Three days passed.
While Harlequin was flying through the forest as he always did, he heard a faint, unfamiliar noise.
A bird?
He first thought that the resonant pi~pi~ was a bird’s call, but quickly realized that it wasn’t.
The sound formed into a velvety melody.
“A flute…”
Yes. The sound of a flute.
A musical instrument that humans play.
Harlequin flew through the grove, drawn towards the sound.
“Ah.”
He could hear running water over the melody of the flute.
Of course. The waterfall is just beyond here. The one the boy attacked by the dusk bison said he was heading for.
Harlequin approached the waterfall quietly, hiding between tree trunks.
It had not rained much the summer before, so the waterfall’s flow was less than usual, but still water flew down, creating a violent white spray.
The boy sat on a large boulder nearby.
He had a side-blown flute pressed to his lips. It was made from some kind of white material, bone or horn, and he played the song wholeheartedly.
I see, in the bag around his waist was that flute.
It was a beautiful song.
It seemed cheery, but sometimes also felt very lonely.
Human flutes can make beautiful sounds like this…Harlequin thought to himself. It’s so different from the flute from then.
✦ ✦ ✦
—“Then?”
Harlequin was surprised.
When was “then”?
✦ ✦ ✦
A scene suddenly rose up in his mind.
Helbram smiling, holding a small flute made from hollowed-out wood.
“Since you do it too, Helbram won’t give up his bad habits either.”
Elaine looked like she was in a bad mood.
Harlequin held a similar flute in hand.
✦ ✦ ✦
That was right.
He’d picked up a flute used to ward off beasts, which some human had dropped.
When he came back to the Fairy Realm, Helbram was carrying a similar flute, too.
Elaine became angry with them, accusing them of having gone off to play in the human world again—
His flute from that time made a strange pii-hyoh-roh-roh noise when he blew into it.
✦ ✦ ✦
Without his noticing, Harlequin had started crying.
I don’t know. I don’t know when that memory was or what it was about.
I don’t know anything, so why am I sad?
✦ ✦ ✦
Perhaps the song the boy was playing was too beautiful.
The musical scale smoothly rose and fell.
The refrain held steady through the changes in key.
A melody by turns cheerful, playful, and heartrending.
The melody repeated itself, modulating its tone a little each time—it was causing him to remember something—
✦ ✦ ✦
Abruptly, the song broke off and Harlequin returned to his senses.
He looked up to see the boy sitting atop the boulder, unchanged.
He seemed to be merely gazing at the basin under the waterfall, with his flute still pressed to his mouth.
Harlequin thought about calling out to him, but something stopped him. Instead he began to leave.
However—
“Is that it?!”
A voice he knew very well broke in.
Downstream from the waterfall, a thicket split with a crunch and Diane’s face peeked through.
“Aaahhh! A giant!” the boy shouted.
“Hey, I want to hear more! Keep playing!” Diane tried to climb over the thicket and get closer. Overcome with surprise, the boy tried to flee. But his leg slipped—
“Aaahhh!”
He tumbled headfirst into the basin.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Come on, hey, wake up!”
“Waahh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
Harlequin and Diane had hauled the boy back to land as soon as he fell in. He shouldn’t have swallowed too much water, but he didn’t rouse easily.
While they waited for him to come to, they built a fire nearby and made a soup from mushrooms found in the vicinity and birds and eggs that Diane gathered. As if lured to consciousness by the smell, the boy finally opened his eyes.
“Where am…Oh, you’re that guy from…”
“Sorry for scaring you.” As Diane peered in from his side, the boy screamed again.
“It’s all right,” Harlequin said. “She’s my friend. She’s also the one who picked you out of the waterfall.”
“Oh, really…Thank you. Ah—” The boy turned pale. “Flute! My flute!”
“Your flute’s over there. You flung it away when you fell. It was next to the boulder.” Harlequin jerked his chin, indicating the boy’s side.
The boy picked up his flute and smiled, relieved. At that moment, his stomach growled loudly.
“How about we have some food?” Harlequin brusquely poured some of the contents of the pot into a wooden bowl and held it out to the boy.
