The Girl Who Dreamed of a Different World Read online

  Sharassa remained standing in silence while the wizard kept on reading, so Kana remained silent. She had been dragged out of bed to meet with the man, and now he was ignoring her. This was the kind of man who demanded respect while giving none to anyone else, but Kana was used to that kind of behaviour. It seemed like Sharassa was too since she just stood there, watching.

  ‘Now,’ the Master said, finally turning his chair around, ‘we come to the matter of what we are to do with young Kana.’

  ‘I still think this is a dream,’ Kana said, ‘but if I have to play along, why can’t you send me back?’

  He looked a little annoyed, as though he had been about to go on and she had spoken out of turn. Still, he answered the question.

  ‘The spell I used to bring you here transports the subject from anywhere it can find someone suitable. I can’t send you back, because I don’t know where you came from.’

  ‘You said I wasn’t suitable.’

  ‘The spell also has a fairly high failure rate. Sometimes you get what you need. Frequently you don’t. I won’t apologise for bringing you here since I’m attempting to save Soken from a catastrophe which could end it. You appear shocked.’

  The sudden use of a Japanese word had shocked her, but the shock fairly quickly faded and was replaced by a sudden urge to giggle.

  ‘Soken?’

  ‘And now you seem amused. Soken is the name of this world.

  Soansha is the goddess who created it.’

  The giggling got worse. ‘It, uh, sounds like a word in my language. Sōken. It would mean… creation or invention. A-and Soansha sounds like another word in my language which would translate to inventor.’

  ‘Ah. And you believe this is evidence that you’re dreaming this whole experience. I admit that the coincidence is interesting.’

  Kana tried to keep a smirk off her face; it seemed like the Master would not like her smirking. ‘This all seems too much like an isekai.’

  ‘And what is an isekai?’

  ‘It’s a work of fiction dealing with a protagonist who is somehow transported to another world. Fantasy worlds are popular.’

  ‘Appropriate.’

  ‘In the stories, it’s common for the transported hero to have to defeat a demon lord to save the world. Are you trying to save the world from a demon lord?’

  The wizard frowned. ‘Technically, no.’

  ‘Technically?’

  ‘Serpens is a powerful demon, but he was the last true dragon and his worshippers are trying to return him to life. So, I am trying to save the world from a true dragon… who is currently what one could describe as a demon lord.’ Kana could no longer hold in her grin. ‘Nothing I can do will convince you that this is real, Kana,’ the Master went on. ‘However, it is real, you are stuck here, and you are also of no practical use to me. We need to decide what is to be done with you.’

  ‘Okay. I mean, I might as well go along with this until I wake up.’

  ‘Hm.’ He was silent for a few seconds, his sharp eyes fixed on her face. Just before she was about to start feeling really uncomfortable, he said something to make it worse. ‘You’re a pretty sort of girl. You could probably do well in Alabeth as a courtesan.’

  Kana’s cheeks turned scarlet. ‘A courtesan?’

  ‘Find someone rich to support you. The work is hardly difficult.

  I feel you’d do well in–’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I am not working as a… a… a prostitute!’

  ‘Going into service would be less lucrative, but that is probably your only other alternative. You have no skills of use here.’

  Kana was about to protest that he had never asked what she could actually do, but he was probably right; what did she know about farming or whatever? ‘As a courtesy, I can arrange for you to learn the language and culture, but you will eventually have to leave here and make your own way.’

  Kana stared at him for about a second and then lowered her eyes.

  What could she do here? What had she ever learned that made her suitable for a life in a world like this? ‘I…’

  ‘Master,’ Sharassa said, suddenly breaking her silence, ‘there may be another option.’

  The wizard looked up at his aide. ‘Explain?’

  ‘I took the liberty of examining her aura while she slept. She has considerable magical talent.’

  Kana’s head jerked around to look at Sharassa. ‘I do?’

  ‘She does?’ the Master asked, ignoring Kana. He turned to her, raising a hand, and another magical circle appeared in the air between them. One of his eyebrows rose and the circle vanished.

  ‘She… does.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘Possibly greater than mine,’ he went on in a musing tone, still ignoring the subject of discussion.

  ‘We could train her as a battle mage,’ Sharassa said. ‘If she were to travel to Alabeth, she could join an adventuring guild.

  She might even be of some use to you, gathering information as others have done in the past.’

  ‘Hm… Can you fight at all, Kana?’

  At last, she was finally being acknowledged again. ‘Yes,’ she said rather proudly. ‘I can use a sword. I’m in the kendo club at school. I mean, I can probably learn to fight better , but I’m pretty good already.’

  ‘You would be using a short staff, not a sword. However, many of the techniques are the same.’

  ‘Well, kendo uses a bamboo sword, so I already have used a sort of staff.’

  ‘Master Godfric can evaluate your skills in that area. Would you like to learn magic?’

  ‘Why not? It sounds like it could be fun.’

  Sharassa’s perfectly angled brows rose. ‘I don’t believe any of the students have ever described it as “fun.”’

  24 th Sokarte.

