The Girl Who Dreamed of a Different World

by Niall Teasdale

  Kana’s nose wrinkled. ‘Thirty-five years living at home with your parents. I’m not sure I could cope.’

  Aneshti gave a shrug. ‘It’s not that bad. It never really bothered me at all.’ Something about her tone suggested to Kana that the ice elf was not telling the whole truth. ‘Still, I was happy to learn I would be coming here. The White Castle is the place to learn magic.’

  ‘The Mages’ Guild in Alabethi has a very good reputation,’ Myshta countered.

  ‘And don’t they know it? If they feel they need to spread rumours about the Master to assert their superiority, they can’t be all that great.’

  ‘That’s a fair point,’ Myshta acknowledged with a nodding head.

  ‘What kind of rumours?’ Kana asked.

  ‘Mostly that the White Castle is the home of satanists,’ Myshta said.

  Kana almost choked on a mouthful of ale. ‘S-satanists?’

  ‘Followers of Satan, the demon lord of dark magic. Most of his followers are necromancers and I bet you haven’t seen a single zombie while you’ve been here.’

  ‘Uh, no. No, I haven’t. But you have Satan here? Ram’s horns and goat legs?’

  Myshta looked a little perplexed. ‘He’s a demon. He can appear as pretty much any shape he wants. You have a god named Satan where you come from? That’s an interesting coincidence.’

  It was. Whenever Kana was starting to think her dream/coma theories should be put aside, something seemed to come along to reinforce the idea that Soken was a fantasy. Now another fragment of home was intruding, even if Kana was not Christian and did not believe in the Devil.

  ‘Well, Soken has been influenced by other worlds for thousands of years,’ Aneshti said. ‘Perhaps not always your world, Kana, but certainly worlds very like yours. The shitagi know more about that kind of thing than most.’

  ‘Oh. Why?’

  ‘Because humans first appeared on Soken in the Skonar Peninsula.’

  Aneshti was getting her lecture on again. ‘Long ago, only the two species of elves lived on Soken, by the grace of Soansha. The first humans to live here migrated to Skonar Island over fourteen thousand years ago. The human population of the mainland is only about six thousand years old.’

  ‘Oh. Uh, migrated from where?’

  ‘No one really knows. It might be your world or another one like it. There are many different universes hidden away where mortals can’t see them. We know they exist because, well, demons exist and they come from somewhere other than here. Do you have any records of a migration of people off your world thirteen or fourteen thousand years ago?’

  Kana frowned. ‘Fourteen thousand years… Well, that’s like twelve thousand B.C. which would make it the Stone Age, I guess. We don’t have real historical records dating back to then. I don’t think so anyway. That’s… I think that’s before agriculture! I’m sure that if we did have evidence of a mass migration like that, I’d have been taught about it, but that’s a long time ago.’

  Aneshti gave one of her proud smiles. ‘Elves are rather good at keeping records. We have history going back over thirty thousand years. Uh, though it does get rather sparse before the Dragon Wars.’

  ‘There are dragons here?!’ Kana brightened. How cool would it be to see a real, live dragon?

  ‘Not really,’ Myshta replied. ‘The elves wiped out all the true dragons in the Dragon Wars. Every so often, a lesser dragon is created, but compared to the true dragons, the lesser ones are…

  big lizards.’

  ‘Oh. Still. I’d love to see–’

  ‘You wouldn’t. Lesser dragons spend a lot of their time eating and they aren’t too picky about what they eat. The true dragons…’

  ‘They were evil,’ Aneshti stated flatly. ‘They were monsters.

  That’s why we had to destroy them.’

  ‘Probably true,’ Myshta continued. ‘The last of them to die became the demon god Serpens. If that isn’t a sign that they were up to no good, I don’t suppose anything is.’

  31 st Deokarte.

  The year was coming to an end and the White Castle was preparing to celebrate the start of the new one as it began. White, winter-flowering blooms were being hung in the main hall of the keep and above the doors of the various dormitories; Kana had not learned the name of the flowers, but they looked somewhat like lilies.

