The Voice of the Earth
"Oh, Eli! There you are!"
Having earned a perfect score in every Magic Department major course and claimed the top spot, Eli was already a talent whose praise echoed among the professors. He was unfailingly courteous, possessed of an admirable character, and blessed with breathtaking looks besides—what professor could possibly dislike him? Professor Waite, too, greeted him with obvious delight and lavished him with compliments.
"Worthy of the top seat, indeed. Teaching you has been its own reward. Tell me—do you also know the properties of flat rosa?"
"Yes, Professor. Both the flowers and roots of flat rosa are used medicinally. If you dry the flowers in the shade and brew them well, they warm the stomach and stop diarrhea. The roots produce a sticky sap that soothes the insides when you're suffering from heartburn or stomach pain."
It seemed the top seat truly wasn't something just anyone could hold. Bayul watched Eli rattle off the explanation as though reading straight from a textbook and felt genuine admiration.
"Well done, you know it thoroughly. If I may add one thing—the leaves of flat rosa, when crushed and applied to cuts or puncture wounds, are remarkably effective. We learned that at the start of the semester, and everyone forgot it except Eli, didn't they?"
"No, Professor!"
"We simply didn't remember fast enough!"
"We work so hard in your lectures!"
At Professor Waite's mild rebuke, the girls clamored in chorus to deny it.
"Really?"
"Of course! It's all coming back to me now!"
"Oh ho, is that so?"
A mischievous glint flashed through Professor Waite's eyes.
"Dinner for two, no questions asked! Just you and me, Professor!"
"Eek, a date with the Professor! What do I do!"
"This is a team match—what's all this about an intimate little meal?"
Amid the girls' squeals, one boy's thoroughly exasperated voice rang out.
"Ah, right. My mistake—I withdraw the offer."
A chorus of disappointed groans followed, though of course that hadn't been the point.
"What I'll give you instead is a weekday pass—one that lets you leave without questions or conditions. You all go half-mad wanting to go out every single day."
"You'd really give us one?"
"Shall I write you a fake one, then? I don't joke about these things."
A weekday pass was worth an enormous amount. Carrington Academy prided itself on its strict residential rules; to leave campus on a weekday, a student needed a genuinely valid reason, and the criteria were so exacting that countless requests were denied outright.
"One condition, though—the losing team spends a month pulling weeds in the herb garden. Well? Are you in, or not?"
Glances darted silently back and forth. A whole month of weeding was a bitter pill, but the temptation of the pass was immense.
Surely our team won't lose?
That lazy, comfortable complacency hung thick over the room.
"Professor, how do we split the teams?"
"Hmm, I'd say we just cut the class down the middle as it stands."
He set the lectern at the center, and the numbers on either side came out nearly even. Bayul quietly counted himself lucky to be sitting beside Eli. The students nearby felt exactly the same way.
"Shall we begin, then?"
The lecture hall fell quieter than it had been at any point since class started. This was no grade on the line, and yet the tension was somehow even thicker.
"Since it's the first round, let's start easy. This one."
Professor Waite picked up an herb crowned with small yellow blossoms along every branch. What made it distinctive was the leaf's edge, jagged and serrated like a saw blade.
"Inkula."
Bayul naturally assumed Eli would be first to answer again. But the correct answer came drifting over from the opposing team.
"It mainly blooms in summer and bears fruit in autumn. The part used medicinally is the root—taken when you have a sore throat or a cough, it brings welcome relief."
"Correct! You know your plants precisely, Lanasa."
If this side had Eli, that side had Lanasa, the top student of the Knight Department. Apparently reluctant to stoop to pulling weeds, she had kept her lips firmly sealed—until now.
"Yes!"
"Lanasa, I believed in you from the start!"
The students who'd been despairing at not being on Eli's team finally brightened and cheered.
"I knew that one too. Just a beat too slow."
Eli clicked his tongue in frustration.
"Second question, coming up."
The second herb was a rather peculiar-looking plant. A round, lumpy tuber like a potato sprouted several long, slender leaves straight from its crown, and a scruffy tangle of thin root hairs clung to it, giving it a slightly bedraggled appearance.
"Villatria! A variety of yarrow! Ground into powder and taken with warm water, it stops bleeding. It's also known to be effective on burns."
This time Eli was faster. The moment Professor Waite lifted the herb, the boy reeled off the information as though he'd been waiting for it all day.
"One to one. Dead even, is it?"
For all the talk of a team match, the contest was narrowing into a private duel between Eli and Lanasa. Neither yielded an inch. Every time Eli answered one, Lanasa inevitably answered the next, a relentless back-and-forth that never broke.
A couple of the herbs were ones even Bayul might have known, but the two of them were so blisteringly quick that he never got the chance to open his mouth.
"Helena. A small plant that grows in the deep shade of the mountains, used to brew liquor or steep as tea. Its young leaves are eaten as greens as well—it strengthens bones and muscles and lifts the spirit."
"Gah! Oh no, no, no! What do we do!"
With one question left, Lanasa's string of correct answers tipped the balance for good. As things stood, they would have to nail the final question just to force a tie and escape the weeding. The faces of the students who had pinned everything on Eli turned to ashen despair in an instant.
"Now, the last question. Focus!"
Only Professor Waite seemed to be enjoying this. He smiled as he picked up a herb and held it up for the class to see. As they always had, every gaze converged on Eli and Lanasa.
"Hm?"
But what was this? Somehow, both of them had gone quiet—a complete reversal from everything that had come before.
