Never Follow a Stranger
Juhwan's gaze chased Dorothy all over the square. She dashed one way and then another, and she looked happy—laughing ahaha, utterly delighted.
The child was small. Once she slipped in among the adults she all but vanished, and Dorothy was quick besides. The fear of losing her kept his nerves drawn tight, yet seeing her that glad, he couldn't quite bring himself to tell her to stay put. Nothing mattered more than a child playing bright and merry. And if Oz was with her, he told himself, it would probably be all right.
"Dorothy, don't go too far!"
Lizzie called the warning, though whether it reached the child was anyone's guess. It had certainly reached Oz. His ears flicked as if to say he understood, and because the horned rabbit's body was buried in the child's hat, it looked for all the world as if the ears had sprouted from Dorothy's own head.
When she took to chasing the traveling privy, Juhwan worried she might be ruining the man's trade. If anything, she seemed to be drawing eyes to it. The privy-keeper rattled his wooden tub, Dorothy fled, and a customer called the man over as if he had been waiting for just that chance.
Whatever delighted her so, she picked out her next quarry at once and was off again.
Then a fight broke out nearby. Some vagrant who almost never came into the square had shown himself and started a commotion, and as gawkers packed in, Dorothy's small shape sank into the crowd.
At this rate he was going to lose her.
In a rush of panic Juhwan scooped Lizzie into his arms. One step forward, and people took a single look at his bulk and hurried out of the way. A little farther on he caught Oz's ears poking above the child's hat. She was running hard for the edge of the square.
She was only five. Once something caught her interest, nothing else existed. This wouldn't do. In a strange place like this, he really might lose her. Still holding Lizzie, he broke into a run.
A huge man came charging with a terrible look on his face, and the crowd scrambled aside in a fluster.
The child slipped out of the square. A man who looked like a vagrant slid in behind her, quiet as a shadow.
Kidnapping. Ransom. Trafficking. Every foul word he knew rose at once.
In that instant Juhwan's speed multiplied. Wind seemed to wrap his feet and his back and shove him forward, and he thought, This must be wind magic. Hurry. Faster. Before the child vanished from his sight entirely. The moment he wished it, his body answered, and he shot out of the square.
Dorothy had gone into a narrow alley off the avenue. At the mouth of it, two men had her boxed in.
"No! Daddy, Daddyyy!"
She was calling him, her voice already drowning in tears. These bastards. I'll kill them. It felt as if fire were bursting behind his eyes.
His body shot the rest of the way. The men and Dorothy were right in front of him. He set Lizzie down and spun; he couldn't shed his speed all at once, and he couldn't stop on the first try. Turning with the momentum, he went for one of the men blocking the child.
Between the two of them he saw Dorothy's small body. His own shadow stretched over Lizzie's head. Oz looked a breath away from lunging, those round eyes fixed on the man.
Juhwan reached out. His big hand closed on the man's shoulder, cloth and all, and heaved him up.
"Gyaah!"
The man screamed in pain—his whole weight had jerked up through the shoulder. Juhwan flung him without a pause. The body sailed through the air and crashed down far off. Wind magic again, he thought; the man had been far lighter than he ought to have been.
The one left behind he caught by the collar and hit. Once. Twice. Two blows, and the man's face caved in and he dropped unconscious. By the time Juhwan threw the limp body down like trash, Lizzie already had Dorothy in her arms.
Lizzie was a wreck of tears. So was Dorothy, her face ruined with tears and snot, mouth wide, wailing.
"Dorothy! You mustn't go far from Mommy and Daddy! Why did you come all the way out here? What were you going to do if we lost you!"
It was rare for Lizzie to be truly angry. Dorothy sobbed, waah, waah, and got the words out between the cries.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. But the pomegranate… waaah… the pomegranate was yummy…"
"Pomegranate? What pomegranate! Why do you worry Mommy sick like this!"
"I'm sooorry, Mommy, but the pomegranate… they said they'd give me a pomegranate… waaah…"
"I thought we'd lost you."
"Mommy… don't throw Dorothy away…"
Watching the two of them, Juhwan felt his own heart go quiet instead.
Dorothy said some girl had offered her a pomegranate and she had followed, but Juhwan had seen no such girl. Maybe his eyes had been only on Dorothy. Either way, when he reached the alley there was no child there but her.
"You can't go chasing just anyone because they say they'll give you food!"
At Lizzie's scolding, Dorothy nodded.
"…Okay… Mommy, I'm sorry…"
"…The pomegranate… Mommy will buy it for you. So from now on, whether it's pomegranates or meat, no matter what anyone offers, you must not follow them. Do you understand?"
"…Okay…"
Dorothy scrubbed at her tears with her fists.
"…Mommy, can I have two?"
Lizzie stared at her, speechless.
While Juhwan was watching them, several gaunt figures came out from deeper in the alley and dragged the fallen men away. He didn't stop them. The people hauling the men looked like ghosts. There was almost no muscle on them; the bones showed through.
And farther in, where those figures had come from, there were more of the same. Their eyes were on Lizzie and Dorothy. Hatred, envy, greed—all of it clung to the way they looked.
If Dorothy had been dragged in there…
A chill went through him. They shouldn't stay.
He gathered Dorothy, still crying, and Lizzie into his arms and walked. Lizzie leaned into his chest and kept glancing back. Only then did Dorothy seem to notice the people in the alley. Her crying cut off short, and her body shrank in on itself.
A few steps carried them out of the alley onto the avenue, and the air changed. The sticky gazes fell away, and bright, clean things filled the space around them. Only a few steps between the two, and yet the avenue and the inside of that alley were different worlds entirely.