  Everyone was in a festive mood, looking forward to a week without work. The week which encompassed the crossing between one year and the next was the principal holiday on Soken, partially because it was the coldest part of the year and there was little to be done outside.

  Everyone was feeling festive, aside from Kana. She had now been a resident of the White Castle for three full months, the year was changing – here and, she presumed, at home – and it was hard to believe that this new life was not her only life.

  Things had progressed. She was now almost never caught out by some nicety of society she had not encountered. She could speak broken Alabethi without her ring and only wore it in the evenings or when Master Vadoven needed to explain something complex to her. She was at least competent with one of the forms Master Vadoven was teaching her for the short staff, the one which essentially treated the weapon as a katana. She had not learned any new magic, but she had got better at working her one and only spell; having cast it every night for three months, she now did not need to say or do anything, just concentrating was enough.

  And she still had not revealed to Aneshti that she could do that.

  She was now regularly spending time with Aneshti, Myshta, and Orin. Most evenings she ate with them and then they would chat about whatever. Not infrequently, Kana ended up having to explain some aspect of life in Japan because the others had no idea what she was talking about. Also not infrequently, these discussions would turn into a comparison with Soken’s prevailing cultures, which was educational. Much of the land, for example, had a fairly patriarchal view of things. In the north, the Skonar peoples had quite strong views of gender roles and this had influenced the culture of Shibella, where Aneshti had been born.

  In the south, things were less strict, especially among the elves who considered men and women to be equal. This had affected Alabethi culture more than the surrounding lands; Orin, who hailed from Alabeth, had been surprised to discover segregated bathing at the White Castle and was not in the least shocked by Kana being trained as a battle mage.

  Things were going fairly well, but Kana was feeling dispirited as she watched people putting the last of the decorations up around the hall. She wondered what her mother and father would be doing for the new year. They always went to a shrine, and Kana suspected that they were doing the same this year, just with more enthusiasm. If their daughter was missing, they would be praying for her return. If, as Kana still hoped, she was in a coma, her parents would be praying for her recovery. Kana was not really sure that she believed in the power of prayer, but she would have liked a shrine to visit this year. She would have given just about anything to see the colourful – and probably useless –

  charms and to stand in the cold waiting for midnight.

  ‘You look like someone killed you and raised you as a zombie,’

  Aneshti said.

  Kana jumped. She had not heard the elf arrive. ‘I was thinking about home. I’ve never been away at this time of year and, if I’m not in a coma, I’ll never get to be there ever again.’

  ‘Well, they say there’s no way to go back, but you can’t go around believing things like that, can you?’

  ‘Can’t I?’

  Aneshti sat down beside Kana, shaking her head as she went.

  ‘First, you still seem to think you’re dreaming. Personally, I don’t like that idea since it would mean I’m not real, but there’s still the possibility that you’ll dream a way to go home.

  Then you’ll wake up where you came from and be able to tell everyone about the weird dream you had.’

  ‘If I remember it, but yes, I suppose there’s that.’

>   ‘It’s your dream. You can dream anything you want if you try.

  Second, I don’t believe anything is impossible. Just because the Master doesn’t know how to send you home doesn’t mean he can’t figure something out. Or you could. Like… Like there used to be a spell, an enchantment, called a Greater Wish. It was dangerous to cast, but the results if you succeeded could be worth any price.’

  ‘There’s a lot of past tense there, Aneshti.’

  ‘Well, the way of creating things like that has been lost, but every so often someone finds something with a Greater Wish enchantment. If you could find one, I bet you could use it to go home. Greater Wish can do just about anything .’

  ‘Okay.’ Kana frowned at the table, which did not seem inclined to respond to her harsh treatment. ‘How would I find something like that?’

  ‘Adventuring! Search through ruins and in dungeons. Didn’t Sharassa suggest you become an adventurer?’

