A Hand from Beyond the Sea (3)
The moment Monia suddenly appeared behind them, every sailor felt as if he had been caught in a spell.
The first thing that seized their eyes was her beautiful black hair, dark as the night sky they so often watched on long voyages. Next came the eyes that stole their gaze completely—slightly upturned at the corners, sharp and haughty, yet holding violet irises that slept like jewels. Her tightly closed lips were full of life, tinted a soft pink that stirred the natural urge to kiss them. Her skin was nothing like the rough complexions the brothel women of the ports tried to hide under layers of paint; it was smooth and lustrous as silk. Her arms and legs were long, supple, and perfectly formed. She possessed a beauty that seemed more work of art than living woman, as if she could not possibly belong to this world.
Yet what truly drew the sailors’ stares were the parts that inflamed their desire. The large, lush breasts wrapped only in the tattered remnants of a dress, the smooth, tightly toned waist where abdominal muscles faintly showed, the soft rise of her hips, and the full, well-fleshed thighs that followed—everything about her was made to provoke a man. It stirred the lust of men who had been forced into long abstinence by months at sea.
“Gulp.”
The sound of someone swallowing made the sailors glance at one another before they could stop themselves. Moments later, a man’s arm wrapped around Monia and pulled her back, and every gaze snapped toward that motion.
Because their eyes had just left Monia, the first thing they registered was a body clad in a cloak of some beast’s fur. Perhaps because they had been staring at Monia—who looked as if she would fit neatly into their arms—the sudden sight of a man’s broad chest startled them. When they lifted their heads they saw a face framed by hair like wild animal fur, sharp eyes glaring down at them. It was a masculine, powerful, charismatic face; an ordinary man who met it by chance on the street might have felt his legs give way under the sheer pressure. To rough seafarers, however, that was no great problem.
He’s huge.
What the hell is that?
Chester’s height alone was intimidating. In an unarmed brawl the bigger man was almost always the stronger one—that was simple fact. The sailors themselves were no small men. When ship crews chose new hands, the first thing they looked at was size. Without skill or experience, surviving at sea required a large, sturdy frame, stubborn stamina, and a vicious streak. Born big and further hardened by life on the waves, they were not the sort to be cowed by anyone’s physique. Yet Chester stood a full head taller, and neither his bulk nor his muscle yielded an inch to theirs.
“Hey, that has to be Monia, right?”
“If she’s that pretty, I can see why the captain’s obsessed. But what’s the giant next to her?”
“Don’t tell me that’s the butler?”
“Come on, no way. How is that a butler’s body? Nobles only hire soft, girlish pretty-boys who care about appearances.”
“Well, he is handsome, I’ll give him that.”
“Obviously some island native! Does he look civilized to you?”
Chester and Monia watched the two men talking busily. As expected, they could not understand a single word.
This is troublesome. We can’t communicate at all. But then who was looking for Monia? Searching for her means they’re from the kingdom. Why would someone from the kingdom gather foreigners who don’t even speak the language to find her?
The worst part was that he could not even guess the other side’s identity. If the kingdom itself had sent people to recover Monia, he could understand that. If it were the Duke, he would certainly play the grieving father whose daughter was stolen by the crown and stir up trouble. Some people might send searchers just to curry favor with him. But why gather foreigners who could not even speak the language? Monia seemed equally uneasy; she had revealed herself, yet she still could not bring herself to approach or speak to them.
“Butler or not, who cares?”
“Right. We can’t talk to them anyway.”
“Kill the man, drag the woman to the captain.”
Even without shared words, body language and expression still carried meaning.
“Their faces don’t look good.”
“Yeah.”
The instant Chester sensed the dangerous shift in atmosphere, he saw the nearest man raise a crossbow and aim it at him. The bolt flew. Chester, who had been watching the weapon’s movement, twisted his body and dodged before the string even finished releasing.
“Huh?”
“He dodged that?!”
The moment he cleared the shot, Chester seized the trunk of a nearby tree with one hand. With that brutal grip he locked onto the hard wood, then lightly kicked off the ground and launched his body upward. Without any real preparation, using only the lightest of motions, he climbed the tree and vanished into the dense canopy of leaves in the blink of an eye.
“What the hell was that?! Does he think he’s a monkey?!”
Unlike Chester and Monia, the sailors knew what monkeys were—yet even to them the sight was absurd. They had never seen a human climb a tree like that.
Every eye locked onto Chester. Only then did two of them remember Monia and whirl around in panic.
“Huh?”
