The Field of Screaming Carrots
People say a shock can stop the breath in your throat. Perhaps that isn't merely a turn of phrase.
Juhwan's body lunged. He snatched Dorothy up from where she sat peering into the hole—there, he had her—and only then did the air tear back out of him. It had lasted an instant, but he was certain his breathing had truly stopped.
He curled an arm over the child's head so the sound wouldn't reach her. Only when he felt she was safe against him did he let his gaze drop.
Oz's mottled body had burrowed down into the hole. Kiee, kiee—the strange cry rose from beneath him. It was nothing like a human scream. It sounded like the cheap monster in a children's program on television.
Under Oz's head he could see a carrot, a little larger than the ones on Earth, its body half buried in the soil. Green leaves still clung to the crown, and thin white roots like whiskers bristled from the body. There was no mistaking it. It was a carrot.
Kieeeee. The scream grew a little louder, and the sound was resonating from the carrot itself.
Carrots on Earth are scored all over with fine horizontal scratches, like lines. This one bore the same marks. What differed was that the scratches gaped slightly open, and the scream was leaking from those slits. The carrot's white whiskers shivered. Sound seemed to be coming from them as well.
Juhwan lifted a foot. Silver coins, or whatever else—he didn't need them. He couldn't leave the thing. Dorothy was here. Lizzie was here. He would not abide anything that threatened the two of them. It had to be destroyed now, stamped dead before whatever lay under the ground could scream any louder.
"Oz, move."
That was the moment.
Oz, still digging, thrust himself forward. His head swung toward the carrot, and the round little tail on his rump wagged.
"Ah—!"
Something Juhwan had not expected happened.
Oz sprang at the carrot with his mouth flung so wide the air seemed about to snap. He didn't bite the body. He chewed the leaves and stems at the top, and his mouth worked in quick little bites until every stem and leaf had vanished into it.
The carrot's scream dragged and wilted, like a broken record.
So Oz ate carrot greens too. Whenever Dorothy had meat he begged for some, and Juhwan had thought of him only as a magical beast that happened to look like a rabbit. But he was a rabbit after all. Then why the stems, and not the carrot? The feeling sat strangely with him. Did rabbits prefer the greens to the root?
No. That was not what he ought to be thinking about.
What was that, just now?
By the time Oz had eaten every leaf and stem, his horn glowed a faint red.
A small mark rose on the carrot's body: a circle of red light, slightly lopsided, as if a child had drawn it by hand. It appeared at almost the same instant the screaming carrot's voice went slack.
But the red circle vanished in a flash. Juhwan blinked, and when he looked again there wasn't even a trace.
Dorothy squirmed in his arms. Her small hands pushed at his arm, and her face popped free.
"Dad, I want to see too. What is it? What did Oz find? There was a noise. Is that a screaming carrot?"
The child's eyes sparkled.
Red Sword and Lizzie, a little way off, came running.
"Juhwan! Dorothy! Are you all right?"
Lizzie's eyes were round. Her mouth asked after the two of them, but her eyes were smiling, and joy covered her whole face.
Marie of Red Sword peered into the little pit, and her mouth fell open.
"My God! It really is a screaming carrot!"
Dorothy was wriggling to get down. Juhwan held her still a moment longer and studied the carrot in the hole.
It didn't seem dangerous. The carrot's little mouths—if they even were mouths—hung slack and strengthless, their corners drooping, the opposite of a smile. The thin white whiskers were the same. All of them had gone limp, as if they had fainted.
Lizzie crouched and poked the screaming carrot with a finger, once and again. Karin watched her and muttered.
"I've only seen one once. And I didn't dig it up. Someone else found it and brought it to the guild."
"Same. I saw it screaming when the guild staff checked it."
"We were all there together then."
"Honestly, I thought screaming carrots were something out of a legend. People talk about them, but I'd never seen one. I wasn't even sure they existed. And yet... it really does just look like a carrot."
Red Sword and Lizzie crouched like children, giddy, poking and pressing at the thing. Every one of them seemed amazed, and glad.
Oz, however, had already lost interest. He bounded up and began shaking off the dirt stuck all over him.
Dorothy pointed at another patch of ground and shouted.
"Oz! I didn't get to see, so one more!"
Oz scrubbed at his face with a paw. To call it pretending not to hear might be stretching things. An adult might have let it pass. A child would not. Small children, as it happens, have no shame at all.
Dorothy pressed right up to him, shoved her face into his, and pointed at a different spot again.
"Oz! I didn't see. You have to go find it fast. It's what Mom likes. They said it makes piles of silver coins."
A stifled laugh burst out among Red Sword. Lizzie's face went faintly red. She seemed a little embarrassed, and that was all right. Liking money was the same the world over—this world and that one both. No one, anywhere, disliked coin.
Oz's ears tipped back and lay flat. He was annoyed, plainly. Dorothy tilted her head.
"Want me to help? Should we dig together? Should I find the carrot for you?"
She trotted off and planted herself at one spot, nose working as she sniffed the air around her, copying exactly what Oz had done. She wrinkled her small nose, sniffed, then stopped short and pointed at the ground.
"Here, Oz. I think it's here."
At that, Lizzie and Red Sword laughed.
As if he had no choice, Oz got up and went hopping away. He ran in a direction entirely different from the one Dorothy had pointed, nose twitching.
"My God," Jessie of Red Sword murmured.
Oz began to dig again. In a moment his small body vanished into the soil, and a little later that strange scream rose—only to stop almost at once. Had he eaten the leaves again?