  ‘She said something about an adventuring guild and gathering information.’

  ‘There you go. You do that, and while you’re gathering whatever information they want, you can also be looking for some lost artefact capable of getting you home. Everyone benefits and you have something to work toward.’

  ‘I… guess.’

  ‘Too right. Cheer up. Tonight is going to be long and kind of rowdy, and we could do without a member of the undead wandering around and bringing the mood down. Do you see me complaining about being away from home for the First Dawn?’

  Kana managed a somewhat half-hearted grin. ‘No, but you don’t want to be home.’

  ‘Beside the point. Give me a smile or I swear to Soansha that I’ll get you drunk and persuade you to dance naked around the hall.’

  ‘That is not a good threat to use to cheer me up, Aneshti.’

  The ice elf looked a little perplexed. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I don’t think you’re joking.’

  1 st Ankarte 6020.

  Getting drunk was not an easy thing to manage on the light ale which was served to more or less everyone through the night.

  Historically, the barely alcoholic beer was drunk rather than water because the brewing process tended to kill off anything harmful. In modern Soken, most places of reasonable size passed their water through enchanted pipes which purified the water and the White Castle was no exception. The water piped from a nearby river was as clean as it could get, but people still preferred to drink ale and, if you tried hard, you could actually get a bit of a buzz from the stuff. Kana had tried, but the effect was fleeting and not really to her liking.

  It was also mostly tradition that had everyone stay up all night, all together in the keep, and making a lot of noise. The hours of darkness on the last night of the year were known as the Dead Hours; the old year was gone, the new year was yet to begin, and the world sat in a deathless limbo until the sun rose. Sleeping in the Dead Hours might mean you never woke up. In some places, the dead were said to walk abroad, looking for living souls to drag back to the underworld with them.

  Despite all this, everyone trooped outside in the freezing cold when the first light began to show in the sky. In other places, the head of the household led the way out, but in the White Castle, everyone followed the Master. It was true that, in many

  ways, the castle operated as one big house with the Master at its head, so it seemed appropriate that he should lead the way. Then there was a lot of standing around watching for the sun to appear above the eastern wall.

  ‘Welcome to the new year!’ the Master called out as the first sliver of the sun appeared, shining brightly through an icy-blue sky.

  ‘Aye!’ everyone responded, even Kana who had been briefed on the procedure by Aneshti and Myshta. There were cheers and raised flagons. The adults were drinking something a little stronger than ale now. The long vigil was over, and people were soon drifting off to their rooms.

  Kana was just about to do the same having bid farewell to her friends when she heard Sharassa’s voice. ‘Welcome to the new year, Kana.’

  ‘And the same to you, Sharassa,’ Kana replied.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  Not sure exactly what the elf wanted, Kana went with, ‘Tired.’

  A smile flickered over Sharassa’s lips. ‘About being here as the year begins anew.’

  ‘I still don’t entirely believe this is real. I miss my parents.

  I feel like I should be angry, but this isn’t real and I’m too busy to spare the time for ranting. I’ve made friends… I’m struggling on.’

  Sharassa nodded and began to turn away. Then she paused. ‘The Master won’t say it, but he’s sorry to have brought you here for no good reason. He won’t ask, but he cares about how you’re coping.’

  Kana stared at the elf for several seconds. ‘That’s nice,’ she said eventually.

  For an instant, Kana thought she saw something like disappointment flash across Sharassa’s features. Then the elf turned away. ‘Sleep well, Kana. May the new year bring you joy.’

  Kana said nothing as she started for her dormitory, but she really doubted that the new year would bring her any joy at all.

  Chapter Two: The Great Brassiere Caper The White Castle, Soken, 16 th Pakarte 6021.

