The Carrots That Would Not Scream
Children never tire when they play. It was impossible to tell where bodies so small kept such a store of strength. And yet, perhaps because they spent that energy without a thought for what came after, they were also the ones who collapsed the moment the fun was over, like toys whose batteries had run dry.
Dorothy was no different. On the road back to the guild, with Oz tucked into the front pocket of her skirt, her steps grew slower and slower.
Watch her quietly and her eyes slipped shut now and then. How anyone managed to sleep while walking, he could not fathom. Her soft curls nodded with every step, and little by little her shoulders tipped forward under Oz's weight. Oz was still young and small, but so was Dorothy. Of course he was too heavy for her.
At first she had insisted, with some logic only she understood, that she had to walk, because she was the adventurer who had found the screaming carrots. In the end she managed only a few steps before she reached out her arms and asked to be carried.
Juhwan held the child against his front and walked on without a word, a dirt-sack of carrots lashed to his back with cord. Dorothy was asleep in an instant.
Whatever was so delightful, Lizzie and Red Sword never once ran out of laughter or things to say the whole way home.
Something the women of Red Sword said made Lizzie laugh, bright and open. She glanced back, caught sight of Juhwan, and laughed again, her eyes bending into crescents. Perhaps they had been talking about him.
It ought to have been something kind. A verdict passed among women was a little frightening, and he felt needlessly guilty. Still, if Lizzie was laughing, perhaps it had been all right. On Earth his score had been miserable. Was the man he was now being counted a good husband, a good man?
Sunlight glittered in Lizzie's hair. His eyes narrowed before he knew it.
Beautiful.
She was lovelier than on the day they met. The white face that had been less than a handful had filled out a little, and a faint sheen lay on her skin. He wondered if some foreign blood ran in her. She seemed a little different from the people around them—the pale skin, the slender face, far more dear than anyone nearby. Perhaps she only looked that way to his eyes. Even so, no matter how many times he looked again, she was beautiful.
Walking ahead among the women, Lizzie turned an arm behind her and opened and closed her fingers. Hello? Hello? That was what it seemed to say. A bit of mischief, coming from her. The childlike gesture pulled a smile out of him before he could stop it.
He found himself praying to the sky that this plain, ordinary life would go on and on.
By the time they reached the guild, the afternoon was well along. He had never come at this hour before, and there seemed to be twice as many adventurers as in the morning. The hall overflowed with them, loud and jostling.
The line before the reception desk was longer than usual, too. Most of the people waiting held wooden request tags. This, it seemed, was the hour when the day's commissions were closed out.
Juhwan and Red Sword made for the purchase window. That side was crowded as well. There was only one window for buying, so the line ran longer than anywhere else.
The rule that a Rank 2 adventurer need not wait in line seemed to hold at every guild. Red Sword went forward with Lizzie, ignoring the queue. Lizzie stole a few uneasy glances at the people around them, but Red Sword looked perfectly at ease.
"Hey, you! Who said you could cut!"
"Get to the back! You hear me?"
Men about halfway up the line stepped out and roughly blocked the way.
Lizzie's white face went whiter still.
Juhwan started forward, then noticed that every woman of Red Sword had a hand at her waist. They were gripping nails.
Nails, for a thing like this? The thought came and went. One look at the men picking the fight and he understood. One of the five was the Rank 4 adventurer who had once slammed Karin's face into a desk. This group was probably his party.
Was he simply meant to watch? Red Sword seemed to have a long store of feeling built up, and every eye glittered with the will to kill. This was not a matter he ought to step into lightly.
He made ready to intervene at any moment and caught Lizzie's eye, beckoning her over. She looked at Red Sword with worry, then turned. Sighing, she walked toward him.
That was when one of the men baiting Red Sword slipped a hand out. Whether he thought no one would see, or thought that much was allowed, Juhwan could not say. The hand was aimed at Lizzie's leg.
Juhwan's foot came up in a flash. He had no intention of going easy. He kicked the man square in the head.
A bizarre croak burst out of him, and his head went flying. His body chased after it. In an instant he shot clear of the line and slammed into a table. With a crash, man and table went down together.
Blood running from his scalp, he twitched and got to his feet. He lifted his face in entirely the wrong direction. He spoke not to a person, but to the wall.
"You… what did you…"
He never finished. He pitched forward as if someone had snuffed him out, and seemed to lose consciousness where he fell.
