Vol. 1 Chapter 2.6 – Early October, 1566 — Part Two

After inspecting Nisaku’s village and its surroundings, Shizuko became convinced that her assumptions had indeed been correct.

There were two stretches of river, one near the village and another a short distance away. Although both were shallow enough that the water would not even reach one’s knees, the water flowing through them was brown.

When she scooped some up, tiny grains of sand came up along with the water.

Depending on the rainfall, river water could sometimes remain muddy and brown for around three days. However, it had not rained at all over the past several days.

To begin with, a river from which grains of sand could be scooped up was one that had been thoroughly contaminated by sediment.

There was simply no way such water could be used for drinking.

Even washing clothes in it should have been out of the question, but they likely had no other water source available.

‘Because they haven’t thinned the forest, the soil has been left exposed. The rain must be washing away the topsoil and depositing it in the river. If something isn’t done soon, this forest will become prone to mountain disasters such as landslides.’

She took a brief walk through the forest surrounding the village, but the ground everywhere was waterlogged and had turned into a sludge-like mess.

After walking only a short distance, her straw sandals became so thoroughly caked in mud that they were practically unusable.

Even Wittmann, Kaiser and König found their paws sinking into the mud, leaving them unable to move as freely as they wanted.

Under such conditions, it was hardly surprising that herbivores and the carnivores that preyed upon them had stopped coming anywhere near the area.

“This is even more dangerous than I imagined.”

Even from a cursory inspection, the mountain was in terrible condition. By modern standards, it was in such a state that it would likely be designated a mountain disaster hazard zone by the following year.

If things took a turn for the worse, a landslide could even reach their own village and cause devastating damage.

Shizuko shuddered at the realization that the village they had finally managed to restore after two long years could be wiped out in an instant.

“At the very least, we need to stabilize the conditions around Nisaku-san’s village. That’ll help ensure the safety of our village too.”

Judging by the situation, there was no time to spare.

In the worst-case scenario, she would have to petition Mori Yoshinari to temporarily lend her some laborers.

They needed to urgently thin out the poorly growing trees and those with exposed roots, restoring the forest’s natural environmental and protective functions.

“We’re heading back.”

After giving Wittmann and the others a brief command, Shizuko made her way back to Nisaku’s village at a slightly hurried pace.

By the time she returned, the villagers had already eaten most of the boxed lunches she had brought for Nisaku and his people.

Perhaps because it had been so long since they had enjoyed a proper meal, some were even shedding tears as they ravenously shoveled food into their mouths.

Shizuko initially thought their reactions were a little exaggerated but then she remembered that they had been suffering from prolonged hunger.

‘I just hope their stomachs don’t get overwhelmed and send them into shock…’

With that thought in mind, Shizuko began looking for Nisaku.

Whether fortunately or unfortunately, there were not many adults in the village, so she managed to find him almost immediately.

He appeared to be sitting with his family. An elderly man and woman, presumably his grandfather and grandmother, along with his wife and daughter, were gathered nearby.

Every one of them was so emaciated that they were practically skin and bones.

‘I really have to do something about this.’

“Nisaku-san, could I have a moment of your time?”

The instant she called out to him, everyone present turned their attention toward Shizuko.

Finding herself stared at from every direction, Shizuko instinctively shrank back. However, without paying any attention to her reaction, the villagers placed their boxed lunches on the ground and pressed their palms together toward her.

“Thank you, kindly. Thank you so very much.”

Startled to see them prostrating themselves before her, Shizuko noticed that most of those bowing their heads were elderly.

From that observation, there was only one conclusion she could draw.

‘Just like my village, this one has remarkably few elderly people and children. Does that mean they’ve been reducing the number of mouths to feed…?’

When food became scarce, elderly men and women would inevitably become the first targets of kuchiberashi (reducing the number of mouths to feed).

If food supplies dwindled even further, the next to be targeted would be those who were physically weak or unable to work, and finally, the children.

There were very few elderly people or children remaining. Furthermore, every villager was reduced to skin and bones, teetering on the brink of starvation.

This meant that even after reducing the number of mouths to feed, they were still unable to secure enough food to sustain themselves each day.

“Okami-sama, Great Wolf, please save our village.”

‘…Huh? Great Wolf…?’

Shizuko initially tilted her head in confusion at the words of one of the villagers, but then remembered that they were in a mountainous region.

Among people living in the mountainous regions of central Japan and Kanto, there were communities that revered wolves as messengers of the gods, worshipping them as divine attendants known as go-kenzoku.

Furthermore, the wolves inhabiting the Chichibu region, particularly those associated with Mitsumine Shrine, were revered as『gods.』

However, by Shizuko’s original era, the Japanese wolves that had once inhabited the region had already become extinct.