  The Master decided that he should undertake Kana’s education personally, at least for the first spell. It would allow him to truly assess her talent and capability. It also meant that he was going to commit some considerable time to one-on-one tuition, so he needed a day to clear the time.

  That meant that Kana had one more day to become accustomed to the idea that she was not in fact dreaming. She was still clinging to that hope, but she found that she had to regularly remind herself that this was all some fiction her sleeping mind had constructed.

  It was getting hard to believe that Soken was not her new reality.

  She had spent her free day wandering around the castle just to find out what she could. She discovered a blacksmith, a short man who was very solidly built and had a long beard with a few burn marks in it from the forge. There were elves, so were there dwarfs? He fit the stereotype of the fantasy race, but maybe he was just a short, stocky human. Kana had no way of asking.

  There were few elves in the castle, but they seemed to follow Sharassa’s body plan: not at all tall, but slim, attractive, and with light-coloured hair. Sharassa’s hair was something in the human spectrum, but Kana spotted a male elf with blue hair; she got the feeling that was not the result of hair dye.

  The humans Kana saw all seemed to be Caucasian. The majority of them had dark hair, but she spotted a few blondes and redheads.

  Given that the White Castle seemed to collect people from all over the world, the lack of skin colour variation on the humans seemed odd, and a resolution to that question was added to the list of things Kana wanted to ask about. It certainly meant that Kana got more attention than she might have expected.

  Kana had fairly pale skin, so that would go without comment, but she looked a little more like an elf than the other humans did.

  It was her eyes more than anything. Sharassa had quite large eyes with a noticeable tilt down toward her nose. Kana had quite large eyes too – dark-brown ones unlike Sharassa’s blue – with a fairly obvious epicanthic fold. It gave the impression that her eyes had a tilt to them, even if they did not. Sharassa’s eyes actually sat at an angle, appearing almost cat-like. Not the s
ame at all, but there was a clear visual similarity. Along with that, Kana had quite small features: her nose had a perky quality and her mouth was not very large. Her upper lip had a quite pronounced bow to it. Her hair was black and long; she generally knotted it up into a ponytail which fell to the middle of her back, but there were always loose strands hanging around her face because she liked the look of it. Her ears were not covered, so it had to be obvious that she was not an elf. Add in the strange clothes and Kana figured she looked quite exotic to the people of the White Castle.

  It was a day which taught her little but at least gave her a better idea of where things were. In the evening, Sharassa came and took her to the baths so that she would be clean when she spent the day with the Master. Kana found that vaguely insulting but had to admit that a good soak would feel good after her first few days in Soken. Kana had always lived in houses with private bathrooms in them, but she had visited more than a few sento as

  well as a couple of onsen while on holiday. Public bathing was not that shocking, though she had to learn the peculiarities of this society’s version of it. She was pleased to discover that the genders were separated. And the soak in a hot pool after washing did feel great.

  And today, being awoken not long past dawn to eat a large breakfast did not feel great. Kana got the impression that Sharassa was always up early, or that ‘early’ was a matter of what you were used to. It was easier to go to bed when it got dark and rise when it got light, even if magic could provide light where it was needed. Kana, like most people of twenty-first-century Earth, was used to having electric light, on demand, at any time of the day or night and expected her evenings to stretch out toward midnight as she watched TV, studied, or read. Here, life followed the daylight cycle more closely.

  The first thing the Master did when she entered his study was to hand her a ring which was too big for her slim fingers. Or it was until she slipped it onto the middle finger of her right hand to demonstrate that it would not fit, at which point it shrank to the exact size required. More magic, which Kana should have suspected but it still came as a shock.

  ‘That ring,’ the Master explained, ‘will allow you to communicate in Alabethi. You’ll need to learn the language yourself, so don’t wear it constantly. I’ll arrange for you to study with the children once we’ve determined how good you are at magic. I assume, from your reaction to that ring if nothing else, that there is no magic where you come from?’

  ‘Not real magic,’ Kana replied. ‘There are magicians, but they use tricks to fool people. Uh, what I mean is that I don’t think there’s any magic where I come from. Maybe there is and it’s hidden. I certainly couldn’t do anything and I don’t see why I should be able to here.’

  ‘It’s fairly common for people transported here to gain…

  unforeseen abilities. If my assessment of your talent is correct, you have gained considerable talent with magic.’ Well, that certainly made sense if her dream was following the usual plot for an isekai novel. ‘You seem to have more raw talent than I do, but you don’t have the education. You can’t work magic if you don’t believe you can, so I must disabuse you of several misconceptions you have almost certainly grown up with in order to teach you your first spell.’

  ‘Uh, right. What am I going to learn?’

  ‘Something simple and of great utility. You’ll learn to create your own light.’

  ‘That does sound useful,’ Kana agreed. ‘Thank you.’

  There was a brief instant where the wizard looked surprised at her politeness, but he rallied his usually gruff expression before Kana could be sure she had seen anything. ‘It starts you on the way to being responsible for your own use of resources.

  Now, the first thing you must give up is a cherished concept for almost all non-casters. You believe in an objective reality, I assume? You have it in your head that there is one “real” world which everyone observes. Everyone perceives the same real world when they look at it.’

  ‘Well, yes, obviously.’