“Th-Thank you. First time in days since I’ve had real food…” The boy crinkled his eyes happily, blowing on the soup a couple of times before beginning to slurp it down happily.
“That flute is very important to you,” Diane remarked, smiling, and the boy gave an embarrassed nod.
“Now you’ve rescued me twice. My name is Terrence. Please call me Terry.”
“I’m Diane.”
“And I’m Harlequin. From the looks of you, you haven’t had proper food since we met last time. I told you it’d be impossible for a human to go all the way.”
As he was about to tell the boy to hurry and go back home, Diane interrupted.
“Hey, Terry. That song you were playing, was that all of it? Why did you come here? What are you doing?”
“Diane…” Harlequin gave her a troubled glance.
But Terry only laughed a little sadly without looking particularly offended.
“Up until a short while ago, I was part of a traveling troupe.”
Gripping his flute, Terry started talking.
“I was told that my parents died when I was only an infant, and that I was raised as part of the troupe ever since. The person who looked after me the most was a man called Marius the Flutist. He told me I had a talent for the flute and taught me many things.”
Terry cast down his eyes with a but.
“Everything went well for a while. But as the songs I learned became more and more difficult, as you might expect, practice became more and more of a hassle. So often I’d slip off behind Marius’ back to go and play. But one day, when I returned to the troupe’s tent…”
“When you returned?”
Terry took a deep breath, and continued with difficulty. “Everyone was dead.”
“Dead?”
Harlequin and Diane looked at each other.
“You said they were dead? Were they killed by bandits or something?” Harlequin asked. Terry quietly shook his head.
“I don’t know…Usually, a traveling troupe is summoned by kings or nobility for celebrations or festivals and goes from town to town. But because they tend to visit places that favor them every year, the route is generally set, and troupes try to avoid dangerous areas as much as they can. That day, we were camping at a spot we were familiar with, near the riverbank along a large main road that we took every year.”
Telling them how he’d grown more irritated with Marius’ nagging year by year, Terry was moved to tears.
“I took a nap in the forest nearby, and when I returned to the tent, everyone, every single person was cut down. And nothing valuable had been taken, and it didn’t look as if any of the women or children were assaulted, they were just…just killed.”
“How terrible,” Diane murmured, covering her mouth.
“Later I heard that area had similar occurrences before. I think there must have been someone lurking around who just likes to kill.”
“For crying out loud, humans are really worthless.” Harlequin let out a sigh. “Only humans do things like kill others of their own race for no reason.”
“I guess so.” Terry gave a humorless laugh. He continued, “When I got back, Marius was just barely breathing. This is the flute that he gave me in his last moments.” He gently caressed his precious white flute.
“So that song you were playing earlier, did you learn it from him?” Diane asked, and Terry nodded.
“It’s called The Promised Rainbow. When Marius was young, he once saw a small waterfall that always had a rainbow across it. He said he wrote the song then.”
Terry looked off in the distance with another but.
“Because I was always slacking off, I can’t remember the final phrase no matter how hard I try. I know I learned it once, but I can’t recall the melody.”
“So, you came to see the Rainbow Waterfall?” Harlequin asked. Terry nodded again.
“That’s right. If I remember correctly, he said it was around here. But I guess this isn’t the place after all.” The boy looked in the direction of the waterfall that he had fallen into earlier. The sun had already gone down and in the dark, of course, he couldn’t see any rainbows.
“There are other waterfalls around. You should give up on this one already and go look someplace else,” Harlequin said curtly.
Terry smiled.
“Yeah. You’re right…I feel a bit better now that I’ve come this far.”
“Wait, are you leaving?” Diane looked a bit disconsolate. “I wanted to hear you play the flute again.”
“Diane, don’t be unreasonable. This isn’t a place for humans.”
“I see.” The giant hung her head, dejected. Harlequin sighed again, as though to say, Good grief.
“Well, your clothes haven’t dried yet, and the sun has already set, so why not set out tomorrow?”
“Yes, that sounds good.” Terry nodded in assent, and Diane clapped her hands happily.
“Great! Then let’s hear some more of that flute!”
“Okay. What do you want to hear?”
Terry, smiling, put his flute up to his lips.