Lizzie, Red Sword, all of them stared at Juhwan with round eyes. So did everyone else.
The fallen man's companions drew their weapons, each in his own time.
"You looking for a fight?"
"What, you the kept man these wenches prop up?"
"Damn you! A stone rolls in and thinks it can knock out the bricks already set and sit itself down, is that it?"
"Think Rank 3 makes you somebody? These women all yours now? A newcomer ought to stand in line like one!"
They had gotten the wrong idea. He would answer a fight as many times as they liked, but a misunderstanding of this sort would not do. His foot had gone out because the man tried to grope his wife, not because he was some philanderer.
Besides, Red Sword were not those men's women. Were their heads wrong? In more ways than one, something was off.
A glance told him the Red Sword party was angry as well. Karin already had a nail in her hand. If Red Sword meant to fight, he would not stop them.
One twitch of a finger and the smell of blood would have risen, when a voice came from the entrance.
"Stop. A moment ago that man tried to lay a hand on this mage's party member. And this mage is already Rank 2 in the city. He doesn't have to stand in line."
It was the Guild Master. Frowning, he spoke to the men.
"Hey. You'd really better quit while you're only this deep. A mage of his level could have every one of you roasted through in a heartbeat. I'm not exaggerating. You've heard what he did to me, haven't you? If you thought the story was blown out of proportion, the man who took it is telling you. Not exaggerated in the slightest."
The Guild Master looked at the broken table and the unconscious man, and sighed.
"How many times did I warn you that someday you'd catch a real beating? You don't pull that on just any woman."
Clicking his tongue, he came up in front of Juhwan. For some reason he looked a little worn. Behind him stood a girl who seemed to be in her teens.
"Juhwan, if you've got a moment, I'd like a word."
As he spoke, he eyed the herb sack.
"Oh-ho. Out gathering herbs today? Odd shape for a sack, if that's all it is."
Dorothy, who had woken at some point and was wearing a dazed look, seemed to come to herself at those words. She sat up in Juhwan's arms.
"Carrots! Dorothy found them. They scream."
"Hm?"
The Guild Master startled. Several adventurers nearby looked over, drawn by the words scream and carrot.
While every eye turned that way, the men who had picked the fight quietly slipped back into their place in line. The heat had gone out of them. Only after the Guild Master's words did it seem to occur to them that Juhwan was a fire mage.
"Screaming carrots, is it? Been a while. They've been scarce lately, and the price has been climbing. Congratulations."
The Guild Master grinned and led the way to the window.
"Let's be quick. Once a human hand has touched a screaming carrot, the mana drains as time passes. The faster we process them, the more they're worth."
He raised his voice to the hall.
"Screaming carrots have come in, so anyone who's never seen one, come here. Newcomers especially—drop what you're doing and all of you gather round. These are dangerous goods. You need a proper look."
Ah. So when someone brought in something rare, they showed it off as a lesson for everyone. People murmured and crowded toward the purchase window.
Juhwan set the two sacks down, and the Guild Master muttered as if surprised.
"What, you gathered two?"
"No! This many!"
Dorothy held up all ten fingers. She thrust her chest out like a boast and lifted her nose high.
"Oh-ho."
The Guild Master laughed. He seemed to take it for a child's exaggeration. A few chuckles rose from the people around them as well.
Juhwan did not correct her. The sacks would be open in a moment. Seeing would be enough. There was no need to explain at length.
The Purchase Clerk brought a box from the back, about a foot square on every side. A sturdy-looking lock was fixed to it.
"It's a mana box. Put them in there and the screaming carrot's mana won't leak."
The Guild Master explained, and not only for Juhwan. He seemed to mean the others to hear as well.
"Screaming carrots have mana?"
"They do. They're the ingredient in the medicine mages use to recover mana. But from the instant a human hand touches them, the mana drops fast. What actually reaches us is a pittance beside what they originally held. A shame."
If a screaming carrot kept even a little more mana than it did now, the price would double, he added, baring yellow teeth in a ha-ha of a laugh.
Meanwhile the Purchase Clerk opened the box and began to dig carefully through the dirt in the sack. Just before a carrot would have come clear, he stopped and cautioned the crowd.
"The sound should be weak, but cover your ears for now, all of you."
With that, he plugged his own ears with small scraps of cloth.
