Oz Grows a Horn
Jolt, jolt, jolt, jolt. The sound kept on. It nagged at her. Why did it keep making that noise?
But that was not what mattered. Hiding was more urgent. Dorothy was playing hide-and-seek with Sinbad on the back of an enormous fish.
She scrambled up a tree, and there was Sinbad, looking for her. Good. Now. Pounce. Give him a scare.
Dorothy leapt from the tree. Her body sailed up into the sky. Right beside her, Oz flew with his ears flapping, and the tail on Dorothy's hat began to bob up and down with all its might. She flapped hard.
Then she remembered.
Oh, right! Dorothy's hat only had one tail!
In that instant she dropped out of the empty air toward the ground. Of course. A bird has two wings. One wing, and you cannot fly. Aaah! No! Dorothy was falling!
"What do I do? Oz, help me!"
She shouted, but Oz did not seem to hear. He flapped his ears and flew off alone, far away.
Wind went whooshing past her face and ears. Waaah—she did not know what to do. She was bawling when someone woke her.
"Dorothy. Dorothy, wake up. It's a dream."
Her eyes flew open. Mom was looking down at her, startled. Thank goodness. It had been a dream. Dorothy clung to her and wailed, and her stomach growled. Grrrk, grrrk, grrrrrk. Terribly loud.
"There's a hungry-bug living in Dorothy's tummy."
Mom said it with a laugh.
A bug?
That would not do. If something like that lived in there, she would end up like the earthworms the bugs had eaten. The mountains were full of worms like that, wriggling while bugs ate their bellies.
She looked down at her stomach in a panic, and Mom laughed again. Tears began to spill. Mom Lizzie must hate Dorothy now. She had said a bug lived in her. And she had laughed.
"Oh, Dorothy!"
Mom caught her up, startled.
"Does Mom hate Dorothy now?"
"I'm sorry. It isn't that."
But she was smiling. Mom kept on smiling.
Dorothy let out a wail, and Mom reached over and drew close the basket sitting in the corner of the carriage.
A cloth covered it, and a delicious smell rose from underneath. Sniff, sniff. Mom giggled at the sniffing.
"Meat!"
Mom pulled the cloth away. Inside were bread and meat, and beside the bread sat something black and shriveled.
"I know that."
Raisins. They were terribly expensive, and Dad had bought them anyway. He had said they were delicious. Mom had not wanted to, because of the price, but Dad said he wanted to see Mom and Dorothy eat them, so she had had no choice. What was it he had called them? Some emergency thing you ate when you were weak, and your body got better right away. That was what Dad had said they ought to buy.
"Mom, may I eat this?"
Mom Lizzie put on a slightly stern face.
"After you've eaten your meal."
"Okay!"
Meat was good too. Dorothy bit straight into the piece Mom gave her.
"Oh."
Her eyes went round. It was incredibly good. They had bought this meat at the market, and it tasted a little better than what Mom made.
When they were buying it, the merchant had said there was something in it besides salt, and that was why it cost a bit more. Dad had looked and said it was an herb they used in his hometown, too.
At that, Mom had said expensive, expensive, and bought it while crying a little. Mom crying the way Dorothy cried had been a little funny. Dorothy asked why, and Mom said she was crying because it was too expensive. Dorothy laughed, and so did Dad.
They had also bought something like leaves, kept in a little jar.
Mom had meant not to. It was too expensive. But the merchant said it was something you put in meat. When he told her it was what had gone into this very meat, and that it made meat taste good, Mom worried and worried, and then bought one.
Dorothy was busy eating when Mom stepped away for a moment to talk with Dad up on the driver's bench, and she shared a little with Oz.
Oz snatched the meat and went around behind her. He set his head against Dorothy's backside and started to eat. Don't let Mom catch you, Oz.
Mom was a little greedy. Give the meat away and you got scolded. She meant to feed Oz nothing but tasteless straw and grass, so every time Dorothy ate she had to slip him a little in secret. Otherwise Oz would be hungry.
While Mom was still talking with Dad, Oz nudged Dorothy's back with his head, asking for more.
There's hardly any left.
Dorothy let the meat fall from her mouth onto her palm. She held her hand back a little, and Oz took it at once, then set his head against her back again and ate.
She put the last piece in her mouth and chewed, and her eyes stung. No more meat. Oz had taken it and eaten it all.
