The Princess and the Hoe

“Haah, the air is wonderful!”

Arriving at the entrance of the Pedrica Mountains, I stretched both arms wide and drank in a deep breath.

The air was so cold and biting it stung my lungs, but the scent of trees and earth mingled within it set my heart racing all over again.

Whoosh, hah, whoosh, hah. Only after gulping down lungful after lungful of that long-missed forest smell did I finally lift my eyes to the towering snow-capped peaks of the Pedrica range.

“Wow….”

Spectacular.

A field of pristine white stretched endlessly before me, filling my entire field of vision.

Brilliant snow clung in layers to every ridge, and each time the wind swept past, powdery flakes rose from the crests and scattered into the empty air.

Just thinking about setting foot on frozen ground again after so long made the corners of my mouth curl up on their own.

Heh heh.

Unlike the knights and the Grand Duke worried about me, I had arrived at the mountain's entrance without breaking a sweat.

My breathing was even, and my legs and shoulders felt lighter than ever.

This is what people are meant for — walking the earth.

With my spirits high, I set off into the mountains.

The two knights who had raced ahead when the Grand Duke appeared were already out of sight.

But there was no particular need to worry.

The path cleared by the Grand Duke's knights was still traced out vividly ahead of me.

However treacherous and merciless the northern mountains were rumored to be, this was ground the Duke's knights climbed up and down in the course of their daily training. Perhaps that was why the trail they used bore unmistakable marks of human hands.

“A pity.”

I clicked my tongue and smacked my lips.

Places trampled by human feet like this never grow medicinal herbs or rare poisonous plants.

What's more, it looked like the two knights ahead — even while serving out their punishment — had climbed up clearing away the snow that had piled up overnight.

And not just the snow. They'd yanked out even the jagged stones poking through the frozen ground and the tough wild weeds, tossing them all to the sides of the path.

Almost as if to say, follow carefully.

Whatever else I think of them, a knight really is a knight.

The faces of the men who had fussed over me before the climb flashed through my mind, and I burst into a small laugh.

Rough and coarse, yes — but threaded through it all was that unspoken consideration unique to the northern knights.

Following the path they had so kindly cleared, I began climbing the mountain in earnest.

The feel of the firm ground beneath my feet was wonderful. Even the chill seeping up through my soles, despite the cleared snow, pleased me.

After more than two weeks without setting foot on a mountain, my body finally felt like it had come home.

The southern winter mountains were savage beyond comparison, but thinking of the poisonous plants that might be thriving in exactly this kind of barren soil excited me even more.

Whoosh, huff, huff—. How long had I been climbing?

Naturally, there was no trace of the knights who had sprinted ahead in full gear. Unless I ran into them coming back down from the summit, I would never catch up with them.

I stopped walking.

If it stays like this, there's no point in climbing at all.

The point was — I hadn't volunteered to share their punishment just to trudge up a nicely groomed trail.

Standing in place, I surveyed my surroundings carefully.

Apart from the path the knights had cleared, the area was still buried deep in snow — thick enough to swallow you past the knees with every step.

Piercing through that tomb-like blanket of white, bare branches and blackened, withered weeds of unknown names jutted up in grotesque shapes.

To anyone else, it would have looked like nothing more than the bleak scenery of a dead winter mountain. But to my eyes, it looked entirely different.

My mouth watered.

How many herbs and poisonous plants are hiding under that snow?

Gulping, I slipped my hand into my cloak and drew out the gardener's gloves and hoe I'd hidden at my waist.

They were the pair I'd spotted by chance a few days ago, while watching Celine hunt for four-leaf clovers beneath a ladder.

The gardener had apparently left them behind after tending a flower bed, and I had quietly pocketed them at the time.

Small and old-fashioned, but sturdy enough to break through frozen ground.

Gripping the hoe's handle tight, I turned my body away from the safe hiking trail without a moment's regret.

Toward the place untouched by a single human footprint.

Toward that perfect unknown, where rare herbs and lethal poisons were surely strewn across the earth as far as the eye could see.

My bet with the Grand Duke did flash through my mind for a moment.

Even if I lose the bet, I've got nothing to lose anyway.

To be honest, I had never intended to win it in the first place.

Varkan was following the princess, keeping his distance behind her.

At the same time, he could not for the life of him understand her bizarre behavior.

Granted, understanding a madwoman was a lost cause in itself, but her reality-shattering stamina was a matter on an entirely different axis from her unsound mind.

A princess of Delmare, raised like a flower in a greenhouse, should have been gasping for breath just reaching the mountain's entrance against this ferocious north wind.