  It was on a spring morning more than a year and a half after arriving in Soken that Kana ‘graduated’ as an official Battle Mage of the White Castle. She had spent the last month with

  Master Vadoven learning to tie together all the basic skills she had learned into a cohesive style of staff fighting and magic. In truth, she knew most of it already, but Vadoven was the one to give her the final nod of approval. Well, Vadoven was the one to say she was ready; the Master was the final arbiter and Kana was a little surprised when Sharassa told her the Master had agreed.

  It was not that the old wizard picked on Kana. He simply did not pay her much attention. He had dragged her across dimensions to meet some need, decided she was not what he wanted, and now she was beneath his notice. Okay, so he was not involved in the teaching of relatively basic spells Kana had been learning so far, but he did not even acknowledge her if they passed in a corridor or something. When her sixteenth birthday had rolled around, Sharassa had wished her well and Aneshti had forced Kana to celebrate, more or less at gunpoint. It was the first anniversary of Kana’s summoning as well as her birthday, and the man responsible had not even sent a card. Birthday cards were not a thing in Soken, but that was beside the point!

  So, as Kana walked through the dining hall toward the head table where the Master was waiting, her thoughts were mixed. He was finally paying her some attention, but equally, he was finally paying her some attention. Three or so months shy of two years had been spent in this world because he had failed in the casting of a spell, and this was the first time since her arrival that the Master would be speaking directly to her.

  It was not exactly a formal ceremony. It was breakfast time and Kana had been called up to the head table. On the other hand, everyone had known that something was up because the Master only sat at the high table for breakfast when he had a reason to.

  Sharassa had briefed Kana on what would happen this morning, so Kana walked up to where the Master was waiting for her and dropped to one knee. ‘Master,’ she said, trying to keep her ambivalence out of her voice. She had long since dispensed with the translation ring; her Alabethi was as fluent as any native, a fact she was rather proud of.

  ‘Kana,’ the Master said in return. Then the rote ritual began.

  ‘Your teachers all agree that your competence in the basic skills of a battle mage cannot be doubted. You have worked hard and learned well.’ That seemingly unimportant comment was about the highest accolade anyone received at the castle, but Kana got the impression that it was just part of the ceremony in her case. ‘It is time to reward your diligence. Do you agree to make the goals of the White Castle your goals?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Do you seek the well-being of the people of the Whit
e Castle above all else?’

  ‘I do.’ The first response had been rote, but this one meant more, to Kana anyway. She had come to like the residents of the castle. Perhaps not all of them, but certainly enough of them for her to want to protect them as best she could.

  ‘Then I grant unto you the rank of Battle Mage of the White Castle. Let all here bear witness. Battle Mage Kana, stand and face your people.’

  Kana got to her feet and turned, but she was already aware of the reaction she was going to get, because the cheers had started as soon as the Master had finished speaking. She could see Aneshti, Myshta, and Orin standing at the table she left for the ceremony.

  They were clapping, and Orin was cheering along with a number of the others gathered for the morning meal. Perhaps the oddest thing was the collection of kitchen staff who had gathered at the sides of the hall to see the ceremony and congratulate Kana on her graduation. Well, it was only odd if you did not know that Kana had been learning some basic spells from one of the cooks in her own time. It seemed that the kitchen was more vested in her future than the Master was.

  ‘Sharassa will speak to you today about your future,’ the Master said, his voice audible only to Kana as the cheering and clapping continued. ‘You have today free. Enjoy your day of rest.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kana replied. Then she started back to her table.

  Yes, the old man seemed uninterested, but at least she had friends here. Now she had to wonder what future Sharassa would be discussing with her. Were they going to send her out into the world now? Having made friends, was she about to lose them? Would that be a bad thing?

  ~~~

  It was not long before Kana found answers to her questions; Sharassa fell into step beside Kana on the way to the dormitory but waited until they were in Kana’s room before explaining anything.

  ‘On Antora, you will begin learning more advanced spells,’

  Sharassa said. ‘Well, “more advanced” is relative, but we will be continuing your education in the magical arts. You will progress to quite advanced spells quite quickly, I believe. You have the talent and we mean to make use of it.’