Ayul came to see him on his third day in the tent. Dawn was just breaking, and he was in the midst of working his body through the Isolation Technique. She approached as he exercised outside the tent.

Sun-browned skin, patterns painted on her face, bright eyes. She gave a different impression now. Her expression looked much softer than before. At least she did not look ready to take someone's head off with an axe. Her words bore that out.

"A pleasure to meet you. I'm Ayul."

Her manner was nothing like it had been at their first meeting. She was calm. A true Westerner, perhaps. Encrid thought he was beginning to understand these people's ways. They were straightforward and never put on an act. Just like Rem.

"A little late for introductions, isn't it?"

Encrid spoke casually as he stretched. Gripping his left fingertips with his right hand, he turned his arm over and pressed steadily, loosening the muscles and tendons running from elbow to wrist.

Flexibility did not come overnight. It required the effort of daily training. Of course, Encrid had already been doing this for years.

Ayul's gaze swept over his body as he warmed up. For all his size and muscle, he moved with remarkable suppleness. Those muscles were tough, firm, and flexible. His physique was so well defined that cannibals would shake their heads at the sight. Those bastards hated tough, sinewy bodies.

"True, but we should introduce ourselves properly."

Though she had studied another man's body closely, there was no feeling in her gaze. Ayul remained matter-of-fact.

"Well, if you say so."

Encrid gave a perfunctory nod, and Ayul asked, "Can we dispense with the formalities?"

"I'd prefer that myself."

With that settled in straightforward fashion, they moved on. Ayul, too, was grateful to Encrid for becoming their human totem. That was why she had come.

"I thought I'd show you around for a while."

She spoke with her hands demurely holding her colorful skirt. Encrid judged there were at least two long daggers strapped to her thighs beneath it. He did not need to see them; her gait and gestures told him enough.

Her footfalls carried different weights. Her right foot landed more heavily. There would be a comparatively heavy weapon hidden on that side. Nor did a woman who had swung an axe at Rem the instant she saw him seem likely to go about unarmed.

Anyone could tell Ayul was a warrior, both from her appearance and from her behavior. That flowing skirt looked ideal for hiding things, too. As Rem's wife, she might even use it to block an opponent's vision. The lunatic who turned every situation into a sparring match assessed her skill once again.

Ayul waited for his answer with the sun behind her. Dawn was breaking, sunlight settling over them. Its warmth in the dry air made exercising here a pleasure.

Encrid had just finished warming up. Wiping his light sweat with a dry cloth, he went inside and asked Hira whether he could leave the tent.

"Would you come back before noon?"

Hira's tone was positively pleading. She seemed to have been busy with something for three days without proper sleep, and he wondered whether she was holding up. Encrid nodded.

Several of the people lying nearby greeted him. After three days, more of them were improving. Among them was the child he had first encountered.

["My name is Jiba. I'm thinking of marrying you when I grow up, mister."]

The child was bold. On hearing that, Luagarne had not merely puffed out her cheeks; she had stuck out her tongue as she laughed.

["Get in line, little human."]

["What?"]

["You already have plenty of rivals ahead of you."]

Jiba had sulked for a while at that. Declaring she would be his future bride as soon as she could get out of bed and walk certainly made her a bold child. Her mother had heard her, yet remained unperturbed. Shouldn't she put a stop to that?

Geomnarae still laughed heartily, while the woman with no daughter had gone back to sleeping, quiet as the dead. Well, all sorts of things had happened.

For now, it was still time for Jiba to be asleep. She had kicked off her thin blanket, leaving her belly exposed. Her mother drew it back over the child, who slept without a care, and asked, "Shall I come along?"

She meant she would accompany him if he needed someone to attend to him. Encrid shook his head and went back outside.

"Let's go."

Ayul spoke, and Encrid followed her. Outside the tent stood a man who had been looking at him strangely for days, but he ignored him.