She was already gone from the spot.
“What the hell is wrong with those bastards?! Shooting arrows at Chester!”
Monia was clearly furious that Chester had nearly been hit. Chester pulled the now-rough-tongued Monia into his arms, stroking her hair while he spoke to Ant, whom he had ordered to wait in the trees.
“Did you remember the scent?”
Ant nodded. Chester praised him with a fond rub, then told him to take another smell. A dog’s nose was already beyond ordinary imagination; an ant-wolf’s was far sharper still. Ant turned his head this way and that, sampling the air, then nudged Chester’s palm with his nose to convey his meaning.
“They’re not all here. Quite a few more must have come ashore.”
“……”
Hearing that, Monia puffed out her cheeks, full of fighting spirit.
“Beat them all up!”
“Mm.”
Chester smiled briefly at her demand.
“Monia.”
He turned her face toward his and spoke quietly.
“Those men have been at sea a long time hunting for this island. Their desires are pent up and their tempers are foul. You saw how they acted toward us just now.”
“Yes.”
“So even if we go with them quietly, there’s no guarantee we’ll reach the kingdom in one piece.”
“……”
“But maybe—just maybe—we could. And if we want to drive them off, a light thrashing won’t be enough.”
Men that well-armed, hardened by rough work, with good stamina and the thick hides that came from constant brawling—subduing them one by one would take forever and be extremely dangerous. They carried cutlasses and bows; the danger would not end with a few bruises.
“Besides, they just tried to kill me outright. They were probably ordered to kill me and bring you back.”
Chester had no intention of gently turning aside someone who meant to murder him. His father had taught him only how to hunt beasts, yet he had often watched that same father “hunt” men. He had always been prepared for the day he might have no choice but to kill a human being. Monia, however, was different. Murder, no matter how justified, was a grim and sinful act. So he asked her.
“Monia. If you want to stay with me, we have to kill those people. I don’t want to put you in danger, and if I can help it I’ll leave you at the house and handle them alone. But the fact that I’ll be killing people doesn’t change.”
Chester would become a killer. Monia looked at him in silence. In his eyes she saw anxiety trembling—fear that she might reject him because of this. At the same time, fear rose in her own face. What flashed through her mind was the memory of Chester, blood-soaked and collapsed after he had recklessly gone to hunt a bear for her sake when terror had swallowed her whole. The moment that corpse-like image returned, her resolve hardened.
Monia leaned in and kissed him softly. After a long, lingering kiss she drew back and whispered,
“I’ll stay by your side forever.”
And then,
“I won’t let you carry it alone either.”
Chester felt her body trembling with tension and fear even as her voice rang out as firm as steel.
“If you have to fall down a thousand-fathom cliff of thorns, I’ll fall with you. If you have to shoulder a crushing sin, I’ll shoulder it with you.”
Monia drew the machete Chester had made for her, took courage from its weight, forced her shaking body still, and held out her hand. Carefully she tied the rope that already bound her own wrist around Chester’s as well.
“No matter what happens, the two of us won’t be separated.”
She laced her fingers tightly through his, looked up at the face that had already regained its calm, and smiled.
“Besides, it’s all right. It really will be all right. You know how I’ve lived on this island, what I’ve managed to do. You’ve watched me the whole time.”
Chester might not remember, but the words she pulled from a memory that remained crystal-clear to her were almost the same ones he had once spoken to her on a stormy night when she had been thrown into the terror of death beneath wind and rain.
“I’m much stronger than you think.”
“So don’t worry.”
Hearing that, Chester felt a deep sorrow. People who had lived hard, incomplete lives like his grew familiar with death whether they wanted to or not. Every winter, neighbors they had known died; a single bad harvest turned men into bandits who raided the village; they killed those bandits to save the village; a single misstep with a noble could mean anything from a beating to death. So Chester had long prepared himself for the day he might have to kill. Monia had not. She had lived a life of abundance where death was never familiar. And yet she had steeled herself for murder so easily, as if human beings no longer looked human to her—just as she had once looked at him and seen only livestock.
How…
What kind of education had the Duke given her? How could a father raise his daughter this way? Inside Monia he saw the shattered child who had endured a childhood of violence and near-torture, who did not even know she was suffering and pitiful, who simply endured in silence. The child was broken into pieces, yet she did not cry. She did not even know how to shed tears for herself, because she did not know she deserved pity.
“Monia.”
So Chester wept for her in his heart, while on the outside he pulled her into a firm embrace with a face set in hard resolve and said,
“Thank you.”
