Nenshin
A large pit had been dug behind his house. It was presumably where they usually burned garbage. Black scorch marks remained.
"Do you normally burn the flying locust eggs here?"
Maomao
confirmed with Nenshin.
"That's right. They don't burn easily, so I douse them with fuel."
By fuel, he likely meant oil or sheep dung. The firewood and charcoal that Maomao and the others took for granted were luxury items in this region.
"Well... since we have the opportunity, I'd like to try burning them a different way for once..."
At Maomao's offer, Nenshin looked puzzled.
"I don't mind, but what are you planning to do?"
"For starters, I'll borrow that pot over there."
Maomao touched the large pot. It was old but sturdily made, and once the rust was removed it would still be serviceable. It had apparently been left unused for quite some time, as dried grass and dead insects were inside.
She flipped it over and scrubbed it with a straw brush.
"Here you are, Maomao."
Sparrow
had gone to fetch water from the river, and Maomao gratefully used it.
"That's a huge pot. You could probably
make
enough green pepper stir-fried pork for about thirty people at once."
"Were they using it as a field kitchen or something?"
Maomao and Sparrow faced each other as they washed the pot. When she was around Sparrow, Maomao found herself unconsciously matching her speech patterns.
"That's a pot for cooking the farm slaves' rice. They made a whole day's worth of rice in it."
"I see, I see. There sure were a lot of farm slaves, huh."
Maomao had roughly relayed to Sparrow what she'd heard from Nenshin. The eccentric handmaiden didn't seem to care much whether the person across from her was a former bandit, a killer, or a former farm slave.
(I wonder how much the villagers know?)
They treated her as an oddball, but the atmosphere wasn't one of outright hostility. Perhaps it was all part of their easygoing nature — not particularly worried about locust plagues either.
"Is this village safe if bandits were to attack?"
The words slipped out of Maomao before she could stop herself.
"I think it'll be fine~"
She'd meant it as a murmur to herself, but Sparrow answered from across.
"They're settled here now, but they're originally a pastoral people. Inside the storehouse, there were well-maintained bows and swords. They know the terrain, so they're strong — and bandits would have to be pretty brave to attack them."
In terms of security, the capital was apparently somewhat better after all.
"So that's why they target travelers."
Maomao nodded in understanding.
(I wonder what happened to that guide?)
It felt like something she shouldn't think about, but there was one thing she wanted to confirm.
"Sparrow, why did you do something as reckless as acting as bait? Basen didn't seem to know about it, and I can't imagine Rikuson would do something like that."
As far as Maomao was concerned, Jinshi should be highly sensitive to her safety by now. Assigning Basen as her guard was, she believed, Jinshi's own way of being considerate.
Sparrow narrowed her small eyes.
"My
life
is all about
minimizing
the damage. Rather than not knowing when we might be attacked, isn't it safer to be able to dictate when we attack?"
That was probably Sparrow's own version of a safety measure.
"Normally, I'd think the smart move would be to keep the danger quiet and reassure people, though."
"Well, Maomao, you've got nerves of steel, so I figured you'd prefer a more logical approach~"
"Just so you know, I will die if you punch me."
"Yes, I know. I have high expectations for your poison tolerance."
She's quite the pragmatic big sister.
While they'd been chatting, the grime on the pot had come off.
"What are you going to do with this pot?"
"I'm going to put the locust eggs from earlier inside it."
"⁉"
Suzume retreated with tremendous speed.
"…Maomao."
"Suzume, don't worry. I won't eat them, I promise I won't."
"Really?"
Her eyes were filled with doubt.
"Yes. They don't look very tasty, and I only collected them as a precaution, but they're pretty gross, aren't they?"
She'd eaten the adult form before, but the eggs were quite a different matter.
"I'll pour oil on these and—"
"Stir-fry them?"
"Burn them."
"Burn them?"
Maomao took the pot and headed for the temple. A modest brick temple.
"If we light a fire here, doesn't it feel more like a festival?"
"Oh my."
"And a festival needs a feast, right?"
Maomao glanced briefly at the village children still milling about.
Suzume's face broke into a grin. It seemed she'd caught on to what Maomao was planning.
"I see. Then leave the decorations to me."
Red ornaments came sliding out from her collar.
"We'll need a stand to display the pot, so let's have my brother-in-law and Raban help too."
It had also become established that Suzume would work together with Raban's older brother.
Since Suzume took the initiative in setting up the venue, all Maomao had to do was prepare the feast.
Yanyan
was practically
a professional
cook, so Maomao's contributions tended to get overshadowed — but she was no slouch in the kitchen herself.