It was a look of mingled resentment and gratitude, both love and hate. Encrid did not know the man. An odd fellow for a Westerner, whose likes and dislikes tended to be so clear-cut. He seemed close to Jiba's mother, so there appeared to be no ulterior motive.

Ayul led Encrid away from the tent. Sunlight welcomed their steps between the rows of tents.

"Have you cut Rem's head off yet?"

Encrid checked his left foot midstep and lengthened his stride. An army of ants was crawling beneath it. Spiders scattered at the human footsteps. Off to one side, a dung beetle was diligently rolling cow dung.

Would Luagarne eat that, too? Probably not. She seemed to pick and choose her insects just as humans did their food.

"People die when you cut their heads off."

Ayul uttered a truth. It was one Encrid knew as well.

"What he did seems bad enough to deserve it."

Ayul nearly agreed, then stopped. She remembered yesterday. The day Rem had slept at her home.

* * *

["I want a child."]

If you wanted something, shouldn't you say so without hesitation? Ayul had done just that. Her mate had taken it in stride.

["Do you?"]

He was his usual self, wearing that expression that suggested he cared about nothing but axes, fighting, battles, and cannibals. There had been a time when he was a mischievous brat. When had he become like this? Ayul stopped thinking about it.

Their wedding was a week away. Rem devoted himself to fighting and hunting. Watching him, she thought:

'It looks like he's running away.'

That was only a feeling. Rem would never actually do such a thing. Resting her chin on her hand, Ayul watched him swing his axe. She nearly asked whether he wanted to run away.

She recognized her own dishonesty. If Rem said he did want to run away, could she bear it? She turned away from the thought.

It was the first time she had hidden her feelings and said something else instead. That something else had been her wish for a child. Deep down, she told herself it couldn't be.

Rem was their future chieftain, brimming with talent, a man who would one day become a Hero. How many people in the West deserved to be called Heroes? There was said to be one among the cannibal tribe.

Why would someone like Rem want to run away? He loved this land. More than she did. That was another thing Ayul liked about him. So he was not running away. Her instincts must be wrong.

And he proved her right. He did not run away. A week after their wedding, he chose to sleep out on the plains rather than at home, and he beheaded the one they called the cannibal tribe's Hero.

Beneath the low sky, the clouds stretched like a white ceiling. Blood dripping from his axe drew a red line across it.

["Aaaaah!"]

Her mate let out a monstrous roar. A cry of victory. After that frenzied axe work, Rem left.

Why? She did not know. He had said nothing. At first, she was dumbfounded.

'That bastard?'

Rem had told her he had never considered any woman but her as his mate. They had grown up together, used similar techniques, and grown alike in temperament.

["Not that I suspect your mother of anything, but you'd think you two came from the same womb."]

Her father, who had not yet been chieftain then, had often said that.

["Really?"]

Ayul had liked hearing it. Had Rem not? Had her mate, the man who was supposed to live as her other half for the rest of their lives, felt differently? Had their hearts been pointing in different directions?

'Was it only me?'

Had she alone felt that way? Rem had left. After a month, her bewilderment had given way to anger. How could he leave without so much as a letter?

["Forget him."]

So said her father, now chieftain. So much had happened afterward. Years passed. The four seasons left their marks upon the plains.

On a windswept summer plain, Ayul made up her mind.

'When he comes back, I'll take his head off.'

Beyond bewilderment and anger, past even worry, all that remained was the desire to kill him. And then Rem returned.

["You said you wanted a child."]

After avoiding her for days, he had approached her and said that, for reasons she could not fathom. His shadow stretched long before the tent. Ayul looked at it as she answered.

["Right now, I'd rather cut your cock off and hang it on the wall than have a child."]

Venomous words. It was certainly no arm or leg she meant to cut off. No, she meant something he possessed but had never had occasion to use.

Rem scratched his head. He could be shameless with everyone else, but not with Ayul. He had abandoned his responsibilities and cast aside his duties. Worst of all, he had left his mate waiting, helpless to do anything.

Rem acknowledged his own failings. That was why he could stand here now and speak.