Granted too, judging by her personality, one could argue she'd gritted her teeth and stubbornly willed herself that far.

But the princess had been positively giddy the entire climb.

And that was not an exaggeration. At times she was as delighted as a puppy seeing snow for the first time; at others, as nimble as a fox treating the snowfield like its own backyard.

Her steps were light, and her breathing was unshakably steady.

Was that even possible?

Varkan found himself studying the princess rather than the summit, wondering how the summit could possibly be the summit at all.

Quite some time had passed as he quietly trailed her.

They were already halfway up the mountain.

Varkan's eyes narrowed.

That's no ordinary stamina.

Hendrick's report — that she handled the maid's work without tiring — came to mind unbidden. Back then, he'd merely taken it to mean she was doing fairly well for such a frail princess.

But now he could see it was nothing of the sort. That stamina simply could not have come from such a delicate frame.

Varkan glanced up once at the mountain's peak.

The ones who went ahead will already be coming back down from the top by now.

Tracing the contours of the mountain, he resumed following the princess.

Then—

The princess, who had been marching steadily along the path, suddenly came to a halt.

She then reached into her cloak and began fishing something out, item by item.

A crease formed between Varkan's brows.

…A hoe?

It was the last thing that belonged in those small white hands of hers.

Where in the world did she get that…?

Ha. Varkan pressed down on his throbbing head and let out a sigh.

Before that sigh had even finished leaving his lips, the princess glanced around, stepped off the path the knights had cleared, and abruptly veered off in a new direction.

Varkan followed in her wake, thinking:

So it finally begins.

He'd known it was too quiet for someone climbing a mountain.

He trailed her silently, resolving that the moment something dangerous happened, he would seize on it as his excuse to drag her back down the mountain.

Left to his own desires, he would have snatched the hoe from her hand that very instant and hauled her straight back to the Duke's residence.

And then—

Thud! Thud-thud! Thudthudthudthud!

"…."

The princess had begun rapidly shoveling away the snow beneath a frost-dead tree.

What on earth is she…?

Then — whack, whack, whack—! She began hammering the frozen earth with her hoe.

Varkan was left speechless.

A woman who, on the surface, appeared more sound and beautiful than anyone — swinging a hoe like a bladed weapon, gouging into frozen ground like some kind of beast.

Had any of the other knights or servants witnessed the scene, their blood would have run cold.

And yet Varkan's bewilderment came from an entirely different direction.

…She's skilled.

This was ground that had frozen and thawed hundreds, thousands of times over.

Breaking through it with a single small hoe — with the strength produced by those slender little hands — was never going to be easy.

Yet the princess split the earth at varying angles, one strike after another.

Her movements were familiar to the point of being unsettling.

After digging away for a long while, the princess tucked something into a pouch she'd prepared in advance, then moved to a new spot.

She dug again, extracted again, and then — beaming as if she owned the whole world — carefully swept her findings into the pouch.

Watching her, a long-buried memory surfaced without warning.

His own mother — abandoned by his father, her mind lost to madness.

Not everyone was the same, but as a rule, those who lost their reason to a devastating shock tended to develop a pathological obsession with some single thing.

Varkan's birth mother had been no exception. At the break of every dawn, she would go out in thin clothing to the winter seashore and gather useless little pebbles.

Oblivious to her fingertips blackening with frostbite, she would cradle those drab stones as if they were precious gems, piling them high in boxes and pockets.

Perhaps this princess, too, had suffered some terrible loss and was clinging to meaningless rocks and weeds for that very reason.

The princess's retreating back — huffing warm breath onto her dirt-caked fingertips — somehow overlapped with the last image he had of his mother.

The corners of Varkan's eyes sank a little.

Feeling an inexplicable heaviness settle in a corner of his chest, Varkan silently trailed the princess's strange expedition for a long while more.

Then she began climbing a steep slope.

A faint crease formed between his brows.

That's dangerous.

The direction the princess had gleefully bounded toward was a steep incline infamous even within the Pedrica Mountains for its unstable ground.

Covered in snow, it might have looked like flat land — but its end opened onto a dizzying precipice, a plunge of a thousand fathoms.

Time to bring her down.

Varkan judged he had given her more than enough time. And the instant he made up his mind and took a step toward her—

“Whoa!”

With a short cry of delight, the princess seemed to drop straight out of the air — whoosh! — vanishing from his sight.

"…!"

Startled, Varkan bolted on pure instinct.

Cutting straight across the snowfield, toward the edge of the ridge where she had been standing only moments before.

“Princess!”

Varkan's voice tore sharply through the snow-covered mountains.