue.
It was no worse a reason than any other.
“But to think it turned out to be a good thing, what the Charcoal Witch did to that statue…,” the official muttered, staring vacantly at the throng. “If we expand into merchandising, we might be able to make quite a lot of money.”
“Mm-hmm.”
I see. I didn’t even consider the merchandising… Just think, if someone were to start selling merchandise featuring the statue in its new condition, the newspapers would definitely make a big show of condemning them. And what do you know, that would draw even more attention to the statue itself. No doubt about it, you could make quite a lot of money selling that merchandise. Ah, but since the statue was modified by Saya, working out the copyright would be a pain… Wait, but if she ever challenges me, I could use the statute of rights to usage of one’s likeness to shield me.
“Lady Witch, are you having wicked thoughts?”
“……No.”
I turned away coldly. This was no time for wicked thoughts. I shook off the ulterior motives that had flashed across my mind.
The noisy crowd continued to fill the library, indifferent to our casual scheming.
“In the end, I don’t suppose you have any intention of returning that statue to normal, do you?” the resigned official grumbled as she gazed at the crowd.
I shook my head just once and answered, “I think that might be for the best.”
And then, secretly, I shared some information with the official.
“The statue was always like that, you know.”
It had always been a different person from the neck down.
[The Case of a Particular Pupil]
“I wonder if a goddess would have a face like this?” My teacher hummed thoughtfully as she patted the plaster statue that I had finished sculpting. “No, maybe it’s better to make her a little cuter…”
“People don’t want a statue of a goddess to be cute.”
“Well then, what do they want, I wonder?”
“A reverent, mysterious beauty…maybe?”
“I see…in other words, someone who looks like me. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Incorrect.”
“Fran, model the face of the goddess after me, won’t you?”
“You’re getting in the way of my repairs. Please go somewhere else and leave me to my work.”
My name is Fran.
This may come as a surprise, but I’d like to write an account of a crime that involved myself and my teacher. There are many parts that will be unpleasant to hear about, but I’d very much appreciate it if you could somehow stick with me until the end.
If I remember correctly, the weather was clear that day.
My teacher and I were travelers, and we were entrusted with a package by a certain city.
It was apparently a statue of a goddess that had sat in the city since antiquity, but just as we were leaving to continue our journey, the people said to us, “Our neighboring city has just completed its library of historical records, and we would like to give them this as a gift,” and asked us to take it. You could say we had the bothersome task foisted upon us.
“That other city hasn’t been around long, so it seems they don’t really have important artifacts like this. To mark the creation of their library of historical records, they put out a request for nearby cities to send them historical documents. And, well, our city is unfortunately not all that interested in such things, so we decided to send them this instead.”
Why on earth would you build a library of historical records if you don’t have much history…?
That question occurred to me, but my teacher had said, “Yes, of course. Allow us to be of assistance,” and exchanged a handshake with the government official, so we ended up transporting the thing.
“Oh, Lady Witch? I was told the shipping charges are to be paid in advance, so here…” I could see the two of them having a stealthy back-and-forth, but I was just an apprentice, so I pretended not to see.
Anyhow, that’s how we came to be transporting a mysterious plaster statue.
And then, immediately after we were outside of the city’s gate—
There came the discussion of who should carry the thing, and my teacher made the proposal, “How about we alternate?” So that’s what we did. As we crossed from one country to another, we rode our brooms and literally tossed it back and forth.
We only discovered the shocking truth after we were well underway.
There was a perfect grove of trees between the two cities, so we decided to take a rest there and brought our brooms down to land.
Once we were on the ground, my teacher said quite innocently, “Come to think of it, I never really got a good look at this goddess statue…” She pulled off the cloth that had been covering the package.
“Ah, now that you mention it, I haven’t looked at it, either.” I waited close behind my teacher to witness the unveiling of the goddess.
But…
“……”
“……”
We put the cloth back.
“It doesn’t have a head…” My teacher had turned pale.
“It doesn’t have arms, either…” I had turned pale.
Did we see it wrong? We must have seen it wrong. That’s right, there’s no way a statue of a goddess would be so incomplete. That would be utterly ridiculous.
I pulled the cloth off again.
“……”
“……”
“It’s a wreck…”
“A total wreck…”
How on earth had the package gotten broken? Let’s think about this, considering the manner in which we had transported the package thus far.
Below are my recollections.
“Heave!” My teacher tossed the package to me with a strong blast of magic.
“Hyah!” I tossed the package back with a strong blast of magic.
