Don't Leave Me
When the sun stood high, the bell in the tower began to ring. It was the noon bell. They had agreed that once it sounded, they would finish their errands and go meet Red Sword.
Lizzie lingered in front of a shop that sold chickens and eggs, caught in one last hesitation. She seemed to want a chicken. Gazing at the hens packed tight into a slatted wooden crate, she asked,
"Juhwan, is there room on the wagon, or behind it, where we could put a coop?"
He said nothing. She couldn't be serious.
"Even two hens would be wonderful. If we could only get eggs every day, the table would be quite a luxury."
She looked again and again, wistfully, at the crates stacked in tiers, then asked the shopkeeper what a young hen cost. She had meant it.
"Lizzie, if we put them on the wagon, the chickens will be dead in no time."
No one knew that better than Lizzie. Juhwan had never actually raised a chicken in his life.
She sighed.
"Of course they would. But it really would be nice to have them. It'll take days to get back to the village this time too, and we could keep eating eggs the whole way. And if we only had one rooster, they'd have chicks, and later we could just eat them."
Listening to her, he thought she must have envied the chickens other households kept when she was small. A neighbor who raised several hens had looked, she said, like the very picture of wealth. Now that they had a little money, that was the first thing that came to mind.
Juhwan smiled wryly, and Dorothy, cradled in his arms, spoke up.
"Mama, chickens sound good. Oz will protect them."
"Right? I think Oz would guard them well too."
"Yeah. Our Oz is smart."
Mother and daughter both seemed set on keeping chickens. Perhaps, for two people who had been poor all their lives, a hen really had been the golden egg they longed for.
"We ought to go. Red Sword will be waiting."
At that, Lizzie nodded, resigned. But before they left the shop she bought one bundle of twelve eggs, paired off and tied with straw.
"Mama, is it heavy? Should Dorothy carry it?"
Dorothy held out both hands. Lizzie seemed briefly worried they might break, but she soon settled the bundle into the child's arms.
"Hmm. But Dorothy, you're offering to carry Mama's things because they're heavy, and you're in Papa's arms right now. In the end the heavy part still lands on Papa."
Dorothy's eyes went round, and she thought for a moment. After a short pause she nodded, as if the problem were solved.
"Papa is incredibly strong. So it's fine. He can beat the eggs."
"...Right."
Hearing them, Lizzie laughed, and when she laughed Dorothy laughed with her. The gloom from the guild a little while ago seemed to fly off on that laughter.
Juhwan carried most of what they had bought on his back, while Lizzie held the things that needed careful handling. The three of them came out of the alley together and crossed the square.
Now and then they caught people murmuring at the sight of Oz, calling it a magical beast. They seemed to know it by the collar more than the horn. Fingers pointed at collar and horn from every side.
"Oz is smart, Papa. Dorothy is the teacher."
Dorothy said it loudly, on purpose, so people would hear. She was showing Oz off. It was Oz they were staring at, but Dorothy's nose went up in the air. And for some reason she lifted the eggs a little higher, so everyone could see them. She must have wanted them to know they were rich.
They had already settled the bill and left the inn room, but they had been told the wagon could stay until the end of the day. When they reached the inn and went to the space where it was kept, there were traces of the keeper having given the horse hay and water. It had been a little expensive, but the service was certainly good.
The moment Dorothy climbed onto the wagon she left Juhwan's arms. Once the luggage was carefully loaded, the three of them sat side by side on the driver's seat.
She seemed sorry to be leaving the city. Sitting there, the instant the gate came into view, she hopped up onto the bench and turned around on her knees. Lizzie hurriedly caught her around the waist. Listening to her mother's scolding, Dorothy waved at the buildings. She said it was goodbye.
Juhwan steadied her back with one arm and settled her properly into the seat, a little relieved. It was the same as always. She had only been startled earlier because of the aide.
"Dorothy, you can't stand up in the wagon. You'll fall."
"Yes, Papa!"
The brave answer was the same one he had always heard.
Red Sword was already waiting in front of the gate.
Coming with the merchant caravan had taken a long time, but the return looked as if a few days would be enough. There were several villages along the way, they said, so there would be no need to sleep outdoors.
They chose a route a little different from the road the merchant column had taken. On the way to Moderni the caravan had been so large that the roads they could choose were limited. Juhwan and Red Sword had no such constraint. Using the safe roads that linked village to village as they saw fit, they plotted a path meant to keep them from meeting bandits. According to Red Sword it was a bit of a detour, but it was the most ordinary route to the city of Moderni.
"Please remember the road well. Moderni is also the place adventurers go most. The guild in the adventurers' village has a fair number of them too, but when it comes to work, Moderni is the best. In seasons when jobs grow scarce, most adventurers go there looking for work. So you absolutely have to remember this road. That's why we're going a little slowly on purpose."
Karin pressed the point while they rested after a long stretch of travel. People of this age seemed to learn every road by memory alone, without so much as a map, let alone a navigation system. Honestly, Juhwan wasn't very confident. If they told him to go alone, he wasn't sure he could really manage it. There were no signposts in the Middle Ages.
They took only a few short rests along the way. Juhwan and Red Sword kept on almost without stopping, at a pace that wasn't too fast. They passed through the villages they met in between and entered one that appeared around sunset. It was far smaller than the adventurers' village—only a little larger, it felt, than the place where he had first met Lizzie.
They had come into the village, but the streets were quiet. Almost no one was out. Spring and autumn might be different, Jessie said, but a village in winter was mostly like this.
When they headed for the square, the village chief and a few of the men came out.
"Aigoo, adventurers, are you?"
The chief looked over Juhwan's clothes and Red Sword's and broke into a broad smile. The question was aimed at Juhwan.
