Marta
Five years ago, inside a rocking carriage, the eyes of Blow Deblique—then a boy of thirteen—took in the snow-blossoms settling white across the wheat fields.
His mother, Luce, sat at his side with a worried face, her hand closed tight around his. His father, Slot Deblique, would not so much as meet his eyes, and spoke in a voice that brooked no argument.
"You will not cause trouble at the monastery, Blow Deblique."
"......"
"Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"You will soon be of an age to enter the Academy. How long do you intend to go on behaving like a child?"
"......"
"Go, learn a great deal, and come back having felt something. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
He had no wish to answer. But his mother squeezed his hand so hard that Blow Deblique had no choice but to force the word out.
The place he was bound for was Paulos Monastery. The point of sending him there, in theory, was that a monastery steeped in want might make him look back on his own life and repent. The Blow Deblique of those days, of course, had no intention of doing any such thing. He was only turning over in his head how on earth he was meant to fill a month of that dreary time.
Not long after they arrived, every piece of luggage he had brought was taken from him by the butler, Alfred, until all he held was a bag with the bare minimum of clothes.
Just you wait till I get home...
Blow Deblique shot a glare at Alfred as the man carried his things off. He had no time to do more than that. Sister Berka, who had charge of the children his age, took him by the hand at once, and he had no choice but to walk toward a building so shabby it could not even be compared with the mansion he had left.
The nearer they drew, the more children turned to stare—dozens of them in clothes worn to rags and stiff with grime, smirking as they looked him over. Blow stared right back and did not give an inch, but the moment he stepped inside, he could not help but scowl. The space was smaller than his own room, and wooden bunks stood packed in rows. From blankets so thin they seemed to stink at a glance, a few children poked their faces out and watched him. Something in those hollow eyes ruined whatever sense of beauty he had left, and he jerked his head away.
This isn't even a stable.
What reached his ears after that, though, was something he truly could not believe.
"This is the bedroom. I'll assign you a bed in a little while."
At those words the boy Blow squeezed his eyes shut, and anger surged up all at once. But his father's warning on the road still rang in his ears: cause trouble at the monastery, and they would not come for him—not in a month, not in a year. He had not been here thirty minutes, and already he made his decision. A month at most. He would endure it somehow. If they tried to keep him longer than that, he honestly thought he would rather throw himself into the lake he had seen on the way.
Holding his feelings down as far as they would go, he managed a nod with his lips pressed tight. A smile was beyond him.
They passed several more bedrooms before he came to a room a little larger than the rest, one that looked like a classroom. The children gathered there, all about his age, fell silent the instant he entered and watched him and Berka with wary eyes.
"Blow, could you introduce yourself to your friends?"
"I'm Blow."
"Blow? Surely that isn't all?"
"It is."
He said it while looking sharply up at the nun. He had expected her to lose her temper, but a smile, of all things, rested at the corner of her mouth.
"Please use respectful speech, Blow Deblique."
"......"
"This is Paulos Monastery."
Saying any more seemed like it would only tire him, so Blow gave her a perfunctory nod.
"Blow will be living with you for a while. If there's anything he doesn't know, please be kind enough to tell him."
With that, Sister Berka went out. Several of the bigger boys, who had disliked his manner from the start, closed around him at once.
"Hey."
"What."
"Those clothes... You a noble?"
"Yeah."
"You know rank doesn't mean a thing in here, right?"
"So?"
A hollow laugh spilled from the boys at the prickly answer.
"You came in last, so first you're on water—"
"Get lost."
Blow Deblique said it without a shred of hesitation. Faced with that brazen calm, the boys—more dumbfounded than anything—caught one another's eyes, snorted, and started in on him. The one who looked like their leader, a big, dark-skinned boy with cropped hair, shoved a vicious face into his.
"This is Paulos Monastery. Only people who work get to eat."
"Then work hard."
As if he had been waiting for exactly that, the boy seized Blow by the collar.
"You little bastard."
"The abbot tell you to do this?"
"Hah. A nobody like you who won't keep the rules and the law—!"
He never finished. The Blow of those days was not the sort to wait on anyone else's words.
"Ghk—!"
One fist to the gut, and the big boy folded backward and went down. The rest rushed Blow all at once, but not one of them could match the strength and the technique of a boy who had sat through knight's lessons, however halfheartedly, since he was small. It took less than ten minutes to put the lot of them in order.
The other children in the room had forgotten even to breathe. From the corners they swallowed, dry-mouthed, again and again.
"Well? Anyone else want a turn?"
No one had the courage to answer him. Blow swept a slow look over the children coughing and staring up at him. If he had followed his temper, he would have beaten every one of them who had come at him into pulp. He didn't bother. This much, and no one would dare him again. The nun would probably write the whole thing off as a bit of light conversation.
"I'll be sleeping. Wake me when it's time to eat."
