Chapter 17: Growth

Garan, garan—the alarm board was being beaten, and I snapped awake.
That was the signal that something had intruded near the village.
She must have woken the same instant I did. I leapt from my bed just as Nina came out of the hut next door.

「Enemy to the south, about a hundred meters beyond the village edge.」

Running side by side, Nina listened to the trees’ voices and pinned down the exact position.

「How many—」

Before she could answer, the forest trees toppled with rending cracks.
Then the palisade that ringed the village blew apart.

「Just one.」

Watching the beast that had come right up before us, Nina said with a thoroughly fed-up look.

No doubt because she had bad memories of it.
The intruder was an armored bear.
And it was a size larger than the one we had run into when Nina and I first met.

「Nina. Look after the villagers.」
「Mm. You’ll probably be fine, but be careful…」
「Please wait.」

I entrusted my back to Nina and took a step forward—only to be halted by a voice like the chime of a bell.

「Sensei. Won’t you let me handle this?」

Ai.

「…All right. But don’t push yourself.」
「Yes!」

Beaming, Ai stepped out in front of me.
Nina raised no objection either.

The armored bear, whose movements my glare had frozen, bristled at the appearance of an apparently easy prey—a small human—and charged with a growl.

It was rare for the cautious, reserved Ai to speak up on her own.
I didn’t stop her partly because I wanted to respect that—

「My arms like a bear’s, my legs like a deer’s, my skin like rock, my strength—」

—but also because both Nina and I knew full well how strong she was.

「—like a dragon!」

Ai met the armored bear’s straight punch head-on with her bare hands. Though it stood three or four times her height, she wasn’t pushed back—in fact, her arms creaked as they forced the bear’s bulk to give ground.

「Eeei!」

With a spirited shout, the armored bear’s massive body flew. It was hurled several meters, tumbled over and over, and crashed through the palisade again.

「O wearer of icicle raiment, o caster of autumn leaves, o melter in spring’s sunlight—spirit of snow and ice, Jack Frost! Clutch it in your palms and stain it with your breath!」

A tremendous blizzard roared out from Ai’s outstretched palms. In moments the armored bear was buried in snow and frozen solid.

「Tomorrow we’re having bear stew!」

After holding her guard for a few seconds and sensing no sign of the bear moving, Ai turned, pumped a triumphant fist, and struck a guts pose.

「…She’s grown into one scary woman. I don’t reckon I could beat her anymore.」
「Late. What are you even showing up now for?」

Nina griped at Dalga, who spoke through a shiver.

「Nah, I’ve got no business stepping in.」

Watching Ai merrily drag the frozen armored bear along, he shrugged.

Since admitting defeat to me he’d lowered his posture a lot, but lately Ai’s growth seemed to be pressing him even further into a deferential stance.

—It’s been five years since then.
Counting from when I took Ai in, over six years have passed.

There had been some friction, but in the end our village and Dalga’s village merged.
Dalga’s village had originally been a band held together by his strength and charisma alone.
Once he placed himself under me, talks went smoothly, and with no major problems we became members of a single village.

With time I came to see that while Dalga was rough, short-tempered, and self-centered, he was unexpectedly kind to his own people.

You could call it the way one treats property, but at least he didn’t hurt them for no reason, and he would stake his life to protect them.
All told, once you became one of his own, he wasn’t such a bad guy.

And it wasn’t only Dalga’s village that merged with us.
Some villages gladly joined because they could barely secure food on their own, while others saw us as invaders and came at us.

At times like that, the one who proved most useful was Dalga.
One look at him and it was obvious they couldn’t win.
In terms of being feared I was the same, but it made a big difference that he was the same race. Villages that would fight to the bitter end against a dragon, thinking they’d be eaten, would readily surrender to Dalga, who was—just barely—still human.

…Well, the most effective tactic was threatening them together, the two of us side by side.

In this way our village kept swelling, and its population now tops a thousand. By the standards of this era, that’s close to the maximum scale.

「You’re the captain of the guard, at least—do your job.」

Even as I reminisced and got sentimental, Nina’s scolding continued.

