Chapter 122: Acorn Feather Drop

When Ren came out of the main house the sun had gone down altogether. But lights flickered here and there in the direction of the annexe. Somebody was moving about with a lamp. There was light in the annexe windows too.

He was usually indoors in the main house after dark, so he was seldom outside the buildings at night in the first place; but even so, the annexe as he had seen it from a window had always been pitch dark.

For it to be full of the presence of people gave him a strange sort of feeling.

The corridor leading to the storage room was dark, and even inside the room it was pitch black. But there was no particular difficulty if he set down a “small box” and made it glow. Once he had put out enough “small boxes” and set them in a row to light the place properly, Ren spread a cloth over the bed and took out several hemp sacks. The sacks were stuffed with the feathers of bird-type magical beasts — though not the ones with a good firm shaft that could be used for quill pens, but the feathers from about the breast and belly.

He had kept them because he used them for things like the classification in the reference room.

The clear, translucent azure feathers of the Azure Wind Swift. The shining, bright orange feathers of the Flame Finch. The deep green of the Moss Red Cockatol. They were no use for quill pens, but the colours were quite beautiful enough.

Ren sorted the feathers into roughly equal lengths.

Next he took out the nuts he had gathered in the forest. He washed them clean with Water Magic, wiped off the wet, and picked out the ones that looked usable. He selected acorns of about the same size and, with resin, fixed feathers to the little scar at the base of each acorn. To one acorn he glued feathers of a single colour, evenly spaced.

Acorns with azure feathers, acorns with orange feathers, acorns with deep green feathers. He took an acorn between his fingertips and checked how the feathers were balanced. A satisfied smile came to Ren’s mouth.

Next he cut boards out with the “small box”, glued them with resin, and put together a box about the size of both palms spread; then he ground a hole in the middle of it with a horn rabbit’s horn.

“……I wonder if I could make holes with the small box……”

A horn rabbit’s horn was quite sharp, and pressing and grinding it against the board would make a hole, but it took a surprising while. Doing it by hand, grinding away, he couldn’t help wondering whether there was a way of doing it with the “small box”.

In the centre of another board he stood a length of tube grass, cut about as short as his little finger, and fixed it upright with resin. The hole he had opened in the middle of the box he widened until the tube grass glued to the board would pass through it.

He put the hole over the spindle he had made of tube grass and tried turning the box. The box went round and round. The tube grass he had used for a spindle was firmly fixed and didn’t wobble.

He tried dropping a feathered acorn into the box from above while it turned.

Tock.

With a dry sound the acorn dropped into the box and rolled. The second one bounced and sprang out of the box.

Ren thought for a moment, then got out a cloth and laid it in the box.

Tok.

When he dropped the feathered acorn again the sound was softer than before, and the acorn settled in the box without bouncing much.

“A quiet sound is better……”

He took the cloth out of the box and tried drawing a line at the edge of it with the char-core quill pen. He rubbed the line he had drawn with his hand. The black of the line spread a little, but he satisfied himself that it didn’t go altogether black.

Laying a straight board along it, he drew lines out from the centre of the cloth like the spokes of a wheel, and wrote numbers in between line and line. Last of all he made a hole in the middle and put it back into the box, threading the hole in the cloth over the tube-grass spindle as well.

“There!”

Spinning the box with one hand, he held a feathered acorn up in the other and dropped it in from above. The acorn rolled inside the turning box, but the feathers on it caught. When the box stopped turning, the acorn stopped moving too.

The game was to compete over the number that the tip of the stopped acorn pointed at.

“Yes. This way you could play it in a carriage.”

What Ren had thought up was something like the squares game, but playable inside a carriage.

Since you weren’t rolling it from a distance, he had made it turn so that it was harder to aim. He had put feathers of different colours on so that it was easy to tell whose acorn was whose.

“It’s come out looking rather pretty, too.”

There was something cheerful about the look of the different-coloured acorns set out in a row.

Ren had thought of it after hearing Patrick say he would like to play the squares game inside the carriage as well. He thought he might give it to him when they left.

“……The cloth may be a bit doubtful, but it’ll do for now. I’ll make more.”

When he had made a set for each family, so that everyone besides Patrick would have one, the vivid azure of the Azure Wind Swift feathers suddenly began to bother him.

“Wait……, azure feathers were sought after, weren’t they……. Might someone say they want feathers for quill pens as well……?”

He had made them on a sudden idea and the momentum of it, and now he was beginning to feel a little uneasy.

The next morning he woke early as usual, but since he wasn’t going out hunting he felt rather unsettled. If he went out hunting at dawn he could probably be back at the mansion before the celebration began, but there was also the chance that something might happen and he wouldn’t get back in time.

When he went outside there came a dry clack, clack from the direction of the back garden.

He went to look, and found Patrick and Tina having a bout with wooden swords.

Scott was standing in front of the butts with his bow at the ready. Theo was watching beside him.

Perhaps they had noticed Ren coming; Patrick and Tina stopped, and Scott and Theo turned round as well.

“Good morning.”

“Morning, Ren.”

“……Er, may I watch?”

“Of course. Not at all.”

He made his greeting, and Patrick and the others returned it. He was interested in bow practice and sword practice alike, so he checked whether he might watch, and they agreed readily.

For a while he stood a little way off and watched them at their practice.

When Scott set his bow, mana could be seen glittering at his shoulders and arms. When Theo drew, on the other hand, there was no mana wrapped about his arm.

When Tina rushed in at Patrick, mana came spilling out in glittering points. Patrick, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have any mana showing at his arms or his sword. Yet he turned Tina’s rush aside without the least trouble.

(……Does mana come out when you use a skill……?)

He was thinking about that as he watched when a voice came from behind him.

“Well now……, Ren-kun?”

He turned round at his name, and there stood Eugene. Ren’s eyes went round.