No answer came. He didn't care. Whistling, he picked up his bag, went to the cleanest-looking bed in the bedroom the nun had named, and lay down. It was a top bunk, so the ceiling hung close, but that suited him well enough. At least he didn't have to look at anything else.
A little time passed. From the murmuring below, it seemed most of those boys had come in. Blow shut his eyes and meant only to sleep, when the door opened again and the noise beneath him cut off all at once.
"Why... is it so quiet? Lintz? Max?"
"Quiet! Marta."
"H-huh? Why?"
From the sound of it, the one who had just spoken was the big boy who had taken the first punch. Blow was briefly wondering whether he ought to tell them to shut up when the whispering died, and angry footsteps stopped in front of his bed.
"You mustn't do that!"
A girl's voice, clear, rising from the lower bunks—and with it a foul smell that he, a young lord, had rarely been made to endure. Blow grimaced, pinched his nose, and barely managed an answer.
"...And who are you? What's that smell."
"I just finished cleaning the toilets."
"......"
"This is a place where you have to work if you want to eat. The abbot works too."
"So having the new kid beaten was the abbot's orders, was it?"
"Lintz!"
Marta's voice was hushed and yet perfectly clear, but no one answered the girl. At length she raised it again, almost shouting toward Blow.
"That was those children's fault!"
"Right. And the fault doesn't just vanish. My hand still hurts."
"I'll speak to the abbot and Sister Berka about this myself. So come down. Quickly."
"Haa. You've got a truly tiresome personality."
Words were clearly not going to end it. He pushed himself up—and what met his eyes was a freckled girl with hazel-brown hair, dressed more raggedly than anyone else in the room, leaning on a cane worn smooth at the tip, gazing quietly up at him with her eyes closed.
"......"
Scoundrel though he was, the sight of her startled him so completely that for a moment he could not speak.
"You. What's your name?"
"...Blow."
"Come with me, Blow."
He hesitated, and the girl's rebuke fell at once.
"Quickly!"
Blow let out a long, deep sigh and, for the moment, had no choice but to climb down from the bed.
Three days after he entered the monastery, Blow had already mastered the art of avoiding Marta. Hide himself somewhere passable, and one of the boys working nearby would come running to report.
"B-Blow! Marta's coming."
"Thanks."
Most of the boys were already under him, so there was nothing difficult about it. The only cost was that, every time, he had to endure twenty minutes of Marta's scolding right up until he fell asleep.
"Blow! You can't do that."
The barrage came every day. At some point Blow stopped answering any of it and simply stared at the ceiling.
"Blow! I'm begging you. Please?"
"......"
The Marta of those days had no way of knowing how hard Blow was biting down on his temper. The only reason he lay there in silence was a thin, grudging scrap of pity for a girl who could not see.
"I'll do it tomorrow."
"Really? Promise."
"Yeah."
They were empty words.
Most of the boys followed him, but his nature ran so wild that a faction that disliked him was bound to form. One of them was Marta's younger brother, Aubio. Aubio challenged him truly every single day, and Blow usually had him on the ground within two blows. Then Aubio would shout at him without fail, voice thick with grievance.
"I—I hate you."
"Yeah. Get hit every day and I'd feel the same. Don't you ever get tired?"
"You bad guy!"
"Then don't touch me. It's a nuisance."
Blow was sick of it. Even beating them just enough to keep them from becoming a bother had started to irritate him. ...Should I really give him one proper thrashing? Whenever the thought rose, he counted the days he had left, shoved the feeling down, and went off into the nearby woods.
Today was no different. He was looking over the trees for one he might climb and sleep in when, far off, he caught sight of Marta groping along the ground.
"Where did it go... my cane..."
And nearer at hand, boys giggling as they watched her. Blow let out a thin sigh, walked over, and asked in a low voice.
"What are you doing?"
"Huh? It's Marta's cane!"
"Marta's an idiot. Come into the woods and she can't find her way."
They thrust it in front of his face as they said it: Marta's wooden cane, worn down at the tip. And strangely enough, Blow found that he could not stand the sight of them snickering. He rapped his knuckles down on the crowns of their heads at once.
"Ow! Blow! Why'd you hit me!"
Max looked up at him as if he'd been wronged. Blow answered with a scowl.
"You just look like you want to be hit."
"That's too much!"
"What, not enough? Want another?"
"N-no!"
They dropped the cane and bolted for the monastery buildings. Blow picked up the thing lying there by itself, and from far off came Marta's trembling voice.
"...Is someone there?"
He looked at the cane in his hand for a moment, then flung it down near her. Marta reached that way at once.
"F-found it!"
She clutched it tight to her chest, turned toward where he stood, and began to shout.
"Thank you! Thank you!"
"......"
Her voice reached Blow clearly even as he was already moving away. Something in it left him uneasy, and he walked quickly off in the opposite direction.
