The Carrots I Tasted as a Child (1)
Rian gazed out over the field and smiled with satisfaction. Dean, on the other hand, stared at the soil with a look of regret.
"Brother, do you really have to leave? Can't you just stay here and live with us?"
"I'd stay if I could. But—"
Rian grinned as he looked at him.
"See, the truth is, I'm the son of a fallen noble house. I've got a fortune stashed away — a ridiculous amount of it. I have to go reclaim it."
"F-for real?"
"Nah, I'm messing with you. I've been a dirt-poor nobody my whole life."
"Come on, don't joke around."
"It's funny, though."
Rian gave Dean a pat on the shoulder and turned to go.
"I'm hungry. Let's go eat."
"Is there somewhere to eat?"
"Nope. Doesn't matter. Walk into any house around here and they'll feed you just fine."
"Yeah, and then we'll be stuck there two or three hours working off the meal. Come eat at my place today. Mom made a big spread for a field snack and there's some left over."
"Yeah? Let's go there, then."
The two of them walked on side by side.
"What are you doing this afternoon?"
"This afternoon? Well, I have to wait for the base fertilizer to soak into the soil, so there's not much to do."
"When are you going to sow the seeds?"
"Tomorrow or the day after. Want me to bake some bread this afternoon? I make a mean loaf."
"Yes!"
"Alright. Mix up the flour dough later, get a fire going in the communal oven, then come get me."
"Doesn't that mean I'd be doing all the work?"
"No way. If you think about it, I'll be contributing something too. Probably."
"Oh, come on, Brother. I never should've believed a word you said. You just want to eat bread, don't you?"
"Caught me, huh?"
Chatting idly, the two of them drifted off toward the village.
Rian's farming had begun today.
Three months remained.
The land always gave back in proportion to the effort you poured into it. Rian fully intended to throw everything he had into that short span of time, and to be repaid with a harvest so abundant he could reunite with Audria even a single day sooner.
"Your favorite carrot cake is ready, sweetheart."
"Wow!"
Six-year-old Lisa clapped her hands and cheered. The moment Mother set the mouthwatering carrot cake on the table, Father and her older sisters came running in from the kitchen and sat down.
"Eat up, my girls."
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
"Yeees!"
A happy evening, the whole family together. They were in the middle of dinner, the atmosphere warm and lively, when it happened.
The window shattered, and a rock came tumbling into the house.
"What on earth—?!"
The entire family sprang from their seats in alarm. Outside, curses and shouting erupted.
"You lunatics who sold your souls to the devil!"
"You fucking whores!"
"Go drop dead!"
Someone smashed the door in with an axe. The walls shuddered under hammer blows, as if an earthquake had struck. Someone hurled a torch inside. The flames raced along the carpet and spread with terrifying speed.
"Aaaaah!"
Lisa clapped her hands over her ears and curled in on herself. Her two older sisters rushed to her side, and the three of them clung together, trembling. Mother hurried over and gathered them close.
"It's all right. It's all right."
"I'll go see what's going on! Just hold on!"
Father rushed outside. The moment he stepped through the door, they clubbed him over the head. The blow took him instantly; he crumpled to the ground and did not get up.
"AAAAAHHHH!"
Lisa screamed and bolted upright. She looked wildly around. She was sitting on the bed in the tent they had pitched as temporary quarters the day before. Realizing it had been a dream, she let out a shaky breath of relief.
"Hah… hah…"
Her heart was hammering against her ribs. Cold sweat stood on her skin. Recalling that wretched, infuriating past, she sat frozen for a long time, unable to move. Her hands trembled.
Fifteen years ago, the entire village had branded her family as demons. The people back then had seemed like hideous monsters. Her father, her mother, her eldest sister, her second sister — every one of them had been burned at the stake atop a mercilessly piled heap of firewood.
She, the youngest of them all, had barely escaped with her life thanks to an old knight who happened to be passing through the village on the day of that cruel execution. Lisa had become an orphan overnight. And that wound had made her into the vengeful spirit she was today.
Lisa could not swallow the rage that rose in her as the memories came flooding back. She was still sitting on the bed when she suddenly caught a sound from beyond the inner chamber. Someone had entered the tent. Footsteps approached at a measured pace and stopped before the cloth-covered entrance.
"Lady Lisa. Kestiria reporting."
Royal Guard Captain Kestiria. The granddaughter of the old knight who had saved her fifteen years ago. Lisa looked toward the entrance.
"What is it?"
"Preparations are complete."
"Preparations?"
Only then did she remember. She rose quickly from the bed and pulled off her nightclothes. Her beautiful naked form was reflected in the full-length mirror.
"I'll be out shortly. Stand by."
"Yes."
Lisa was currently staying in Silverlon, the fief the emperor had granted her. Silverlon was also the hometown where she had been born — and the place where the village of her enemies still stood. She was in that village now.
A short while later, Lisa changed into a dress of rather somber colors and stepped out of the tent. She followed Royal Guard Captain Kestiria toward the village square.
Some three hundred villagers sat kneeling in the square, both arms bound. Heavily armed knights stood watch over them, radiating a menacing air.
"Her Ladyship approaches! Every last one of you, faces in the dirt!"
