The Blue Road Home (3)

When a ship heading west turns left, it heads south.

You may think I'm stating the obvious, but here, heading south more specifically means moving away from the continent.

As I mentioned briefly before, ships sailing in this world choose routes that avoid the territories of large monsters that might attack them.

Otherwise, a large monster will sink the ship, leaving crew and cargo as flotsam on the sea.

Even if people escaped a sinking ship in a small boat, a boat that size could still be attacked by monsters that weren't even particularly large.

In other words, if a ship sinks at sea, there is basically no way to survive, barring exceptions like me.

If they were extraordinarily lucky, they might even wash ashore safely.

That was why information about the territories of large monsters was so important to sailors, and why it was shared or guarded so strictly.

Ordinary sailors never failed to gather information about monsters in nearby waters whenever they reached a port, while national navies carefully managed their intelligence to keep it from leaking to other countries.

Naturally, information about monster territories would be more detailed and complete in waters closer to the continent.

Conversely, routes leading away from the continent were often unknown beyond a certain point and more dangerous, so most sailors disliked them.

There were exceptions, of course: in places like the nation of Fuso, where merfolk lived in the nearby sea and cooperated with people on land, information was available and ships could sail relatively safely even far from the continent.

Trade with another continent, in particular, would be absolutely impossible without the merfolk's assistance.

In any case, because of these circumstances, the warship soon gave up pursuing the ship that had fled south.

That did not mean this ship could return to its original route now, however.

If it did, the warship would surely detect and capture this ship.

According to the information Suin had as the ship's captain, there was only one safe route south through these waters.

It was the route that called at an island named Badomod, a port of call that had not originally been on our itinerary.

About four thousand humans lived on Badomod; I had no idea whether that was a large or small population, but... apparently, the island's ruler was not human.

Suin warned me before we entered port that, astonishingly, fairies effectively ruled Badomod.

Yes, the same ill-natured race that had also inhabited the Great Grassland.

Yet the people of Badomod treated the fairies nesting in the center of the island like gods, offering them fish caught at sea and harvested fruit and living by appeasing them.

The fairies sometimes abducted human children and incorporated them into their collective consciousness, but the humans on the island revered even that, calling it a blessing.

It seemed utterly insane to me... but if that was their faith, it was not my place as an outsider to interfere.

When I heard more details, it seemed the people of Badomod were granted honey produced by the fairies, which they enjoyed as a luxury.

Only the island's humans were permitted to consume it, and apparently licking it brought about a feeling of euphoria.

Long ago, a sailor reportedly succumbed to curiosity, stole some, and tasted it, after which the island's people executed the sailor; they said that blissful smile never left the sailor's face until the moment the executioner's blade took the sailor's head.

Apparently, a fellow sailor secretly went to rescue the condemned sailor before the execution, but the sailor refused to flee, even after learning the execution was certain, saying that leaving the island for a place without honey was out of the question.

Euphoria and addiction... however I looked at it, this was no ordinary substance.

In short, well, that was the sort of island Badomod was.

Because the fairies' whereabouts here were well known, exterminating them probably wouldn't be impossible.

But the people of the island would not want that.

Besides, it wasn't my place to interfere, and there was no reason for me to get involved.

So to avoid unnecessary trouble, I decided to remain aboard the ship while we were in port at Badomod.

The fairies' senses were sharper than those of humans, so if a threat like me set foot in their territory, I might provoke an excessive reaction.

Captain Suin went with the navigator to gather information about the surrounding seas, while the purser in charge of trade seemed busy reworking the trade plan thrown into disarray by our sudden port call.

A port was a facility for bringing in wealth from outside, and maintaining one required no small amount of effort, so apparently, once a ship had docked, it could not simply leave without conducting any business.

They had to consider the route ahead, choose what to sell at Badomod, and decide what goods and quantities to take on to fill the empty space in the holds.

Naturally, the goods they purchased had to be items in demand that could be sold at the ports farther along our route.

Rebuilding a carefully prepared trade plan was surely no simple task.

Consequently, the ship would likely remain at Badomod for two or three days.

On deck, I dangled the line from a fishing rod borrowed from one of the sailors into the sea and gazed idly up at the sky.

The sunlight was strong, and the sky was an unusually deep blue.

That was only natural for a southern island I had reached by ship, but there were many differences from the continent.

Even the wind blowing around us and the spirits dwelling in the sea seemed somehow more cheerful.

Come to think of it, I had heard somewhere that flying insects such as grasshoppers sometimes crossed the sea riding on the wind.

Had the fairies on this island crossed the sea from the continent in the same way?

If so, there were several things I found a little strange, and I tilted my head in puzzlement.

After all, fairies were a race that cast aside individuality, formed a collective consciousness, and sought to achieve immortality.

But no matter how powerful fairies were, it was hard to imagine their ability to link with one another extending without limit.

So this was merely my own conjecture, but perhaps fairies normally belonged to the collective consciousness of their own group, contacted other groups when necessary, and backed one another up.

Perhaps that was how they preserved their immortality as a species.

But if my guess was correct, the fairies of Badomod were outside that species-wide immortality.

It went without saying that on this island, separated from the continent by the sea, travel back and forth would be far from easy.

Even if fairies could fly, whether their light bodies could ride the wind all the way to this island would be a complete gamble.

What reason could they have for living in a place where they had to take such risks?

I suspected that the fairies of this island had deliberately chosen to live somewhere they could not receive support... no, to put it more plainly, I thought they had been exiled.

Of course, I had no idea why.

Had they done something that caused the fairy race to cut them off?

Or had they embraced beliefs that the fairy race could not accept?

Or perhaps they had contracted some disease harmful to the fairy race?

In any case, if a group of fairies that could no longer live on the continent had thrown themselves into the sea in a desperate, possibly fatal attempt and reached this island, their arrival would be a stroke of luck they had won for themselves.

If the result was a peaceful coexistence between humans and fairies, I found that interesting in its own way.

Even if the means they employed did not accord with my own sense of ethics.

As I was lost in thought, the fishing rod in my hands bent sharply with a powerful tug.

...Judging by the strength of the pull, it had to be a fairly large fish.

Without panicking or trying to force the rod upright, I worked it in time with the fish's movements and patiently waited for my opponent to tire.

Now then, what sort of fish would I catch on this southern island, where the sunlight, sky, and even the wind were all different?