Remembering the tradition of wolf worship, Shizuko glanced at Kaiser, who was sitting beside her.

He was the highest-ranking wolf pup among the offspring of Wittmann and Balti.

Although he was called a pup, wolves generally grow to the size of an adult within a year, though it takes approximately two years for them to reach sexual maturity.

However, Kaiser alone had already grown to a size that was hardly distinguishable from that of a fully grown wolf.

While the other pups were still appropriately sized for their age, Shizuko had no idea why he alone had undergone such abnormal growth.

Despite his imposing appearance, however, he was an affectionate, clingy fellow who constantly stuck close to Shizuko.

Until recently, he had been just as attached to his mother, Balti.

‘Wolf worship, huh…’

“We’ll be starting work soon, so I’m sorry to trouble you, but could you gather the woodcutters for me?”

Although the villagers were still prostrating themselves before her, Shizuko decided to set that matter aside for the time being and focus on accomplishing her original objective.

Perhaps thanks to the boxed lunches, nearly all the villagers volunteered to work as woodcutters.

There were over twenty of them in total, a pleasant miscalculation for Shizuko, who had expected only around ten.

“We’re going to thin out the trees throughout this surrounding area. The process is called『forest thinning』but you don’t need to worry about the terminology. Basically, we’re going to make sure each tree has an appropriate amount of space around it.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

The villagers responded enthusiastically, sounding thoroughly motivated.

Shizuko was not particularly fond of relying on sheer determination, but she felt that, for now, it would be better to embrace their enthusiasm.

“Please transport the felled trees down to the foot of the mountain. Our villagers should be waiting there, so once you’ve handed the timber over to them, your part will be done.”

Before wood could be used as timber or firewood, it first had to be dried.

However, they had been unable to find a suitable place in the mountains for storage or processing.

Therefore, they decided to cut the trees that could be processed into timber into suitable lengths at Shizuko’s village, while the remainder would be turned into charcoal or firewood.

While the wood was drying, they would also need to prepare an area suitable for carrying out fuseyaki (earth-mound charcoal burning). However, since drying would take at least several months, they had ample time to make the necessary arrangements.

Any wood left over after processing would be used as scrap wood for fueling fires.

“Now then, I’ll select the trees, so please remove any tree I mark, roots and all.”

“Understood!”

With that, Shizuko began marking the trees that were to be felled, one after another.

Rather than maintaining uniform spacing, she was largely relying on her own visual judgment. However, ensuring that sufficient sunlight could reach the forest floor was currently far more important than precision.

Consequently, they would need to fell enough trees that the forest would appear almost excessively sparse.

“This one’s sturdy, so we’ll leave it. This one’s no good. Let’s go ahead and cut it down. As for the trees beyond here…”

While conducting a basic inspection of each tree’s condition, Shizuko continued selecting those that needed to be felled.

Once she had finished marking the trees across a sufficiently large area, Shizuko left the woodcutters to their work and returned to Nisaku’s village.

“Tagosaku-san, Daiichi-san! Are the preparations ready?”

Shizuko called out to Tagosaku and Daiichi as soon as she returned.

Next, they needed to begin constructing a facility for filtering the river water and start work on digging a well.

Since the water filtration facility was not particularly complicated, she decided to complete that task first.

“Everything’s ready!”

With that, Tagosaku gave her an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

Just as he had said, behind Tagosaku was a wooden tub with a piece of cloth secured somewhat loosely over its opening.

“So this is the river water. Ugh, looking at it again, it’s practically the color of dirt.”

The wooden tub that had not been covered with cloth contained river water thoroughly contaminated with mud.

It would probably take more than a day for all the sediment to settle. Even then, it was doubtful whether the water would become clean.

“Alright, let’s place the charcoal, plant materials and small stones on top of the cloth, in that order.”

What Shizuko had come up with was an improvised filtration device, the kind frequently used in survival situations.

Ideally, more refined materials would have been required, but she needed to limit herself to things that could be procured locally.

If she constructed a complicated facility, the villagers would have to travel all the way to Shizuko’s village whenever something broke down.

That would amount to nothing more than a waste of time for both parties.

Therefore, it was essential to keep the design simple enough that Nisaku and his people could construct it themselves.

“The charcoal purifies the water, while the plant materials remove the sand suspended in it. The small stones serve more or less the same purpose.”

Although she explained this to them, Nisaku, as well as Tagosaku and Daiichi, who were assembling the device, understood very little of what she was saying.

For the time being, all they took away from her explanation was that it would somehow make the water cleaner.

They poured the water into the prepared tub.

Although the process was faster than waiting for the impurities to settle naturally, they would still need to wait approximately one to two hours.