But Dorothy would bear it. Dorothy was Oz's big sister.
"…"
The tears started falling in earnest.
Mom came back, looked at Dorothy, and said she might eat the raisins. Then she sighed, and added that if Dorothy was going to cry like that, she should not have been given any.
"Mom, you're amazing. How did you see? Do you have eyes in the back of your head?"
Dorothy was astonished, and Mom laughed as if she could not help it. Dorothy did not like Mom when she sighed. She liked Mom when she laughed.
She put one black, wrinkled raisin in her mouth and chewed. Sweet, and sweet, and—oh, what was the other thing—a strange taste that squeezed her eyes shut went tingling all through her mouth.
"What is this? It's so good!"
She popped one into Mom's mouth too. Mom said it was sweet and sour, and her eyes went round. Right. Sour. Dorothy remembered!
She sprang up and ran to the opening that looked out on the driver's bench.
Jolt, jolt. The carriage shook, and her body shook with it. Ah. This was it. The sound from the dream. Yes. This had been it.
With that thought, Dorothy thrust her raisin-filled hand out through the opening.
"Dad, this is incredibly delicious."
Dad smiled, turned his head back just a little, and opened his mouth. So the delicious raisin would not fall, Dorothy put her fingers in along with it.
"Salty."
Dad said something foolish.
"Dad, raisins are sweet and sour!"
"Right. Tastes like the ones I used to eat."
"Then why is it salty?"
"Because of Dorothy's fingers."
"Is Dorothy salty?"
Dad laughed. But it was strange. Why was Dorothy salty? Dorothy was a person. People did not have a flavor.
Dorothy sprang up. The carriage jolted, and she swayed.
Dad's voice told her to be careful. She ran straight to Oz, who was sitting in front of Mom.
Chomp! She put Oz's finger in her mouth, but it was not salty. There was only fur.
"Oz tastes like fur."
Mom laughed.
Oz beat the floor of the carriage with his foot. Tap, tap, tap, tap. He seemed angry. Maybe Oz tasted like fur because his hands were stuck down on the floor like feet. If his hands were up high, like Dorothy's, he would have tasted salty.
"Too bad, Oz. Dorothy is salty."
Oz seemed angry about tasting like fur. He laid his ears flat to the sides and pushed his head into her. Once, twice, over and over.
"Stop it, Oz!"
His pushing drove her into the corner, all the way to where the luggage was. Still he did not stop. He kept butting her with his head.
"Are you going to turn into a bad rabbit?"
At that, Oz paused. Then he pushed his head at her again. She was about to tell him he had become a bad rabbit when her hand brushed his forehead. Hard. Strange.
"Oz, did something come up on your forehead?"
"…"
When she asked, Oz lifted his face high, as if showing off.
"No, not like that. Sometimes things come up on Dorothy's face too, but you don't brag about them. They make a weird face. And they hurt."
She said it while bringing her face close to his forehead.
"Huh?"
Between the hairs, something small and pointed.
"A horn?"
She touched it. Something pointed really had come up. The horn that used to hide inside the skin was outside now. It was still only as tall as the fur, hard to see, but if you looked closely a tiny horn was sticking out.
"Oz! You grew a horn! Mom, Oz got a horn!"
Mom had been up by the driver's bench, talking with Dad. She turned. Oz tipped his face as high as it would go.
"Oh my. Oz, you really were a horned rabbit."
Mom came close and peered at the horn. Oz lifted his face, proud.
Dorothy was glad too. Truly glad that Oz had a horn. But.
"…"
Her head sank a little.
Mom went back toward the driver's bench. In a thoroughly startled voice she told Dad that Oz had grown a horn, and Dad was startled too.
"He's really growing a horn?"
"It seems so. It's amazing."
"Well. He really was a horned rabbit."
Their voices reached her. Her head drooped lower and lower.
"Dorothy wants a horn too."
She must have been heard, because Mom and Dad both laughed out loud.
"Pii."
Oz came close and looked up into her face. Through the mottled fur, the tip of a white horn showed, still much too small.
"Oz is lucky. Having a horn."
"…Pii."
He tapped the floor, twitched his ears, and hopped up onto Dorothy's head. Then he sat quiet.
Mom watched them, laughing.
"With Oz up there, he looks just like Dorothy's horn."
