Gazing Up At The River Of Stars (4)

“—Your magic tools are broken, yes? Tell me what’s wrong. If I can fix them, you’ll never bad-mouth the lord again.”

Noi thrust both hands out toward the man holding the device. After a beat of stupefaction, the men laughed.

“Little miss. This is an expensive piece of kit. It’s village property—you get what that means? Either way, it’s not something for a kid to—”

“Just hand it over.”

Noi said it quietly. The air went tense with a sharp sting.

Perhaps cowed by the force radiating from her, the villagers traded looks.

The most timid of them passed the device to Noi.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

“C’mon, man…”

Noi accepted it with both hands and set the wooden chest on the ground.

(A Snow-Store.)

Unlike dried goods, it lets you keep both flavor and nutrition for long stretches—handy, but costly.

Fitting for the Magic Count’s backyard. From “shared property,” it was probably kept in a village icehouse most of the time.

Noi opened the Snow-Store’s lid. A chill ought to billow out the moment it opened, but the temperature didn’t budge.

She lifted the Snow-Store, flipped it over, and removed the bottom panel.

“H-hey! What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Don’t fuss. If I don’t open it up, I can’t inspect the array inside.”

The bottom was double-layered. Noi exhaled in relief. It looked like a later model, but the essential core she had designed hadn’t changed.

Noi was called the kingdom’s greatest mage not only for her vast magic power, but for creating many magical appliances. You could say she laid the foundations for the Esria Kingdom’s modern, widely used magic tools.

Before withdrawing to the mountains, she had developed numerous devices, filed patents, and amassed more than enough wealth from them.

A hundred years after her “death,” those rights were surely gone—but the knowledge of the many tools she had built remained.

Sitting cross-legged, she studied the magic circle traced on the bottom plate.

“…I see. You folded wind magic into the freezing. That complicates the array, but it makes sense for drawing off heat. Interesting. You’re creating drive by repeating twin-weaves and… hm? What’s this earth magic woven here…? It’s working against you. Is it meant to stabilize the temperature?”

“Hey, what are you staring at it for?!”

Shouted at by a villager, Noi started. It was a bad habit—getting absorbed the moment she saw a magic array. All the same, she’d love to sit down and decode this one properly later.

“It’s a ‘magic circle,’ right? Not a fray in it—clean work. Where do you see it’s broken?”

“What, so you can’t fix it after all?”

With the villagers rushing to a conclusion behind her, Noi fanned the bottom plate—array and all—back and forth.

“H-hey!!”

“What are you doing!”

As they panicked, Noi nodded.

“Just as I thought.”

“It’s out of magic.”

If the circle still held charge, any outside stimulus would spur it to maintain itself. But it didn’t twitch.

“Magic? We pour it in every time we use the thing!”

“Not activation charge—the magic that lets a circle remain a circle.”

Noi turned with a bright smile.

“It’s only run dry. If you feed enough charge along the glyphs to sustain the array, it’ll hold.”

“What are you on about? Nobody can do that!”

Noi blinked. She’d thought that solved everything.

It bore repeating: Noi was born to a great mage clan. She’d grown up among mages more than ordinary folk—and she simply didn’t know.

“You think mages live in a village like this?”

That mages who sought knowledge wouldn’t settle where they couldn’t take any in.

“Some folks claim they ‘see dreams,’ but it’s always little stuff—five calves next season, rain tomorrow—things anybody could say. That’s no mage.”

“Besides… Butler Geiko told us this would last a good ten years when he checked it. How are we supposed to show up after just three…?”

“We didn’t do anything weird that would ‘drain the charge’!”

Now she understood why they wanted to go to the traveling mage.

If they brought it to the manor, they’d be blamed for misuse. With Kardia—who didn’t live in the village—money might paper it over at worst.

Leaving those circumstances aside, Noi glanced toward the door.

“Insects.”

“Insects?”

“Have any been coming around lately?”

One villager, following her gaze outside, let out an “Ah.”

“Now that you mention it—at our place, yes.”

Others nodded in sympathy.

“Us too!”

“Right—bugs! Swarming around the house!”

“It’s summer, so I didn’t think much of it, but… can’t say I’d seen them before.”

“…Come to think of it, those bugs clustered on this appliance.”

At that muttered remark, the other seven gaped.

“Phosphora.”

Noi stood and went to the shop entrance. For some reason, several villagers had gathered there. Ignoring their stares, she reached out with both hands and clapped them softly against her chest—catching something.

Startled, the villagers and shopkeeper watched as Noi showed them the insect in her hands.

“It feeds on magic—an enchanted lifeform. I saw one flying just now.”

Perhaps it had been drifting about, hunting for charge. In her palms, it was about fly-sized and looked a bit like a pill bug.

“These drained the array’s reserve. Phosphora are born from rain. You said it used to rain here, didn’t you?”

“But I’ve lived here for years, and I’ve never seen that bug!”

“Then perhaps the land’s memory is returning. Looks like your village has become one of their routes.”

Lands carry memory. Hoping it wasn’t a sign of anything worse, Noi eyed the insect in her hands. A villager’s voice went flat with despair.

“Then what are we supposed to do…?”

“You can’t chase them all away.”

If Phosphora remained, they couldn’t keep magic appliances in the village—so it seemed to the gathering, and a pall fell over them.

“Let them pass.”

“Let them… pass?”

“Let the Phosphora move through—to their next feeding ground.”

“How would we do that?!”

Noi knew the answer.

But she clenched her small fists.

(…Not as I am now.)

She couldn’t try that method.

Because now, Noi was a person with no magic.

Even when she tried to twist a thread of charge, nothing responded—no hum, no stir.

She bit her lip in frustration.

Now she finally understood what it really meant to never use magic again.

The humiliation, the frustration, the helplessness of losing what once was yours to wield—

She trapped it all inside her small body.

“So in the end, you can’t do it after all!”

“Big talk for nothing.”

“You lot—piling on a child like that—”

As Noi looked down, the villagers’ voices turned exasperated. The shopkeeper, moving to scold them, halted—something had caught his notice.

“Thank you.”

Noi’s body rose, gently, into the air.

“You did very well.”

And in that instant, her heart felt as if it floated too.