(Cooking was just like compounding medicine.)
It all came down to how you combined the ingredients.
"What are you going to make?"
Nianzhen narrowed his remaining eye.
"If it's a festival, we should enjoy ourselves properly. This is the feast for the occasion."
"...Well, I suppose that's true."
Nianzhen shifted his gaze uneasily. The person standing there was Raban's older brother.
"Hey! Don't use all of it! The amount I brought is limited!"
"I know, I know. More importantly, hurry up and steam these for me."
"You really know how to work people hard!"
Raban's older brother grumbled as he fed fuel into the stove. Even though the sheep dung was dry, he seemed reluctant to grab it with his bare hands, so he used sticks to pick it up and toss it in.
"Use any of our tools here however you like. If you're using up food supplies, I'd appreciate it if you paid us back afterward. We're barely scraping by, you know."
"Thank you very much."
"Well then, I'm going to get some sleep."
Nianzhen lay down on the crude sleeping mat. He looked energetic enough, but he was already an old man, and the daily farm work must have been wearing on him.
"Sweet potatoes get sweeter the more slowly you heat them, right?"
"That's right. That's why you don't just blast them over high heat."
(He seemed knowledgeable not just about farming, but about cooking with potatoes as well.)
In any case, Raban and his lot must have been using his older brother when figuring out how to make use of sweet potatoes. Raban's older brother might come across as the more forceful one compared to his younger brother, but he was fundamentally far too good-natured. And because he put on an outward show of resistance, it just came across as a perfectly ordinary — if rather belated — rebellious phase.
"I don't really know much about cooking, but do you happen to know any dishes you can make with the ingredients we have here?"
"Why are you asking me?!"
"Suzume said she's basically just an eater, and I can't count on Basen."
Suzume could manage something simple like porridge, but she seemed to prefer focusing on eating when it came to complicated dishes.
"...I don't know."
Raban's older brother told an easily see-through lie.
"Is that so? ...I'm sorry. I wanted to feed you lots of delicious food."
Maomao glanced behind her. The children were watching through the gap at the house's entrance. It wasn't just the brother and sister from before—somehow their numbers had grown.
"You've got friends too, huh? Wanted to eat something delicious and unusual, did you?"
Maomao spoke to the children, even as she thought this wasn't like her at all.
"Huh? You can't eat sweet potatoes?"
The younger sister's voice, sounding sad.
"We can eat them, but I'm sorry—I'm not very good at making things taste delicious."
"Are you bad at cooking?"
Another child tilted their head.
"I want to eat sweet potatoes. We don't have any..."
A child's sad voice.
"..."
Raban's older brother made an awkward face.
He looked irritated, and when she thought he had turned his back, he let out a heavy sigh. Then he spun around and snapped his finger up sharply.
"Hey, you little brats. If you want to eat, then lend a hand. I'll feed you something better than anything!"
The children cheered.
Raban's older brother apparently had a strong eldest-son temperament.
(Easy pickings.)
Maomao thought this as she lifted the lid off the steamer and poked a chopstick into the sweet potatoes to check if they had softened.
By the time Maomao and the others finished cooking, the shrine decorations were complete as well.
At the center of the shrine sat a pot filled with locust eggs. Bricks had been skillfully arranged to form a makeshift stand.
The crude brick shrine had red banners hanging everywhere, and animal-fat lanterns flickered with a warm glow. Metal pieces strung on cords served as wind chimes, clinking softly. When the wind blew, they chimed and the red banners fluttered gracefully.
Crude chairs—barrels topped with woolen cloth—lined up in place of tables. Maomao and the others arranged the finished dishes on them.
The sun had nearly touched the horizon.
"What's all this?"
Not only the children but the adults had come as well.
Once everyone had gathered, Maomao poured oil into the great pot. Using dried grass as kindling, she set it alight.
With a soft whoosh, an aroma billowed up—it was hard to tell whether it was savory or foul. In the deepening dusk, the great pot no longer looked like a pot at all; it had become a grand bonfire.
"Honored guests, whatever are you doing?"
The village chief tilted his head in puzzlement.
"Allow me to explain that."
It was Bashin who stepped forward. Beside him, Jakku hovered, subtly holding slips of paper up for Bashin to see.
(
They were
cue cards.)
"This village was built long ago to carry out a certain festival."
"…Yes, that does sound familiar. The one where you mindlessly dig up the ground—the one nobody could make sense of?"
One of the villagers replied.
"That's right. It probably made no sense to you. The reason we've come is to pass on this festival—which has only survived in a half-baked form—in its proper shape."
