Only Now a Mother
Lizzie leaned against the window of their lodging and looked down over the square, which had gone pitch-dark before she noticed.
In the village where she had lived, everyone went home and to bed early once the sun set and the dark came down, then rose again in the black before dawn. The city seemed to work by different rules. Around the square, sunk in blackness, a few shops still kept their lamps lit and their doors open. Now and then laughter rode in from far off on the dark—people drinking and making merry, she supposed. Women's laughter cut sharp through the men's voices and scattered up into the night sky.
"Aren't you cold?"
Juhwan had come up behind her. He draped a wool blanket over her shoulders with one hand. A gentle man. Lizzie rested her head lightly against her husband.
Right before her eyes, Dorothy was asleep. Juhwan held the deeply sleeping child in his arms. The girl looked all right again, and yet the day's events seemed to have frightened her badly. Once drowsiness took her she had clung to his chest and refused to be put down, nothing like her usual self. Nodding off, she woke the moment they tried to lay her on the bed, and she whined as she never had before. She simply did not do such things. She would not come even when Lizzie tried to hold her. She stuck only to Juhwan and would not let go, so in the end he had taken off nothing but his outer coat and gone on carrying her.
With his free arm he drew Lizzie's shoulders in and looked out the window. Somewhere in the dark, someone was shouting at the top of their lungs. Lizzie quietly studied the sleeping child's face.
Until now, she thought, she had never truly felt herself to be a mother. Perhaps she had only thought of Dorothy as a much younger sister. When they first met, both of them had been so lonely and so worn down that simple pity might have deepened into something else. Only after nearly losing the child today did she seem to understand that she was a mother. Only now did she grasp what it meant when this girl called her Mama.
"You're remarkable, Juhwan."
She said it all at once, and her husband laughed.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"...From the moment you met us, I think you were already Dorothy's papa. I've only just now figured out that I'm her mama."
The arm across her shoulders tightened. He spoke quietly.
"Because that's what I wanted from the start. Lizzie, you don't have to force it. You become a parent slowly, by making mistakes and choosing wrong along the way. Dorothy's the first child for both of us."
Lizzie closed her eyes. When he put it like that, it felt true. Juhwan really was different. She could not point to any one thing, but there was weight in the way he spoke.
She remembered him at the Miller Trading Company that afternoon, checking the letters on the page. Reading the document the merchant had handed him and talking as an equal, he had been dazzling. He had looked like someone truly extraordinary. She had always thought letters were useless for keeping yourself fed, and yet it was as if he had held up before her eyes what it meant to live as a person, and to be treated as one.
What Karin of Red Sword had said—that she envied her—still sat in a corner of her heart. Any other woman who met Juhwan would think the same. He was that fine. That remarkable. Perhaps some woman of a rank Lizzie could not even imagine would come to love him. If that day ever came, would she still be able to stand beside this man?
I can't go on like this.
She wanted to become a woman who would not be ashamed to stand at his side. Only then, she thought, could she throw her shoulders back and proudly call herself his wife. And she would fight to remain there. Even if someone came and told her to hand her husband over, she did not want to lose.
And I want to raise Dorothy well.
She hoped Dorothy would grow into a woman far stronger than she was, one who knew how to make her way in the world. To raise her that way, Lizzie herself would have to study and become someone better. Yes. She had to.
Most people disliked the idea of a woman learning to read. But when she lifted her face to her husband, Juhwan was smiling as if nothing could have pleased him more. Ah—she liked this man far too much. For a little while she stood with his arm around her and Dorothy held between them, looking out over the black city.
As always, Lizzie rose early.
Juhwan lay still and watched her. The small woman who had been curled tight in his arms when he fell asleep was now bustling about the room. Sunlight came in and lit her golden hair, and the shining strands seemed to scatter brightness through the room. The hair she had cut short to her ears, to sell for money, had grown out a little.
She was gathering into a basket the socks she had washed and hung the night before. They were not quite dry; her face creased faintly. Turning, she caught him looking and smiled, bright as anything.
"Juhwan, if you're awake, say something. Why are you just staring? It's embarrassing."
Her pale cheeks flushed peach-red.
When he held out a hand she came, as if she had no choice, and leaned into him for a moment. He lifted the quilt and drew her in. She twisted, squirming to get free.
"You could sleep in. Just for today."
"I can't. There's something that has to be done every single day. While we were working with the merchant caravan I couldn't do any laundry at all, and we don't have a change of clothes left. Mushrooms are about to start growing on them."
Yes, he knew. That was why he had fallen asleep stark naked. He could not possibly have climbed into bed in clothes soaked through with blood and some liquid he could not name.
Lizzie turned her head, face blazing, and muttered.
"You'll catch a cold. Put your clothes on."
"If the child wakes up, she'll ask why Papa isn't wearing anything."
There was no helping it. Juhwan got up slowly and dressed. The smell was foul.
"We ought to buy some clothes before we leave today. We really do need more."
Lizzie let out a small sigh.
While he helped her pack, Dorothy woke. She was bright-faced, as if the night of whining and clinging to Juhwan had been a lie.
He had thought the child might cry a little, or cling to him. Instead she was her ordinary self, laughing as she roamed the bed, then tumbling about with Oz for a while. It was no different from any other morning, and yet something snagged at him. Why?
As he and Lizzie gathered what remained and bound it tight, his attention kept drifting to the child.
