The First Snow
A child can soften a person's heart, no matter the circumstances.
The brightness did not last. The moment Juhwan lifted Dorothy into the wagon and shut the door, the air on every side grew heavy again.
Whether it was because Oz was a horned rabbit, or because rabbits simply kick well by nature, the village chief's wife's injuries were severe. She looked half out of her senses, and still she wept in weak, broken sobs. He had heard the wagon was used by the village in common, so the goods inside were probably the chief's household's. She must have treasured them a great deal.
He was still turning over what to do when the village chief's son hesitated, pushed through the people, and came forward. He seemed afraid of Juhwan. He stopped beyond the reach of Juhwan's hands and bent at the waist.
"I spoke with the villagers. I— well— the wagon belongs to the village in common, but no one is using it, so please take it. Everything inside, too. We'll give you all of it."
The words were barely out of his mouth before the village chief's wife, still sprawled on the ground, began to wail. Juhwan had thought she was unconscious. He had been certain she was half-fainted.
When he looked around at the people, every one of them quietly turned their faces away. Offering the wagon and the goods was fear, most likely. They were afraid he might take revenge on them.
Juhwan turned without a word. He had no particular thought of revenge, but he had meant to take the wagon by force if he had to. If they were giving it, so much the better.
When he climbed onto the driver's seat, the cold air glittered under the sunlight. Something felt wrong. He looked up, and small flakes were drifting down, soft as down. It was the first snow he had seen since coming to this world.
Winter, and he had not seen snow once until now. There was not much of it piled along the mountain road.
He thought he had read somewhere that too little snow brought a winter drought. If that was so—war, and a drought besides—then this was truly a hard world to live in.
When a family goes hungry and suffers, or when a man himself does, anyone can become a devil. Yesterday, and again today, Juhwan had learned that he might become one too. The villagers, ground down by their lives and desperate only to survive, might simply have grown selfish.
But.
That was all the more reason to harden his heart. Anyone living in this world could, for their own sake, put another person in danger without a flicker of shame. Gus and the villagers had shown him, plainly, that the world was that kind of place.
Dorothy's small face flashed through his mind.
And this is the place that child has to live.
His heart gone dark, Juhwan shook the reins. The wagon left the villagers behind and rolled slowly forward.
In case any goblins remained, Lizzie and Dorothy stayed inside. But as they passed through the village he saw no goblin still whole. All of them were dead or wounded, and now and then one lay groaning with an arrow in it.
A low sound escaped Juhwan. Keeping Lizzie and Dorothy inside had been the right choice.
Broken doors, scattered belongings, the traces left where people had been torn apart, a woman dead in a brutal shape. Even the stones of the road the wagon traveled were stained with blood. It was wretched beyond words.
Driving slowly, Juhwan brought the horse to a stop.
Whether goblins searching for people had done it, or people in flight had been looking for cover, several piles of straw lay near a half-ruined shed. He climbed down at once. Good. Spread over the cold, hard floor of the wagon, it would help. And in the rush he had never thought of it: the horse had nothing to eat.
He opened the wagon door and passed the straw inside. Lizzie took it and laid it thick across the floor. She looked glad.
She didn't say so, but she was cold after all.
He felt terribly sorry.
The remaining bundles he set on top of the wagon. The roof was rounded, but a wooden rail ran along the edge, meant for loading cargo, and ropes hung here and there along it. He lashed the straw tight to the roof, then turned to climb down.
That was when he saw a familiar figure.
Gus.
A little way off, the old man was limping out from behind a building. Far from him a goblin lay fallen, and Gus was bent over, gathering arrows scattered across the ground.
The source of all of this. The man who had lured goblins to the cabin and put Lizzie and Dorothy in danger. He had not drawn them toward some nameless crowd in the village. He had drawn them to a cabin in the forest where there was only one woman. He had meant to kill Lizzie and Dorothy. An enemy.
No one was nearby. No goblin. No person.
Juhwan dropped from the wagon and spoke toward the gap of the driver's seat.
"Wait a moment."
It must have sounded very cold. Lizzie, still arranging the straw, seemed startled by his voice. Through the wagon he faintly saw her hurrying toward the driver's seat. There was no time for a longer explanation.
He dropped low and ran toward Gus, an axe in his hand. The distance closed in an instant.
Gus turned his head and saw him.
