Yae’s life with her unwelcome new roommate went surprisingly well, as long as she ignored the occasional rebellious vibration. The black sword didn’t move much, it didn’t eat, and it didn’t speak. All she had to do was set it against the wall, and that was it. The only catch was that she had to take it with her every time she left the house. When she muttered about how ridiculous it was that she had to walk a black sword instead of something more reasonable like, say, a black Labrador, it rattled harder than ever.
Yae felt incredibly guilty when she told the chief that the ceremony was a success. She was also terrified of the prospect of Lady Bihin appearing at some point to reclaim her sword. But after having a nightmare where the black sword danced around her as she sat on the floor, she couldn’t bring herself to tell the chief the truth. The second day, she had a nightmare of Kuroashi staring her down with the sword in his mouth. Oh yeah, what happened to that tiger? There were so many things she didn’t understand. The fourth night, she went to sleep holding the black sword, tired of being afraid and wishing for something, anything, to go ahead and happen.
She got her wish.
The next day, Yae received a summons from Chief Kadaru and walked to an assembly hall built on the mountain slope with the magnificent, terraced fields.
“I’m one of the women being married to Miya Province?”
Kadaru had informed her—after what could hardly be called a proper greeting—that he was marrying off ten women from Kaki Province to a neighboring province. Yae had been preparing herself to be berated, convinced that he had found out about her failure to report the black sword, so the unexpected news caught her off guard.
The wooden assembly hall resembled a row house, and Yae and Kadaru were the only two people inside it. She could hear the bright voices of laughing children outside. Clear rays of sunlight slipped in through the half-open round windows and lit the wooden floor with a white shine.
“The other nine women are one of my daughters, two others from my family, and six from the village,” Kadaru said calmly.
Kadaru appeared to be in his forties, and he was a big man like his son, Misao. His hair and eye color both matched his son’s, but a prudence gained from age was visible in his face. His drooping eyes hinted at his kind nature.
And from his back extended a single brightly colored wing.
“Why are you, um…?” Unsure of how to ask the question politely, Yae fell silent.
Kadaru smiled grimly and brushed some reddish-brown hair away from his forehead. “The official reason is to reinvigorate exchange with Miya Province, which has been stone-cold for some time now. But truth be told, both sides found plenty of benefit in this arrangement.”
“I’m always impressed by how you can be so ruthless and still look so calm,” Yae said, giving him a glare. Kadaru laughed heartily in response, creases forming next to his eyes.
“And I’ve always respected your smarts. Honestly, I don’t want to give you to them,” Kadaru admitted.
“Why was I chosen?” Yae asked. Kadaru’s smile turned to a grimace.
“Miya Province has been dealing with increasing amounts of deformation. I thought you might be able to help get a handle on the situation, Dr. Yae,” Kadaru answered, staring at her fixedly. Yae stared back with the same expression.
Deformation was a phenomenon that caused a thing not bound by the power of a name to morph into a different, often stranger entity. There were various types of deformation, but the following was the most common. Say there was an apple, but no one knew it was called an apple. Instead of its associated word, people just referred to it by descriptions like red thing, round thing, sweet fruit, and tasty ball. This would cause its existence to become fuzzy.
Once that happened, its true nature would warp, and its shape would change. It wouldn’t be a huge problem if it turned into something harmless, but things suffering from deformation often repeated these transformations over and over until they became terrible monsters.
Yae had her own theory as to why this strange phenomenon occurred. I wonder if things with a name lose their sense of self once all people who called them by that name are gone. It was essentially amnesia. The thing was fighting to become something tangible, something recognized, and in doing so brought on the symptoms of deformation.
Deformation was considered a disease in this world. What made it troublesome was that objects, plants, and even spirits could contract it. Though oddly, it was rare for livestock bred in villages to be affected.
The reason people granted Yae the distinguished title of doctor despite her having the appearance of a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old-girl was because she could prevent an outbreak of deformation. Ever since she was a young girl, she had been finding plants that seemed like they might be at risk of contracting deformation and performing Appellation—or naming—charms.
It wasn’t anything impressive, really. She had just lived in a place abundant with nature in her previous life and used to go on walks to pick edible plants. As a result, she knew the names of more plants and animals than the average person. She was also good at making diagrams because of her work experience.
But naming a thing just once had no effect. It needed to be done right. It was essential that the characters in the name reflected the thing’s true nature, and without writing the name multiple times, fixing labels, and spreading the word so that it became common knowledge, the naming was pointless.
Yae didn’t do this work just out of the goodness of her heart; she did it for selfish reasons as well. Being attacked and devoured by a dandelion that turned into an octopus monster while she was out on a walk was something she would rather not experience.
Be that as it may, it was nothing more than a preventive measure she did in her free time. She had never once performed a proper treatment, as a doctor would, on something that had already contracted deformation. The subjects of her Appellation had all been plants in a harmless state. Treating a person or spirit was out of her league.
“…Truthfully speaking, they consider my daughter Oshiro the jewel of the arrangement,” Kadaru said blankly, lifting the gloomy mood.
“Lady Oshiro is very beautiful,” Yae responded.
Yae thought of Oshiro, Kadaru’s daughter who was turning eighteen this year, and felt a wave of admiration. She had fiery red hair, plush pink lips, and large eyes. All the men in Kaki Province turned around, spellbound, when she passed. When Yae thought of her own unruly black hair and sticklike figure, she wondered if Oshiro was a different species altogether. Don’t think that way, Yae. It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. I have luscious long black hair and a slender frame…! Ugh, that’s not convincing at all…
“She is still ignorant of the world, but she will perform her role,” he said, appraising his own daughter calmly. To Yae, it sounded quite harsh.
The chief had four wives and sixteen children, including his biological offspring and the uroko he had taken in. In this world, it was perfectly acceptable for a husband or a wife to have other partners, provided they had their spouse’s permission. Put bluntly, marriages were performed with the mindset of “be fruitful and multiply.” It was a difficult world in which to survive to adulthood, so the more children the better.