The Sapling on the Village Back Hill (2)
"Go on, try reciting it."
Thermia urged me on.
The theater would be fun, but my mind had suddenly changed about the whole thing.
—I believe words should carry sincerity. Even if this is a performance, there's no need to dress up a falsehood as the truth.
Saying it out loud made me feel a little guilty, so I added,
—It's not that I'm too embarrassed to say it myself.
Yeah. That's definitely not a lie.
Thermia nodded.
"So you are embarrassed!"
Well... a little, actually.
"Understood. If the Tree insists, I shall comply."
Looking rather disappointed, Thermia tucked away the practice script.
"And here I thought it was rather well-written."
I found myself wondering whether my future self would give it the same verdict. I should memorize the contents and ask later.
"All finished."
Velesa, having measured everything down to the branch girths, climbed down from my trunk.
"Though I could drape a canopy over you, I'm not sure I should. You already possess such a magnificent form that anything I add would only detract."
Velesa's gaze swept over me from root to crown.
"Branches that are immaculately ordered like the topiary of a noble estate yet alive with nature's wild dynamism, and foliage that fills them out neither too sparsely nor too densely. This is a landscape already complete — one that clumsy human hands ought not dare to touch."
Ah. So that's why.
Designs the canopy's airspace through a regularized arrangement of branches and leaves. Reduces the resources and time required for branch growth and grants advantages in aesthetic beauty and structural utility — at the cost of demanding deliberate, conscious planning.
I hadn't designed it with aesthetics in mind, but apparently the effect had been there all along. No wonder visitors so often stood gawking in admiration as they approached. A vast, beautifully ordered tree standing in the middle of untamed wilderness — of course they stared.
"Big sister, I feel exactly the same."
Thermia agreed enthusiastically.
"The way I see it, the Tree is already perfect. I thought maybe you could add something to it, but I suppose not."
"Unfortunately, I'm a seamstress, not a gardener."
Velesa looked my way.
"If the Tree truly wishes it, we could prepare a canopy regardless of our own judgment. Do you want one?"
—Does draping a canopy play an important role in assimilating the newcomers? If so, whether it suits my appearance is a trivial concern.
Velesa considered for a moment.
"I suppose it's hard for you to grasp, Tree. The finer the fabric, the more labor and expense it demands. If the village truly reveres the sacred tree, then spending that much on it is only right."
—I did already receive a chunk of mana stones. The village chief asks me every time we meet whether I need anything else, too.
"What cannot be seen at a glance holds no great value. That is precisely why fine clothing has worth in itself. In the first moment of beholding something, all a person takes in is its outward appearance."
Vulgar reasoning, certainly — but was there truly nothing more effective than an expensive exterior for conveying my worth at a glance?
—If your intent is to make them grasp my value intuitively, then I don't think dressing me up is necessary. Thermia, by the way — do you wash every time before you come here?
"...Pardon?"
The girl blinked blankly, then went rigid with alarm.
"Can you smell me?!"
The front of her dress flapped in a frantic panic.
—No, nothing like that. I asked precisely because you're almost always immaculate.
The girl sagged in deep relief.
"Well, 'every time' would be a bit of a fib. But I do try to wash before coming."
—Why? In this freezing winter, why bother with such a hassle? This place is nothing but the back end of an uninhabited village, and all you meet is a tree.
"I... honestly never thought that deeply about it."
Thermia floundered, then turned to Velesa. "What about you, big sister? Did you wash before coming?"
"I bathed this morning, so I only rubbed on a little scented oil."
"See? You can't just show up any old way, right?"
The girl turned back toward me.
"It's just — the Tree isn't merely a tree, you know? I doubt even the village chief has ever come here filthy from his errands."
A soft round of laughter rippled through us.
—My worth lies not in my lush branches or my deep roots. It lies in your hearts — in the deep respect that brings you here washed and clean, through bitter cold and busy lives alike.
Perhaps this, too, was a kind of worldly vanity. A materialist's mind — dressing up appearances, prizing cleanliness, fussing over the surface of things.
But if that is what people are, then one simply accepts it as such. If this is the best their hearts can offer, then the best should be received with joy.
—Let them do for me what you do. Don't dress me up — make them dress themselves up instead. For my worth will come not from me, but from their faith.
The wind stirred, carrying the fragrance of scented oil through the air.
—Do not adorn me. Let them adorn themselves. My worth will spring not from what I am, but from what they believe.
They washed themselves — every single time — in this bitter winter?
A male elf, freshly rinsed in river water cold as ice, shivered as he toweled himself dry. The cold had turned his skin scarlet from head to toe, and gooseflesh crawled up his arms.
And they do this mad ritual every time.
Either the entire village was insane, or that tree was something truly extraordinary. It had to be one of the two.
The male elf, educated in the royal capital, found himself believing the former.
Elves huddled in forests even along the kingdom's frontiers, wall-less and isolated — there was no chance such people would reach reasonable conclusions. Some accidental custom, born of pure happenstance, had hardened across generations and simply persisted, unexamined. No thought of reform, no thought of change.
Fools. They were dragging down the average of the entire elven race.
Because elves like these were everywhere, a man who had graduated top of his class in administration and finance at the Royal Academy, built a respectable career, and been awaiting his promotion under the second-born prince — was now, solely because he happened to share their blood, reduced to playing spy.
The spy clenched his chattering teeth hard.
"Serve with pride — it is an important duty, guarding the young master's ward." Offering a short-lived elf a chance to cozy up to future power? He could see right through that transparent gesture.
"Brrr! Cold as a witch's tit! I washed my clothes spotless before coming — did you wash up too?"
