Chapter 1: Inexplicable Murmurs
Arc 1: Sparrow Eyes
Chapter 1: Inexplicable Murmurs
“PLEASE take the job!” Unen pleaded in the loudest voice she could muster so as not to lose out to the noisy chatter of the cheap saloon. She anchored her gaze on a man in his prime who was throwing back his ale alone at a table beside the bar counter.
He looked up at her with irritation. “Look here, Short Stuff, can’t ya ask somebody else to do the job? Why does it hafta be me?”
Unen unconsciously bit the inside of her cheek at being called “Short Stuff”. She was about to argue her name wasn’t “Short Stuff” or “Shorty” or “Tiny”, but she swallowed back her complaints right as she was about to lash out at him. With her matchstick legs, not growing any taller in over three years, and her unruly short hair, Unen certainly didn’t look anywhere close to fifteen years of age. She couldn’t fault him for her looks.
“She’s asking you because she needs to, otherwise she would ask someone else.” Standing beside Unen with her hands at her hips and a frown on her lips was Irena, a friend who was two years older. Her glamorous auburn hair flicked quickly from side to side as if animating her annoyance with him.
They were inside the Scarecrow Nose, the biggest saloon in the region renowned for travelers congregating within its walls the instant they entered the town of Yezero due to its convenient location. As evening drew near, townspeople who had finished their work in the fields for the day flocked through the door one after another to let loose for the night. Though it was only the first week of June, the overcrowded saloon felt like a boiling hot attic on a midsummer day.
“And I’m supposed to care…? Why not just suck it up and ask the captain to—”
“Ask my dad? Are you seriously suggesting that?”
“Just kidding.” The man heartily laughed at the enraged Irena, whose eyes sharply narrowed on him. “Cap’ is strongly opposed to his little girl entering the Vigilante Corps after all.”
“That’s why we’re stuck asking you for help. Getting a request from his lordship to survey his land is an incredibly important job. How could we ask anyone other than Yezero’s best swordsman to be our guard?”
Last week, the town mayor had received a single letter from the lord of the Baborak territory, which Yezero belonged to. According to the mayor, the letter had read, “I’ve heard your town is in possession of a skilled mapmaker. Would it be possible to have them fashion a map of my territory?”
There was no one who fell under or went by the trade of mapmaker. But there was an apprentice transcriber who accepted requests to draw up maps of towns and fields. Thus, the mayor had given the lord’s letter to Unen, and with the help of her reliable friend, she was presently attempting to hire a guard to protect her while she took measurements and surveyed the lord’s land.
“You’re just going to survey the plains to the west, right? Then the young lady right here should be more than enough protection.”
“How could you be so optimistic? Baborak and the neighboring Chelveny have never been on good terms. It’s even more of an issue because this time she’s going to survey the border between the two territories. I can’t protect Unen alone if trouble finds us.”
“But you said it’s for three days, yeah? Like I said before, the pay’s a bit too cheap, don’t’cha think?”
Having the harsh reality thrust in her face once more, Unen chewed her lower lip in irritation.
They had been paid a very modest sum for the job upfront, which wouldn’t be enough to hire two guards. Lord Baborak’s excuse had been his choice to assign the job in parts. “Use this money to make a map of the grasslands at the western edge of my territory. We can decide where to go from there,” he had said.
Desperately reminding herself to hold her head high and her eyes off the ground, Unen continued trying to convince the man. “The job this time is a trial run. His lordship said that if this map fits what he wants, he’ll hire me to make a map of his entire territory afterwards. I’m pretty sure I can pay you more once that happens…”
“Ah, sorry, it’s not like I’m trying to squeeze more money outta ya, Short Stuff.” The man’s expression suddenly soured as he scratched his head. “You see, word is that a duo of extraordinarily skilled mercenaries known as the Two-headed Griffin has been stayin’ in the town two towns over since last month. They’ve been snatching up every single beast extermination and guard job in the area, putting my pitiful coin pouch in a sorry state…”
“The Two-headed…Griffin?” Unen and Irena’s voices perfectly synchronized.
“Rumors say one half of the duo is a frightening man of colossal size who has easily lopped off a brown bear’s head with a swing of his sword. The other half is a mage born from darkness or somethin’ like that. He’s said to have erased a gang of burglars from the face of the planet when they attacked a wagon train.”
