Only the Living Get Hungry
"Wh-what—what is that?!"
"Agh! My ears!"
The fire mage clapped both hands over his ears, but it did no good. The magical beast's cry was so enormous it seemed to bore straight through his flesh. He caught himself thinking he would rather go deaf.
It hurt. God, it hurt. No wound had opened and no blood was running, yet the pain was like an awl stirring inside his skull.
Without meaning to, he punched his own ear. The agony was so vast he couldn't even feel the blow.
"Make it stop!"
At his shout the wind mage forced his huddled body upright. He seemed to be trying to raise a wind, but it was plainly impossible. The pain was too great; he couldn't gather his focus at all.
That was the trouble with wind magic. Fire magic needed nothing more than a flow of mana, but wind demanded concentration before it would answer.
He couldn't loose his fire now either. If the child who handled the beast died, or the beast itself, everything they had worked for would be wasted.
The fire mage lunged as if he meant to fall on the creature, stretching a hand toward the horned rabbit's mouth to shut it.
Then the rabbit, which had looked too hurt to move, sprang without warning straight at his face.
A tremendous force slammed into him. The horned rabbit's foot, he thought. The shock was so great he couldn't tell what had happened—only that the world went black and lightning seemed to flash before his eyes.
He toppled onto his back.
The beast scrambled up onto his face and began to kick at a furious speed. Pain flared. His nose burned, and thick blood ran from it. He grabbed the little bundle of fur, but the creature clung to him with astonishing strength. He couldn't tear it off. The kicking went on and on.
At least it had stopped screaming. The sound drilling into his brain ceased, and quiet came down.
The wind mage seemed at last able to shape his magic. The air inside the wagon began to heave and stir. Wind brushed the fire mage's face and gathered toward the beast still latched there. Slowly the air moved; he felt it coil around the horned rabbit like a snake.
The rabbit's body seemed to draw in a little. Even so, it kept its grip on his flesh and hammered him with its hind feet. His brain vibrated until the whole world shook.
He was going to die like this. Beast, handler—none of it meant anything unless he lived.
With one hand he fought to shake the creature off. With the other he seized the whip at his belt. He was just about to set it alight when the door burst open and someone grabbed him by the hair.
His body was hauled out into the bright open. Before he understood what was happening, a heavy impact drove him into the ground. The horned rabbit that had been tearing at his face and kicking him was gone. Then the wind mage came down on top of him as if he had been thrown.
A grotesque shriek tore loose. He couldn't tell whether it was his or the wind mage's. Perhaps it was both.
Flat on his back, the fire mage clutched his stomach and stared at the sky. He didn't even know where he hurt. He grabbed his belly first anyway.
"Hhk—!"
A sound like escaping air left his mouth before he could stop it. Through a vision gone the color of blood, a huge man was bringing a fist down on him.
God—
A fist wreathed in flame smashed into his face.
The moment Juhwan opened the door, he seized the man inside the wagon by the hair.
Oz let out a pyii and dropped from the man's face, then slipped back into the wagon and settled beside Lizzie and Dorothy. It's all right. They're alive. That was what it looked like Oz was saying. Perhaps it was only what Juhwan wanted to hear.
He flung both men out as if they weighed nothing. Once they were gone, the inside of the wagon came clear in a single glance.
"...."
The instant he saw Lizzie and Dorothy lying there, his head seemed to split open. Rage surged and swelled like a vast balloon. He lost control completely. In a heartbeat his mind crossed space and time and fell backward into the past.
His father was dead. His mother was dead. His grandfather was dead. All of them were dead. Love something, and it vanished. It was nowhere in this world. Lose them once and it was over. The end.
His heart stopped. A feeling like blood going cold ran from his head to his feet. All he could see was Lizzie and Dorothy collapsed in the dark, limp and unmoving.
Lose them once, and it was over. They would never come back. You could keep calling up a memory. You could not call back a life.
"Die."
The word seemed to leave him on its own.
Juhwan spun and charged the men sprawled on the ground. He drove his fist down. The fist was crimson. He hadn't even meant to call fire, and yet his whole arm was blazing.
