Chapter 517:
The Legend
“SO, I HAD A LITTLE QUESTION on my mind,” Zinal said.
Fische was pulling sweets out of the magic bag that had groceries in it. I was surprised he still had room in his stomach.
“What is it?” my father asked.
“Oh, not for you, Druid. For Ivy.”
“For me?”
What could it be?
“It’s how you talk about the fortune-teller. You call her Fortune-Teller, right? Usually people add the fortune-teller’s name after the title, or they call them Fortune-Tellers of Kashime—why do you call her simply the fortune-teller?”
Huh? The fortune-teller’s name? Well, her name was Ruba, if I recall correctly. Come to think of it, why don’t I call her by name? Huh? Wait, I did hear lots of people in the village calling her “Fortune-Teller Ruba.” So I must have called her that at first, right?
“I’m not sure why…” I mused.
I have a feeling the fortune-teller told me something. It was “My name…” Huh? What did she tell me? It was such a stressful time in my life that my memories are all mixed up.
“I’m sorry, I don’t remember,” I answered.
“Ah, that’s all right. It’s a nitpicky question anyway; I was just curious.”
When I met her in the village, my family called her Fortune-Teller Ruba, so I must have called her that, too. And when I met her in the forest…I would have been wary of her at first… Oh, I remember now. When I first met her in the forest, she was sitting next to me when I woke up. I remember being very startled by that. And her name… I think I couldn’t remember her name then… Yeah, I think I forgot it. Then the fortune-teller told me why she was with me and taught me how to survive in the forest… I think I didn’t remember her name all the way until the end. But the next time I saw her, I remember calling her by name. But if I recall correctly, the fortune-teller was… Wait a minute, what? I feel like something important happened, but I can’t remember?
“It’s not a big deal, so no need to rack your brain over it,” Fische assured me. “Some people don’t call fortune-tellers by their names.”
I was probably worrying everyone by getting so lost in thought. When I nodded at him in gratitude, he handed me a cookie from his magic bag. I took it and popped it in my mouth.
“Don’t eat too much or you’ll spoil your dinner,” my father said. I gave him a questioning look. “We’re probably going to spend the night in this cave,” he continued.
Huh? Is it already that late? You know, Ciel was probably playing for about two hours. We ate lunch here in the cave…and I think we walked about two hours, too…
“Yeah, I guess it’s time for us to start thinking about dinner,” I replied.
“I love being with you guys,” Zinal chuckled, popping another cookie into his mouth. “We get to take it easy when we’re in caves.”
“How do you usually spend your time in them?” I asked him.
Zinal thought for a moment, then smiled cynically. “Well, first we have to find out what kind of cave we’re dealing with, then find a spot where we can get some semblance of rest. The number of monsters comes heavily into play. If there’s monsters, we leave the area and keep an eye out. And if they seem hostile, we leave the cave right away. As a rule, we never sit down and eat in caves. And if you’re going to spend a lot of time in a cave, you need a party of at least five. With five people, you can sleep in shifts.”
It sounded like a big hassle.
“What are caves like for you, Ivy?” Zinal asked.
“Me? Well, Ciel guides us into the cave, then we explore it…take any magic stones we happen to find… We relax…eat dinner…and sleep.”
“And…this is just you and Druid, right?”
“Ha ha! Yes, it is.”
I didn’t realize how different our experiences were. I remembered hearing in passing once that I’d be killed by monsters in a flash if Ciel weren’t around.
“What do you want to do about dinner?” my father asked.
Dinner…I’m so full of cookies, I’m not really hungry.
“I’m not really hungry,” Zinal said. We all nodded in agreement.
Imagine, everyone in our party was filled up on sweets. Now that I thought about it, Zinal and Fische had kept pulling sweets out of their magic bag. I looked at the table and saw there were hardly any sweets left. We had eaten quite a lot without even realizing it.
“I think some fruit should do it,” my father said. Zinal pulled a bunch of fruits out of his magic bag in reply.
“Mr. Zinal, could you please get out the red fruit?”
“The red fruit—you mean chor?”
“Yes.”
“You like it?”
“Oh, yes. I can’t get its rich sweetness out of my mind.”
Chor fruit came from the chort trees that only grew near caves. It was a red fruit about the size of my father’s fist, and it had a soothing, rich sweetness.
“You know, I remember the chort trees by this cave had some ripe fruit on them,” Fische said.
I thought back to the chort trees nearby. And indeed, at least six of them were ripe. We’d picked all of them, of course.
“We were quite lucky, weren’t we?” I said.
Chort trees often dropped their fruit before they were ripe, so you rarely found any with ripe fruit. And when you did, you’d only find one or two at most. And yet the chort trees by this cave had six whole ripe fruits. It was quite a rare occurrence.
“I think I’ll have one, too,” Fische said, taking another chor out of his magic bag. “It’s been a while since I’ve had chor. And I heard about this when I was a kid, so it was a long time ago, but there’s a legend about this fruit.”
“A legend, you say?” I glanced at my father and saw that he was intrigued as well.
“I’m not surprised you haven’t heard it, Druid. It’s a legend from a village that doesn’t exist anymore. I only know about it because the village used to be near mine.”
A legend from just one dead village? That does sound intriguing.
“Long ago, when a man’s family was taken from him by an authority figure, he drew a summoning circle and brought the world near its end.”
Ah, so there’s a summoning circle in this legend. I’m not sure how I feel about that… Wait, isn’t this a legend about a piece of fruit? Why hasn’t he mentioned chor yet?
“The man poured all of his essence into the summoning circle to activate it…then he took his final breath. Feeling both relieved and worried over the impending end of the world, the man’s family and friends buried chor fruits in the dying earth and prayed.”
Zinal frowned skeptically at Fische. “Is this a story about the end times? But the world is still here.”
Yeah, it sure is.
“Besides, if the world ended, who would’ve been around to leave this legend behind?”
It did seem to be a very strange legend.
Fische shrugged his shoulders. “Beats me. I only heard this legend secondhand myself. The version I know might not be the exact way it’s told in the village it came from. I just happened to remember it when I saw the chor fruit after all these years.”
“Still, you don’t hear many legends involving summoning circles,” my father said.
Fische’s eyes widened with a start. “You know, you’re right.”
He hadn’t noticed it was unusual? Oops! Now Zinal is smiling mockingly at him.
“Authority figures have always been violent, haven’t they?” I remarked.
His family was torn apart by an authority figure… If that really happened, the man must have felt bitter about it. Was that why he meddled in summoning circles? Even so, destroying the world was a bit extreme. The legend probably got more and more outlandish as it was passed on again and again.
“The end of the world…there are all sorts of legends people left behind about that,” Zinal said.
My father and Fische nodded. Were there really that many legends about the end of the world? The thought made me feel sick to my stomach…