Where Peppermint Dances (2)

“Hey! Wake up!”

Slapped briskly on the cheek, Noi woke.

A man she didn’t know—the one who had dragged her down from the floating isle—was right in front of her.

“Where’s the lord? Take me to him!”

Dragged up onto the lakeshore, Noi pushed up on an elbow and sat. Her whole body hurt, but not as badly as she’d braced for when she jumped.

It was lucky she’d caught one of the spiral down-currents midway. After that, it seemed the torrent had swallowed her and she’d blacked out for a short time, but she had survived.

Apparently, they were indeed at the lake in the Hyuetos Magic Count’s domain that Noi had visited before. Around the lake, several people stared in agitated murmurs.

“We’re racing the clock! Hurry!!”

Despite what he’d just put her through, the man hadn’t given up.

Pressing a hand to her spinning head, soaked through, Noi murmured softly.

“Racing… the clock…?”

“If we don’t hurry, that thing—!”

He was deranged, yet even so, his desperate urge to convey something came through plainly.

“Wait, start from the—”

—SPLAAAASH

Suddenly, the lake threw up a towering sheet of spray.

A great wave rolled across the surface. In the middle of the glittering droplets, a single boat sat.

“—You did this to the bride of Kardia Ewerin… Don’t think you’ll get away with it.”

On the boat stood Kardia and Ornis. Kardia spelled his shoes and strode across the lake.

“Kardia!? Y-you’re the lord!?”

The instant the man cried out in a shaken voice, a deep, uncanny rumble welled up from the bowels of the earth and rolled across the area.

“It’s here! I knew it! It’s that floating isle’s fault after all!”

The man clutched his head and began to tremble. Kardia, now on the shore, immediately lifted Noi and held her against his chest. His body burned with shocking heat.

“Kardia, your fever again—!”

Noi jerked, turning to him, but Kardia stared straight past her at the man.

“Lately I’ve dreamed it every night! And now it’s real—just like I said! Nobody believes me!”

“What—?”

“If you’re the lord, do something! Get that island down, now!”

In his confusion, the man begged Kardia.

Kardia cast the approaching man a cool, downward look.

“It’s peeling! It’s peeling off!”

The man wasn’t looking at Kardia anymore. His gaze was fixed high overhead—at the floating isle.

The earthen outer shell sheathing the isle tore away like tree bark, ripping free with a wet crack. Not just one slab—here, there, everywhere, the skin began to peel all at once.

“—Run!”

Kardia shoved the cradled Noi away and spun mana in an instant.

He raised a gale around himself, a violent blast that hurled the bystanders away from the falling debris.

Wind-tossed, Noi was flung and slammed into the ground—but she forced herself up at once.

“Kardia!!”

Noi screamed, her cry tearing into a shriek.

The people there were saved—but rubble rained down, one slab after another, onto Kardia.

“Kardia! No—Kardia!”

More screams rose all around Noi.

“Everyone run! Next—look, that water! It’s going to fall!!”

The man pointed up at the floating isle.

But its aspect was no longer the same. Revealed at the isle’s core, once wrapped in the outer shell that had just crashed down—was water. A massive, massive volume of water.

“Eeeek!!”

“T-that much water—there’ll be a flood!”

“You’re kidding—run where? This is an island! Where are we supposed to go!?”

Shouts erupted from every direction.

With the deluge above and rubble falling from the sky, people began to lose their sanity.

Screams sharp enough to split the air rang over the shore.

Shoving through the fleeing crowd, Noi ran to Kardia. Two people ran toward the lake: Noi—and Ornis, who had been blown the same way by Kardia’s wind.

Noi peered into the wreckage and gasped. Through a gap in the rubble lay Kardia, covered in blood.

Ornis, also peering in, went pale and began weaving a magic circle.

“That rubble’s too big to lift with your wind array! Dig out the ground under Kardia! We’ll drag him out from below!”