This was no small flame. If Dorothy had seen it she would have shouted that Daddy was amazing—the thought twisted through him, and the fire roared higher.
Even if they weren't dead, even if nothing had happened, even if Oz had kept them safe, it did not change the fact that he had failed to protect them. He had finally gained the strength to keep his family safe, and the moment he stepped away they had been put in danger. He had put them in danger. He knew that when a person died they did not come back, and still he had failed. It was the same as always. He was the same as always. He could lose his family as easily as breathing.
He brought the burning fist down on the man. This one—the fire mage, wasn't he? That filthy body had no right to go on living. Die.
He seemed to hit him for a long time. At some point the man's body went slack. Where Juhwan had struck, the flesh was warped as if it had melted.
Only then did a little reason return. The world around him came back into view.
People had gathered. They were silent. He thought he couldn't even hear them breathe. Someone swallowed, a small wet sound.
"Uh... uh... ah...."
The wind mage made a strange noise. When Juhwan turned, the man's face was a mess of tears and snot, trembling hard. He shoved himself backward on his backside, trying to get away. He had been in the wagon too. He deserved to die.
Juhwan surged to his feet and drove a kick into his face. Brilliant fire burst into sparks and washed over the man's body. What was happening to him? Just as when he had beaten the fire mage, his leg had become a mass of flame.
He dragged the wind mage over and flung him down on top of the fire mage, then fetched the water barrel fixed to the wagon's side. When he dumped the water over the two fallen mages, a hiss rose from their bodies. A foul stench came off flesh scorched and blackened by his fire.
The fire mage, who had been lying limp, groaned and woke.
"Which one of you."
The man didn't seem to understand. His half-melted lips worked, and he sobbed. He shook his head and babbled something unintelligible. It sounded like a plea for his life.
"Which of you started it. Who said to do that to my family. Who spoke first."
Only then did the fire mage grasp the words, and his face went ashen. It was so warped and burned that the color of the skin was hard to make out, and still Juhwan could see the blood leave it.
"So it was you."
At that, the fire mage flailed and slid backward. The wind mage howled in a voice that would barely shape the words.
"H-he shaid we should do it. I din't do anyfing."
Juhwan didn't look at him. He seized the fire mage by the collar and struck again. Before the fist landed, the fire lashed the man's whole body. Once, twice—and by then the shape of the face was gone. There was only a twisted mass of flesh.
But the fire in him would not go out. Rage burned blacker still, devouring his heart and roaring higher.
"Hey, Juhwan! That's enough. He's dead. He's been dead a good while. Stop."
Someone caught Juhwan hard by the shoulder. It was Leonard, master of the Miller Trading Company.
"He's dead. You need to see to your wife and child. This isn't the time for this."
"...."
Somewhere along the way the flames on Juhwan's body had sunk away. He didn't even know when.
When he glanced at the wind mage, Leonard spoke.
"Leave him to me. We'll need what he knows about the bandits. If I'm right, they aren't ordinary thieves."
"...."
"I give you my word. He won't die an easy death."
"...."
Juhwan answered nothing and went to the wagon. His heart was in such a hurry his legs tangled under him.
Through the wide-open door he saw Oz, sitting quietly beside Lizzie and Dorothy. There was no one else inside, and no one near the wagon. Oz had kept watch for them.
He climbed in as if he were falling and pressed an ear to each of their chests. The hearts were beating. The skin was warm. Their clothes did not look disturbed. They seemed only deeply asleep. Both of them wore peaceful faces and breathed in small soft sounds, like Sleeping Beauty.
He poured healing magic into them, but they did not wake. It wasn't poison. He couldn't have explained how he knew; he simply knew. When he let his mana flow through them, he could tell. They were only asleep.
I'm sorry.
He should have made certain of them first. He had done everything backward. Beating those men had never been the important thing.
He laid them on the straw bed toward the back and stretched out on his side beside them. He watched their sleeping faces and did not move.
"...."
Oz hopped over and climbed onto Dorothy's stomach, settling there as naturally as if nothing at all had happened. When Juhwan reached out, the rabbit mouthed his finger and gnawed it gently, as if to say it was all right. They would wake soon.
