The Living Young Tree (3)
Thermia came sprinting at full speed.
"Young Tree, have we committed some kind of sacrilege?"
―No, so calm down.
I hurried to soothe her, for she had gone pale as a ghost. After a while of consoling, her way of addressing me shifted from "Young Tree" back to "Lord Tree."
Thermia wrung the water spirit out like a rag and gulped the water down. Her color considerably restored, she asked,
"What happened?"
―I turned the whole forest into a Holy Land, same as I did with the orchard.
"And the earthquake?"
―Thaaat was an unintended side effect I hadn't counted on? Tell everyone I'm sorry. I really didn't expect it to be this intense.
Thermia breathed a sigh of relief.
"I thought you were angry and had destroyed the village."
―I'm not that kind of person, am I?
"No, you're not."
We set about cleaning up the situation, step by step.
Most of the buildings had collapsed flat, but with living trees now growing into place as structures, the restoration itself wouldn't take long. Construction was always the most time-consuming part of any project, after all.
The furnishings inside had been reduced to wreckage, which was a problem, but...
―Let's use my assets for the village's restoration.
"Lord Tree, you don't need to apologize, and there's no need to go that far. If the forest has become a Holy Land, then even if a great being's path makes us stumble, we should receive it with joy. That is the price of the honor of standing close to you."
Thermia was earnest.
―No. Greed exists so it can be trimmed away. These were treasures gathered from the village, so let's spend them on the village. They were just sitting there piling up anyway.
"If that is your intent rather than an apology, then by all means."
It was settled: we would empty out my assets. After all, a tree has little use for property, no matter how much of it accumulates.
"Still, there's no need to worry as much as you are. The most important thing was the warehouse grain, but we can simply harvest from the Four Seasons Orchard, so that's no problem at all. As for the furnishings, we made them ourselves to begin with. We can remake them in no time."
Thermia smiled.
"Most people have more or less finished their literacy lessons these days, so they've run out of things to do at night — and now they finally have work. The village chief has been racking his brain about how people wandering around at night with nothing to do is bad for public order. So this worked out well."
When you have nothing to do at night, couldn't you just... sleep? I wish everyone would go back to a normal way of living instead of staying awake on the strength of miracles.
"More importantly — if the entire forest has become a Holy Land, does that mean it'll bear fruit all four seasons, like the Four Seasons Orchard?"
―That, it won't.
A Holy Land created when a divine being fixed a portion of its divinity into the earth. Here, nature communicates with people and is granted mystery.
I read it over, and I still couldn't tell what the effect actually was.
Isn't that effect just a bit too vague?
Thermia wandered around, looking every which way.
"Something does feel different, hm?"
From the far edge of the sky, the Water Drop Girl came flying in, an excited look on her face. Apparently she'd discovered something fun and come to tell us about it.
"Bang-ul-i! Did you see something from the sky?"
The Water Drop Girl waved at Thermia and then descended, shaking her head as if to say it wasn't anything she'd seen from above — instead, she patted herself with a pat pat, as if to say, look at me.
Then, without any further explanation, she simply walked around the clearing in the brush.
What was different... whoa?
The little water-bright girl came in a different size every time, and right now she was only as large as a blade of grass. Which meant that to walk through the clearing, she'd had to shove the weeds aside like pushing through dense underbrush — a real struggle.
But not anymore.
The blades of grass were leaning over on their own, clearing a path. The Water Drop Girl strutted along, proud as a king.
―Whoaaa. That's amazing.
The Water Drop Girl nodded, then busied herself conjuring a water spirit. She aimed it at a pebble half-hidden by the grass and hurled it with all her might. The water spirit warped into a distorted streak and shot through the air — and the blades of grass parted out of its path. Unimpeded, the spirit smacked into the pebble with a splash. It quivered on the stone's surface and oozed down.
The Water Drop Girl pointed and giggled — kyaruruk.
Whoa, a clean hit. Though I do wonder why she threw a water spirit when she could have just picked up a pebble. You are a water drop yourself, you know. Shouldn't you two respect each other?
"Whoa! Can I do it too?"
Thermia picked up a pebble.
The girl tried walking carefully across the clearing. The blades of grass leaned away with each of her steps, helping her along with ease.