The fifteenth day since Blow had come to the monastery.
The children there did every kind of work. They split firewood, helped tend the vineyards, cleaned, and sewed. The jobs were usually claimed by a footrace: the sisters and monks in charge stood at intervals, and the children ran for whichever task they wanted.
Blow, of course, slipped toward the wood-splitting. It was the easiest place from which to drift off into the forest and slack. His spot was already taken for him, so unlike the children who ran, he strolled that way at his leisure. Behind him, always, only one person was left standing. Marta.
When she remained like that, Sister Berka would come to her, bend her knees, and call her name gently.
"Marta."
"Yes, Sister."
"The toilets will do today."
"Yes, Sister."
Marta never once asked why. The nun stroked her hair with a soft hand.
Is she an idiot?
No matter how he looked at it, Blow could not understand. He had seen her run perfectly well with that cane. She could tell a friend to lead her. She had her brother Aubio, for that matter. And did that nun think at all? She could give Marta something easy first. Why make her clean the toilets every day—the one job no one wanted? It wasn't as if anyone would scold her for doing otherwise.
Mealtimes were the same. Marta always took the smallest lump of potato, and though cleaning the toilets left a musty smell on her, she washed the younger girls first and then washed herself in cold water. For some reason the sight of her nagged at him, and Blow found himself watching her closely without quite meaning to.
While he was doing so, Lintz, beside him, spoke up.
"Blow!"
"What."
"We're going fishing after lunch. You coming?"
"Too much trouble."
"Come on. Catching fish is more fun than you'd think."
Blow shook his head at Lintz's grin.
"They said there's some gathering again this afternoon. I'm lying down until then."
"The Blessing Ceremony?"
"Yeah. That."
"Well, you're not even taking part, so I suppose it would be a bother. If you feel like it later, come down to the lake."
A little while after, the children scattered to their assigned work. Blow, of course, skipped the morning duties. His kindhearted friends had offered to haul the wood in his place, and he could hardly ignore such sincerity.
The weather had grown much colder than when he first arrived, and his hideout was the storeroom on the roof of the building that held his bedroom. Usually he lay there watching the clouds drift past the window, and today, too, they swam beautifully across a sky like the sea.
A long while passed. Cloud-watching had gone dull, and Blow was just getting up to go see about the fishing Lintz had mentioned when, through the window, he caught sight of Marta, finished with the toilets.
"Ugh, it's cold."
She walked along rubbing her hands, looking thoroughly satisfied with herself, paused a moment at the well, and drew up a bucket. Then she carefully wiped her hands and face, her arms and her legs, with that freezing water. Her breath rose whiter than the clouds. Blow, cold himself, found himself doing up the buttons of his coat again for no good reason.
"Cold. But I can't go smelling while the kids are eating."
Washed, Marta took up her cane and started toward the chapel, the place of prayer. Blow followed some ten steps behind, quiet.
A little later she went inside, made her way to the very front, and knelt. Blow stayed near the entrance with his arms folded, watching. Soon she clasped her hands tight, and her voice, clear and ringing, carried all the way to him.
"Today, too, I give thanks. Almighty Lunaria."
All she had done since waking was eat three lumps of potato you could barely chew, and clean the toilets. And she was thankful? The more he listened, the more something twisted in his gut.
...Is she really an idiot?
Why thank a god? There's nothing to thank. They've done nothing but make your life miserable, and you call that a god...
He watched her in silence, thinking things he could not even bring himself to say aloud. After a while, Marta's small shoulders began to shake.
"This Blessing Ceremony... please let it end well. Reyna, and Bode, and Lintz......"
She named every child who would receive the ceremony this time, one after another, and then went on in a voice brimming with longing.
"May blessings fill the futures of everyone who goes on and leaves me behind......"
Tears ran down her cheeks. Perhaps it was only that the girl's voice was so desperate. Before he knew it Blow's face was deeply furrowed, and he was glaring at the altar before her, where the sunlight fell.
....Pray that hard and it still won't be heard. If it had been heard, she wouldn't have any reason to cry. Everyone would have eaten well and lived happy. That damned Lunaria doesn't even care about you.
And Marta, who still doesn't know it... she's a fool. Truly.
Faced with a sight so unlike himself, his stomach kept turning, until he could not hold the words in.
"...Idiot."
At that, the voice of the praying girl cut off. Marta whipped around toward him, and though he knew she could not see, Blow startled all the same.
"Blow......?"
His name in her mouth froze him for an instant. Then he ran from the chapel, and the boy fled into the woods for a long, long time, as if he had done something terribly wrong.
"Young master. It's time to get up."
Hans's voice. Blow Deblique's eyes flew open.
The ceiling of the monastery he had known as a child. He let out a long sigh and, with some effort, pushed himself up.