The warning. Staying beside Lizzie and Dorothy. Comforting him now. He gathered all of it together and said, very quietly, "Thank you, Oz."
Oz stopped chewing, tipped his head, and cried in a small voice.
"Pyii."
Juhwan looked at Lizzie and Dorothy again. Neither of them stirred. Only their thin breathing told him they were alive.
"...."
He was tired. He was truly tired of losing people.
Don't scare me like this. Wake up. Please, open your eyes soon.
But they did not wake until the city of their destination was right in front of them—a full day and a half later.
She was hungry. Her stomach felt hollow, the way it always had when she was small.
"...."
Her eyes flew open. Dorothy. Someone had come to the wagon. Someone who wasn't her husband had tried to open the door. God—what had happened? This was no time to be sleeping so peacefully.
She sat up in a rush, and in the dim space she saw that someone was there.
"Eek!"
A small cry escaped her. The black shape did not move. It only sat, still. Her eyes were dim, as if she had been pressing on them for a long time, and everything was cloudy. Even so, the body was a shape she knew. Could it be her husband?
"Juhwan?"
The husband who always answered when she called him gave no answer. Fear surged. Maybe it wasn't him.
But that big body is definitely Juhwan's.
She hunched where she was and stared, and little by little her sight cleared. Lizzie started and leaned forward, awkward and unsteady. Her husband was crying. Light came in through the driver's seat of the dark wagon and caught the shining tracks of his tears.
"What's wrong?"
She tried to cross the straw bedding on her knees, and her body pitched forward. There was no strength in her arms. Juhwan's large hand shot out and caught her. He drew her in and held her against his chest, and with her gathered tight he only wept, tears running and running.
"Juhwan, are you all right?"
Held in his arms, she reached around and quietly circled his waist. He answered in a choked voice.
"...I think you were drugged. A sleeping draught. You and Dorothy. You slept for more than a day. I'm sorry. I should have been with you. It's my fault."
"...."
A thin anxiety rose in her. What had been done to them? Surely not another man—she thought she could hear the blood leaving her face. As if he had read her, Juhwan tightened the arm around her.
"Nothing happened. Oz sent a warning, and I came straight back. Dorothy's all right too. You were only asleep. Both of you."
Thank God. Thank God. Relief loosened her, and then her stomach growled, loud and sudden.
"Wait a moment. I'll bring you something. I didn't know when you'd wake, so I've been keeping jerky broth warm."
His voice was still thick with tears as he fumbled up the water pail in the corner. Her stomach, as if it understood speech, growled again and again, demanding to be fed. She was a little embarrassed.
Juhwan ladled a little of the meat broth into a bowl and held it out.
"Your stomach's empty. Start with this."
She took a sip as he said. The lukewarm broth went down and only made her hungrier. The growling came more often. She was drinking again when Dorothy shot upright and shouted.
"Meat!"
At the same moment a noisy growl rolled out of the child's stomach. Lizzie laughed before she could stop herself, but Juhwan did not laugh. Somehow he looked like a frightened child. A child who had only grown very large.
"Juhwan."
Lizzie took her husband's hand. She leaned close and looked up at him, and the tracks of his tears were still shining.
"I'm sorry. You were worried, weren't you? But we're all right."
"...."
Dorothy scrambled to her feet and threw both arms high into the air.
"Daddy, Dorothy saw! Dorothy saw Daddy shoot a huge fireball, this big. It was huge. Super strong. So cool."
Even in the dark wagon, Dorothy's eyes glittered.
"Ha... ha."
Her husband managed a laugh at last. There was no strength in it. It sounded exactly like crying.
"But Daddy, Dorothy is so, so hungry. Give Dorothy meat too."
From the child and from Lizzie, both stomachs growled at once. Only then did her husband's face ease, as if he had finally been reassured. He murmured, very small.
"Because only the living get hungry."
The voice was almost too quiet to catch. Just barely loud enough to understand. She didn't know why. His words stuck in her chest like a thorn. They felt unbearably sad.