"We are. We'd like to stay the night."
"There's no house in our village that keeps a proper inn. But adventurers come by now and then, so we lend out houses and barns."
A small house for one night was one rina, he said, and a barn was one large copper.
What was this outrageous gouging? Juhwan's eyes went wide. An inn in the adventurers' village was one rina for two days, and that had been a fairly clean, proper inn. If it cost this much, they would be better off sleeping outdoors.
When he turned to climb back onto the wagon, the chief cried out and spoke again.
"Adventurer! If you're short on coin, I won't take the whole rina. I'll take just one coin."
One coin was half a rina—the same as a night in a two-bed room at the inn in the adventurers' village. Had he looked that easy to fool? Now he was a little angry.
"Move. Where do you get off naming a price like that?"
When Juhwan frowned, the chief yelped and bent nearly double.
"I-I'm sorry. Our village hardly ever gets guests, so we don't know the going rate. Well then, how about one small coin?"
This village seemed to set its prices by sizing people up. Karin of Red Sword, who had been listening quietly beside them, snorted and cut in.
"Look here. You saw a fine wagon and got greedy. Don't go catching a bolt from the blue over nothing—do it properly. Lend us the barn and the small house for one small coin. And give us two waterskins of hot water to use while we sleep."
"B-but if we do that..."
The chief and the men looked at one another, troubled, and Karin grinned.
"Any other time I'd start by raising hell, but I'm holding back because Mr. Juhwan is here."
"Haa."
The chief glanced up at Juhwan and sighed. He was nodding that they would do it when Marie spoke.
"Give us a little hay for the horse, too."
"That's per head—"
The moment he started to name a price, Juhwan's brow tightened. Certain the man was about to spout some absurd figure again, he glared, and the chief swallowed. Then, with a face that looked ready to cry, he nodded.
"A-all right. But we can't give you too much."
Karin looked a little pleased. So hay was something you were supposed to pay for separately.
That was on me.
But the one who had tried to gouge them first was the one in the wrong.
The house the chief offered was not empty. Someone who lived there had cleared out for a single night.
"This is like the village's pocket money. In a place with hardly any cash coming in, it's a pretty tidy little earner."
Marie said it with a giggle, then headed for the barn where they would stay.
At first he had felt terribly sorry that Red Sword insisted on sleeping in the barn, but once he actually stepped inside the house he thought he understood why. House and barn were nearly the same, and the barn had more straw. Spread the piled straw out and lie down on it, and you could sleep quite warmly.
Juhwan smiled wryly. Chicken droppings and goat droppings lay scattered around the house. The straw on the bed had been used so long that much of it was flattened and crumbled, and worst of all there seemed to be bedbugs. The one mercy was a brazier in the middle of the room. No fire was lit in it. It wasn't that anyone had cleaned or deliberately put it out. From the little ash, they seemed to kindle a fire only briefly each day.
With no choice, he brought out a few pieces of the firewood they had stored on the wagon. It was a small emergency store, but there was nothing else for it. He called flame from his hand, set the wood alight, and threw in this and that of what they had to make a stew. He made a little extra, and Lizzie carried some over to the Red Sword party. Juhwan didn't go in. He waited outside the barn, and Karin's voice reached him.
"Thank you, Lizzie. But don't do this from now on. Of course, once people get close, they share like this. But unless you're in the same party, everyone bears their own costs. Hand things out to everyone you meet and there'll be nothing left later. Often the other person comes to expect it again, too. That's why adventurers, even when they're close, mostly see to everything themselves."
Her voice was gentle.
"Besides, our job right now is teaching you and Mr. Juhwan how to act as adventurers. But truly, thank you, Lizzie. We're cold through, so this stew is very welcome."
With the child wrapped in a wool blanket in one arm, Juhwan patted Lizzie's shoulder as she came out of the barn, his expression a little downcast.
Stew in this world was basically a catch-all porridge: every odd scrap of ingredient went into water and boiled together. They wouldn't light a separate fire and make that for every party. While adventurers traveled together, they probably often gathered around a single pot. What Karin had pointed out was the act of bringing food over even though they hadn't cooked it together.
In the cold air Lizzie hunched. Juhwan opened one side of his coat, drew her in against him, and they walked a little. Stars glittered overhead. As they walked, her heart seemed to clear again.
Around the time they finished eating, the chief brought one leather waterskin filled with hot water. That alone wasn't very warm. It would have been a little better to push the bed beside the brazier, but the layout of the house wouldn't let them move it. The place was poorly heated and cold, and with bedbugs on top of that they simply couldn't sleep.
In the end Juhwan and Lizzie took the child to the wagon and lay down. In the narrow space, with the waterskin at their feet, it grew fairly warm. Lying in the pitch dark, Lizzie laughed softly. Juhwan reached out and fiddled with her short hair.
"Why are you laughing?"
"I liked the inn, but I like sleeping pressed together like this too, Juhwan."
"Do you."
Dorothy lay between them, Lizzie pillowed on his arm. Oz was curled by their heads. The child had already been half asleep when they left the house because of the bedbugs. Somehow the inside of the wagon seemed full of a happy feeling.
"Me too, Lizzie."
"Right?"
Real gladness colored her voice.
It was deep night, around the time Lizzie fell asleep as well. Into the ears of Juhwan, dozing lightly, Dorothy's voice came, small.
"...Don't leave me... Dorothy... don't leave me...."
His eyes snapped open.
Dorothy was still asleep in his arms. It was sleep-talk. She murmured again, her pronunciation unclear.
"...Papa...."
It can't be....
Juhwan muttered it without meaning to. The small sense that something was off, the one he had felt since morning—he thought he finally knew what it was.