“Rrrah!” My teacher tossed the package with…you know the rest.
“Ryah!” I tossed the package…you know the rest.
“Hee-yah!” My teacher…you know the rest.
“Ha-yah!” I…you know the rest.
That’s all.
“I wonder how on earth it got broken… I have no idea…” I gazed off into the distance.
“I know… I can’t even guess how…” My teacher stood beside me, gazing off into the distance.
“……”
“……”
There stood two bewildered travelers in front of a plaster statue that had been broken by their carelessness. Both of us were mages, but we were confronting a problem that could not be solved just by casting spells. So we both simply stood there in silence. Unfortunately, unless we found the damaged parts, the goddess statue would remain missing her head and arms.
There was no way we could deliver it to the library of historical records in its current state.
By the way.
Who on earth could they have been, these two witches at their wits’ end in this hopeless situation?
That’s right, it was us.
Ultimately, we ended up retracing our path, looking to see if the statue’s head and arms were just lying around somewhere. But for some reason, we couldn’t find anything that looked like statue parts anywhere, and in the end, we weren’t really sure what had happened to them.
“Miss! I bought some statue parts!”
So we decided to make new ones.
This is when the conversation I included at the beginning of this account unfolded. We were anxious about what would happen if someone noticed that the face was different and our secret was exposed, but we figured that if anyone asked, we could just say that we were only paid to transport the thing.
We both let out a sigh as we looked at the finished remodel.
“This is…unmistakably a goddess…”
“Wait, isn’t it just your face, Miss?”
“In other words, a goddess, yes.”
“Do you have plaster for brains?”
At any rate, we had tried, with our excellent skills, to repair the damaged head and arms.
There were no traces of the former statue left. From the neck up, it was a beautiful woman. Into its damaged hands, we somehow placed a spear that we bought from a blacksmith’s bargain bin in a nearby city and staged it to look right. I had taken the restoration of the goddess statue seriously until about halfway through the process, but then my teacher had decided to make the goddess’s face look nearly identical to her own, and I had decided that I didn’t care anymore.
“I think we probably won’t get any complaints if it looks like this.”
“You’re right. I think it’s perfect.”
“How about it? It’s lovely, resembling me, right?”
“You’re right. I think it’s perfect.”
My teacher was filled with mysterious confidence, and my eyes were like those of a dead fish. We carried the plaster statue to the city that had recently erected its library of historical records.
However…
The government official who came to greet us stared at the goddess statue and frowned.
“This is…the goddess statue…?” the official asked, wearing a puzzled expression. “I had heard that the goddess statue was missing its head and arms, but…?”
We were stunned. It was like heaven itself had come crashing down on us.
This is something that I heard later in secret, but apparently, the goddess statue had originally lost its arms during a war.
In other words, everything would have been fine if we had just transported the package with innocent looks on our faces.
We had ended up causing even more trouble, and now we were in a major bind.
“Um…actually, they found them right before we came to your city. She got fixed!” My flustered teacher let her mouth run.
You can’t possibly think she’s going to be fooled by an explanation like—
“Is that really true?! Wow! And my goodness, she’s beautiful.”
Oh, she was fooled. That was easy.
“She is beautiful, isn’t she? Well, she is a goddess, after all.” My teacher was wearing a very satisfied expression.
“Thank you so much. This is sure to bring crowds to our library of historical records.”
“Oh-hoh-hoh, don’t mention it! We only did what was natural as travelers.” It wasn’t clear whether or not my teacher knew that she wasn’t under suspicion, but she kept wearing her satisfied expression.
As I stared vacantly at the two of them—the government official and my teacher—I felt fairly relieved.
After a short while, the official said, “Oh, Madam Witch? I was told that the shipping charges were to be paid on arrival, so here…,” and the two of them started a hushed exchange. But I was just an apprentice, so I pretended not to see. I wasn’t privy to the particulars of the deal, so I kept quiet.
Later, we heard that a rumor that the head and arms of the goddess statue had been repaired spread through the countryside like wildfire. In fact, a new rumor that the goddess had somehow regrown the parts she had lost during the war began to circulate, and for better or worse, the city and its library of historical records found itself at the center of an unprecedented history boom.
Although, most of the visitors who came from foreign countries immediately realized the head and arms were obvious fakes, and so the hype died down.
These days, I hear that the story of the two travelers who got carried away messing with the statue became more famous outside of the city, yet even now, I’m still concealing the fact that I was one of those travelers.
I’d like to carry the tale of this incident to my grave.
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