In the meantime, Shizuko turned her attention to the final task: digging a well.

“Last up is the well, but…I wonder if we’ll be able to find a suitable spot.”

Locating an underground water vein suitable for use as a well required both the necessary tools and considerable patience.

There was a high likelihood of repeated failures, so without perseverance, the undertaking would be meaningless.

Shizuko herself had previously attempted to dig a well in her own village, only to fail on all five attempts.

In a sense, it was rather ironic that the tools she had prepared back then were now being put to use here.

“I suppose I could look for tree branches that point toward the ground. Or I could use this natural magnet to measure the magnetic field generated by an underground water vein…”

When her previous attempts at digging a well had failed, Shizuko had happened upon a magnet by chance.

There was also the possibility that it was magnetite, but whether it was a natural magnet or magnetite made little difference to Shizuko.

Incidentally, Japanese magnetite was mentioned in Volume Six of the first part of the Shoku Nihongi (Continued Chronicles of Japan), a historical record from the Nara period. According to the account, magnetite was discovered in Ōmi Province (present-day Shiga Prefecture) and presented to the Emperor as jishi (lodestone) on the eleventh day of the fifth month of Wado 6 (713).

Later, magnetic compasses were introduced to Japan from overseas during the Heian period.

From then onward, Japan also imported magnetite from abroad and used it to manufacture magnetic compasses.

Although Shizuko had managed to obtain such a valuable magnet, naturally, its disadvantages outweighed its advantages.

First and foremost, she only had one.

If it broke, she could not simply obtain another.

Searching for a replacement was practically impossible as well. After all, there was no guarantee that she would find another magnet even if she dug up the ground looking for one.

Furthermore, because it was black and nearly spherical, distinguishing its north and south poles was difficult when trying to determine directions.

With no better alternative, Shizuko suspended the magnet from a thin string and fitted it with a bamboo plate so she could distinguish north from south.

Unfortunately, the resulting contraption looked absolutely dreadful. To an outside observer, she would have appeared to be nothing more than a woman doing something suspicious with an ordinary pebble.

“I wonder if I’ll be able to find anything with this. Well, no point worrying about it. Might as well give it a try.”

Letting out a sigh, Shizuko began using the magnet to search for underground water veins.

After that, they continued searching for a suitable place to dig a well, but just as expected, they were unable to find one.

Everywhere they tried was either filled with mud when they dug into the ground or situated in a location that made construction difficult. No matter where they looked, they simply could not find a suitable site for a well.

There might have been an ideal location farther away, but that would mean spending too much time fetching water.

At that point, it would be faster to descend to the foot of the mountain instead. Therefore, they needed to dig the well somewhere within approximately five minutes’ walking distance of the village.

“…Doesn’t look like there’s anywhere suitable, Village Chief.”

“Please don’t put more pressure on me…”

“Puressha?”

“…Never mind. Anyway, we just have to keep looking for now. In the worst-case scenario, we might need to build some kind of machine to pump water up from the foot of the mountain…”

As she said this, Shizuko turned her gaze toward Kinzo, who immediately whipped his head around to look in a completely different direction.

Even without saying a word, his intentions were perfectly clear.

His back practically screamed that he wanted to be spared the headache of figuring out another mysterious contraption for a while.

As Shizuko pondered what to do, Kaiser, who was standing beside her, suddenly barked.

She wondered whether some animal had appeared, but after barking, he abruptly dashed off toward somewhere.

Kaiser moved so quickly that Shizuko and the others could barely comprehend what had happened. However, the moment they came to their senses, they hurried after him.

“Wait, Kaiser! Where are you going!?”

Despite Shizuko calling out to him, Kaiser did not stop.

Although still a wolf pup, he was nevertheless a wild animal and he quickly left Shizuko and the others far behind.

However, he apparently had no intention of going very far, and they soon managed to catch up with him.

“Hey! Don’t just run off like that! What’s gotten into you?”

Responding to her words, Kaiser barked while lightly digging at a particular patch of ground.

At first, Shizuko tilted her head in confusion, but she soon realized that Kaiser was telling her to dig there.

“Village Chief! What’s going on!?”

While Shizuko was examining the patch of ground Kaiser had been repeatedly pawing at, Kinzo and Tagosaku finally caught up with her.

Although Daiichi and Nisaku were breathing heavily, neither collapsed on the spot.

“Alright, let’s try digging here!”

No sooner had she spoken than Shizuko snatched the manual well-drilling apparatus from Kinzo’s back and immediately began drilling into the ground.

[Go-kenzoku (御眷属) refers to the sacred attendants or divine familiars of a Shinto deity, often animals believed to serve as messengers or protectors of the gods.]