Chapter 3
To the south of Quaalid stood a hunter’s cabin.
When people heard “hunter’s cabin,” they imagined the stench of scattered animal carcasses and scraps, but Tarmin’s cabin was clean.
That was because he traded or otherwise disposed of most of his game that same day.
There were hooks for hanging game, a butchering table, and a stand for twisting rope by hand, but his father had been the one to use them, and by Tarmin’s time they had been all but abandoned.
His father had never liked the roads being built or living within the city walls, and as soon as Tarmin was old enough to live on his own, he left the city without a second thought.
Beside that cabin stood the home of his childhood friend.
Unlike the hunter’s home, crowded with worktables, the area in front of Enya’s house was completely empty.
As if no one lived there.
**
Elenora Addis was the daughter of the Addis family, which ruled Quaalid.
And she was an eccentric who had repeatedly summoned Tarmin to take her hunting.
“Tarmin, you’re late.”
“I’m sorry, my lady. But it’s not as though anything urgent happened, is it?”
“That’s true, though.”
Though Tarmin apologized, he wasn’t particularly deferential. Elenora didn’t seem inclined to reprimand him, either.
On an autumn day, ideal for hunting plump game, Tarmin was accompanying a noble young lady.
The nature of these outings was why he behaved unlike himself.
When nobles brought hunters along, it was usually to help with the hunt, but Elenora had no bow, didn’t ride a horse, and brought no beaters.
All she did was follow behind Tarmin as he hunted.
Sometimes she took the game he caught and reported it as though it were her own achievement, but scouring the woods or lakeshore didn’t guarantee a successful hunt every time.
Besides, the woods were still dangerous for a young lady to wander through.
Though they had been hunted until they vanished, the northwest shore of Quaalid had once been a dangerous place no one dared visit because of werewolf sightings.
Tarmin remembered watching his father hunt werewolves for a paying client.
A black-furred werewolf so huge that an arrow looked comical beside it.
The way it charged in an instant and swung claws sharp as daggers.
They were said to be extinct, but there was no guarantee that nothing lurked in the darkness beyond the forest.
Even without monsters, the woods were dangerous. Poachers, for instance.
They would be carrying weapons for hunting, even if they were crude bows or spears.
Most cases ended with their weapons confiscated and a fine, but that didn’t mean poachers couldn’t have ill intentions.
If a young lady from a noble house got hurt, even by chance, Tarmin would be held responsible.
“This sort of adventure is dangerous.”
“I’ve told you repeatedly, I can protect myself.”
At their first meeting, Elenora had shown him the sword at her waist, saying she could protect herself.
Seeing the short little blade of the sort a young lady might wear did nothing to ease Tarmin’s concern.
Her well-kept brown hair, befitting a noble, fell smoothly to her waist, and her practical white trousers and snug boots looked lovely, but to Tarmin she was a walking disaster.
When he spent the day on edge, watching the path ahead while keeping an eye on Elenora behind him, he would get home and collapse into sleep, then be bedridden until the following day.
As their meetings continued, he gradually let his guard down around Elenora.
Familiarity was most dangerous. Predators struck back when hunters let their guard down.
Those were the words of his hunter father, though even his father had probably never hunted with a noble young lady watching from behind.
And then there was Enya’s problem.
She seemed to be living off the money she’d earned as a hero, but from what Tarmin had observed over the past few days, Enya wasn’t doing anything at all.
He couldn’t understand why she sat around as though she’d lost all will to live.
She could have earned others’ respect or lived in luxury, among any number of other possibilities.
Rubbing his still-aching shin, he spoke to the young lady.
“Shall we get going, then?”
“Yes. Where are we going today?”
“I thought we could make a circuit around Dumo Lake.”
**
Elenora followed the young hunter walking ahead.
She had spent a considerable sum to join him on his hunts partly to avoid tutors who taught her useless things, but her true purpose was something else.
Tarmin, the archer and guide of the hero’s party.
She wanted to see what he was really capable of.
When Tarmin left the party and returned to Quaalid, people who recognized his potential tried to hire him.
Tarmin turned down every offer and remained an ordinary hunter.
People doubted his claim that he lacked talent, but Tarmin truly lived as an ordinary hunter and was quickly forgotten.
Compared with the heroic deeds of the party—literally ‘splitting mountains and lifting the earth’—he really was ordinary.
People concluded that he had been expelled from the hero’s party because he was so ordinary.
