“Ollie. I never hid any egg. Whatever egg you ate — it wasn’t mine.”
“What? But…… it was right in front of your house……”
“I’m staying at Bes’s place right now. There’s nothing there, Ollie.”
Thrown into confusion, he darted his eyes around, at a loss for what to do. Then whose egg did I eat? Don’t tell me it was Jackson’s.
“Ka — Kan, what do I do? What if it was Jackson’s egg?”
“Ha…… That’s not even the main problem right now. We don’t even know what kind of egg it was.”
“What does that matter! What matters is whose it was. I’m dead. What do I do…… Jackson is going to kill me.”
“Ollie, Ollie! Calm down. It wasn’t Jackson’s egg. There’s no reason for him to hide an egg in front of our house.”
“……Really? Thank goodness, phew.”
He clutched his chest and let out a sigh of relief. But Kan still couldn’t stop worrying about Ollie’s rounded stomach.
“You really are something…… Ha, Ollie. Do you remember what the egg looked like?”
“The egg? Uh…… it was about this big…… and, mm, it was red and black.”
“What?”
Kan had never seen an egg that color. He’d never heard of a red and black egg from any of the village elders either. Completely unaware of his growing unease, Ollie had already bounced back to his usual self.
“It’s fine. It obviously looked like an egg packed full of vital energy. Nothing’s gone wrong yet…… so isn’t that good enough?”
“Ollie.”
“Stop worrying over nothing. Just hurry up and give me my gift!”
He shrugged off the hand Kan had on his shoulder as he said it. Then he held out his hand with unabashed confidence.
Of course, Ollie had noticed that the vital energy wasn’t building up as quickly as expected and found it a little odd — but he didn’t think it was a serious problem. It was just that, as the village kids always said, being a half-breed meant he couldn’t absorb the potent vital energy of a strong egg easily.
He grinned as he took the box Kan handed over with a sigh. The weight of it was heavier than expected, and his heart lifted even more. Then he looked up and eyed Kan with suspicion.
“You’re not going to take it back, are you?”
“No. I told you it’s a gift.”
“Alright then!”
He opened the box with eager hands, and inside lay a bracelet set with a large gemstone and a garment of deep crimson. Ollie stared at it with slightly dazed eyes, then slowly lifted the bracelet. The glittering green gemstone was the exact same color as his eyes.
“Your birthday’s coming up soon. I’ll be heading to the Bikan Mountain Range around then, so I wanted to give it to you early.”
“……My birthday?”
Only then did Ollie realize his birthday wasn’t far off. Come to think of it, there was less than a month left. He quickly fastened the bracelet with its glittering green gemstone onto his wrist. Then he dangled it in front of Kan’s face. The bracelet shone amid Ollie’s bright, clear smile. Kan watched, briefly entranced, then caught himself and spoke.
“It suits you.”
“Right? It’s perfect for me. I didn’t know you had such good taste.”
Not a word of thanks — he was too busy showing off the bracelet. Then he pulled out the deep crimson garment and held it up against himself, looking at Kan. Kan laughed along and said it suited him well. Getting the reaction he wanted, Ollie beamed. Not a trace remained of the dejection from moments ago.
Ollie was always like that. He never dragged anything out for long. It gave the impression that he wasn’t particularly serious about things — but Kan thought that was precisely what made Ollie who he was.
“Do you like it?”
“Yes!”
With that quick answer he pulled his shirt clean off. Kan turned his head in surprise, then thought that probably looked even stranger, and slowly turned back. Ollie hummed to himself as he put the new garment on. The rounded belly protruding below his lean chest — Kan was this worried about it, and yet the person it actually belonged to seemed completely unbothered.
There had been a time when Danny once tried to take on an ostrich egg, but that was truly out of the question. Tree Folk were large-framed and sturdy, but there was a limit to the size of egg they could eat. It was said that an ancestor had once eaten an ostrich egg, but by Kan’s generation it was seen more as an act of recklessness than anything else.
Aside from winter, eggs were always plentiful, and unless it was a chicken egg, even a single woodpecker egg was enough to last a full month without trouble. What they consumed wasn’t simply an egg — it was the life force held within it.
“Ollie…… can you tell me more about the egg?”
“Hmm?”
Having changed into his new clothes, Ollie struck a pose to show them off to Kan. Kan said it suited him well, but didn’t forget to add a word of concern. Fortunately, in his good mood, Ollie didn’t get annoyed at Kan’s words.
“Well…… I was poking around in the ground with a stick and something hit it. So I dug around a little and there was this glimmering egg. I just…… figured you must’ve hidden it there, so I dug it up and took it home.”
“It was red and black mixed together?”
“No. From one angle it was red, and from another it was black. Strange, right?”
No bird buries its egg in the ground. Birds build their nests in rock crevices or in trees and lay their eggs there. Even ground-dwelling birds don’t hide their eggs underground. So an egg being found underground meant someone had hidden it there. A red and black egg…… Kan couldn’t think of anything and it unsettled him.
“Isn’t it a little strange that your…… your stomach got that big from it?”
“The egg was big, so my belly stuck out. I’m thin, so I’m always like this. When was it? I was like this when I ate a snake egg too.”
“What? Ollie, you ate a snake egg?”
“Not the snake — just one egg.”
Imagining Ollie — smaller than the average Tree Folk — eating a snake egg made Kan’s chest go cold. Tree Folk could technically eat any egg, but they tended not to eat eggs from creatures that shared the earth with them and lived in symbiosis. Except in special cases like Ollie, who subsisted mainly on chicken eggs, they mostly ate things that held the vital energy of the sky.
“Are the eggs I give you not enough?”
“Everything you give me is quail eggs the size of a thumbnail!”
“Quail eggs are plenty for you.”
“No they’re not!”
Even a chicken egg barely fills me up! At what followed, Kan was a little dumbfounded. He’d been stealing Philip’s egg because he was tired of chicken eggs, and now he was saying a chicken egg was barely enough.
“Then I’ll bring you something bigger than quail eggs. But in return, stop stealing from the young ones. Ollie.”
“……It has to be something that’ll last me a full month.”
“Fine. Now promise you’ll stop stealing.”
“That I can’t do.”
“Ollie.”
Kan found it hard to accept that Ollie would sooner die than give up stealing eggs. So he let out a deep sigh and got up from his seat. It seemed Ollie needed time to think. And Kan also needed to look into the egg Ollie had eaten.
“I’ll be heading to the Bikan Mountain Range soon, so think it over while I’m gone. As for eggs…… I’ll bring them to you, so let’s at least agree that you won’t steal from the young ones……”
“……Fine. I’ll just think about it.”
“Alright.”
He ruffled the small head that sat so far below his line of sight, and headed for the stairs. He made sure not to forget to say his goodbye to Ollie as he stepped down the stairs they’d once packed and shaped together out of mud.
Kan knocked on the sturdy wooden door. Before long, George’s voice called for him to come in.
“George.”
“Oh, Kan. What brings you here.”
He lifted his hunched body from the sofa and spread both arms wide toward Kan. An old frame, but with a thick build that still held firm muscle. Kan pulled George into an embrace.
“Looks like you’ve been to Ollie’s place.”
“……Yes.”
Kan sniffed, catching the scent on his clothes. It seemed the incense Ollie burned in his house had seeped into the fabric. George smiled warmly and guided Kan to the sofa. In his eyes Kan was still a child, and so he didn’t forget to hold out a small bowl of fruit toward him as well.
“That sort of thing should be for kids like Philip.”
“To me, you and Philip are no different.”