Dorothy played a little longer, and when Lizzie told her to wash, she took Oz off to the corner of the room. A water pail and a small basin stood there, the water meant for washing hands or for wetting a cloth and wiping oneself down. Guests drew it themselves from the great cask behind the inn, and used water went into the wooden tub beside the basin; the inn, they had been told, would clear it away later.
Dorothy splashed her face in the water Lizzie had already poured into the basin. Every time her small hands came up, water spattered the floor. After Dorothy, it was Oz's turn. She wet her little hands and scrubbed at Oz's horn.
It had become a daily ritual since the horn came in. Dorothy seemed to think the horn was something like her own teeth, and said that if you did not clean it, it would rot. Oz did not look pleased, but stayed still all the same. After clumsily polishing a horn smaller than her own little finger, Dorothy straightened up.
"Ah, that was hard!"
Muttering that, she ran to the little table where breakfast was already laid, before Lizzie even called her. No different from any other day.
"Juhwan, breakfast is ready."
Lizzie called him. He ate with a faint, unsettled feeling he could not quite name, then took his family to the Adventurer's Guild.
Once they were outside, Dorothy was a butterfly again, fluttering after everything that caught her eye. She did not stray too far from Juhwan and Lizzie, though. Perhaps all those repeated warnings had done some good.
The guild office in Moderni was laid out much like the one in the adventurers' village. Inside, the tables where adventurers sat occupied the right-hand side, and the left wall was papered with request slips. The room itself was far larger and cleaner than anything they had seen back in the village. The sign, of course, bore a picture of Santa. Every branch of the Adventurer's Guild seemed to paint him on its board.
The women of Red Sword were sitting in a corner. They lifted a hand in a small greeting. As Juhwan drew near, his eyes went to Karin's waist. Something strange was stuck through her belt.
Nails. Every member of Red Sword had several of them jammed tight along her belt. They did not look quite like the nails he remembered. Not round and slender, but squared off, as if someone had carved them by hand from long bars of iron, and much thicker and longer than the concrete nails of his old world. At that size they were less nails than the chisels people used to split stone.
Seeing his gaze on their waists, Marie giggled and said, quietly,
"We bought them yesterday. These are our backup weapons. Just like you said, Mister Juhwan—if the other side leaves an opening, we go wham with these!"
Marie made a show of raising her arm. Dorothy stared, then whispered to Juhwan.
"Papa, Dorothy wants one of those too."
"...I don't know. They don't seem quite right for you."
"But if I had one, Dorothy could punish the bad guys."
That strange feeling came over him again, like a film of grease caught at the back of his throat. Nothing was wrong with how she acted, and yet he could not stop noticing.
He folded his knees and crouched. Even then the small child's face was below his. He hunched until they were eye to eye, and lightly stroked the head of Oz, perched on her hat.
"Dorothy, you're a magical-beast tamer. You don't fight with nails. You fight together with Oz."
At that, Dorothy's eyes went wide, and for a moment her face turned thoughtful. A child's thoughts were not trifles. Even a little one pondered and worried as hard as any adult, in her own way. Dorothy sank into thought, then nodded several times.
"Yeah, that's right! Dorothy and Oz are one body, so we can fight really well."
Yesterday he had thought she was only frightened. Inside, it seemed, she had been working out how to win, in a child's way. Dorothy sparkled up at him and spoke into his ear.
"Papa, next time Dorothy will save you."
"All right. Thank you."
This child, he thought, would grow up brave. Words had a way of taking root. Registering her as a member of the party might actually turn her into an adventurer.
Juhwan went and stood with Red Sword at the back of a line. It was a city, and even a wide hall was packed and noisy. In the village there had been no such thing as a queue. Here a long line stood before every counter. People murmured and looked from Dorothy to Oz and back. With a horn showing above the fluff, they could tell it was a magical beast. It was still half-buried in soft fur and only just visible, but anyone with sharp eyes seemed to know at once.
The murmuring drew a few clerks at the counter to look their way. A man who had been behind the desk saw Juhwan, stood at once, and came out.
"Would you be the party Dorothy and Oz?"
"We are."
"Ah, I thought so. Please come this way. We've already been notified about you, and everything is prepared to register you as Rank 2. Those of Rank 2 need not stand in line."
As the crowd buzzed and stared, the guild clerk glanced at Oz.
"I heard it was a child and a magical beast together, and I thought that was odd. But the two of you suit each other."
"It's Dorothy and Oz."
Dorothy reached up to touch Oz and beamed. The clerk smiled at the sight.
Juhwan followed him behind the counter, Red Sword with them. He handed over the wooden request tag and the stick of wood they had notched each time healing magic was used, and the clerk reckoned the account at once. The daily wage alone was considerable, but this time the payment for the healing worked during the bandit attack came to even more.
Total earnings: 9,200 rina
Hearing the sum, Lizzie looked as if she had fainted with her eyes open. For a moment she did not move.
Most of the money went into savings at the guild. Red Sword took their share in hand. They returned the wooden tags marked Rank 3, exchanged them for Rank 2 necklaces, and with that their business here was done. They could go on to the adventurers' village as they were, or stay a little longer in the city and take requests.
They were discussing it with Red Sword when the guild door opened. A finely dressed man came in at a slightly hurried pace. A guild clerk grinned.
"I thought he would come, but he's quicker than I expected. The Margrave's aide."