It appeared that the wheat fields had been mostly harvested, so the festival would undoubtedly begin soon—perhaps even as soon as the day after tomorrow.

Before Lawrence lay the expanses of the village of Pasloe’s fertile wheat fields. The more abundant the harvest, the more prosperous the villagers. Furthermore, the noble who managed the land, one Count Ehrendott, was a famous area eccentric who enjoyed working in the fields himself. Naturally the festival also enjoyed his support, and every year it was a riot of wine and song.

Lawrence had not once participated in it, though. Unfortunately, outsiders were not permitted.

“Ho there, good work!” Lawrence called out to a farmer driving a cart heaped high with wheat in the corner of one of the fields. It was well-ripened wheat. Those who had invested in wheat futures could breath a sigh of relief.

“What’s that?”

“Might you tell me where to find Yarei?” Lawrence asked.

“Oh, Yarei’ll be over yonder—see where the crowd is gathering? That field. It’s all youngsters at his place this year. Whoever’s slowest will wind up being the Holo!” said the farmer good-naturedly, his tan face smiling. It was the kind of guileless smile a merchant could never manage.

Lawrence thanked the farmer with his best trader’s smile, and turned his horse toward Yarei’s place.

Just as the farmer had said, there was a crowd gathering within its confines, and they were shouting something. They seemed to be making sport of the few who were still working the field, but it wasn’t ridicule at their lateness. The jeering was part of the festival.

As Lawrence lazily approached the crowd, he was able to make out their shouting.

“There’s a wolf! A wolf!”

“A wolf lies there!”

“Who will be the last and catch the wolf? Who, who, who?” the villagers shouted, their faces so cheerful one wondered if they were drunk. None of them noticed Lawrence pulling his cart up behind the crowd.

What they so enthusiastically called a wolf was in fact not a wolf at all. Had it been real, no one would have been laughing.

The wolf was the harvest god, and according to village legend, it resided within the last stalk of wheat to be reaped. Whoever cut that stalk down would be possessed by the wolf, it was said.

“It’s the last bundle!”

“Mind you, don’t cut too far!”

“Holo flees from the greedy hand!”

“Who, who, who will catch the wolf?”

“It’s Yarei! Yarei, Yarei, Yarei!”

Lawrence got off his wagon and peered at the crowd just as Yarei caught the last bundle of wheat. His face was black with sweat and soil as he grinned and hefted the wheat high, threw his head back, and howled.

“Awooooooo!”

“It’s Holo! Holo, Holo, Holo!”

“Awooooooo!”

“Holo the wolf is here! Holo the wolf is here!”

“Catch it, now! Catch it quick!”

“Don’t let it escape!”

The shouting men suddenly gave chase after Yarei.

The god of the bountiful harvest, once cornered, would possess a human and try to escape. Capture it and it would remain for another year.

None knew if this god truly existed. But this was an old tradition in the area.

Lawrence had traveled far and wide, so he put no stock in the teachings of the Church, but his faith in superstition was greater even than that of the farmers here. Too many times had he crossed mountains only to arrive in towns and find the price of his goods dropping precipitously. It was enough to make anyone superstitious.

Thus he didn’t bat an eye at traditions that true believers or Church officials would’ve found outrageous.

But it was inconvenient that Yarei was this year’s Holo. Now Yarei would be locked in a granary stocked with treats until the festival was over—close to a week—and would be impossible to talk to.

“Nothing for it, I suppose…” said Lawrence, sighing as he returned to his wagon and made for the village head’s residence.

He had wanted to enjoy some drinks with Yarei and report on the events at the monastery, but if he didn’t sell the furs that were piled high in his wagon bed, he wouldn’t be able to pay for goods purchased elsewhere when the bills came due. He also wanted to sell the wheat he’d brought from the other village and couldn’t wait around for the festival to end.

Lawrence talked briefly of the midday happenings at the monastery to the village head, who was busy with festival preparation. He politely declined the offer to stay the night and put the village behind him.

Years before the Count began to manage the region, it had suffered under heavy taxes that drove up the prices of its exports. Lawrence had bought some of this unfavorably priced wheat and sold it for but a meager profit. He hadn’t done it to win favor with the village, but rather because he simply didn’t have the resources to compete with the other merchants for the cheaper, finer grain. Nevertheless, the village was still grateful for his business then, and Yarei had been the middleman for the deal.

