Iron Age (4)
Monia twisted her hips and drew the axe back. The blade slipped into a shaft of sunlight filtering through the branches and flashed brilliantly, as if showing off.
She shifted her weight, moved her body with fluid ease, and struck the exact spot she had aimed for. Unlike before, when the stone axe had mostly smashed and crushed, the thick metal edge sank cleanly into the wood.
“Ugh!”
Used to stone axes bouncing off trees, Monia was so startled by the solid jolt that shot up her wrist when the metal axe bit deep that she let go. The axe stayed put, firmly embedded, never falling to the ground.
“Wow. This feels completely different.”
“Doesn’t it?”
While Monia was still marveling at the sensation of the metal axe, Chester—who had already felled a tree of his own—agreed and drew his knife.
He slid the blade from the wooden sheath he had carved for it and set the edge against the trunk, pushing smoothly. A thin branch sheared away at once.
With the claw knife he had never been able to cut a branch cleanly in one stroke; he had always had to half-break and finish by hand. The metal knife simply glided through and was gone.
Even thicker branches yielded easily: he drove the knife in, tapped the spine a few times for shock, and snapped them off.
Once the fallen tree was trimmed, he yanked the metal axe free from the stump and began chopping the trunk into lengths easy to carry.
Muscles flexed under his clothes. The axe sank deep, was rocked free, swung again a little farther along, sank again. After several such blows he planted a foot and shoved. The wood cracked with a loud report and broke cleanly.
“Ohhh.”
Monia sprang up, wrenched her own axe free, and began swinging with fresh enthusiasm.
An inexperienced person might still struggle even with metal, but Monia had already felled thick trees dozens—hundreds—of times with a stone axe. She toppled this one without much trouble.
“Wow! It’s already down!”
Until now they had mostly targeted slender trees because the thick ones were too hard. That was no longer necessary.
Thick trees could be dropped as easily as they liked!
“All right, then!”
The moment the tree fell, Monia pulled something from her basket.
At first glance it looked like a discarded scrap of iron plate, its surface warped and dented all over—except for one edge that gleamed with a smooth, razor sharpness that almost hurt the eyes.
It was shorter than the original machete but thicker, sized carefully to Monia’s frame. Chester had used a generous amount of ore to forge it for her.
Machete in hand, Monia set to work, whipping the blade through the remaining heavy branches and clearing them in a blur.
“Heh, heh-heh-heh. How’s that taste, you bastards!”
Chester, busy bundling the cut logs with rope, watched her dance the machete through the branches like a sword form and gave a quiet snort of laughter.
“Is it really that much fun?”
He said it, yet every night he still fell asleep with his own knife hugged tightly to his chest.
“We’re already finished!”
After whirling the metal machete, the metal knife, and the metal axe in a whirlwind of work, Monia stood trembling with an almost stunned expression. Emotion surged up so hard she suddenly kicked a nearby rock.
“Ow!”
Of course the rock felt nothing. Only Monia’s foot did.
“What are you doing?”
“But! That stupid rock made everything so hard!”
“That rock is the reason we managed this far.”
“Ah.”
Monia stroked the rock she had just kicked and murmured an apology.
Back home they stacked the firewood, ate, and settled into free time.
“Animals have been showing up more lately, haven’t they?”
“Yes. I think we can start hunting again soon.”
“Mm. Then tomorrow let’s move the trap lines first.”
Animals learn. Leave traps in the same places long enough and they begin to avoid them. So Chester regularly shifted the positions of every snare and pit they had set throughout the forest.
“What are you making right now?”
“Hm? A god statue.”
“What for?”
“To put it where that devil appeared before.”
“Ah! Right—that happened, didn’t it.”
“You forgot?”
“Heh-heh.”
Monia watched the figure Chester was carving.
His hands were skilled, but only in the practical sense: he could take odds and ends and turn them into something useful without fuss. Artistic finesse was another matter. He was better than most people, yet nowhere near an artist.
Carving a small block of wood into a delicate, intricate god statue was simply beyond him at present.
“Won’t the god get angry if it turns out ugly?”
“Nah. It’s the heart that counts. Every year Father and I offered the leftover scraps from the last hunt that didn’t sell. Never once got struck by lightning.”
“You offered the leftovers…?”
“Well, handing over something valuable to a god whose voice you’ve never even heard would be a waste.”
“You’re going to hell for that.”
Even so, Monia never tried to stop him from making the ugly little statue.
The result was plain only because skill was lacking; Chester poured every scrap of care he possessed into the work. He even dredged up half-remembered patterns from the church statues in the capital and copied them as best he could.
“Chester.”
“Mm?”
“Is there a reason you love knives so much?”
“A reason I love knives?”
“Yes.”
Chester paused in his carving and looked at the knife he had made.
“It was the gift Father gave me the first time he recognized me as a proper hunter.”
“……That knife—where is it now?”
“No idea. The country took it. Probably gathering dust in some prison storeroom.”
Monia’s face began to cloud.
“It’s all right.”
Chester set knife and statue aside, drew the darkening Monia into his arms, and held her.
“But—”
She started to speak, then pressed her lips shut.
Chester’s parents were dead.
During the drought, starving people turned bandit and wiped out the entire village. Even a strong man like his father could not defeat dozens of raiders while half-starved and dried out himself.
So that gifted knife had been, in truth, his father’s keepsake.
And she had been the one who…
“Father taught me how to use a knife.”
Chester stroked her hair, speaking the way one tells a child an old story.
“How to use a sling, how to shoot a bow, which plants are safe to eat, how to hunt animals…”
He pointed next at the house they had built.
“That too.”
Then at the tools they owned.
“Those too.”
Finally he pointed at himself and at Monia in turn.
“And our lives.”
He scooped up Ant, who had been lying nearby, and pulled both Monia and the ant-wolf into his arms.
“Everything I have came from Father. One knife more or less doesn’t matter.”
“……”
Monia listened in quiet tears until Ant licked her cheek; then she laughed without meaning to.
“Hey.”
“Mm?”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Just… for a lot of things. I don’t even know how to apologize properly, but… I was sorry.”
“That’s enough for me.”
They shared the quiet moment until Monia’s heart settled. Then she asked,
“What about your mother? What was she like?”
“Hm? My mother?”
“Yes. You always talk about your father, but almost never about her.”
“Mother, huh. What should I say…”
Chester thought a moment.
“Father was honestly a bit of a weirdo. The kind of man who left his family behind to wander the world. He only settled down after he met Mother.”
“Th-that’s… true, I guess?”
It was not a topic one could casually agree with, so Monia gave an awkward little nod.
Chester paid it no mind and continued.
“Mother was gentle enough to put up with even a man like that most of the time—but when she got angry she could snap a kitchen knife in half with her bare hands.”
“Excuse me? What did you just say?”
Perhaps Chester’s grip strength had come not from his father, but from his mother.
“Captain! Captain!”
The navigator’s voice reached Rotin’s ear as he slept.
“We’ve sighted an island!”
At those words Rotin’s eyes snapped open as if the deep sleep had never been.