(In a flat, monotonous drone.)
Bashin's delivery was entirely monotone, but with the bonfire blazing behind him like a halo, it lent the scene an oddly mystical air. Jakku had prepared well, too; from among the many slips he'd written, he seemed to be selecting the right one to match the villagers' reactions.
(He's gotten quite good at using his brother-in-law.)
Brother Rahan poked Maomao.
"Hey—is that really true?"
He whispered the question to Maomao. The stage setting was good enough, so there was one man here who could be fooled too.
"That's how the setting goes. Please try to play along."
"What? No way."
Brother Rahan made a face that said, *Are you serious?*
"...Is that so? I understand that the festival is to be held here. But may I confirm one thing?"
"What is it?"
"The festival has been entrusted only to Nenshin, hasn't it? We were never told anything about that—we were called here by the lord of the time as a place for settlement."
A crackling sound burst from inside the pot.
In other words, they were fine with holding the festival, but they had no intention of participating in it themselves.
Sparrow paused for a moment, then showed them the document while thinking it over.
"I understand. It doesn't have to be you lot performing the ritual."
Basen looked toward Maomao. Behind him, Sparrow winked one eye shut with a snap.
*(I've been thrown the ball.)*
The rest was being left up to her.
Maomao had no choice but to step forward.
She walked slowly, step by step, approaching the great pot.
*(Was there something? Something?)*
As she walked slowly, she thought up an improvised script. She stood before the great pot and bowed her head.
"This fire is a fire to send offerings to the gods. In ancient times, there was an era when humans were used as sacrifices, but it is said the gods gave an oracle that they no longer required such things."
She borrowed a line from some novel that had been popular in the rear palace.
"The land deity is an avatar of birds, and we have decided to offer their favorite foods as offerings in their place."
A chicken sleeping inside a coop caught her eye.
"Even if you say the land deity is a bird, we worship the god of grazing—"
"Oh my, so even though you've already settled down, you still cling to the faith of your old gods?"
Sparrow said, deliberately hamming it up.
"Is that perhaps why the wheat around here hasn't been growing well? Hasn't it been getting worse year after year? Could it be because spirits of the land god are squatting here without anyone believing in them?"
The villagers began murmuring among themselves.
The decline in wheat harvest was probably real. If you neglected the fields that much, of course things would go downhill. Unlike rice, wheat needed proper soil preparation, or it would just grow weaker and weaker.
(Is this going well?)
But then—
"Isn't it just that the soil's worn out? And I mean, gods—do they even really exist?"
A young villager fired back.
(You need to have more faith!)
Maomao thought, even though she had no right to lecture anyone else on that.
"Even if you bring up gods now, it doesn't really convince anyone."
"Exactly. The lord has a generous heart whether there's a harvest or not."
"Yeah. A kind lord you can see beats some god who might not even exist."
Voices of agreement rose throughout the crowd.
(Mm, yeah. You'll only believe what you can see, huh.)
She had known this would happen. Nothing to be done about it.
"Heh."
Maomao chuckled.
"Is something funny?"
"No, I think there's been a misunderstanding, so let me say it one more time. 'Performing the rites is not something that requires all of you.'"
She repeated Basen's line word for word.
Maomao kept her back to the villagers and rummaged through her robes.
(Let's see… here.)
Then she swung her hand high into the air.
Whoosh—a blaze of fire flared up from a large pot.
"Fire—fire!"
"What, the color changed!"
(How nostalgic, but still...)
In Maomao's pocket, there was the disinfectant alcohol she always carried, along with a pinch of the salt from the cooking earlier. She had it on hand because Sparrow had told her salt was a luxury item.
(If only I had some copper...)
If the flame had turned green, they would have been even more surprised.
Maomao turned around and put on a pleasant, customer-service smile.
"Now then, I understand you won't be participating in the ceremony, but..."
She looked at the dishes set on the barrel chairs.
"It seems I've made a bit too much food this evening. Won't everyone have some before it gets cold?"
"Yay!"
The ones raising their hands enthusiastically were the children. It wouldn't do to have them help and then not feed them.
Just as everyone's attention turned to the food, Maomao poked Sparrow.
"Please stop throwing me into impossible situations."
Maomao let out a sigh. Honestly, she'd broken into a cold sweat.
"I believed that if anyone could do it, it would be you, Maomao."
Sparrow said this with a perfectly straight face, then grinned and joined the battle for the feast.
(I hope this works out...)
Maomao was completely exhausted and decided to rest in the tent first.