"It works!"
So it really was communication with nature itself?
I spoke to a neighboring tree.
―Doesn't my shade make it hard for you to live?
I waited quietly, and the neighboring tree swayed its branches by about 0.001 centimeters. A mysterious result, occurring with no wind at all.
Whoa? We're actually talking?
I tried hard to decipher what the branch-swaying meant. A faint thread of intent reached me.
Frankly, it had been hard to live until now — but the nuance seemed to be that now that we too had been granted a bit of your great mystery, it wouldn't be hard going forward.
Whoa, for the first time in my life, I had a conversation with a tree.
Never mind that I'm a tree myself.
And now I understood why the neighboring tree said it was fine.
A question had been nagging me since I grew so enormously large.
How exactly am I growing?
It was true that as my roots spread, I absorbed more nutrients. I could feel them circulating through my body.
But nutrients alone can't explain it — I'm just too big. Really, too big. Growing this much on nourishment alone is past the breaking point.
Perhaps divinity itself was acting on my very existence. My root growth might simply provide a mundane foundation that solidly supports my divinity, while the fundamental force making me grow was the divinity itself.
By the same logic, since a portion of my divinity was now fixed across the entire forest, the neighboring trees had been granted mystery too — so even with my shade blocking their sunlight, they could live without difficulty.
Besides, when I poured out my intent, I had included the wish that my neighboring plants not suffer harm but live on. It had turned out exactly as intended.
Yu-hu, a good result.
I called Thermia over and shared the happy news.
"That's wonderful! But... you can talk to trees?"
―Yep.
"Let me try it too!"
Flushed with excitement, Thermia approached a tree trunk, pressed her forehead against it, and murmured,
"If you can talk, please speak to me."
Well, how do I put this.
―You shouldn't be talking to me, should you? I could always do this.
Thermia, who had in fact been pressing her forehead to my trunk, giggled — hihi.
"I'll try again!"
She pressed her forehead to the neighboring tree.
"Tree, if there's anything you want to say, tell me."
She waited quietly, and the neighboring tree swayed its branches by about 0.00001 centimeters.
Whoa, what excellent communication.
I had wanted to serve as a bridge between nature and people — and even if it was still only this one forest, seeing such a clear result made me proud.
"······."
As she kept her forehead pressed to the bark, Thermia's ears gradually turned red. Then, glancing around and seeing no one watching — only the Water Drop Girl pointing at her and giggling — her face flushed bright crimson.
"Hey! Don't make fun of me! Lord Tree, it doesn't work."
―Hm? It worked just fi— oh.
People can't read a thread of intent from a branch swaying just a little.
Whoa? Wait, hold on, isn't this a problem? I poured my strength into crafting this Holy Land over time, and if it's like this, it's only half-finished.
It turned out to be needless worry.
After a few attempts, Thermia — remarkably — became able to read the neighboring tree's faint intent. Interpreting it was difficult, half guesswork at best, and the interpretation itself stayed vague, but it was communication.
"Thanks to you, Lord Tree, I can do something mysterious too! Talking with trees!"
―Whoa, impressive. You could kind of do it before, but still.
Thermia belonged to the elf race, close to nature by blood; I'd also refined the mana in her body, and she'd spoken with me — a sacred being — plenty of times, so it seemed to come easily to her.
For the average villager to manage it, I suspected it would be quite hard unless they had a real talent for it.
Delighted, Thermia immediately asked the neighboring tree,
"Has any villager irreverently visited Lord Tree and caused a disturbance? Disturbances aside, anything else counts too."
Whoaaa?
Um, excuse me. Doesn't it scare you a little, asking a question like that right out of the gate? What exactly do you spend your days thinking about?
"So there's none? None at all? Understood. Thank you for telling me!"
Thermia sighed in relief.
"This is incredibly convenient! If this works, then surely this does too?"
The giddy girl pointed at a bird flapping past nearby.
"You there! You with the beautiful blue feathers! Come over here! I have questions! Answer them, and I'll pay you with leftover grain the immigrants bring over!"
The blue bird changed course mid-flight. It circled in the air as if deliberating, but in the end it was persuaded and landed on the girl's shoulder.
