Whispers of the Past

Seeker Len managed to locate the right documents and brought them to me. I sat at one of the tables, brushed off the dust, and got to work. I heard Seeker Len shuffle around before finding a seat at a different table and he promptly started to doze.

It was odd seeing English letters on a scroll, but the contents of the scrolls did confirm to me that this probably wasn’t a hoax. I dove deep into a scroll by a woman known as Seer Mei. The first entry was written in the year 347, known as The Year of the Blue Mist. I confirmed with Seeker Len that this would have been 156 years ago. Most of her work was written as if she was speaking to someone directly, telling a new Seer what they needed to know with little mention of her own life and feelings. Her way of writing also struck me as modern, so I don’t think this was someone pulled from the Elizabethan era.

The level of detail to this situation was beyond what could reasonably be done on Earth. You could, arguably, hire a host of people and rent out land after building multiple massive structures and force them to lie to me. The cost would be equal to the GDP of a small nation, but you could do it. The truth of this reality is in the fact that there are some things that can’t be done with Earth technology.

You’ll think you’ve gone crazy, Seer Mei wrote. I promise this is real. It was the night sky that convinced me. The stars here are red and arranged in constellations unique to Wosurei. There are also two moons. I’ve also seen living creatures, made of blood and bile, that do not exist on earth. The easiest to find would be the wren-rabbits. Wild ones live near the palace and a group of them are kept as messengers for the royal family. Ask your Seeker where to find them. If they’ve gone, I’m sure the royal family has replaced them with another form of life equally foreign to Earth.

What you choose to do here is your business, but know that you are truly here and that this world exists as much as Earth does.

I would need to double check these things myself to erase all doubt. I had already begun to accept the rising probability that this was real; the night sky and wren-rabbits would seal the deal. Mei’s scroll answered many of my questions, some I hadn’t thought to ask.

I, and by extension you, cannot use magic. This was made abundantly clear to me. The only people who can use magic in this world are those who make contracts with the gods. In total, there are perhaps a handful of people in all of Wosurei who can wield magic and only in specific circumstances and in particular ways. The contract with the gods that Seers make is based purely on information. I can't find any mention of Seers being given magical abilities by the gods. Maybe that is beyond their power.

A later passage said, A Seeker’s job is to spend their lives in preparation for a Seer’s arrival. They study the texts of previous Seers, serve the Emperor as an advisor, and will receive messages from the gods. Some Seekers never get the chance to meet a Seer, but most are able to encounter one at some point. Doing the math, there seems to be one Seer alive in Wosurei at any given time in the last six hundred years. There’s never been more than one Seer at a time. A few of the early Seers didn’t leave behind any scrolls or other writings, making this hard to verify, however I’m confident the number of Seers thus far, including myself, sits at seven.

The sound of something being set down next to me broke my concentration. A plate of golden dough balls, reminiscent of bao but smaller, had been put next to my right hand.

Seeker Len smiled. “It occurred to me that you likely hadn’t been fed all day. I apologize, that was an oversight on my part. Starting tomorrow, you’ll have a proper schedule.”

I frowned. “Schedule?”

He raised his hands as if to ward off a blow. “You haven’t agreed to help us yet, I recognize that. This schedule is just to ensure that you are being properly taken care of. It merely outlines meal times and recommends activities to do at certain times. You are free to decline any suggested activity.”

This schedule didn’t lessen my feelings of being imprisoned. Still, being bored and alone would be hard to endure for long. I gave him a curt nod before picking up a dough ball and popping it in my mouth. The flavor of seasoned, saucy meat with a hint of mushroom coated my tongue and I fought back the urge to sigh. It was sumptuous, perfectly cooked, with just the right ratio of dough to meat.

“Thank you,” I said begrudgingly. “They’re good.”

His smile was back. “Excellent! We call them bao, but if you ask for small meat buns the kitchen will know what you mean.”

“Are they new, these bao? As a dish, I mean.”

“Ah, no. I can recall my grandmother making these and she always called them bao.”

I nodded as I popped another bao in my mouth. Some Seer must have brought the word over from Earth decades ago. The ripples of their life continued to echo outward in time, except that these bao were quite small in comparison to the bao I knew. Had that been deliberate or did the recipe shift a little, like how meaning is lost in a game of telephone?

I polished off the plate as I read, careful not to let the grease on my fingers touch any of the scrolls. I skipped ahead in Seer Mei’s scroll to see what sort of things she’d written near the end of her life. What I saw made me break out in goosebumps.