Brownie Hood

 

Here's a new mantle and a hood too, poor Brownie!

You'll never need to do good deeds again!

—A song from England, sung when a brownie departs

 

"What about this one?"

"… A spirit, I think?"

Mel stared at the water Rin had set gently floating through the air, answering with furrowed brows, sounding unsure.

"And this?"

"Not a spirit… I don't think…"

When I showed her a flame I'd transferred to a wood chip, the half-sheep girl shook her head.

"Then what about this?"

"Uuu, I'm getting all confused nowww."

Confronted with water sitting in a glass, Mel finally threw in the towel.

What kinds of magic did she perceive as spirit-derived, and what kinds didn't she? We'd run her through test after test, but the results were far from illuminating. She had no rational basis for her answers. It was pure intuition.

"I'm starting to feel like she's just saying whatever comes to mind…"

Rin muttered, looking exhausted. I couldn't blame her.

The shadow spear Ara had created was not spirit magic, but the water sword Rin had made was. When I formed a sword of flame, that wasn't spirit magic. When we blew wind, it was. When I made a stone heavier, it wasn't.

It was starting to feel like some bizarre quiz game.

Nina was the type of genius who couldn't explain herself well either, but at least she tried. She'd say things like "you can tell by looking" or "it's just a feeling," explanations that explained nothing. As far as Nina was concerned, we were the strange ones for not understanding.

Mel, on the other hand, didn't even understand why she could tell. Was she judging by appearance? Did she possess some sense the rest of us lacked? Or was it a kind of magic? We couldn't determine even that much.

Naturally, she couldn't answer a single one of the "Why?" questions Rin peppered her with, and the longer the exchange went on, the more drained both of them became.

"Let's take a break…"

"Yeah."

While we'd been grinding away at this fruitless exercise, Yuuka and Ara had gone back to sparring, and Innis had been watching Chryse. More precisely, Innis had quickly sensed our exchange was going nowhere, volunteered for babysitting duty, and bowed out early.

"Thank you, Innis."

That said, looking after a child is no easy task. Chryse in particular was completely unpredictable, so I was grateful Innis had been keeping an eye on her.

"Here."

With a knowing smirk, Innis gave Chryse a little pat on the back.

"Good work, Daddy."

The words tumbled out with Chryse's innocent smile and hit me like a bolt through the heart.

"C-could you… say that one more time?"

"Good work, Daddy."

Daddy.

Such a common, everyday word, and yet it packed a devastating punch.

"… Innis taught you that, didn't she?"

Neither Nina nor I had ever called ourselves that to her. Which meant the culprit was obviously the girl standing right in front of me with that smug grin.

"'Mentor' is hardly appropriate, is it?"

"Hmm…"

Honestly, I think of everyone in Scarlet as my own children. Chryse, whom I raise and look after directly, is of course special among them, but the nature of my love is the same even if the degree differs. Everyone else calls me Mentor, so I wouldn't have minded if Chryse did the same.

I wouldn't have minded, and yet…

"Could you call me Daddy one more time?"

"Daddy."

Hearing Chryse parrot the word so obediently filled me with an indescribable, bashful warmth. Not unpleasant in the slightest.

"I want water."

Chryse reached for a glass on the table with both hands and tried to bring it to her lips.

"Whoa, that's the water Rin conjured earlier. Rin, could you pass the pitcher…"

I was about to finish the sentence when I froze. Something had just flickered through my mind.

Like an answer brushing against my palm, only to slip through my fingers.

"What's wrong, Mentor?"

Rin tilted her head, casually dumping the water from the glass, pouring fresh water from the pitcher, and handing it to Chryse.

The discarded water vanished as though evaporating, leaving not even a wet spot behind.

As a general rule, the effects of magic don't last long. Water created through magic is no exception; drink it to quench your thirst, and you'll regret it later. That's why I'd stopped Chryse.

With rare exceptions like my and Rin's transformation magic, once a spell wears off, its effects vanish as though they had never been. Everyone in this city knows that. It's the cardinal rule of magic.

But what if that was wrong?

What if things didn't vanish because they were magic, but because…

"Rin. Could you conjure some water again?"

"Huh? Sure… Water."

I placed Chryse's now-empty glass back on the table and poured Rin's conjured water into it.

"Now, say this: 'This glass is a glass for holding this water.'"

"This glass is a glass for holding this water… What's this about?"

Rin furrowed her brows in confusion but repeated my words exactly as asked.

"Dismiss."

At my command, the water instantly vanished.

Along with the glass it had been poured into.

"Oh, I seee! You gave the cup to the water, didn't you?"

While Rin and Innis stared wide-eyed, Mel spoke up in her carefree voice.

"Mel, you knew all along, didn't you?"

I looked at the half-sheep girl, fighting the urge to sigh.

Then I asked Rin to conjure water one more time…

"This is a spirit, too."

Holding up the glass of water that appeared, I declared it so.

When you give a gift to a spirit, so long as it's small enough to be worn, the object becomes part of the spirit, appearing and vanishing alongside it. Mel had discovered that principle a few years ago.

For convenience, I'd taken to calling it the Brownie Hood, after the legend from English folklore: brownies were fairies who, when given a hooded garment, would claim it as their own and disappear.

"I've been saying that from the staaart."

Mel puffed out her cheeks in protest.

She was absolutely right.

I had been interpreting her answers of "it's a spirit" and "it's not a spirit" as referring to whether spirit power was being used.

But thinking about it, that's not what she'd been saying at all.

She had pointed at the ball of water floating in the air and said, "This is a spirit."

"I always thought, and I'm fairly certain I taught you all, that spirits are natural phenomena cut away by magic and made to behave like living things, possessing a will of their own. But that definition was incomplete."

Even this water, which appeared to have no will and looked like nothing more than ordinary water, was fully a spirit.

… No. Rin had told me once. Everything in this world possesses a will. Even without manifesting as spirits, rivers flow in unpredictable ways. If that's true, then even the water sitting in this glass has a will.

It simply lacks the means to communicate it.

"But you said the flame Mentor conjured wasn't a spirit… oh!"

Before I could answer, Rin seemed to figure it out on her own.

"I see…! Flame. Hey, Mel. Is this a spirit?"

Mel nodded at the flame Rin produced in her palm. It was incredibly simple, really. The flames I produce are real fire blazing inside me, not spirit fire. But that had been muddling the issue the whole time. If I hadn't been there, they probably would have figured it out much sooner…

"… Hey, you know…"

Innis, who had been watching the entire exchange in silence, spoke up with a serious expression.

"Couldn't we somehow… use this to do something similar to enchantment magic?"

"What do you meaaan?"

Mel tilted her head, not following.

"Of course!"

The advantage of enchantment magic is that it can be activated with a single word.

But I knew of one other mage who could achieve something similar with a different kind of magic.

"The Six Orders, Mel. If we could teach these spirits the Orders too…"

My words struck home, and Mel swallowed hard.

"So that means…"

"Yes."

Seeing that she understood, I gave a firm nod.

"… What does it mean?"

She hadn't understood at all.