I cannot see them, but Juliet and Marco are in the kitchen, and I hear Juliet swear softly. Marco can fill his voice with sunlight, and I hear him ask her, "Juliet, Juliet. What did the carrots do to you today to call them so?"

I know her answer to that. The carrots have done well this year. We have filled baskets with carrots, barrels with carrots. The sand box in the root room is full of carrots, and Marco is building another for the potatoes. We have pickled them, salted them, eaten them. We eat quickbread of them in the mornings with the coffee. We have taken a hint of color to our skin from them.

We have pulled carrots of all colors from the rich patch of dark soil where he grows them. Some are the yellow of the sun at morning, but most take their rich hue from the burning sky on days of good sunsets. We even have some in purple.

The carrots from Marco's land are rebels, all. They twist and spin and tangle. The branch and branch again. Some of them are thick, but with a wasp's waist. They are impossible to peel, I have given up for the day. Juliet has not.

In town, the carrots are straight and strong, lined up on rows on the old wooden market benches. I had asked Marco about them: they looked easier to peel. They looked firm, and crisp. They were proud carrots. He shook his head sadly for me, letting curls fall into his face. "No, no," he said. He bought me one then. I watched him peel it for me with his pocket knife, the peel falling away with straight pulls of the cloudy blade. He asked the seller for some salt, then handed me the carrot.

It was a fine carrot. But: it did not speak of the earth it grew in, or the clads that turned its path. It was crisp, but it did not clutch the teeth for that moment before giving in to the hard chomp. It was sweet, but the only that. A light, flat confection, without any hint of bright sun or hot days.

Marco said: that is why. I will help Juliet peel more tomorrow.