Dorothy clapped at the sight of him popping back out.
"Yes! Oz is amazing. So amazing. The absolute best!"
Oz was young too. Whether it was Dorothy's praise that put the strength in him, or Lizzie's shining eyes, or Red Sword staring wide-eyed and calling him incredible, he suddenly ran as if rockets were tied to his feet and started digging all over again.
"No way! My God."
"He found another!"
"What—was this a whole field of screaming carrots?"
"Silver coins!"
The women's delighted cries rang from every side. Dorothy, Lizzie, and Red Sword alike were beside themselves, chasing after every screaming carrot Oz turned up.
There didn't seem to be any great danger. Each time, before the scream could swell, Oz ate the leaves. Even so, just in case, Juhwan cautioned the noisy women.
"All of you, don't come close until the screaming stops. You too, Dorothy."
"Yes!"
"All right."
The women and Dorothy answered all at once.
Juhwan kept watch on every side, in case a beast or a magical beast should appear. The forest was always dangerous. He checked the shiver of the leaves, the tracks. A single fox hid among the dry grass, watching the people without a twitch. Aside from that there were only a few birds. At least within sight, there was no dangerous animal.
Dorothy was running with Oz. When he bounded ahead she arrived late, checked the screaming carrot, and ran again. The two of them looked as if they were playing—a child and a puppy who couldn't hold in the life bursting out of them.
But after they had dug up about ten, both Dorothy and Oz seemed to lose interest. They stopped so much as glancing at the carrots and began to play, rolling over and over on the cold ground. The women's voices drifted over, a little disappointed.
Still. What am I supposed to do with those carrots?
Could he simply put them in a bag and go? They seemed fainted now, but they might wake. He wasn't even sure fainted was the right word. The carrots had no eyes or ears anywhere—only things that looked like mouths. In any case, if those came to, they would scream again. Juhwan stepped close to Karin and asked quietly.
"Do you know how these are supposed to be handled?"
"That..."
Karin frowned, troubled. She had never actually harvested a screaming carrot herself. The uneasy look crossed her face, and she gave a small shrug.
"Normally, when you take a screaming carrot, you stop your ears completely and then put it in a bag or a box. You fill the bag with soil and bury the carrot entirely before you carry it. Usually you're lucky to get even one, so it isn't much trouble. Right now there are more than ten."
"Them fainting like that..."
"I've never even heard of it."
"And horned rabbits hunting screaming carrots..."
"I've never heard of that, either."
Juhwan looked at Oz, tumbled into a heap with Dorothy as they played. Innocent. Seen like this, he was only a young rabbit with a horn.
The red pattern that had risen on the carrot earlier was strange, too. Oz had made it. Of that there was no question. Perhaps Oz was not an ordinary horned rabbit. The thought had flickered through him now and then before. Today made him sure.
When they returned to the guild, he would have to ask them to find someone who knew horned rabbits well. Would that count as a request, too?
His eye caught on Oz's forehead. The white fur, only a few strands a little while ago, had spread to about the breadth of a fist. Around the small white horn, the forehead had gone entirely white.
I'll have to ask about that as well.
Juhwan began filling the herb sacks he had received from the guild staff with the soil Oz had dug up, dividing it between two of them.
Dorothy and the women gathered the carrots and brought them over, tossing them into the sacks with soft thumps. Once the screaming carrots were split between the two sacks, he covered them with soil again. There wasn't quite enough, so he dug a little more ground with the axe and added it.
He tied the mouths of the sacks tight, then held one out to Red Sword.
"This is your share."
"Huh?"
The women of Red Sword startled.
"This herb edge was your secret place. Splitting it in half is only fair."
"That's..."
"But—"
"We weren't looking for payment. If anything, this was meant as thanks for your help."
Juhwan shrugged.
"It's early for thanks. They might not be worth much, surprisingly. Oz ate every one of the leaves. Maybe they won't work at all. Or if they do, maybe only by half, and we'll only be paid half."
Red Sword looked at one another. They had been too excited to think that far.
"But even if that's so... thank you. Truly."
Karin bobbed her head. The other women bowed as well. Lizzie was watching Juhwan with shining eyes, and she seemed happy too. He grew a little shy.
Dorothy came running with Oz in her arms and asked, slightly disappointed.
"Dad, where's Dorothy's carrot? Isn't there one for Dorothy? Carrot is Dorothy and Oz and Toto's little sibling."
As if to press the point, she pulled the doll Toto from the front pocket of her skirt and hugged it. And since when, Dorothy, had the carrot become a sibling? He hadn't known a thing about it.
At a glance the screaming might make the carrot seem alive, but it wasn't. Watching quietly, he had come to understand. For whatever reason, a screaming carrot vibrated. Its whole body trembled, and somehow that tremor rang out in every direction like a scream. It was not crying out because it lived.
But how was he supposed to explain that? While he was still turning it over, Lizzie bent toward Dorothy.
"Dorothy, we can't. It's dangerous."
"It is?"
"Mm. It screams."
"But Oz made it stop."
"It only fainted. When it wakes up, it might scream again."
"Oh! Right. That's true."
Dorothy nodded hard. Perhaps there had been no need to think so deeply. The child gave up on a sibling with perfect simplicity.
There were only three herb sacks, so there was nowhere to put the Cheonma. In the end it went into the pouch Juhwan carried for rabbits when he hunted. Unlike mistletoe, Cheonma was hard, so that was fine enough.
They had meant to gather a little more, but the screaming carrots made it unnecessary. The women set off for the guild in far higher spirits than when they had come.