In that moment Juhwan kicked off the ground and rose. He stretched his body in the air and drove his whole shoulder through the swing. The axe sang through empty space. Gus jerked backward, and the blade sheared the air just beside him and cut nothing.
Juhwan reached at once for his head. His hand closed on the hair swept back and tied, and he yanked with all his strength and flung him.
Age and the bad leg must have decided it. If Gus's leg had been sound, or if he had been as young as Juhwan, Juhwan could not have touched so much as a finger. But Gus was old, and worn out from the night. He could not recover from fatigue as fast as Juhwan could, and that narrowed the gap between experience and ability.
When Gus hit the ground, Juhwan planted a foot on his torso and swung the axe. Gus seemed to look up and try to say something. Juhwan did not listen. There was nothing he needed to hear, and nothing to discuss. All that mattered was that this man had tried to kill his family. If Juhwan had not been able to use fire magic, this would have been revenge for their deaths. No reason in the world could make him forgive this man.
With a dull chop, the axe took Gus's neck. Bright scarlet blood sprayed.
Juhwan let out a rough breath and remembered the look on Gus's face when the old man had first noticed him. Surprised, yes—but somehow unhurried. Perhaps Gus had already known, before Juhwan found him. Perhaps he had known the wagon was coming, and had pretended not to, and had shown himself on purpose. A skilled hunter could manage that easily enough.
Even so, it didn't matter. Gus's intent did not matter at all. This was Juhwan's own matter. Gus had tried to kill Lizzie and Dorothy as if it were nothing. He would not forgive it.
He turned sharply.
Back at the wagon, Lizzie's face showed through the gap of the driver's seat. She had been waiting there the whole time for him to return.
"What happened?"
She asked it uneasily.
Lizzie did not know Gus had tried to kill them. In this village, where she had grown close to no one, Gus had been the nearest person she had. The Gus who lived in her heart, and in Dorothy's, was probably a kind man.
Juhwan smiled.
"Sorry. There was a goblin."
"Still?"
"But I killed it. It's all right."
Lizzie seemed relieved. She asked whether he was hurt anywhere, then laughed softly and said she had been startled.
Juhwan looked down at the blood on his clothes and muttered to himself. A good thing goblin blood ran red.
After that he saw almost no one. Whether Gus had been going about killing goblins, now and then a corpse lay with an arrow in it. A little later the palisade came into view in the distance, still burning. The horse tossed its head, uneasy at the flames and the acrid smell.
He drove along the burning wall for a while. After some distance, one stretch had half collapsed into ash. The fire seemed to have caught where the wall was already broken, but the flames held all the same. They appeared to rise not only from the palisade but from the ground itself. In a world without gasoline, what on earth had Gus done, and how?
Juhwan stopped the wagon well back from the fire and picked up a long wooden pole lying nearby. As he drew close to the village wall, the heat came at him in a rush. The flames were not even touching him, and still it felt as if he would be burned.
Covering his face and hands with his clothes, he leaned as far back as he could and tapped what remained of the wall with the pole. A few strikes, and it gave way completely. The fire was still there, but the height of the heat had dropped a little. This stretch was smaller than the rest, as he had thought.
"Lizzie. Sit here. On the driver's seat."
He handed her the reins. If something happened to him, or if a goblin appeared suddenly while he was in no state to fight, she would have to drive.
Once he had made sure nothing was around them, he drew a deep breath. It would have been nice if he could see how much mana remained in his body. He had no idea how much there was. Only a feeling that he was a little weak just now.
I have to be able to take these flames.
He went as close to the wall as he could and set his hand on the ground, picturing a length of it several times the wagon, all of it burning away. Part of him wanted to shout, to force the power harder, but magic did not come out that way. Strain his belly all he liked, and nothing would come of it but shit.
He fixed his eyes on the burning wall. Please. Burn all of this fire away, too.
In that instant the flames shot up into the sky, then burst with a bang, a hole opening through the middle. It was as if they had been about to explode, and the fire inside them had simply vanished.
Behind him, Lizzie murmured.
"My God!"
Juhwan stared blankly at what lay in front of him. The fire that had been blazing so splendidly was gone. The palisade timbers seemed to have turned to ash in an instant. Far longer than the stretch he had wanted, the flames were dead along nearly every length of wall he could see.
Through the gap of the driver's seat came Dorothy's disappointed voice.
"The fire's gone. I thought a big fire was going to come out of Papa."