"Dear me, it seems our two top students don't know it. Anyone else who does?"
Professor Waite raised the hand holding the herb high, as if to make it easier to see. A shaggy, unkempt mass of root hairs like a wild overgrown head, a long stem stretching out the length of a grown man's arm, and at its tip, a broad round leaf hanging heavy.
"Hmm... if I think hard enough, it'll come to me."
They stood squarely at the crossroads: a month of weeding, or not. Setting the labor aside, the herb garden was a place students avoided on account of its foul smell—and the ranch beside it already gave off quite enough stench of its own. Bayul had no desire whatsoever to prolong the agony.
Rai, do you really not know it?
Before he realized it, Bayul was staring at Eli with desperate, pleading eyes. Please, let the answer come out of his mouth.
And then it happened.
―Ailrak.
"...Ailrak?"
Bayul found himself murmuring the word, following the voice that had sounded beside his ear.
"Oh? Who was that just now?"
It had been a very small sound, but the room was so utterly silent that it reached Professor Waite's ears. He whistled low as he searched for the one who'd answered.
"It was Bayul! I heard him!"
It was the girl seated behind Bayul. Excited that the score was now tied, she shouted it out. Relief rippled out in sighs from every corner of the room.
"I didn't know you had an interest in herbology, Bayul. Care to explain its properties as well?"
"Ah, um, that is... I only remember the name..."
Flustered, Bayul fudged his way through an answer. He honestly had no idea what was happening. He'd simply reacted without thinking to a voice that had suddenly sounded in his ear—he knew nothing at all about the herb called ailrak. Even the fact that this plant was ailrak had only just come to his knowledge.
"Hm. Well, you got the name right, so I'll count it as correct. Ailrak is a classic remedy to take when the body is swollen or inflamed. It's also known to be remarkably effective against diabetes."
Having finished his explanation, Professor Waite reached a hand toward his basket.
"Five to five. A tie is a bit anticlimactic, don't you think?"
"No! Nobody lost anything, so this is exactly right!"
"Come now, you've come this far—we have to see it through. I told you, I'll write you the passes!"
"No, thank you!"
"We're fine, Professor!"
The students' protests rained down like hail, but nothing could stop Professor Waite. At last, he drew a new herb from the basket and raised it high.
"Final question! The team that answers wins it all!"
―Senatora.
Oh!
The same voice from before rang again in Bayul's ear, as if it had been waiting for this very moment. And in that instant, Bayul knew for certain.
It's the spirit of the earth!
He's helping me again!
At first his bewilderment had been too great to grasp it, but now he felt it—a voice unmistakably different, yet resembling Innocent's. It was the spirit of the earth. And at last, he had come looking for Bayul again.
―Senatora.
When Bayul stayed silent, the spirit of the earth called out once more. Joy and gratitude welled up together and shook him. He had never dreamed their reunion would come about like this, and that made the happiness all the greater.
"Senatora."
For the sake of the earth spirit's hard work, Bayul willingly spoke the herb's name aloud.
"...Correct! Bayul gets it again!"
Perhaps it had caught him off guard, because Professor Waite called the answer a beat late.
"Waaaah! We won!"
"The passes!"
The students' cheers filled the lecture hall to bursting. They swarmed over, shaking Bayul and Eli by the shoulders, telling them how brilliantly they'd done.
"Bayul, you...?"
Only then did Eli seem to catch on, his mouth hanging open.
It was a spirit, wasn't it? The spirit of the earth appeared?
Bayul nodded slowly. He still couldn't see anything, but the voice was unmistakably clear.
A rough voice, with warmth folded into it.
They had finally met.
Bayul's heart began to pound.
"Bayul! So you met the spirit of the earth during the day!"
On a pitch-dark night, the friends gathered once more at the ranch. Aidan, who'd been buried in library work and hadn't shown his face since before lunch, burst in and fired off his question the moment he arrived.
"Yeah, Aidan. You heard it from Rai?"
"Yep, he dropped by the library for a bit. So does that mean it'll show up whenever you call it now?"
Bayul shook his head, feeling a little sorry for the boy who was practically glowing with anticipation.
"No—I only heard its voice, just for a moment."
"Huh? What! Don't tell me it's still shy?"
"Looks like it."
Right up until they came to the ranch, Bayul had tried tirelessly to summon the earth spirit, but nothing had changed. The spirit wanted to help him, yet still refused to show itself. It was maddening—and yet, in its own way, remarkably consistent.
"Wow, the way it plays hard to get is practically genius! Quinn, is this what spirits are like? Why are they all so capricious?"
"They're beings with a will of their own, like I said. Spirits are special. It'd be stranger if they were ordinary."
"Still, this is a bit much! I'm getting scared just thinking about what the other two spirits will be like!"
Logan had been watching Aidan shiver and ham it up without much thought when a question occurred to him.
"Innocent is the water spirit, and now there's one of earth—so what's left are wind and fire?"
"Right, Logan. Though I haven't sensed either of them even once yet."
"Is there any chance they, too, are lingering around you like the earth spirit, without you realizing it?"
Bayul shook his head firmly. His own obtuseness had meant he'd noticed the earth spirit's presence far too late, but no matter how he turned it over in his mind, there had been no moment whatsoever that could have pointed to spirits of wind or fire.
"I've wondered the same thing, but I don't think so. Nothing suspicious ever happened, not the way it did with the earth spirit."
"Well, to be perfectly accurate, there was once. I watched with my own eyes as a candle lit itself, and things rattled around in a strong wind."