「That’s just it. You don’t have to make me captain anyway.」

Dalga flicked a glance at Ai.

「This village’s got four powerful mages, y’know.」

—to be exact, at the young man running up to her.

「Ai-neechan, you okay!? I’ll carry it.」

Ken, who had long since outgrown Ai in height, reached to take the armored bear’s carcass she was dragging.

「I’m fine. This much is nothing.」

But Ai, without seeming to put much strength into it, easily pried his hands off. She now held strength on par with a dragon—no wonder.

「Sensei, don’t have her doing dangerous stuff all the time, okay?」

Then he turned his point toward me.

「Be that as it may, she says she wants to, and she’s got the skill to do it. She’s not a child anymore—I can’t just forbid her out of hand.」

At that, Ken shot me a look like he had more to say, then took off running.
Wordlessly, Nina jabbed me in the flank with her elbow.

「I know…」

Our daily life and the magic school were sailing along nicely, yet worries never ran dry.
I felt that keenly.



On the northern outskirts of the village lay the cave where Gai-san and the others once lived.
Small enough to be crammed full with a mere dozen people, that cave now served as an icehouse. We sealed the entrance with clay, leaving only a narrow passage, and cast cold magic inside at regular intervals.

We used to make do with jars as a freezer, but enchanting each one was a pain, they were bulky, and their insulation was poor. The cave icehouse solved all those problems at a stroke—and we owed its realization entirely to Ai’s strides in magic.

It seemed magic had something like aptitudes.
It was obvious enough that I couldn’t use cold magic at all and Nina excelled at moving trees, but people too seemed to have their own fits and misfits with different kinds of magic.
Dalga and Gai-san were useless outside of magic that enhanced their own bodies; Ken was good with fire. And Ai was the village’s leading user of cold magic.

Diligent as she was, she handled all sorts of magic well, not only cold. But her cold was exceptional. She alone in the village could cast on the scale of chilling an entire cave. Not even Nina could conjure a blizzard like hers.

「Hey there, Ai—」

I lifted the pelt that hung as a door, and as Ai stepped out of the icehouse I started to call to her—then lost my words.

「Sensei? What’s wrong?」

Fine grains of ice clung to her clothes, glittering in the moonlight and giving her a numinous beauty, like a goddess or a fairy.

「…No, it’s nothing.」

I couldn’t very well say I’d been captivated; I shook my head.

「I thought for sure you were staring at me.」

But the thought was seen through in an instant, and I cleared my throat once.

「You’re right. You’ve become beautiful.」

—Truly.

「Thank you. Even if it’s just flattery, it makes me happy.」

The smile she wore as she said it was genuinely captivating.
It was all rather troublesome, I sighed inwardly.

Only six years.

In that span, the tiny, childish girl had grown into a mature, beautiful woman.
Her hair, once a quirky short cut, had grown lustrous and long, now a braid to her waist.
The flat, boyish frame that had been skin-and-bone had become the rounded lines of a woman.
The babyishness had gone from her face, and a quiet, mature sensuality now drifted from her.

「…Aren’t you going to get married?」
「I’m not.」

When I asked, her smile vanished, and a hard reply came back at once.

A girl as attractive as she was drew suitors without end.
But I knew she had turned every one of them down.

And probably her reason, too.

「I…want you to be happy.」

Of course, happiness wasn’t only found in marrying and bearing children.
Even so, I wanted her to live feeling the ordinary happiness people did.

「Sensei, I—!」

It was then.

White flecks began to drift down, and we reflexively looked up at the sky.

「Snow…?」
「So this is snow? I’ve never seen it before.」

The climate around here was warm; until now it had never snowed even in winter. I had taken Ai to the mountains to help her grasp snow and ice, but this was her first time seeing it fall.

「Hoo, hoo, hoo.」

A strange voice came from inside the icehouse.

With ponderous motions it lifted the pelt at the entrance, and again—

「Hoo, hoo, hoo.」

—it hooted.

「Jack Frost…?」

Ai murmured.

As if in answer, the lifted pelt froze solid.