Chapter 2: Baked Apple Slices
With his heart steeped in unease, Alan returned home. He had thought he would be unable to sleep, but perhaps the sheer exhaustion brought on by terror dulled his mind—he did fall asleep in the end.
Even so, the man he had encountered by the river, with those cold, beastlike silver eyes, continued to haunt and threaten him throughout the entire night in his dreams.
The next day, Alan paced back and forth inside his little cottage. He busied himself with countless chores. He scrubbed the cypress-wood floors with water again and again until they gleamed, then renewed the blessings on the herbs in the garden behind his house—despite the fact that those herbs didn’t need any additional magical blessing at all. (For reasons Alan himself couldn’t explain, they grew sturdy and rampant like weeds without any care.)
He carefully peeled the small apples Mrs. Pan had so strongly recommended, shaving them into slices as thin as cicada wings. After brushing them with a light layer of butter and sprinkling them with sparkling sugar, he baked a large tray of apple slices—then another. The entire room filled with a thick, cloying sweetness, which inevitably made Alan think again of the bottle of honey wine that had been shattered the night before.
He suddenly stopped everything he was doing and let out a long sigh.
The sun had already climbed to the very center of the sky. Alan knew perfectly well that all his busyness that morning had been nothing more than an attempt to avoid something.
—That terrifying man he had left by the riverbank.
Was the man dead?
Or was he still lying there, waiting to die?
Of course, he might have left. Alan dearly hoped that the man had recovered and gone away from the riverbank, but considering the severity of the wounds he had glimpsed the night before, that hope seemed vanishingly slim.
With injuries like those, even a chimera—famed for its tenacious vitality—would likely struggle to recover…
Muttering to himself, with a trace of self-disgust, Alan slung over his back the herbs he had “inadvertently” gathered while blessing them that morning and headed out the door.
Before setting out, on a strange impulse Alan also brought along a small pouch of baked apple slices. They were a lovely golden brown, the fructose and melted sugar crystals casting an enticing sheen over the soft flesh. They had no magical properties whatsoever, but they were undeniably sweet… just the sort of thing to help a weary person regain some strength.
Back in the days when he had still been struggling along with an adventuring party, everyone on the team had lavishly praised Alan’s baked apple slices.
“…Hey, you know, back then I was practically at death’s door. I could feel the Reaper’s hand already groping my thigh. I closed my eyes, thinking, oh gods, this is it, it all ends here. And then, all of a sudden, I remembered I still had half a bag of baked apple slices left in my pack. Damn it, those were the ones I’d saved so carefully! So I told the Reaper by my feet, ‘Sorry, pal, I can’t die just yet,’ and then I fought my way back to life.”
Someone from that old adventuring party had once said this to Alan. Of course, given that fellow’s habitual glib tongue, the credibility of the story was highly questionable.
Still, as Alan walked step by step toward the riverbank with the sweet-smelling apple slices, he couldn’t help but recall those words.
…
Yet the riverbank where last night’s terror had unfolded was completely deserted today.
The green river flowed on with a soft gurgle, its gentle current mingling with the rustling sound of wind passing through the dense forest.
Alan stood by the river, a little at a loss, staring down at his feet.
He could still see the darkened stains of the man’s blood on the muddy bank, but the man himself was long gone. Even the footprints he had left when departing had been deliberately erased, as though he had never been there at all.
Judging from that, the man really had… left on his own.
Perhaps he hadn’t been as weak as Alan had feared?
Alan stood by the river for a short while longer, then let out a long breath, his chest suddenly easing.
That was a relief.
So he thought.
…
Having successfully escaped the possibility of further trouble, Alan’s mood lifted to an unprecedented height.
There were, however, still a few small matters to take care of—such as replenishing his honey wine. The bottle that had shattered the night before had held the very last of his stock.
As for the ingredients needed to brew honey wine, honey itself was easy enough to come by; Mrs. Pan had just given him some honeycomb yesterday.
“Green cardamom can be ordered in advance from the grocer…” Alan muttered to himself.
The only thing that still gave him pause was green lime leaves. Alan frowned slightly and looked toward the dense forest on the far side of the Green River.
Green lime leaves weren’t easy to find in a forest so poor in magical elements.
Alan sighed inwardly.
But…
He had already finished all his chores for the day, and he happened to have baked apple slices on hand to stave off hunger. Even if he spent the entire afternoon wandering the forest, it wouldn’t be a problem.
With that thought, Alan cheerfully crossed the Green River and stepped into the dense forest without the slightest sense of caution.
Former seventh-rate adventurer · low-magic garden-spell enthusiast mage Alan failed to notice that, while he had been standing by the river lost in thought, a pair of silver eyes in the nearby bushes had been fixed tightly on him.
Vertical, olive-shaped pupils contracted into a thin, narrow line.
And when the man saw Alan foolishly roll up his trousers and wade straight across the Green River like that, he couldn’t help flicking the tip of his tail.
A faint trace of the scent of baked apples still lingered in the air.
