Chapter 38 [Golden Wheat Town]
Every autumn, the sunlight shines on the wheat fields dozens of miles from the town, and the golden color makes everyone who passes by unconsciously show a knowing smile.
This is the origin of the name Jinmai Town.
However, this year in Golden Wheat Town, even the miller's face has lost its joy.
Late at night, in the dimly lit room, Joanne stood behind the door, but dared not light a candle.
When three soft knocks sounded at the door, Joanne immediately removed the bolt, opened the door, and let Hall crawl in.
"Sigh." Hall sighed, unable to help but complain, "We're in our own home, but it feels like we're doing something wrong."
"There's nothing we can do." Joanne sighed along with Hall as she spoke.
Back in August, after being reminded by Mela and Lex, Hall and Joanne discussed it and realized that it was not safe to hide the food in their own cellar. So they began to consciously move most of the food to other places behind the backs of the other people in town, just in case.
Meanwhile, in addition to buying a two-story house in Jinmai Town, Hall also bought more than ten acres of land outside the town. Using this identity, he frequently interacted with a grain merchant without attracting anyone's attention.
The two sat in the tavern, drinking heavily from large glasses of cheap ale, pouring out their frustrations about life to each other.
Of course, given Hall's personality, he was mostly the one who listened.
But this approach helped him quickly build a closer relationship with the grain merchant, so when he casually inquired about grain prices in other places, the grain merchant immediately spilled the beans.
The more Hall listened, the more alarmed he became.
It turned out that while he was only vaguely aware that something was wrong, there had already been unusual activity elsewhere.
Take soybeans as an example. In Jinmai Town, you can buy half a bag for eighty copper coins, but in more distant places, it costs one hundred copper coins.
This is still below the price of Bayard.
Hall couldn't imagine what the situation was like in the other territories.
However, apart from the merchants who travel around, who has the means or the inclination to inquire about such news? Most people in Jinmai Town are only focused on their current lives and rarely curious about things in other places.
Even if you mention Radcliffe Territory nearby to them, you'll often only get a blank look: "Oh, I don't have any relatives that far away, and I've never thought about paying attention to news from there."
However, if a stranger like Hall came to live in Golden Wheat Town with his wife, he would become the talk of the town for half a month.
Of course, out of respect for the tax official, no one would doubt that their identities actually did not belong to Bayard territory; they would simply assume that Hall was the kind of person who had saved money in the village and moved to the town specifically to live.
Although after getting to know them, everyone discovered that Hall and Joanne were not vain people.
In short, because of past misunderstandings about Hall and Joanne, even if someone noticed that some of the couple's behavior seemed a bit abnormal, they didn't make a fuss, simply dismissing it as their own wild speculation and putting it out of their minds.
This, ironically, helped Hall successfully complete the task of transferring the grain.
The ever-increasing food prices later on made Hall and Joanne marvel at Mela and Lex's foresight countless times.
Otherwise, with the meager sums they had left after bribing the tax officials and buying the house and land, they probably couldn't afford even half a bag of wheat flour, which now costs two hundred copper coins.
Similar plight wasn't limited to Hall and Joanne; their neighbors, and indeed most of the households in Goldenmead, were experiencing dwindling food supplies and increasing hunger pangs.
To avoid letting others know that they had extra food, Hall had to sneak out of the house under the cover of night each time, while Joanne was responsible for guarding the door and letting people in quickly when she heard the agreed-upon knock.
"By the way, is there enough water in the water tank at home?" Hall handed Joanne the bag tied around his waist, which was full of beans, and asked casually.
It's impossible to eat this bag of beans to your heart's content, but at least adding some beans to each meal will prevent you from feeling like your stomach is on fire from hunger.
Moreover, Hall and Joanne dared not make themselves look different from others, with overly full cheeks and rosy complexions, lest they be blatantly telling others that there was something fishy going on in their home.
Joanne shook her head with a troubled expression, and estimated a number, "I can probably hold on for another four or five days."
“This is going to be difficult…” Hall let out his second sigh of the night.
Since the weather got hotter, the only well in Jinmai Town has been strictly guarded. People who want to fetch water must follow the rules and bring the prescribed containers. Otherwise, they will be pushed away by the guards before they even get close to the well.
If there are only two of them, Hall and Joanne, it will take them three days to fetch a pottery jar of water.
How could such a small amount of water be enough for two people to drink?
But neither Hall nor Joanne felt it was worth spending money to bribe the guards for such a trivial matter. After all, no one knew when the weather would cool down and bring a good rain, so the money had to be spent on the most critical moment.
"Miss Mela's situation should be much better than ours, after all, the Dark Forest is not short of water..." Joanne murmured to herself.
*
Meanwhile, Mela, who was being thought about by Joanne, was feeling a headache coming on as she looked into the girl's stubborn eyes.