An elf he didn't know struck up conversation out of nowhere.
The spy wanted to shout, don't talk to me while I'm trying so hard to keep my temper, but held his tongue. Back in his Academy days, he'd have cursed the man out without a second thought.
"I packed clean clothes with my belongings. Brought those."
"No wonder you looked unfamiliar during the group laundry. You must be from the city? Cleanest-looking elf I've ever seen — like a proper schoolmaster."
What is this fool even saying? Did he not grasp even the elementary logic that appearance and essence are not one and the same?
"I did come from the city, yes."
"Knew it! I told you I can read faces. That slick pomade and that haughty expression — schoolmaster from crown to sole!"
Why, you little—
He had endured being gawked at by human nobles, clawed his way up until his fingers finally brushed the hem of royal power — and now here he was, exiled to spy duty for no better reason than that there happened to be no other elf available. Did they have any idea what that felt like?
"Once everyone has finished washing, please change into clean garments."
The village chief Eldrin clapped his hands and called for attention.
The spy swallowed the curse he'd been about to fling at his falsely friendly kinsman and fixed his mind on Eldrin, as his duty demanded.
So the lord's court mage had once verified the chief's character — but no man's heart could truly be known. Who could say whether this village, grown large as it was amid the kingdom's turmoil, might one day fancy itself a bandit lord's hold?
His task was to vet this settlement and file the final report: verified safe, approach at will. Exile had left a sour taste in his mouth, sure — but this was, undeniably, a mission with the safety of future power hanging on it.
If only I'd been born a human, not some short-lived elf, I'd have welcomed the chance gladly...
However much he soothed himself with indignation, a bitter smile escaped him all the same. He had sworn to rise high enough to one day lead these unschooled fools by the hand — and in the end, here he was, bent and broken by the assignment.
Suddenly, a girl stepped forward as the group's representative. Her all-white attire, cut from costly fabric, caught every eye.
"The sacred tree does not care for commotion. We will move forward in silence, all of us, with reverence in our hearts."
The girl led the way, and every villager fell in behind her. The hundred-odd settlers followed after them in turn.
The sight — the girl in spotless white, a whole village scrupulously dressed, following in solemn silence — was something he had never once witnessed in his life.
The settlers, who had been murmuring among themselves, were gradually pressed quiet by the sheer weight of the atmosphere. Footprints gathered in the snow, and the long procession wound deep into the forest.
The spy scanned his surroundings with a sharp eye.
The elf who'd been chattering at him earlier swallowed nervously, strung tight as a bowstring.
And it wasn't just that elf.
The settler elves, who had failed to adapt to the village's ways, now seemed unable to withstand the solemnity of the moment — every one of them, as if possessed of a single will, trailing the girl in reverent silence. They stole glances at one another, but not a single mouth opened.
The spy's lip curled.
So this is the trick, is it? A fine method indeed for bewitching the simple-minded.
When a new monarchy rises, one of its first tasks is to make the rites and ceremonies of the crown heavy, ornate, and impenetrable. What people cannot know, they cannot understand — and what they cannot understand, they revere as the whole court bows before it. Merely by being made incomprehensible, royal authority is fortified.
So a mere tree fancies itself capable of bewitching men.
And in this tiny village, no less, lay the art of governing a nation.
But it was the duty of the learned to cast aside worthless illusions and proclaim the truth. He had not studied and trained all these years to be swayed by mere outward appearances.
The procession arrived at an open clearing.
Without warning, a warm wind came breathing through.
Sunlight poured down over the broad clearing. An enormous tree held up the sky. Grass swept bare of snow swayed in the breeze, and fruit filled the eye in every direction.
Winter had passed, and spring had arrived.
At the snowbound journey's end, a giant that no season could wither stood waiting, its fruit ready to fill their starving bellies.
The girl in spotless white bowed her head with ceremony.
"O sacred tree, I have brought them all to you."
Verdant leaves rustled.
A voice came down from the heavens.
—Thank you all for coming.
A deep, weighted intent pressed down upon their shoulders.
The genuine gratitude in it, the faint trace of embarrassment, the abundance of quiet joy — together they were more than enough to sweep the soul away.
The spy's mind went white.
This is... this is...
The pale-faced elves sank to their knees one by one, unbidden. Awe became a wave and covered the earth. Faith became a wind and covered the sky.
Staggering, the spy ground his teeth and stood alone.
I must not be bewitched.
Everything he had learned, everything he had trained, everything he had endured — he could not cast it all away now. He had a duty, as the representative of these benighted elves, to stand against enchantment and lay the truth bare. That was why he had scraped together the paltry coin of destitute elves, coin by coin, to enter the Royal Academy as their champion.
He forced his eyes up toward the giant tree.
"What... are you?"
The sky answered.
—I am a tree living on the hill behind the village. A tree you can speak with, laugh with, weep with — a tree that will live alongside you.
Sincerity rode the wave of that intent and swept through his soul.
—I'd rather you didn't think too hard about it. I'll admit I'm a little mysterious — but that's only proof that the world itself holds that much wonder.
The strength drained from his legs.
No pretense. No artifice. No enchantment of any kind — and yet that nobility.
There was no way to regard it as an equal.
His knees met the earth.
And he felt no doubt about it at all.
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Wha—WHAT?!
Why is everyone kneeling?!
Okay, yes, I was playing the sacred tree, so I did pour on the divine intent extra thick this time — but what am I supposed to do if this is how they react?!
You have become an object of faith for sentient beings. Your existence touches a deeper mystery.
Wha—WHAT?!