  The Master nodded and pointed a stocky finger at Kana’s legs.

  ‘That skirt you are wearing. Can we agree that it is made of a blue-and-white checked fabric?’

  ‘Yes…’ Kana said warily.

  ‘Now, how do you know that my perception of the colour blue is the same as yours? Perhaps I see it as a darker colour than you do. Perhaps I see more green in it. Do I see the white as more of a grey than you do?’

  ‘Oh! I can accept that much.’ Again there was a slight flicker of surprise. ‘Well, people can be colour blind. And I saw a programme once that said that not every culture even has names for some colours. So, I guess I can accept that what we see is kind of related to the way we think about things as much as it is about what’s actually there.’

  ‘Good. We’re making progress. What if I were to say that the reality we perceive as ob jective is entirely sub jective? There is no reality until we examine it. What we then perceive may depend as much on what we expect to see there as on any objective function of creation.’

  Kana’s face scrunched up as she worked her head around what he was saying. ‘You sound like a manga writer using barely understood butsuri to explain some superpower. Badly understood ryōshi butsurigaku, that’s what that…’ She trailed off as she realised she had used a bunch of Japanese words in her little speech and the ring had provided no translation.

  ‘I am going to assume,’ the Master said, ‘that “manga” is some form of fictional writing since it has a writer. Those other words obviously have no translation in Alabethi. Perhaps you could explain.’

  ‘Uh, butsuri is… the study of, um, the way the universe works, I guess.’ How did you explain quantum physics to someone who did not know what physics was?! ‘The other thing… I don’t really understand it either, b-but there’s this thing about a cat in a box.’

  ‘A cat. In a box.’

  ‘Yes. Please hear me out. You have a cat in a box. And there’s also poison in the box, but the cat will only be exposed to it if something happens which you have no control over. So, there’s a fifty–fifty chance that the cat has died of the poison, but you won’t know what happened until you open the box. So, um, ryōshi butsurigaku says that the cat is both alive and dead until you look. And some people say that the result can depend on what you think will happen. Like, if you really loved the cat, then maybe it’s more likely to be alive. If you’re a pessimist, the cat’s more likely to be dead. Did any of that make sense?’

  The Master considered for a moment and then nodded. ‘Your world may not have magic, but it seems to have people who think like mages. Magic relies on the fact that reality is entirely subjective. It doesn’t exist until we observe it. Our intention in observing it can affect the outcome of our observation.’

  Kana’s face scrunched up again. ‘I guess I could accept that.’

  Her grimace shifted into a grin. ‘Aren’t you saying that this is all a dream?’

  ‘A shared hallucination might be a better description. The world we see is a subjective view of our reality designed to allow us to function in a world far more complex than our minds can truly understand. You see… an apple. You know how to make use of this object and what the results of eating it will be. You will be nourished. You don’t need to understand what the apple is made of or how eating it will provide sustenance. You simply need the abstract concept of an apple. Mages need the abstract concept of a spell to reframe reality as they wish it to be.’

  ‘You have to make everyone else see what you want them to see when you cast the spell.’

  ‘Precisely. And now all we need to do is to make you believe what you’ve just said.’

  Somehow, Kana did not expect that to be an easy proposition. But she also had the feeling that the Master was not going to give up until she did.

  ~~~

  Kana dropped her skirt on the floor beside her bed and then dropped onto her lumpy mattress. For once, the uncomfortable bed did not seem uncomfortable.
In fact, it seemed like utter luxury.

  Twelve solid hours of teaching had left her so tired that eating had been a chore. All she wanted to do was sleep. And it was all going to happen again tomorrow.

  The old man was trying to kill her, that was it. They had not even taken a break for lunch. Sharassa had brought in a tray of

  food and a pot of what the ring translated as ‘tea’ which was not tea. Or it was a very robust tea with a bitter flavour and a kick like drinking four mugs of coffee one after the other. Given the circumstances, Kana had not objected to the taste.

  Horizontal, Kana closed her eyes and prepared to sink into oblivion. Oblivion refused to entertain her with its presence.

  Instead, all she could see was the text of the light spell streaming before her. There had been a lot of talking today, but there had also been a lot of careful practice of the incantation required to make light. The Master had explained that the words –

  or sounds, since Kana was not sure they were really in any language – were a mnemonic device. Words, he had said, shaped thoughts. These words would shape her thoughts into the form needed to summon light. They had to be recited perfectly. Tone, timing, and pronunciation had to be correct or the spell would not function. Worse, if she got it wrong enough, the universe was likely to slap her for her efforts. Playing with reality and getting it really wrong could result in all manner of unfortunate results.

  Groaning, Kana turned over and buried her face in her soggy pillow. The ticker tape of words continued to scroll across her vision. Sleep was not going to be anywhere near as easy as she had thought.

  25 th Sokarte.

  ‘You look tired,’ the Master said as Kana slumped into one of the chairs in his study.

  ‘When I tried to sleep, I had the words of the spell dancing in front of my eyes.’

  ‘Ah, yes. I remember when it was like that. You get over it eventually.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Or your mind cracks and you turn into a gibbering loon.’