Back in the square, Juhwan looked into the child's eyes.
"Dorothy, I was really worried. From now on you must never follow someone you don't know. No—not even someone you do know, not unless Mommy or Daddy says it's all right. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Good. I was worried. I was so worried."
He patted her back, and she asked in a small voice.
"Daddy, you won't throw Dorothy away?"
"Of course I won't. I will never throw you away."
"…That's good."
Dorothy locked her arms tight around his neck.
After that they made a round of the food carts. The first was the one selling pomegranates, a full rina cheaper than at the eatery, six rina apiece. Lizzie agonized, then bought three: two for Dorothy, and one for herself and Juhwan to share. Dorothy split bites with Oz and brightened again.
Next came a cart selling meat and vegetables skewered on bamboo, and so their pilgrimage of the square began. Now and then Lizzie sighed, mostly right after she paid.
One of the carts sold sugar. It wasn't the white, fine sugar he remembered from Earth; the grains were a little coarse, offered up in small round bowls. The seller seemed to have been watching Juhwan and Lizzie work their way from cart to cart. When Dorothy passed in front of him, he held out a stick tipped with a little sugar.
"Here, child. This is tasty. Try a bite."
Dorothy looked up at Lizzie. Lizzie nodded, and the child broke into a wide smile and took the stick.
"Oh! This, this—Mommy, this is sweet."
It was expensive, but Dorothy chasing a stranger over a pomegranate had clearly shaken Lizzie. Watching the child keep sucking the stick long after the sugar was gone, she boldly bought one portion.
"When we get back to the adventurers' village, I ought to learn a few dishes from the innkeeper's wife. Dorothy says she won't do it again, but if someone offers her something tasty, I think she'll follow them all over again."
She said it quietly, and sighed. Juhwan agreed. The girl was five. Of course she might.
He said nothing. Ever since they had left the alley he had been watching their surroundings, and in the square no one in particular was trailing his family or staring too hard.
At first he had thought they were men who meant to snatch a child and sell her. Thinking it over now, he wasn't sure that was it. The vagrant raising a ruckus in the square might have been their doing as well. Or perhaps some noble who had learned that Juhwan could use more than one kind of magic had arranged the whole thing.
Back in the alley, should I have grabbed one of their own and made him talk?
At the time, the people deeper in had made him decide it was better to withdraw quickly. The way they looked at Lizzie and Dorothy had not been ordinary. Even if someone had staged it, those people likely had nothing to do with the plot. That hadn't been the look of anyone watching with a purpose. It was simple hatred—the kind you feel toward someone happier than yourself.
Still, looking back, he regretted it. He had been too hasty, wanting only to get Lizzie and Dorothy somewhere safe.
Dorothy, who seemed to have no notion of what either of them was feeling, had already forgotten the whole affair. She let go of their hands and started running again. The one mercy was that she didn't go far. She kept about two arms' lengths away, circling only near Juhwan and Lizzie—appearing on this side, spinning around, appearing on this side again. After a long while of that she reversed direction. It made his head spin.
He had heard the man was a fire mage. What Anri had witnessed, though, was wind magic. He couldn't tell how strong it truly was. Judging by the man's speed and power he had to be formidable, but Anri hadn't seen enough to be sure.
The vagrant the mage had thrown would probably never walk on sound limbs again. The force of it had been so great that the man flew all the way to a building wall and struck it hard. To Anri's eye the bones had shattered completely. The arms and legs moved in the air as if they were dancing. He had looked like a straw doll with no bones in it.
The second vagrant was in much the same state. He wouldn't live long. He might still be barely breathing, but even from a distance his face had caved in entirely—and it had only been two punches.
Anri watched that far and left. If the mage spotted him, he might realize at once that Anri was the one who had put them up to it. When they had met at the restaurant, the man had studied Anri's face with care. Anri was certain that face had stayed in the mage's memory.
He walked with his coat drawn closed to the throat, and a shudder ran through him.
What was that?
Remembering the mage beating the vagrant with his fists made his skin crawl. Burning a man at a distance with fire magic, wrapping fist and whole body in wind magic—neither was a method ordinary mages used. Wind magic least of all. Anri used a little wind himself, so he knew.
Above all, wind was not meant to be worn on the body like that. You used it to speed an arrow, or, when something large had to be moved, several people lent their strength together. He had never seen anyone wrap it around himself and strike with it directly.
He could find nothing to say. To handle wind with any familiarity, you had to invest a long time and train it into the body. Even then, let your mind wander for a moment and you couldn't use it at all. Magic did not belong to a person by nature. It took enormous effort before it became possible to use at all. That was the proper order of things.
And this man handled two magics that easily. He wore a human face, and yet he did not look human in the least. That power had clearly gone beyond what a human could hold.
A monster.
A magical beast was called a magical beast because it lived, and yet it was nothing like an ordinary animal. Was a human any different? If someone differed too much from ordinary people, were they still human at all?
His thoughts went, suddenly, to the heroes who had appeared in the Tyrone Kingdom. It was rare, but the heroes who had shown up in Tyrone were said to be a pair, a man and a woman. Both had appeared with overwhelming power, and now, it seemed, they were learning how to control it. Among those who had met them, some welcomed them as messengers sent by the gods. Others, he had heard, called them apostles of evil—narrow-minded, and rotten with pleasure.
The two sides differed, and yet they were saying the same thing. A hero was human, and not human.
Just like the mage he had just seen.
He seemed to have set his foot somewhere he shouldn't have. Anri drew himself in smaller still.