Dad peered into the carriage from the driver's bench.
"Then Oz can be Dorothy's horn."
Huh? Really? She rolled her eyes up as far as they would go, but she could not see it. Still, if Dad and Mom said Oz looked like Dorothy's horn, maybe it was true. She felt a tiny bit glad.
Oz gave her head a light kick. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Don't worry. I'm your horn. It felt as if that was what he meant.
"…Mom, can I eat more raisins?"
A horn had shown up, so she needed to take heart. Raisins would do it.
They had expected a day and a half. Catching the merchant caravan took a little longer than that. An hour or two more of travel in the evenings might have been enough.
But when the sun began to sink, Red Sword stopped the wagon at once. Night roads were always dangerous, and in winter they were strictly forbidden.
Torchlight could not show enough of the dangers lying in wait on the ground, and winter brought especially many starving beasts and magical beasts. Even the ones that usually lived in the forest came down to the low ground looking for food.
For two days they hurried to gather wood and light a fire before full dark, and stood night watch in turns, a few hours at a time.
There was no fixed rule for setting the watch. If several adventurers gathered into a single party, they simply took a turn apiece, fair as fair.
When two or more parties traveled together, it was different.
If the numbers were about equal and no special conditions applied, the parties took the night watch by turns. How the rotation worked inside a party was no other party's business. In the extreme, it did not matter if one person stood every watch for a month.
But if a difference in numbers, or in who had the skill and who did not, meant one party had to stand more watches, that unfairness had to be made up somewhere else. It seemed a small thing. If the side that had watched received no small benefit in return, trouble came later, and if the trouble repeated it got out of hand. You had to be careful.
A slightly larger share of the earnings, or some ease in the work—the methods varied. The only caution was not to overdo it. Whatever the matter, paying back too much or taking too little was forbidden. Either way, things were likely to keep going like that from then on. Push hard when the other side is weak; if they are soft and generous, want still more. That was human nature.
Adventurers ran that way even more, so you had to be careful. Red Sword had impressed it on them again and again. It sounded like an account of what had been done to them.
This time the two parties took the watch by turns. Red Sword rotated one person at a time. On this side, Juhwan kept doing it.
Lizzie offered to take a turn, and he put a stop to that. An ordinary person with no experience, driving the carriage by day and standing watch by night, would be finished in a few days if she pushed herself. She would only become a burden.
Perhaps because she felt guilty, she overdid the driving instead. Later the muscles in her arms and legs knotted until she had to stay inside the carriage for a while. Days of driving had already worked those muscles hard.
There were little mishaps of that sort, but the mood was mostly gentle. Even Red Sword, who had picked quarrels at every turn, was on the quiet side.
Meals, and whatever the road required, were covered with what each party already carried. They had been told it was unwise to show meaningless kindness for no reason. The warning was not only about Red Sword. It held for every adventurer.
A grudge or a kindness, if you gave something you always got something like it back. Take that as an iron rule and you would not go wrong. A surprisingly simple rule, and easy to understand.
"It really isn't a problem at all, even if you kill the other person?"
When Juhwan asked, Marie, the youngest of Red Sword, answered with a slightly cowed face.
"If you killed an adventurer who was minding their own business, or stole their things, that might be a problem. If it happened in a fight, it isn't a big one. Same thing if they picked the fight first."
The guild did not step into adventurers' petty troubles. But if someone was too vicious, or strayed too far from the way of the world, the guild did not stay still either. It had no power of law, yet it had several ways to sanction a person, and that was nearly the same as social death. That was why even rough adventurers lived by rules of a sort.
"Ah, but if you were escorting someone together with the person you killed, or if they were working under somebody else, it can turn into a problem that way. Or the dead person's companions or family might come looking for revenge. That sort of thing is a headache, so it's better not to go too far."
Hm. So that was how it was. He had worried the whole world might be lawless. It was only a world arranged for the convenience of the strong. A lot like Earth, back in the days when Juhwan himself had been running wild. The only difference was whether killing a person sent you to prison.
This world would certainly be a hard place for a woman.
He glanced at Red Sword, then past them to Lizzie. She was watching him with worry on her face.
Juhwan gave her a quiet smile. It was all right. He had the feel of it now, how a person was meant to live here.
Around noon on the third day after they set out, Juhwan's company finally caught the merchant caravan.