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“Um, Zinal, your words don’t match your actions,” Fische said. “If you really don’t want to relax, maybe stop eating cookies.”
He had a point. For somebody dissatisfied with what we were doing, he sure was scarfing down cookies like there was no tomorrow.
Ah! He’s already going for another cookie! And he’s even petting Sol with his other hand…
“Do most people whip out a table and have a tea break in the middle of a cave?” Zinal argued.
It occurred to me then that we hadn’t actually had a leisurely break like this in a cave before Zinal and Fische joined our caravan.
“Sometimes people do—like we’re doing right now,” my father argued.
“Well, sure… I guess all the common sense I’ve gleaned over the years goes out the window when Ciel is involved—oh, right!” Zinal reached into his magic bag and pulled out some more sweets. “I forgot to take these out. These Hataha sweets were so good, I brought more for the road. Have you had them before, Ivy?”
The sweets Zinal set on the table in front of him were a purple-colored baked confectionary. Since I had neither seen nor eaten them before, I shook my head no.
“This is my first time seeing them.”
“A little shop tucked away in a corner off Main Street sells them,” Zinal said. “They’re made with a vegetable called mool.”
“Mool?!” My father shoved Zinal’s hand away before he could offer me a treat. “Don’t feed us anything made from that gross vegetable!”
It’s gross? I shot a worried look at Zinal, who laughed and shook his head.
“It’s easy to assume that, since it’s made with a very pungent vegetable, but trust me, these sweets aren’t disgusting at all.”
Zinal looked at Fische for support, and he nodded. My father gave them a skeptical look. Was the vegetable really that disgusting?
“Are you sure it’s good?” my father asked.
“Yeah. If you don’t believe us, watch us eat some.” With that, Zinal popped a mool cookie into his mouth. My father looked a bit shocked by it. I wasn’t sure why, but I was now very curious about mool. Just how pungent was it?
“Wow, you really ate it…” My father’s brows knit as he grabbed a cookie and stared at it…then he took a tiny bite. “It’s…not pungent.”
“Right?”
“It’s good.”
“Yeah, it’s good.” Zinal smirked smugly. “There’s a little settlement between Hataka and Hatahi Villages. That’s where they remove the disgusting flavor from mool, and they use it in everything. The baker selling these cookies is actually a descendant of the people from that settlement, so he knows how to get the pungent odor out of the mool.”
I took one of the cookies and tried it. It immediately crumbled and melted away in my mouth. Maybe that was the mool?
“What do you think?” Zinal asked me.
“It really melts in the mouth, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, exactly. That’s what’s so great about them.”
They were indeed very good. And they weren’t too sweet, either, so I could easily imagine eating a lot of them in one sitting.
Mrrrow.
Everyone turned to look at Ciel, who had become a central bed for all the dorya to sleep around. Tired from playing, it was ready to take a break with us.
“Really, what a strange sight that is…” Zinal marveled.
Fische nodded. “A pile of adandara and dorya… Wait, huh?” Fische tilted his head in thought.
“What’s up?” Zinal asked.
“Nothing, I just thought I remembered a little factoid about adandaras and dorya… What was it again? Huh… Oh! Yes, it’s what you said earlier about guardian deities! Yeah, I was racking my brain earlier trying to make the connection, but that’s it!”
Fische gave another satisfied nod to himself, but Zinal and my father both looked confused. None of us had any idea what he was talking about. Even Zinal, Fische’s party-mate, was frowning at him dubiously.
“Fische. What are you talking about?” Zinal pestered his friend, who was a little overly excited about his recollection.
“Hm? Don’t you remember? Haven’t you read that book that says both adandaras and dorya are guardian deities of caves?”
Both adandaras and dorya are cave deities? Is there really a book that says that?
“A book…? Ohh, right, you mean the one we read when we were still in our teens!”
Fische happily nodded at Zinal.
“What book is it?” my father asked them.
I wanna know, too! If a book like that exists, I wanna read it!
“Next to the royal capital, in a bookshop in the Town of Kashime, there’s a book that looks different from the rest. They only had one copy and they let us read it, and that’s where we read about dorya and adandaras, right?” Fische asked Zinal.