"Get them down! Bow your heads!"
The knights mercilessly shoved the villagers' heads down until their foreheads were pressed to the earth.
"Did you round them all up? Not a single one missing?"
"Yes! We seized every last person living in the village — men and women, young and old!"
Lisa looked over the villagers with a gaze as though regarding a swarm of insects, and came to a stop before them.
"Kestiria."
"Yes."
"The village chief?"
"This is the man."
Lisa looked at the person Kestiria indicated. He was trembling, his head rammed into the dirt. She studied him closely, and a cruel smile spread across her face. She stepped nearer.
"Raise your head."
"Pardon?"
"It's all right. You may look up."
The village chief, his face bruised, lifted his head with painstaking care, his whole body shaking.
"S-spare us, my lady. We haven't done anything wrong!"
Lisa smiled at the man who was pleading with tears in his voice.
"You've gone quite gray. You weren't like that fifteen years ago."
"…What?"
"It's been a long time, Village Chief."
"D-do you know me…?"
"Don't you recognize me?"
The village chief's eyes went wide as he stared at her. Then he recoiled with a jolt of terror and fell hard on his backside.
"Gah! C-could it be—?!"
"Remember me now?"
"H-how?!"
"How did the child of a demon-possessed household become a lord, is that it?"
Lisa gave a short, dry laugh, then looked at him with eyes gone ice-cold.
"You're the ones who made me this. If it weren't for you, I never would have thrown myself into studying agriculture the way I did."
She held out her palm toward Kestiria, who stood behind her. Kestiria immediately drew the longsword at her waist and placed it in Lisa's hand.
"I came home in such a good mood. Why is everyone so frightened? You're making this rather awkward."
Without the slightest warning, Lisa swung the blade. The village chief's right arm came off.
"GRAAAAH!"
He screamed and rolled on the ground. Lisa advanced on him slowly, the bloodied edge gleaming. The composed expression she had worn until then suddenly cracked, and she roared.
"The one possessed by a demon was your son!"
She drove the sword into the village chief's thigh. Blood fountained, and another scream tore from his throat.
"Your son was the one eating people!"
She yanked the blade free. The village chief, his face deathly pale, scrambled backward across the ground.
"S-stay away!"
"Because of your son, you pinned a false charge on me and my entire family!"
Lisa strode forward, slammed her boot down hard on the village chief's stomach, and drove the blade into his groin. The steel sank in with a wet, heavy thrust.
"GRAAAAH!"
The villagers' faces went ashen as they listened to his wretched screams. They trembled violently, muttering prayers to the gods to save them, over and over.
But there was no god.
"I'll feed your corpse to the pigs, you piece of trash!"
The words had barely left her mouth before Lisa cut off the village chief's head without a shred of mercy. His head, eyes still wide open, rolled across the ground. Blood pooled thick upon the earth, streaming from the severed arm, the torso, the neck.
"Strange. I don't feel as satisfied as I expected."
Lisa returned the sword to Kestiria and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe her hands.
"I suppose I'll have to kill a great many more to feel satisfied."
Kestiria flicked the blood from the blade.
"What shall we do with the villagers?"
Lisa tossed the handkerchief to the ground and answered lightly.
With that, she turned and headed for the tent. Kestiria gestured, and the knights under her command drew their swords as one. Behind Lisa as she walked away, desperate screams began to erupt one after another.
Before long, the knights finished the massacre and went from house to house setting fires. They thoroughly destroyed even the fences and stone walls that bore witness to lives once lived there. Once she had completely erased the village from existence, Lisa intended to transform the land into a vast expanse of farmland that would account for seventy percent of her fief's entire food production.
"You're back?"
When Lisa returned to the tent, her assistant Emily was waiting. She had been working in the fields on Lisa's orders, and dirt still clung to her shoes and work clothes. A little scatterbrained, perhaps, but a kind and diligent assistant.
"I pulled up a whole bunch, just like you asked. Take a look."
Emily opened a burlap sack and showed her what was inside. It was packed with freshly pulled carrots, a vivid, brilliant orange.
"They grew well."
Lisa studied them for a moment, then picked one up. She knocked the dirt off with a few taps and bit into it. Emily started.
"Are you sure you should eat that without washing it?"
"I just wanted to taste it right away."
Lisa peeled the skin with her teeth and bit into the clean flesh underneath. She chewed slowly, savoring it, calling up the memory of the carrots her mother had grown in the kitchen garden so many years ago. Then she spat out everything in her mouth.
"It doesn't taste right. This isn't the carrot I used to eat."
"It's not good? I had one earlier and it seemed fresh and fine…"
"I thought carrots grown in the same soil would taste like the ones Mother used to grow. They don't. Throw them all out."
"What?"
Emily's shoulders slumped, her face collapsing into a hangdog look.
"I nearly worked myself to death pulling these up! What on earth did your mother's carrots even taste like?!"
"What they tasted like…"
A smile rose to Lisa's lips as she recalled the flavor of those carrots from the happy days when her family's laughter had never once run dry.
But the smile did not last. She stared at the carrot with eyes gone cold and barren.
"Have they vanished forever, just like the family I loved? I suppose I'll never taste those carrots again. How sad."