Mela had simply felt too full and decided to take a casual stroll near the cabin.
Before leaving, she had actually invited Silas and Lex, but one was too lazy to move and the other was busy washing dishes, so they both declined her invitation.
"Alright then," Mela shrugged and went out alone with a flourish.
After a month of relentless baking, many plants in the forest are facing withering, and even those that manage to survive look droopy and lifeless.
Mela touched a purple coral fern that was drooping its head; it had originally grown exceptionally beautifully.
Due to excessive water shortage, the deep purple leaves faded to light purple, and the fuzzy layer covering the leaves, which was invisible to the naked eye, also became hard and dry, losing its former fuzzy feel.
Even so, it was in much better condition than the other plants around it.
I wonder when a good, refreshing rain will come down and bring these silent lives back to life.
Mela released her grip and continued walking leisurely forward.
Lex even asked her about this, why she couldn't do divination?
With Mela's abilities, Lex believed she could do it.
However, Mela rested her chin on her hand, gazing out the window. Even in such dazzling sunlight, it seemed that not all the light could penetrate into those deep, dark green pools.
She said, "Divination and prophecy are not the same."
"Divination is the process of obtaining a predetermined future from known information. In other words, the result of divination is something that is bound to happen or has already happened."
"Prophecy, on the other hand, is to glimpse the possible future from the unknown destiny."
Few witches can even glimpse fate, but for a gifted witch like Mela, it's not particularly difficult.
However, even if Mela saw destiny, the future was not necessarily going to happen.
For example, Mela sees that it will rain in ten days, but will it really rain in ten days? Not necessarily.
The reason is simple: Mela had already told Lex that fate can be changed, rather than being an unchanging, inanimate thing.
Therefore, Mela never considered using a crystal ball to divine the matter.
Ultimately, all she could do was wait.
Waiting for the rain that is destined to fall.
Before she knew it, Mela had walked to the riverbank.
On a moonlit night with few stars, when clusters of faint lights suddenly rose from the reeds by the river, they naturally caught Mela's attention.
They are fireflies.
As Mela watched them slowly scatter, she couldn't help but reach out and catch one of the small yellow specks of light.
Perhaps sensing the kindness emanating from Mela, or perhaps finding the familiar and comforting scent of plants on Mela reassuring, the firefly trembled and landed on Mela's fingertip, allowing her to observe it closely.
As its tail flashed light again and again, Mela seemed to feel the breath of life.
Her heart also calmed down unconsciously.
The firefly didn't stay on Mela's fingertip for long; in the blink of an eye, it flew away again, chasing after one of its companions.
Mela let it go, and instead of continuing to the riverbank, she walked upstream along the river.
Then, the scene that Mela least wanted to see happened.
A girl of about fifteen or sixteen years old suddenly rushed in front of her, and the two of them were startled.
"Who are you?" the girl asked first, seemingly trying to gain the upper hand in the conversation.
"And who are you?" Compared to her aggressive tone, Mela appeared much calmer and more composed.
Upon hearing Mela's question, the girl seemed to choke for a moment, but obediently answered, "My name is Gwentil."
She didn't say where she came from, but Mela subtly observed her clothes and the thick layer of mud clinging to the soles of her shoes, concluding that she must have fled from the northern territories.
This was earlier than she and Lex had anticipated.
They all thought that at least half of autumn would pass before anything big would happen.
But now, autumn has only just begun.
It seems the situation in the Northern Territory is more serious than Mela and Lex imagined.
"And what about you? You haven't answered my question yet." Gwendi was quick-tempered and had the temperament of a young girl, feeling that the questions and answers between the two should be reciprocal.
Upon hearing her words, Mela shrugged and asked curiously, "Did I promise to answer your question?"
She was the one who couldn't wait to tell Mela her name.
Okay, that seems to be right. Gwentil's eyes widened, half with anger and half with annoyance.
She never expected that Mela, who looked like a beautiful fairy beyond the reach of an oil painting, would act like a scoundrel like a man.
"Gwendile, who is this person standing in front of you?"
Suddenly, another person emerged from the woods.
He was a middle-aged man with a thick beard that obscured his features, leaving only his gleaming gray eyes visible.
But his physique was visibly sturdy, and his arms were so thick that it seemed he could punch a deep hole in the ground.
With such a person behind her, Gwendy immediately felt like she had a solid support. She raised her chin slightly and replied in a deliberately sarcastic tone, "I don't know either. She just suddenly appeared and gave me quite a fright."
"Hey, who suddenly jumped out and startled whom?" Mela looked at the girl, who was much younger than her, with amusement.
I wasn't angry or offended by her words.
This kind of arrogant and domineering attitude, once he has a powerful backer, would probably make him quite compatible with Silas.
