Words of Autumn

Chapter Eleven

Works of Autumn (aki shi)

Kagami slowly came to terms with her saddened state, and by autumn, she officially withdrew from all classes.

“Akishi Oneechan...”

Akishi sat beside Kagami at the lunch table, and held Kagami’s shoulder. She placed the side of her head against Kagami’s, and patiently waited for what Kagami had to say.

“Oneechan, I can feel it. Magic and alchemy are cold to me. Even when I watch Arashi Oneesama give demonstrations, my heart finds it incomprehensible...”

Akishi slowly swayed from side to side, rocking Kagami very lightly.

“Oneechan, I don’t want to leave Kageyama.”

“Then stay. I want you to stay. We all want you to stay.”

“How can I find work, though? I love cooking, and now I can’t even enter the kitchen.”

“You are very talented even if you don’t become a magician or an alchemist. You can try things out, and see what fits you. Would you like me to help you arrange it?”

“That’s alright. Oneechan, I will ask the librarian first.”

“That’s nice. Librarians always wear gloves, and you don’t have to be so self-conscious about your skin condition anymore. Ever since you stopped exercising, have you ever had another reaction, Kagami-chan?”

“I don’t think so, Oneesama.”

“Nobody at school has developed similar symptoms, so I’m not worried. Maybe in the future you can use the kitchen in the evening to develop your recipes again.”

“That would be nice. If I plan on creating anything, I will ask the kitchen manager.”

The next morning, brushing a leaf off her hair, Kagami stood for a moment in front of Phoenix Hall, and went into the library.

The library occupied five floors of the central tower, directly above the ground floor lecture theatre and the second floor offices. Kagami asked the head librarian if she could be a page, dusting shelves, airing out maps, arranging books, or helping people locate titles by slowly memorizing the topics of each section of the library.

The head librarian had heard about Kagami, as the stories of her depressing plight had been circulating for almost half of a year by that point. After some thought, the librarian suggested “You just turned eight, so it doesn’t... hmm... I guess dusting shelves and bringing requested titles to the reading room might serve as a suitable starting point. Familiarize yourself with this library, and spend some time everyday sampling a few titles from each section. Once you are thoroughly knowledgeable with every shelf, I will train you to become a librarian.”

Kagami was very pleased with this possible career path, and nodded. “Thank you. I would like to start as soon as possible.”

Kagami started three days later. “I need to remember my goal, and not to get carried away with dusting, or overzealous with carting books. My goal is to know the library and its contents by heart, so I can become a competent librarian. A good librarian is not made by dusting shelves.”

Everyday, Kagami focused on one particular shelf. Reading the titles on the spine, looking at the name of authors, or sometimes glancing through forewords and introduction, Kagami steadily added information to her mental depository. She would only spend one hour each day dusting shelves, and she got permission to cart books around only during the hours after dinner.

Days passed peacefully in the library, and when the flowers of spring dotted the campus, Kagami made her way to the third floor of the library -- Theory of Magic.

Some authors proposed resonance with the elements as the main reason for magic to exist; some older titles pointed to theology and suggested that magic was passively allowed divine intervention after the deities ceased their active presence; still others imagined that magic was materialized seeing: a person would ‘see’ the result that was still yet to come, and one who could materialize the seeing would be effective at using magic.

Kagami thought of herself. She certainly did not resonate with the magic elements, maybe slightly when she was six, but definitely not anymore, so if the resonance theory happened to be closer to the truth, then Kagami needed not try at all in the field of magic.

The other two theories that she had come across so far, on the other hand, could be interesting.

Hitomi certainly came from a world devoid of magic and lacking in miracles, but the further back one went in history, the more tales of supernatural phenomena existed.

(“Wasn’t there a European ship set out to sail around the world, and landed on an island that did not really take a liking to them? To distinguish time and direction with sextants, ships were equipped with as many astronomical charts and tables as possible. There happened to be a solar eclipse calculated to happen in two days, and the captain pretended to be God, and shouted angrily at the islanders. On the day of the eclipse, he again yelled at the inhabitants, and pointed at the sun, which readily went black. The residents didn’t know any better, and believed that the captain was indeed God, and offered all the food and drink that the captain could ever want. If I was an islander on that day, how would I know the difference between the captain of a ship, and God?”)

Kagami pondered further with the philosophical question of the Cartesian Theatre. (“How can I know about the things that I can’t possibly know about...”)

“Hmm...” Kagami sat down on the floor, and leaned her back against the side of the bookshelf. “The magic of this world certainly would cause people in my old world to think it is not different from divine miracle. Causing water to come out of rocks... Yes. Controlling water to divide to the sides... Yes. Summoning objects to appear out of the clear blue sky... Yes. Opening the ground to swallow a town... Yes. Causing dead branches to grow... Yes. Causing a healthy tree to wither... Yes. Controlling animals to jump off a cliff... Yes. Changing one substance into another... Yes...”

“Well, to someone who doesn’t know any better, a person with powerful magic could travel to my old world and pretend to be God with little difficulty.” Kagami softly concluded.

“Now the question is, can it be done in the other direction?” Kagami pondered deeper and deeper.

“My old world is rich in religion but lacking in magic, whereas this world is dominated by magic and I don’t see religion anywhere. Can the faith of my world take on the role of magic in this world?”

Hitomi was no stranger to religion. Learning Latin and Greek and immersing herself with chants and rites, she had a very rich religious life. There was even a time during her second year, in the middle of her fall semester, on the eve of one of her midterms, when Hitomi had an unbearable itch in her knee. She couldn’t sleep, and she prayed saying that God knew the situation with the exam, that God was able to help her, and she would trust God to help. And the itch did go away instantly.

When Hitomi was in England, once she had to walk a long stretch of a road between Rochester and Gillingham with no shade to shelter her from the heat of the sun, and there was no breeze to cool her, either. She looked up and saw no clouds anywhere. Hitomi prayed for help and within minutes a large piece of cloud gave her much needed respite. Upon arriving at a tree-lined street near Chatham, Hitomi gave thanks for the cloud and asked the cloud to move away, for the English were usually starving for some sunshine, and many families had come out that day to enjoy some time in the sun. Soon enough, the cloud disappeared from sight.

“If I were to somehow transform the power of faith of my old world into available magic here, what would be the key?...”

“The ultimate barrier is, what made the God of my old world, God.” was the final question that Kagami had to face, after almost five months of contemplation.

Kagami was turning nine, and on the inside, Hitomi was about to be twenty-three.

Outside the library window, wind played tag with the fallen leaves.