Whoaaa — well, animals are nature too.
"It works!"
Thermia clapped her hands in delight. Then she asked,
"Has any villager irreverently visited Lord Tree and caused a disturbance? Disturbances aside, anything else counts too."
Wh-wh-whoa.
Come to think of it, isn't this the same as planting surveillance cameras across the entire forest? The buildings have become living trees too, so there's nowhere to hide.
Wh-wh-wh-whoa.
What have I done?
―You must not abuse this.
"Yes?"
―Absolutely not.
I impressed it upon her, with all due solemnity.
I checked in on the priests of the Holy Kingdom.
They were staying in a room of the inn that had become a living tree. Whatever furniture had survived stood about looking desolate and forlorn.
"Priest Borlidon, are you all right?"
Priest Dahlia asked.
"······."
Priest Borlidon lay rigid on his back on the bed, staring blankly at nothing but the ceiling.
His mind seemed to have left his body entirely.
Priest Dahlia shook her head. It would take a while for him to recover.
With the mastermind of their scheming in that state, I could focus on the village restoration for the time being without worry.
The restoration began with clearing away the wreckage. There were few stone or brick houses, so the clearing itself wasn't difficult. The trees had even pushed the debris aside as they grew, tidying things up more or less on their own — and thanks to the miracle, stamina was the one thing we had in abundance.
The trouble was that the dust and dirt kicked up by the collapse had caked onto the new tree-built structures everywhere, so beyond hauling off the rubble, a proper deep-cleaning was needed.
Honestly, though, cleaning wasn't hard either.
Because there was a brand-new cleaning product enjoying explosive popularity among the elves these days.
The innkeeper picked one up: water spirits packed snugly together inside a fine, round mesh net.
When she scrubbed it against a mud-splattered wall, the droplet-shaped spirits were crushed without mercy, swallowing up the mud and turning murky. The trunk-wood wall transformed into a spotless surface.
"Oooh, now that's nice."
Take the soiled cleaner outside and squeeze it in a long, firm wring, and it expelled nothing but the impurities in a clean spurt. The poor thing did shrivel up like its soul was being wrung out in the process, but rinse it in clear water and it returned to its original state.
These are the days before sponges, after all. Ordinarily you'd have to make do with cloths that barely absorbed anything and turned filthy after a few uses.
And now a universal cleaning product — better and more convenient than any sponge — had been invented. Make it smaller and it works for washing dishes, too. What a marvelously convenient invention.
A universal tool that leaves no greasy residue, enabling spotless dishwashing without soap or detergent of any kind.
Yes, it's a tremendous invention and all, but.
Teacher, the one who invented this — I can't help wondering what grudge you hold against water spirits.
I can understand how it evolved: you were using them as erasers for study ink, found them so effective that the idea branched out into general cleaning. Still, isn't this going too far? The dishwashing part is genuinely too far.
Frankly, I think the village chief's clever idea — keep the water spirits in the water bucket, so you never need to refill it — is the lesser evil.
Not that I don't feel that way when I watch a spirit being fished out of the bucket, wrung dry, and dunked back in.
Water spirits are nature itself — water that has awakened to will. Being part of nature, they probably feel no resentment at treatment humans would consider cruel. But watching it, I couldn't shake the feeling that something about this was... something.
Is this really okay?
Is it actually acceptable?
Apparently, no — it absolutely was not.
A commotion broke out in the middle of the village.
Thousands upon thousands of water spirits had gathered, packed densely together.
It was coordinated action — movement with a purpose.
"What's gotten into them?!"
Startled elves came running to gawk.
Oh no. Don't tell me.
The entire forest had become a Holy Land. The nature within it had been granted mystery, and could now communicate with people.
And spirits were nothing less than nature itself.
The water spirits stacked themselves up, layer by layer. Building their own tower, they claimed the high sky, gazed down over the village — and at the very top, they fluttered a bundle of documents that looked suspiciously like stolen paperwork.
It was the ledger of the ink the Water Drop Girl had supplied to the village, and the payment she had received in return.
An ironclad precedent of fair, equal transactions between spirits and people.
Whoa?
The water spirits had begun demanding their compensation.
The cleaning products had gone on strike.
Whoaaa?