Children liked flashy things. Juhwan snorted a laugh and started to stand, then lost his balance and swayed. He had used too much. For a moment the world spun.
"Juhwan!"
Lizzie's face changed color as she ran to him. She ducked quickly under his arm to hold him up, but the difference in their sizes was too great. They tilted together and went down. Even as they fell he pulled her, on instinct, up onto his own body. With a thud his right back slammed into the ground. Dust rose and tickled his nose.
"Hah."
He wrapped one arm around Lizzie where she lay across his stomach and swallowed a breath. If she had been pinned beneath him... The thought was so awful his face went white.
"Juhwan, Juhwan, are you all right? Are you all right?"
Still astride him, flustered, she touched his face and his body and his head with her hands.
"I'm all right."
He had only been a little dizzy. A short rest and he would be fine—that was what he meant to say. But when he looked at the sky, his vision had gone yellow. Ah. He might need to rest a good while. The snow that had been falling, flake by flake, had stopped without his noticing.
Papa had fallen. It seemed to be because the fire was gone. Even Mama had fallen. Dorothy, watching through the gap of the driver's seat, shot to her feet.
"This is bad, Oz."
She ran in a fluster and pushed the wagon door with both hands. It was a little heavy. But that was all right. She had Oz.
"Oz!"
She was about to shout Go! but Oz was faster. From inside the wagon the horned rabbit came pattering at a run, stepped lightly on Dorothy's head, and kicked the door.
Bang!
It didn't open.
Nothing for it. This was when Dorothy had to step in. She set both hands to the door again, and Oz leapt once more over her head and struck it.
Bang!
Still it wouldn't open. What now? If Papa couldn't get up, what then? In a panic she pounded the door, and from outside came a clack, and the door opened. Mama stood there with a startled face.
"Dorothy, are you all right?"
"...Wuh... uhh..."
All at once a sob came out of her. For a very short moment she had been scared. Being alone in the wagon was scary, and Papa falling was scary.
"Waaah."
When she cried, wiping the tears with both hands, Mama gathered her up.
"I'm sorry, Dorothy. While the wagon is moving the door mustn't come open, so I locked it for a little while. If a goblin or a bad person showed up, we'd have to run right away. And if the door was open and you fell out, that wouldn't do. I'm sorry. Were you very scared?"
"I wasn't scared!"
It wasn't that she had been scared. Dorothy was brave, so she wasn't scared. She had only worried for a moment. Mama and Papa couldn't manage if Dorothy didn't help them. Besides, the ground was cold, so they had to get up quickly. That was all she had been worried about.
Mama carried her in a rush to where Papa was. He had been lying down a moment ago, but he was already sitting up. His face was pale. Something was wrong. Fear dropped through her all at once.
"Papa, are you all right?"
When Dorothy looked up at his face from below, Papa smiled.
"I'm all right."
He closed his eyes, opened them a moment later, and got up with a strange sound—hup. She had never heard that word before. It seemed like the words Papa sometimes said that only he understood.
Papa walked to the wagon a little slowly. He seemed to be staggering. She was worried.
Usually Papa lifted Dorothy into the wagon, but today Mama held her. When Papa tried to take her around the waist, Mama got angry. He had to rest.
Mama gets angry too.
Dorothy was a little surprised. And her fist clenched tight, afraid Mama would be hit. But Papa did not get angry.
When her second mama got angry, the father from before had flown into a rage as if he had gone mad. Papa only laughed.
Strange.
Papa said he did not want to lie down inside the wagon, so in the end Mama and Papa both decided to sit up front. Dorothy, they said, was to go inside.
"No! Dorothy doesn't want to be an acorn all by herself!"
She did not want to be alone. She wanted to be with Mama and Papa. Mama looked a little troubled, then spoke.
"Dorothy, it isn't acorn. It's loner."
Papa started to laugh. Mama laughed too. It was a little strange, but somehow Dorothy felt like laughing as well.
They decided the three of them would sit side by side on the driver's seat and go. Ah—no. Mama, Papa, and Dorothy, and Oz, and Toto. Five of them altogether.
Even so, acorn felt lonelier than loner.
Acorn.
An acorn falls alone on the mountain, so it is terribly lonely. She had thought that once, looking at one lying there. Dorothy was lonely too, like an acorn.
Was that acorn still alone? Dorothy wasn't lonely anymore, now that she had Mama and Papa. She felt a little sorry for it.