Unen narrowly stopped herself from snorting. “The rumors are…fitting of a legendary monster,” she replied, trying to be as inoffensive as possible in case the man by chance actually believed the made-up stories.
Like Unen, Irena clearly thought the rumors sounded fishy. Right after flashing a devilish grin, she taunted him with a straight face. “In that case, I guess we’ll go hire that extraordinarily skilled Griffin duo.”
“Word is that they won’t accept jobs for a pittance.” Lightly shrugging, the man brought his cup of malt liquor to his lips. He must have wanted to end the conversation, because he casually turned away from the girls.
Regardless, Irena hadn’t given up hope yet. She circled around to lean in toward his face. “Why not take our job, since you’re so troubled with the lack of work?”
“How can I make a living if I occupy my time with crummy jobs and lose out when a good one comes in?”
From all appearances, Unen and Irena would be better off giving up on hiring him. Unen dropped her gaze to her feet with a sigh. Her depression was short-lived when she began to notice the smell, or rather the lack of smells. The heavy stench of sweaty bodies mixed with the heady smells of cooked food and liquor permeating the space around her had all but vanished.
In their place, an onslaught of dense and chokingly thick forest smells slammed against her body like raging billows.
Startled, Unen lifted her head—or tried to. Just as she was about to look up, she caught wind of a voice. She focused her complete attention on straining her ears to pick up on it.
<<…the…one…who…us…>>
The voices faded into a sudden gust of wind that took away the forest’s presence and the distinct smell.
When Unen returned to her senses, she found herself amid the ruckus of the cheap saloon that hadn’t changed one bit in the moments she had zoned out. Once more the aroma of cut-rate food and human bodies crammed into a room far too small returned.
“It can’t be…” she muttered, “has Hereh…?” She frantically glanced around the saloon.
Up until three years ago, Unen occasionally heard a voice unheard by others. It was a mysterious voice whose age and gender were indistinct. In fact, she wasn’t sure if the voiceless murmurs even made a sound. The inexplicable murmur tickling Unen’s ears moments ago held the same feeling as the one she heard three years ago. But the dense redolence of the sea of trees that engulfed her this time was a completely new experience.
And now the person who took her seriously whenever she told him her nonsensical experiences of hearing voiceless murmurs—who smiled while he patted her on the head with his warm hand—had become nothing more than a faint memory.
“What’s wrong, Unen? Did you say something just now?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
Unen gave Irena a reassuring smile, then slowly took a deep breath. Right, there’s no way he would be here. Lightly shaking her head to drive the nostalgic memories back into the recesses of her mind, she returned her attention to the scene in front of her.
An unusual commotion had started up near the saloon entrance while she was distracted. The raucous voices spread to the corners of the building like ripples on a pond before giving way to the silence of a placid lake.
A tall young man stood in the entrance, his back framed by the setting sunlight. He was an unfamiliar face to the crowd. A long sword hung at his waist.
The young man headed straight for the bar counter inside the still-as-death saloon. He didn’t seem the least bit perturbed by all the eyes burrowing into him.
From his appearance, he looked to be around his early twenties. Ashen hair cut close to his head swayed over his brow, which was darkly tanned by the sun. Blue eyes gleamed from their sockets with a sharpness reminiscent of birds of prey. His tightly pressed together lips made his hardened countenance appear all the more valiant.
Leaving absolute silence trailing behind him, the young man stood before the counter.
“W-Welcome. What will you have?” the old barkeep nervously asked the unfamiliar customer.
Without easing a muscle in his stiff face, the young man answered back with a curt, “I’m searching for Sparrow Eyes.”
It felt like fingers made of ice crawled along Unen’s spine the moment he uttered that name.
The man who kept refusing their job offer looked up at Unen and Irena, cupped his hand around his mouth, and whispered, “Hey, did you hear that? Sparrow Eyes has gotten surprisingly famous. Isn’t that a customer?”
In spite of the fact that he was whispering, his voice hung loudly in the air of the silent saloon.
Sure enough, the young man in question turned his head toward the girls.
In that exact moment, Unen’s ears caught the faint murmur again—sounding slightly clearer this time than before.
<<…the one who protects…the one…who…us…>>
At the same time, the scarcely audible, voiceless murmur resounded in her chest. The trees then shot up around her, blotting out the sky. What in the world was it that she glimpsed in the shadow of the evergreen needles?
