Before I could capitulate to their dejected faces, a different voice interjected gently. “Am I not good enough?” Sir Leonhart knelt to meet the children’s eye level.
“You’ll play with us?”
“Mm-hmm, if you’re satisfied with me, I’d love to.” Sir Leonhart smiled softly as he patted their heads with his large hands. His amicable smile dispelled the children’s wariness, and they quickly peeled themselves away from me to surround my husband.
The soft expression Sir Leonhart shows children has a different charm from the sweet smile he gives me. I wonder if he’ll smile at our child like that too. Imagining the nearby future filled my heart with bliss.
“Rose, why don’t you rest for a while?” he suggested.
“Duchess, if you’d like, you can rest over here.”
“Please take it easy!”
The women working beneath the shade of a tree called out to me. They were sitting on a large cloth and moved closer together to make room for me to sit with them.
“Oh, but won’t your dress get dirty?”
“How about you use this?”
One after another, they handed me things like a cushion and a shawl.
“Thank you,” I said and joined their circle without hesitation. “I’m sorry for interrupting your work.”
“Please, don’t worry about it.”
“It’s not a problem at all! I was busier moving my mouth than my hands.”
“You can say that again,” a woman agreed jokingly.
Both of them laughed merrily. However, contrary to their words, their hands never stopped moving. Sorting vegetables, wiping them with cloth—they were doing a variety of tasks with practiced ease. The woman who looked to be in her sixties was especially impressive. Her dexterous fingers wove a rattan basket with jaw-dropping speed.
Her calm cadence and tender smile clash with her working speed. My brain’s bugging out just watching her.
“Amazing...” I accidentally blurted out loud.
The young woman sitting next to me gave a big nod in agreement. “I understand how you feel. It’s shocking how fast Gerda can weave. I tried to copy her, but I just can’t do it.”
“It’ll come to you easy once you get used to it,” Gerda said like it was no big deal. “I’ll teach you everything before you get married.”
“I’d love that, but I don’t have anyone to marry...”
“Tell me about it. When will my daughter become a bride?”
“Sh-Shut up, mom! I can find a lover or two if I feel like it.”
“Just one is enough, so hurry up and find him.”
It was a fast-paced conversation, and their cheerful voices were pleasant to the ear. My mood and face muscles naturally softened.
“Well, in the first place, there aren’t many occasions where I can meet someone.”
“We used to have more events where people gathered, but we don’t really do that much these days.”
“When we were young, festivals were a place for encounters,” Gerda said.
The young woman leaned forward curiously. “Aren’t festivals just days when you get to eat meat for dinner?”
“They used to be large-scale affairs back in the day. People would bring food and a strong drink to the square and make a big hoopla all day. The young’uns would dance to music and sing. It was the perfect opportunity to invite out the person you were interested in, so many found their spouses there.”
“In my time, the scale wasn’t so large, but we still held festivals. Your father asked me to dance with him, and that’s how we got close.”
“Mom, you can dance?!”
“How rude. I taught you how to sing and dance when you were little. Don’t you remember this tune?” The mother began to hum a jaunty melody. Everyone’s body swayed in rhythm with the jovial song.
This song must be well-known to the people in this area.
“It was a festival song.”
“To be more precise, it was a song of gratitude offered to the fertility goddess.”
My ears pricked up. Since I wanted to liven up the harvest festival, their conversation was giving me information I couldn’t afford to miss.
Most people in this world are polytheistic, and Nevel is no exception. There aren’t eight million deities like in Shinto, but they still have their fair share of deities. They have more than the big hitters like deities of the sun or underworld—they also have a great variety of minor deities that preside over more mundane, close-to-home things like textiles and the hearth.
Among those, the fertility goddess is fairly famous. The majority of people involved in agriculture worship her, and she’s the object of prayers during harvest festivals and planting festivals.
“I think everyone above forty or fifty can sing and dance it. I haven’t touched an instrument in a long time, so I might’ve forgotten how to play it.”
“How nostalgic. There was an older girl in my neighborhood who was an excellent singer. I was awfully jealous when she received so many flowers that she couldn’t hold them all in her hands! So I practiced singing like my life depended on it.”
“Is there a custom of giving people flowers during the festival?” I asked.
The mothers in the group all nodded.
“Yes! At least, there was in the past. A man would give flowers to the woman they carried a torch for, and if she accepted them, the pair would join the ring of dancers.”
“I kept a straight face when I accepted them, but I was jumping for joy on the inside. The next day, all the girls gathered at the house of someone who owned books, and we jabbered away as we looked up the flowers’ meanings.”
The women’s eyes narrowed as they reminisced fondly.
The young woman who had been listening to them speak with keen interest sighed, her cheeks tinged faint pink. “How nice. I’d like to have such a wonderful experience too.”
“E-Excuse me!” I suddenly spoke up loudly.
The young woman’s eyes went round. The others also turned their attention to me, curious about what I had to say.
“Why don’t we have a festival?” I broached the topic in a way that would’ve made my father heave a heavy sigh. I could easily imagine him lamenting, “You’re a terrible negotiator, as always.”
“A festival? Do you mean a harvest festival?”
“We do intend to butcher one of our cattle and share it with each household, as we usually do, but that isn’t what you’re talking about, is it?”
I nodded frantically, and Gerda peered at me with kind eyes. She had been the one to guide their mundane conversation in the direction of the festival. I had a feeling she’d heard from the mayor my goal for visiting them today. I have to make the most of her assist! I won’t miss this chance.