We’ve arrived at the watermill built beside the stream. A large wheel turns at a leisurely pace, and separate from the building housing the millstone, there’s a dwelling constructed for people to live in. Daon appears to be suggesting we stay here.
“This is going to be our home…”
“My parents used this place until recently. …It’s been kept clean, so you should be able to move right in. Though the people of the village may come to borrow the millstone.”
Peeking into the dwelling, it does seem to have been kept clean. Furniture remains even without anyone living there. He says his parents used it, but no one resembling his parents was in the village. …They must have passed away already. And yet he had gone on carefully maintaining the home they’d lived in.
(Is this really alright…? This is probably a place with memories, something precious to him… if we move in and start changing things around, will he be angry?)
I was thinking this and looking at Daon when Noel noticed my gaze.
“Isn’t this an important place to you? Ma’am Witch seems to be wondering whether it’s really alright for us to use it.”
“I’ve come to terms with my parents’ passing. Cleaning it was simply habit. A house lasts longer when people live in it. This one too would be better off with someone using it. Please make it your own however you like, ma’am Witch.”
That settles it — we can change things around to make it more livable. Noel happily started going through the interior. I peered in from the entrance too: the furniture from when people lived here remains as it is, tableware and all, so it looks like we could start living here immediately.
“By the way, ma’am Witch. I understand you’ve lost your voice.”
(Yes, yes. That’s the story.)
“The villagers cannot read, but I can. If there’s anything you need, I’ll arrange it — for the time being, writing in the dirt would be fine.”
True enough, I can’t speak. Noel had never asked me to write things down, so I’d simply carried on without it, but apparently most people here just don’t know how to read.
(Probably, the way things work here, a witch would of course know letters. Not writing would seem strange… but the only writing I know is Japanese… w-will that be alright…?)
Not writing at all would be suspicious. Given that, writing in a script no one can read is at least more human than writing nothing. There might even be foreign countries here, and they might assume it’s a foreign script. And besides — since we’re apparently speaking the same language, I have some small hope that the letters might somehow carry through too. With that expectation, I grew a branch and wrote in the dirt.
[There is nothing in particular I need at the moment]
“…Ma’am Witch, this writing… I cannot read it.”
So Japanese script is unreadable here. The same spoken language, but different writing — that’s been confirmed. It’s proper lettering, not something a monster scratched randomly, but how is Daon taking it? He’s staring at it with a difficult expression, and I’m on the verge of trembling — and then he lets out a long, resigned sigh.
“This is ancient script, isn’t it? I’ve seen writing with a similar shape to this before. I’m afraid I can’t read it. …Could it be, ma’am Witch, that you’ve spent the past five hundred years without ever coming down to where people live?”
(Hm? Why five hundred years?)
“For five hundred years, it was said that the only surviving Mage-folk was a single sorcerer. But then you appeared. An unknown witch who survived — which would mean you had gone all that time without showing yourself to anyone.”
From the way he’s phrasing it, “witch” seems to be a subset of the group called Mage-folk. Since they distinguish between “sorcerer” and “witch,” perhaps it’s simply a gendered split in what they’re called.
(So I’m understood to be a witch within the Mage-folk. …Actually, the Mage-folk live a very long time, don’t they? Five hundred years being perfectly normal is quite beyond human. …But there’s only one left? That one is probably still alive.)
Apparently, the Mage-folk were almost entirely wiped out five hundred years ago. Noel did well to decide I was a witch with that little to go on. I’m very grateful it worked out, but still.
If anything, maybe it’s precisely because the only confirmed survivor is a single individual that people haven’t grown too familiar with their way of life — which might be why someone like me can pass as a “witch” at all.
“That sorcerer is currently in the royal capital — serving the king, working in the palace as a court mage.”
Daon glanced briefly in a direction that wasn’t here. The royal capital must be that way. A genuine surviving Mage-folk lives there. The thought makes me anxious, and my expression clouds without my meaning it to.
“Does it worry you — a member of your own kind? You wouldn’t have known there was a survivor, living apart from people all this time. That’s understandable.”
*(No… what worries me is precisely that they’re *not* my kind…)*
To a genuine Mage-folk, a counterfeit one might be easy to see through. The problem, in short: I’ve simply been going along with people treating me as a witch because they don’t know enough about Mage-folk to question it. What would the last genuine Mage-folk think if they saw me?
They might notice something off and point out that I’m not actually a witch. And if my true identity as a monster came out from there —
(Ugh… terrifying. I need to pray we never meet…)
But this village is close to the monster-inhabited mountains — probably out in the countryside. The royal capital would be at the heart of the kingdom, and if the court mage works there, the chance of meeting a real Mage-folk should be vanishingly small.
“The court mage rarely leaves the castle, so meeting would be difficult regardless.”
(Oh, really? Thank goodness!)
“But if fate brings you together, perhaps you will meet. You are the same kind, after all — surely someday…!”
(No thank you. Really, genuinely, no thank you…!!)
A scream reverberates inside me so hard I want to die; my face smiles anyway. Daon, watching me, smiles back with an oddly satisfied expression. In his head, perhaps, a touching story is taking shape — “two survivors of an ancient people, each believing themselves alone for five hundred years, finally reunited.” The reality, however, is: “the last surviving Mage-folk, anticipating a reunion with their own kind, arrives to find a monster impersonating one, and may well fly into a righteous fury upon discovering the deception.”
This would be very bad. Nothing about that ending looks good.
(Please, please, may we never ever meet…!)
And that was all I could do — pray desperately with everything I had.