Reading the circle Ornis was forming, Noi said that. He clicked his tongue, dissolved the array, and began to weave exactly what she’d told him.

Moments later, the circle was complete. The earth beneath Kardia’s body softened and slumped.

Noi dropped into the pit Ornis had dug and seized Kardia. Ornis tugged Noi’s legs—and together they hauled Kardia out from under the rubble.

“Kardia, Kardia!”

Noi slapped his blood-slick cheek a few times as she called to him.

He was alive, but he had likely struck his head hard and was unconscious.

When he didn’t respond to her voice, Noi crushed him in a hug.

“Idiot… you idiot!”

Why had he chased after the Noi he’d meant to kill? Painful as it would be to lose a vessel he’d finally found, there should have been other paths—other methods to seek.

Grief and anguish—and joy—surged in her chest.

“…You never change.”

Even after suffering this, Kardia had tried to save people. Noi laid him down gently.

“Ornis, do you know what that is?”

Noi looked up at the sky where they had lived until moments ago. There, swaying as if to brace the isle’s surface, a colossal sphere of water shimmered.

“—This land once saw almost nothing but rain. After Master came here as the lord, it was as if the heavens switched sides— the rain stopped cold…”

“Then that’s the rainfall of this region, gathered.”

At Noi’s deduction, Ornis fell silent.

He must have been thinking it couldn’t be possible.

The floating isle—most of its volume was water. Surely more than the lake before them. That water had been connected to the surface lake by the spiral current, managing the rainfall of this district.

“Why all of a sudden! There hadn’t been any problem until now!”

Ornis’s voice broke with despair. Still staring upward, Noi murmured:

“…The land’s memory.”

“The land’s… memory?”

“I didn’t truly believe it, either. But this place was once a land of heavy rain. So the land is seeking rain—seeking water.”

“…That’s ridiculous.”

In disbelief, Ornis also raised his eyes to the sky.

As they glared up, water began to leak from the sphere—like a skinful of water pricked by a twig, a single jet hissed out.

“It’s starting to leak!”

“Damn it—there’s got to be—!”

If all that water fell at once, it wouldn’t just sweep away people—houses would go, too.

But no magic came to mind that could handle such a volume all at once.

Magic that wasn’t imagined may as well not exist.

“Some measure—anything—!”

“There’s no more time.”

The muffled voice that answered Noi’s urgency was Kardia’s.

Awake, he tried to stand, pressing a bloody hand to his head. Noi hurried to brace him.

“Even if there isn’t time—”

If they didn’t do something, both people and land would die.

Beside the frantic Noi, Kardia looked around. His eyes, staring at the village he had protected and cherished for decades, twisted with pain. At last, he shut them.

Then, in the next heartbeat, he opened them with resolve—and smiled at Noi.

“Noi.”

“Eh?”

“I’ll get you out—at least you.”

With a clear, serene face, Kardia spread his arms to weave a circle. From his motion, she knew he meant to work a massive spell.

(…Why?)

Noi knew: for all his feigned indifference, Kardia loved this village.

Even though he might live a century, using such a spell on Noi now would mean—abandoning this village.

(That—I will never allow!)

Noi smacked Kardia on the head.

“—Wha—”

Eyes flaring open, he stared as Noi shouted:

“You—great—blazing fool! You’re disowned!”

Noi spoke from the diaphragm.

Not even when he was a child had she ever said something like that.

But the words sprang out on their own.

She planted her feet and rose, thrusting out her chin and squaring her shoulders. With her milky hair streaming in the wind, she declared, crisp and stern:

“I did not raise you to be such a fool!”

Kardia, who had been gaping, opened his eyes wider and wider.

Mouth open like a little boy’s, he whispered hoarsely,

“No… it can’t be…”

“Don’t give up! There’s still time!”

Noi glared between Kardia and the sky.

“We’re going to think of a way for everyone to live!”