It was unfortunate that he couldn’t enjoy a drink with Yarei, but once Holo appeared Lawrence would soon be chased out of the village as the festival came to its climax. If he’d stayed the night, he wouldn’t have been able to stay long. As he sat on his wagon, Lawrence felt a sense of loneliness at being excluded thus.

Nibbling on some vegetables he’d been given as a souvenir, he took the road west, passing cheerful farmers returning from their day’s work.

Having returned to his lonely travel, Lawrence envied the farmers with their friends.

Lawrence was a traveling merchant and twenty-five years old. At twelve he’d apprenticed under a relative, and at eighteen he set out on his own. There were many places he had yet to visit, and he felt that the true test of his mettle as a trader was yet to come.

Like any number of traveling merchants, his dream was to save enough money to open a shop in a town, but the dream still seemed distant. If he could seize upon a good opportunity it might not be so, but unfortunately the larger traders seized such opportunities with their money.

Nevertheless, he hauled loads of goods across the countryside in order to pay his debts in a timely fashion. Even if he saw a good opportunity, he lacked the wherewithal to seize it. To a traveling merchant, such a thing was as unreachable as the moon in the sky.

Lawrence looked up at the moon and sighed. He realized such sighs were more frequent lately, whether as a reaction to years of frantic trading simply to make ends meet, or because recently he’d gotten slightly ahead and was thinking more about the future.

Additionally, when he should have been thinking about little else besides creditors, payment deadlines, and getting to the next town as quickly as possible, thoughts chased one another through his head.

Specifically, he thought of the people he’d met in his travels.

He thought of the merchants he had come to know when visiting a town repeatedly on business and the villagers he had become acquainted with at his destinations. The maidservant he’d fallen for during a long stay at an inn, waiting for a blizzard to pass. And on and on.

In short, he longed for company more and more frequently.

Such longing was an occupational hazard for merchants who spent the better part of a year alone in a wagon, but Lawrence had only recently begun to feel it. Until now, he’d always boasted that it would never happen to him.

Still, having spent so many days alone with a horse, he started to feel that it would be nice if the horse could speak.

Stories of carthorses becoming human were not uncommon among traveling merchants, and Lawrence had since the beginning laughed off such yarns as ridiculous, but lately he wondered if they could be true.

When a young merchant went to buy a horse from a horse trader, some would even recommend a mare with a completely straight face, “just in case she turns human on you.”

This had happened to Lawrence, who’d ignored the advice and bought a sturdy stallion.

That same horse was working steadily in front of him even now, but as time passed and Lawrence grew lonely, he wondered if he mightn’t have been better off with a mare after all.

On the other hand, that horse hauled heavy loads day in and day out. Even if it were to become a human, it seemed impossible that it would fall in love with its master or use its mysterious powers to bring them good fortune.

It would probably want to be paid and given rest, Lawrence mused.

As soon as this occurred to him, he felt that it was best if a horse stayed a horse, even if it did make him selfish. Lawrence smiled bitterly and sighed as if tired of himself.

Presently he came to a river and decided to make camp for the night. The full moon was bright, but that did not guarantee that he wouldn’t fall into the river—and if that happened, calling it a “disaster” would be an understatement. He’d have to hang himself. That kind of trouble he didn’t need.

Lawrence pulled back on the reins, and the horse stopped at the signal, heaving two or three sighs as it realized its long-anticipated rest was here.

Giving the rest of his vegetables to the horse, Lawrence took a bucket out of the wagon bed and drew some water from the river, setting it before the animal. As it happily slurped at the bucket, Lawrence drank some of the water he’d gotten from the village.

Wine would’ve been nicer, but drinking without a partner only made the loneliness worse. There was no guarantee he wouldn’t get staggering drunk, either, so Lawrence decided to go to bed.

He’d halfheartedly nibbled on vegetables most of the way, so he had only a bit of beef before hopping back in the wagon bed. Normally he slept in the hempen tarp that covered the bed, but tonight he had a wagonload of marten pelts, so it would be a waste not to sleep in them. They might make him smell a bit beastly in the morning, but it was better than freezing.

But jumping right into the pelts would crush the wheat sheaf, so in order to move them aside, he whisked the tarp off the wagon bed.

The only reason he didn’t shout was because the sight that greeted him was flatly unbelievable.