Had the stunned carrots woken by now? Watching Lizzie and Red Sword cover their ears, Juhwan pressed Dorothy's face to his chest and laid his palms over the child's ears. His own—well, never mind. When Oz had dug the screaming carrots he had felt nothing much, so he would be fine.
The Purchase Clerk's hands moved fast, breaking the dirt aside. At the sight of the exposed carrot, Juhwan took his hands from the child's ears. The screaming carrot was still unconscious. Whiskers and the scratches along its body hung slack.
"Ah!"
The Purchase Clerk's eyes went round. He dug in a hurry and pulled out another carrot. The rest were all limp as well.
"What—there was more than one?"
The Guild Master startled.
The people packed around them began to murmur.
"What? That many?"
"Then why are they all drooping like that? Aren't they supposed to scream?"
"Did they die?"
"The mana's probably all leaked out. Look how slack they are."
"Shame. Then they won't even get paid."
As if he could not hear a word of it, the Purchase Clerk lifted a screaming carrot from the dirt, held it in his hand, and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he took up another beside it. After doing this several times, he jerked his head up and looked at the Guild Master.
"Master! The mana in these is still there. Almost none of it's gone. They've kept more mana than you could even compare with other screaming carrots! I've appraised all sorts of things, but I've never seen specimens like these. Truly, never once."
The voice was absurdly loud. It was the Purchase Clerk's shout, not the screaming carrots, that made a person want to cover their ears.
"How did you do it? What trick did you use?"
This time the shout was aimed at Juhwan.
Dorothy clapped both hands over her ears and muttered.
"That mister is a screaming carrot."
"It's because his ears are stopped up, Dorothy. When you can't hear anyone else, you stop knowing how loud you ought to be."
Juhwan said it and pointed at his ears. Only then did the Purchase Clerk realize he still had his ears plugged. He pulled the scraps of cloth free and shouted to a clerk farther inside.
"Run to the herbalist and check! Ask what they'll pay for screaming carrots with the mana preserved as it is. If they mean to take them at the usual price, we'll have to look elsewhere. This isn't the situation the request described."
Hurrying, he opened the box, set the carrots inside, and explained.
"Everyone—a screaming carrot is normally packed full of mana. They're thought to drink up the mana in the soil. The scream is the sound that mana makes as it escapes, the moment it meets air and a human hand."
They would not all fit in one box. The Purchase Clerk fetched another from the back, packed them in, and went on.
"No one yet knows why it happens that way. And no one has found a way to seal mana like this. Good heavens, what did you actually do?"
He looked at Juhwan.
But Juhwan did not know either. Oz was the one who had dug them. Perhaps it had been possible because a horned rabbit was the natural enemy of carrots.
But if that were so, someone would have known before now.
The moment Oz found the carrots rose in his mind. The horn had glowed red, and tiny circles had appeared on the carrots' bodies. Maybe that was why. Or maybe it was because Oz had eaten the leaves.
"Wh-what, what—hah, hah—what did you—hah—say?"
A man who resembled a toad from head to toe came running in with a guild clerk. He seemed to be the herbalist. The run had been hard on him. He looked as if his breath might fail him at any moment.
Listening to the Purchase Clerk and examining the screaming carrots, the toad-like herbalist's eyes grew huge. His mouth fell open, and still gasping as if he might expire on the spot, he shouted.
"One gold coin! I'll buy them all!"
Well. One gold coin for twelve screaming carrots seemed decent enough. The people around them let out a chorus of oohs and looked on with envy.
The Purchase Clerk smiled, pleased, and asked the herbalist.
"One gold coin each. You're certain?"
"Of course. I'll buy every one of them."
So it had not been one gold coin for the twelve. It was one gold coin for each screaming carrot.
"Hhk!"
"Wh-what! Gold coins?"
"That's impossible."
"Th-then that's twelve gold coins."
The murmuring swelled.
This time Juhwan was a little surprised himself.
A thud sounded beside him. He looked and found Lizzie and Karin sitting on the floor.
"One gold coin. Heavens."
When Lizzie murmured it, Dorothy threw her nose as high as it would go.
"Dorothy found them."
No. Surely Oz had found them.
"Dorothy found them together with Oz."
When she said it again, Oz, who had been peeking his face from the pocket, laid his ears flat back. He seemed a little angry.
At any rate, since the little fellow had earned this much all at once, Juhwan would have to treat him to meat today.
Then the teenage girl who had come in with the Guild Master tilted her head and asked him,
It was Korean.