<<Unen…Ende…Baina>>
Reality snapped back into focus just as the quiet yet powerful ownerless voice rushed at Unen’s face.
Her eyes traced the shape of the muscular body towering over her until they met the falcon-like gaze piercing through her.
Unen carefully stared back at the young man.
Is the sudden return of the Murmur and this man related? What in the world is that Murmur anyway? I haven’t felt that voiceless Murmur even once since that warm hand was lost to me…
“Are you the one called Sparrow Eyes?” he asked Irena, after comparing her to Unen.
“Wrong person.” Broadcasting her displeasure, Irena tilted her chin upward.
The man who had instigated this uncomfortable confrontation shook with laughter. “Wrong one, mister. Sparrow Eyes ain’t the pretty little lady but the shorty there. See how Short Stuff’s hair is the color of a sparrow?”
The young man’s eyes widened in surprise, as if to protest, “But this one doesn’t look any older than a small child.”
His reaction wasn’t uncommon by any means. That didn’t lessen Unen’s displeasure, however, and she snorted loudly. “I know there are people who call me Sparrow Eyes. But I have no idea if the ‘Sparrow Eyes’ you’re looking for is me.”
“…It can’t be—did he have…a child?”
Unen blinked several times. She didn’t have a jot about what he was going on about. But before she had the chance to ask him what he meant, the young man pulled a rolled-up sheepskin parchment from his chest pocket and showed the familiar map to her.
“Are you the one who made this map?”
The neighboring town’s mayor hired Unen to make that map last spring.
“I am?”
Menace immediately filled his gaze. “Who taught you surveying and mapmaking?”
It was then that Unen guessed what he was after.
Three years ago, and the last time Unen had heard the Murmur, outsiders appeared before her. They had been a duo of churlish men from a faraway land who angrily interrogated her in harsh shouts, then left after intimidating her with a parting threat. There was no question in her mind that the young man in front of her was searching for the same person as the men from three years ago.
Unen quietly swallowed back the saliva filling her mouth as she cautiously sorted out what she needed to keep hidden and what she should tell him to skirt further trouble.
Irena stepped between the young man and Unen. “Hey, you, did you come here to hire Sparrow Eyes or not?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then there’s no need for you to waste your time on him, Unen.” Irena grabbed her hand. “The sun’s going to set soon too. Let’s hurry home.”
Slow to react to her friend’s unexpected action, Unen was pulled in front of the young man toward the exit before she could form an opinion.
“Ah, hey, wait! I’m not done talking—” The man grabbed Unen’s other arm as Irena dragged her forward.
The excessive force pulling her in the opposite direction further destabilized her already unstable stance, causing her to lurch backward. Irena looked over her shoulder as soon as she felt the jerk on her hand. Upon seeing his tight grip on Unen’s arm, she slid her left leg across the floor in one fluid movement.
Drunks escaped with their chairs in hand at exactly the same moment Irena’s sweeping kick knocked the young man’s legs out from under him.
“Let’s go! Unen!” Irena yanked on Unen’s hand without even glimpsing where the young man landed on the floor. He jerkily sat up in the direction Unen was being pulled toward, right in the path of her feet.
“Ah! Hey, Irena! Wai—”
At the rate they were going, Unen was about to land a kick to his face. Using all her strength, she tried to pull back her foot.
Similarly sensing the imminent danger, the young man lowered himself to the ground with remarkable reflexes.
Still, Unen felt an indescribable sensation through the sole of her boot as her foot came down. Wooden floorboards didn’t squish like that.
“Irena! Wait! I stepped on him! I just stepped on that man!”
The saloon exploded in an uproar. Influenced by their drunkenness, the majority of customers blithely cheered the girls on while mocking the young man, the few sober ones taking the time to ask him, “You okay, young man?”
Unen tried her hardest to put as little weight into the foot that stepped on him, but it was impossible to make the impact completely painless. She was flustered with guilt and a desire to go back and apologize, but Irena mercilessly dragged her away. With Unen’s small size, there was no way she could win against her sword-trained friend.
“Umm, err, sorry!” she called out nervously behind her.
Barely getting in her apology, Unen exited the Scarecrow Nose. The sound of jeering laughter filled the previous silence as the saloon patrons returned to merrymaking.