Amid all that, only Elenora had never taken her eyes off him.
Her brothers sometimes criticized her, calling her irrational, but she believed he had potential.
Long ago, a wicked sorcerer was said to have created the trials.
Those who overcame the trials, risking their lives, received blessings.
Tarmin had certainly challenged those perilous trials—so dangerous that overcoming even one earned a person respect.
Though he had dropped out partway through, he had overcome several trials before then.
Tarmin, who had been so wary that he never let any weakness show, was now somewhat off his guard. He looked haggard, perhaps from not sleeping well, and kept rubbing his leg—a habit he hadn’t had before.
Today might be the day she witnessed something.
“Are you tired?”
Tarmin, who had been walking absentmindedly, startled and answered.
“What? Oh, no. I’m fine.”
Tarmin fell silent again, and it frustrated her.
“Tarmin.”
She was trying to find something else to say when Tarmin quietly raised a hand.
Following his gesture to draw her attention, she looked ahead. A stag with enormous antlers was drinking at the lakeshore.
Though it was a considerable distance away, Tarmin had already taken his bow from his shoulder and nocked an arrow.
Whenever he prepared his bow, Elenora always felt an itch.
It was as if the air had grown thick and was tickling her skin.
She couldn’t bear not knowing what it was.
If she were a man, could she have gotten closer to him?
Sadly, to Tarmin, she was a highborn lady—and a woman. They had lived in different worlds and had different interests.
If they became friends who could open their hearts a little more, she might be able to hear about his circumstances.
What would Tarmin’s friend call him?
It was a completely spontaneous thought. But she was an Addis.
“Taal?”
“Ugh!”
For an instant, the bowstring wavered, and the arrow flew.
And she witnessed it.
The arrow, which had seemed destined to trace a crooked arc and bury itself in the ground, rose into the air.
And pierced the deer’s neck.
The startled deer leaped this way and that, but it wouldn’t get far.
Tarmin looked at her, flustered.
Elenora smiled.
**
Enya was lying on the bed, gazing at the ring.
She rolled the ring, caught on her fingertip, around and sighed.
That question about how she wanted to be treated.
It was Enya herself who wanted to ask that.
She had returned to her hometown, to Taal’s side.
She had hesitated, but in the end, she had faced him and greeted him.
Say, “I’m back,” and “It’s been a while,” then give the ring back.
Then live an ordinary life as the neighbor of her childhood friend, the hunter.
That had been the original plan, but one moment of caprice had caused a problem.
The ring. The precious ring given to her by a precious friend.
She was only stopping him from taking back what was his, but before she knew it, she’d gotten angry and refused.
She remembered the bewildered look on Taal’s face.
“Why didn’t I give it back?”
Had Taal left instead of asking why out of consideration for her, or had he really just been busy?
In the few years since she’d last seen him, Taal had become a capable hunter.
She didn’t want to disrupt Taal’s daily life.
She hugged the pillow, turned over, and lay on her side.
If she lay like this, her clothes would wrinkle. And the hair she’d spent so long brushing would get messed up, too.
The thought made Enya feel miserable, and yet she couldn’t help smiling.
Just a few months ago, Enya had slept in damp underground chambers with monsters’ limbs for pillows; now, a wrinkled skirt was enough to cause concern.
She remembered the witch in their party, the only woman among them, looking utterly disgusted and stubbornly refusing to camp outdoors. Thinking back now, Enya regretted how inconsiderate the group had been.
Still, she didn’t want to wear wrinkled clothes, so she finally sat up.
-Instead, how do you want me to treat you?
She’d answered that thoughtless question with a vague, “Do whatever you want.”
Taal’s friend Enya. That much should have been enough, but…
He was demanding that she reveal what she was.
Whether she was a deer or a wolf, prey or hunter.
She got angry again.
Was it because her body had changed that her emotions were swinging so easily, too?
Even if she asked to be treated as a man, Enya knew.
She could no longer go back to how things had been.
The blessings that had disappeared.
Her weakened body and Taal’s considerate gestures.
But asking him to treat her as a woman somehow felt like she was trying to seduce him.
Like she was asking him to pay attention to her.
So, in a fit of anger, she kicked him in the shin.
She didn’t need to be a man or a woman.
Being Taal’s friend. That was enough.
Having made up her mind, Enya got to her feet.
She’d decided.
She would give him the ring back and return to a relationship where neither of them owed the other anything or expected anything.
**