["What sort of world do you think that child should live in?"]

Once, he had thought the West a stagnant land. He had thought Westerners were people who had simply stopped, who had lost the determination to advance.

'Wouldn't even the Ageless Madman be better?'

No. It was wrong to compare them to a lunatic who had lived defying the natural order and breaking taboos. But that was how frustrated he had been.

Had he set out to seize what he wanted? No. That was an excuse, a rationalization. Rem had realized it quite some time after leaving the West. More precisely, after watching the man called Encrid.

There was something he had once given up and forgotten. He had abandoned it before even knowing what it was.

'I'll change it.'

The determination to change the West. He had discarded it before he even recognized it. Forgotten it. Cast it aside. Rem had been a loser and a runaway.

Because he acknowledged that, he could not receive his spell. The moment he received the spirit's descent, he would die. That would be the end. His chance to change things, his chance at life, would disappear. He could not enter that valley of death.

Rem had become a fugitive indulging in the pleasures the world still had to offer. He could no longer face Ayul. He could not show her this pathetic side of himself. Nor could he ask her to spend her life as a fool's mate and closest confidante. And so he had fled.

Ah, how shameful. Truly. Rem was ashamed, but he would run no more. Now he had learned. Now he knew both how pathetic he had been and how he ought to live.

'Running away solves nothing.'

Better to walk a path that might kill him than live as a puppet dragging out a paltry existence. So he would walk. That did not mean he believed he would die.

He would shout at this unfair world. This was no obstacle. If there was something he wanted, he would press on toward it.

That was what Encrid had done. At first, he had been nothing but an audacious man who would soon be dead. Then, a man who was entertaining to watch. Then, a man whose death would be a waste.

The past came back to him, time unfolding in sequence, and he saw his Captain struggling desperately before him. The man had said everything with his hands, his feet, his body.

He would not give up. He would not despair. Whatever stood in his way, he would keep walking. That was the sort of man he was.

Rem learned. He understood. He looked back on his life. He remembered what he had left behind. It had all been excuses. That directionless bastard and that alley cat had merely provided the impetus.

Only then had Rem been able to turn his gaze toward the West. He faced what he had left behind, what he had given up. That was why he could say it now.

["I'm ashamed of it, but I ran away."]

Rem laid bare his feelings simply and honestly. His words were calm, but they kept coming. His improved way with words let him explain himself fairly coherently.

He explained why he had run, and how, if he ever had a child, he wanted the land that child grew up in to be different from what it was now. How that had become his goal.

Ayul still watched Rem's shadow. Both the man speaking and the woman listening were utterly composed.

["That's everything. If you want something cut off, I'll cut it off and give it to you."]

If that was how he could atone, he would do it. Rem spoke, and Ayul raised her head.

From his shadow to his toes, from his shins to his knees, from his knees to his waist, from his waist to his chest, from his chest to his face. At the end of her gaze's journey, she found his gray eyes.

Rem had been honest since childhood. With her, he always had been. Was this the moment she had been waiting for? It would have been better if he had told her sooner. But hearing it even now meant she could refrain from cutting his head off for being late.

["It took me a long time. I'm sorry,"] Rem said.

Ayul could never forgive the Rem of the past. Yet the anguish of the man she had chosen as her mate touched her heart.

A tear slipped out before she knew it. Dust in her eye. Though the day had been clearer than any other, without a single speck of dust.

Beneath the bright moonlight, Ayul reached out her hand.

["Take it."]

Rem took her hand.

["You can sleep here. Just for tonight."]

So Ayul said. She would probably let him stay not just tonight, but in the nights to come.

They talked. Rem poured out his feelings, and Ayul told him how hurt she had been. By the end of that conversation, however, she was feeling rather sour.

["Uh, well, there are still things I want to do."]

["So you come back, ask me to forgive you, and then tell me you're leaving again? Just picking up your spell and going?"]

This fucking bastard? Ayul could not help swearing.