A book that looks different from the rest?
“What does the book look like?” I asked.
“It’s this thick,” Zinal said, making a space of three centimeters between his hands. Seeing the gesture confused me. Every book I had seen in a bookstore so far was a thin stack of papers tied together with string. I seemed to remember books were thin because the pages were difficult to turn and easy to damage if you tied too many of them together.
“And it’s not tied together with string, but it’s still a very sturdy book,” Zinal added.
It’s not tied together with string? That might be like the book the fortune-teller gave me. Since I’d shown the book to my father, he was also hanging onto Zinal’s every word.
“Even the cover was a lot sturdier than the covers of books held together with string, wasn’t it?” Fische said. Zinal nodded.
Maybe it was just like the book the fortune-teller gave me. I had never seen another book like it in bookstores, so I had given up looking, but it turned out they did exist.
“Does that bookstore in Kashime have lots of books like this? Are they in the royal capital, too?” I asked.
Zinal and Fische shook their heads. “Nope, the only copy I’ve seen of a book like I’ve just described was the one in that bookshop in Kashime. Haven’t seen any like it in the capital, either.”
So it’s only in that one shop? Zinal’s explanation gave me pause.
“And the owner of that bookshop is stubborn and gets in petty disputes a lot,” Fische added. “Well, usually the pettiness comes from the noblemen and rich bastards who pick fights with him.”
Zinal smiled cynically at Fische’s description. “That’s right. We got acquainted with that bookshop on a gig for the adventurer guild. Some fools were harassing the bookshop owner at the time, so we helped arbitrate.”
The adventurer guild helped arbitrate a dispute? I didn’t know they did that, too.
“Since that bookshop carries all sorts of unusual books like the one we just talked about, some entitled jackasses kept pestering the owner to sell them. And they could have gracefully given up when he turned them down, but so many idiots tried to use their authority and money to get their way.”
Ah…I can picture that.
“I can imagine how the scorned noblemen behaved…” my father muttered.
Zinal grimaced and nodded. “I’m sure you can. But books are a bookshop’s assets, so it’s hard even for a nobleman to take them away without the owner’s permission. And a nobleman’s biggest shame is being caught and sued if they try something shady. That’s why they hire rogues and low-level adventurers to do their dirty work, and why the requests come flying in for guys like us to dispose of those destructive fools.”
Gee, a bookshop owner’s life sure sounds hectic.
“So after who knows how many requests came in and we got rid of the rogues, we told the bookshop owner that if he wouldn’t sell that book, he should at least make copies and sell those. People who wanted to read the book wouldn’t care if it looked different, and at the very least, he wouldn’t get so many people coming to pick fights over it.”
I supposed this strategy wouldn’t work for people who were lured by the book’s rareness, but people who only wanted to know what it said indeed wouldn’t care how it looked.
“Well, he turned us down right away, though.”
They got turned down?
“Apparently, only the book’s true owner can understand what it says.”
“The book’s true owner?” my father asked Zinal back.
“Yeah, true owner—those were the exact words. I thought it was strange and had to ask to hear it again myself.”
Their conversation raised my eyebrows. The words true owner… Why did they sound troubling to me?
“And just who is this true owner?” my father asked.
“Well…” Zinal took a heavy breath in and out. “He said, ‘The true owner isn’t here yet but will appear someday.’”
Will appear someday… That sounds like they don’t exist yet. How do they even know, then?
“What…the hell? That makes no sense.”
“Exactly, Druid. Baffled us, too. We tried asking for more information but got no answers.” Fische shrugged his shoulders.
“Yeah, but he did say something weird to us, remember?” Zinal said to Fische, who gave him a quizzical look in return. “Wait, were you not with me when he said it? Maybe it was Garrit. Anyway, he said, ‘These books will disappear when they are no longer needed. It’s best for them to disappear before their owner sees them.’”
“What?!” everyone else exclaimed.
Ah! My father and Fische seem to finally be feeling the same way. Too bad they had to agree over something so cryptic like this. Still, I really am curious about that bookstore.
I leaned against the cave wall and looked inside my magic bag, which held the book the fortune-teller had given me. Maybe I should show it to Zinal…