The man was not swayed by Gwentil's attitude. Instead, he looked cautiously at Mela with an apologetic look in his eyes. "I'm sorry, Gwentil is still young and can be a bit sharp-tongued. But I think she just wanted to find out your identity and background, rather than actually being hostile towards you."
It's understandable for strangers to want to know these things when they meet, after all, there's no such thing as unfounded closeness in this world.
Besides, Mela knew that she didn't have an exceptionally kind face that would make people lower their guard when they met her.
That's what they say.
“Before I tell you these things, why don’t you tell me your identity and background first?” Mela said casually.
Although Mela was alone, she acted so confidently that she seemed completely unafraid and unconcerned about the strange man, as if she wasn't worried at all about what he and Gwentil might do to her.
The man was stunned for a moment before he finally managed to give a smile that should have been kind.
However, his mouth was covered by his beard, so Mela could only judge it by the deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
“My name is Grenfell, and like Gwentil, I come from the northern territories. As for which lord’s territory it is, please keep that a secret. After all, Gwentil and I don’t want to go back and be caught red-handed, forced to live as slaves.”
Despite the seriousness of the topic, Grinkel brought it up in a joking tone, which seemed to ease the tense atmosphere that had been building.
It's clear that Grinning is a master of communication.
“My name is Mela, similar to yours, but I don’t come from the Northern Territories.” Mela maintained her nonchalant demeanor. She followed up on Grining’s words flawlessly.
She didn't reveal anything that would arouse suspicion from Grind and Gwendolyn, since she didn't yet know the specific situation outside, and making things up could easily go too far, so it was better to simply remain silent. But Mela didn't completely withhold information worth exchanging either.
At least she told them her real name, didn't she? And who knows, maybe one of them is actually named Grind and the other Gwentil.
Of course, the same doubts probably also existed in the minds of Grind and Gwentil.
However, Grinkel couldn't say anything to Mela, since he hadn't provided any useful information besides her name during their brief exchange.
So he just smiled and continued, "I believe you are just like us, someone who has nowhere else to turn. Otherwise, who would be willing to risk coming to this gloomy and terrifying dark forest?"
Grining's words were clearly a test; he deliberately used vague language in an attempt to elicit Mela's true purpose.
Unfortunately, it wasn't Mela who answered him, but Gwentil.
"That's right. If it weren't for Grinningk, I'd probably have been devoured by wild beasts that suddenly appeared along the way. And those vines and thorns that are impossible to guard against, and those prickly fruits, I don't know how that infamous witch survived in this godforsaken place."
Gwentil had accumulated a lot of resentment towards the Dark Forest along the way, and now Grind's words were like a ladder for her to vent her frustrations.
Upon hearing her words, Mela raised an eyebrow with amusement, her smile deepening.
She had no idea when the rumors outside had changed again, and she had become a notorious witch, even though these people didn't even know her name.
“Gwentil, can you tell me what that infamous witch has done? I’m sorry, I’ve only heard that she lives here, and that’s all… People are very secretive about witches and rarely share what they know.”
Mela looked very interested.
"You didn't know that?" Gwentil looked surprised.
She had only recently heard about these things from Grinker, but now she couldn't resist showing them off to Mela.
“Gwentil, this isn’t a place for careless talk,” Grind suddenly interrupted Gwentil, who was about to speak.
Gwendi didn't see anything wrong with it; Grind had always been this cautious since they met. She even covered her mouth as if suddenly realizing something, deliberately lowering her voice:
“I almost forgot, this is that witch’s territory. What if the raven she’s keeping is secretly watching us and repeats what we’re saying to her?”
Gwentil also cautiously glanced around at the surrounding trees to see if a crow was hiding and spying on them.
"..." Although this was the effect Grinningk wanted, he seemed to really want to press down on his throbbing temples.
“…Let’s talk about something else.” Finally, Grinkel weakly changed the subject.
“Let’s call it a day for tonight,” Mela shook her head, refusing to continue the conversation. “I should go back; I have companions waiting for me.”
If she doesn't go back soon, Silas and Lex might start to worry again.
“No wonder you’re not afraid of what we might do to you; it turns out you have companions too. Since we’ve run into each other, why don’t you call your companions over? The more people we have, the safer we’ll be in this forest,” Gwentil warmly invited Mela.
“No need, they don’t like being around strangers,” Mela refused without hesitation.
"What's the big deal? We can just sit around a fire and chat, and that'll make us get to know each other."
Gwentil also cited her and Grinning as an example, saying, "Grinning and I met on the way, but that didn't stop us from teaming up and coming to the Dark Forest together."
“…No, really, it’s not necessary.” Faced with Gwentil’s passionate yet stubborn gaze, Mela felt her temples begin to throb.
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